Articles

• A New Approach to Explaining Fertility Patterns: Preference Theory

Catherine Hakim, Senior Research Fellow, Sociology Department, London School of Economics

Preference theory is a new approach to explaining current and future patterns of employment and fertility among women in modern societies. Although economists usually claim that preferences cannot be measured, methods for identifying women's and men's lifestyle preferences were developed and applied in British (and Spanish) national surveys, confirming the results of previous British and American studies showing three distinct lifestyle preference groups. The results confirm the heterogeneity of women's preferences and suggest that preferences are the primary determinant of fertility and employment decisions. The implications for policies to raise fertility are discussed. [29, no. 3 (Sep 03): 349-374]

• Reassessing the Insurance Effect: A Qualitative Analysis of Fertility Behavior in Senegal and Zimbabwe

Thomas LeGrand, Professor, Department of Demography, Université de Montréal, and Researcher, Centre interuniversitaire d'études démographiques, Montreal, Canada
Todd Koppenhaver, formerly Researcher, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, when this article was written. He is currently a consultant on a project in Botswana
Nathalie Mondain, Ph.D. student, Department of Demography, Université de Montréal
Sara Randall, Senior Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, University College London

A number of prominent demographers have recently reiterated the argument that a lasting mortality decline is a key determinant of the fertility transition. Of the main hypothesized pathways linking fertility to mortality, the one least studied is the insurance hypothesis: the notion that, in high-mortality contexts, people decide to have more children in order to anticipate possible future child deaths and lessen the risks of having too few surviving offspring. In-depth interviews and focus groups from Zimbabwe and Senegal are used to examine this hypothesis and to extend it into a broader theory of reproductive decisionmaking under uncertainty. Whereas insurance strategies are frequent in Zimbabwe and occur in urban Senegal, in the higher-mortality settings--the rural Senegalese site and the recent past described by respondents in Zimbabwe and urban Senegal--deliberate fertility-limitation strategies are rare. The data depict fundamental changes in attitudes, strategies, and behaviors concerning family size over time and, in Senegal, over space. Important reproductive goals and risks extend far beyond numbers of children and mortality. Parents seek to have healthy, successful children for many reasons including companionship, descendants, and old-age support. Diverse investments in child quality (their education, health, etc.) and quantity (numbers of births) are the main means to attain these goals and, less recognized by demographers, are also important ways for parents to manage uncertainty in family-building outcomes; the "classic" insurance mechanism is only one, often minor, aspect of the quantity option. [29, no. 3 (Sep 03): 375-403]

• Childbearing and Women's Survival: New Evidence from Rural Bangladesh

Jane Menken, Director, Institute of Behavioral Science, and Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of Colorado at Boulder
Linda Duffy, Research Librarian, Trinity College, Hartford, CT
Randall Kuhn, Assistant Director, Population Aging Center, Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado at Boulder

Effects of childbearing on women's mortality and the implications of family planning programs in reducing these effects are examined in a 20-year prospective study of more than 2,000 women in Matlab, Bangladesh. Maternal mortality is defined as a death occurring in the six weeks after childbirth. But childbearing may affect women's survival beyond this brief period. Additional hypotheses considered relate to 1) cumulative exposure to childbearing, whether measured by parity or pace of childbearing, 2) age at first birth, and 3) effects beyond the reproductive ages. The results offer no support to cumulative exposure hypotheses, showing no link between parity or pace of childbearing and mortality risk. Instead, we identify an extended period of heightened mortality risk associated with each birth--the year of the birth and the two subsequent years. Family planning programs, by reducing the number of children and therefore a woman's exposure to extended maternal mortality risk, potentially increase survival. Research is needed to identify and address the specific causes of extended maternal mortality risk so that appropriate ameliorative programs may be developed. [29, no. 3 (Sep 03): 405-426]

• HIV/AIDS and Urbanization

Tim Dyson, Professor of Population Studies, London School of Economics

It is well known that levels of HIV prevalence tend to be appreciably higher in urban areas. This article considers the reasons for this and shows that within world regions that are relatively homogeneous with respect to their experience of HIV/AIDS, variation in the level of urbanization corresponds to about one-third of variation in estimated HIV prevalence. Furthermore, for populations in the world's worst-affected area--eastern and southern Africa--there are signs that, partly by differentially raising urban death rates and depressing urban birth rates, HIV/AIDS is slowing the pace of urbanization. Finally, in countries with very high levels of HIV infection and relatively low birth rates, such as in South Africa, the urban sector will soon constitute a "demographic sink"--with death rates exceeding birth rates. [29, no. 3 (Sep 03): 427-442]

Notes and Commentary
Causal Analysis in the Population Sciences: A Symposium

• Causal Analysis in Population Research: An Economist's Perspective

Robert Moffitt, Professor of Economics, Johns Hopkins University

The problem of determining cause and effect is one of the oldest questions in the social sciences. This note provides a perspective on the analysis of causal relationships in population research, drawing upon recent discussions in the field of economics. Within economics, thinking about causal estimation has shifted markedly in the last decade toward a more pessimistic reading of what is possible and a retreat in the ambitiousness of claims of causal determination. The framework that underlies this conclusion is presented, methods for isolating causal effects are discussed, and an example from the field of population research is given. [29, no. 3 (Sep 03): 448-458]

• Some Thoughts on Causation as It Relates to Demography and Population Studies

Herbert L. Smith, Associate Dean for the Social Sciences, School of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Sociology, Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

The counterfactual account of causality defines an effect as the difference, for some unit, between an outcome under an observed treatment and an outcome under a hypothetical alternative. When units are heterogeneous in a population, there is no single causal effect. The micro-level account of causation is complicated when units interact with one another, as they do in human populations. The search for causation requires manipulation. But key micro-level demographic variables--age, race, sex--are not easily manipulated. What are subject to manipulation are the social rules, policies, or choice sets available to individuals within populations. Thus causes are best conceptualized at the macro level, even if their effects are observed at the micro level. [29, no. 3 (Sep 03): 459-469]

• Culture and Causality: An Anthropological Comment

Tom Fricke, Professor of Anthropology and Senior Research Scientist, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan

Anthropology's unique contribution to a discussion of causality is rooted in its specialization in culture rather than in methodological protocols for bolstering our confidence in correlations. This is so because causal arguments are inherently interpretive and, moreover, because human actors themselves operate in terms of meaning. The best interpretive models direct analytic attention to contexts of meaning and motivation. Because these meanings lie inside of people's heads, the interpretation of causality in these terms demands that the validity of analyses be argued for in terms of logical coherence based on highly localized criteria. As with all explanations of human behavior, demographic explanations are as a consequence open to constant reformulation based on new information and the never-ending search for coherence. [29, no. 3 (Sep 03): 470-479]

Data and Perspectives

• New Estimates and Projections of Population Growth in Pakistan

Griffith Feeney, demographer and consultant based in Scarsdale, NY
Iqbal Alam, Pakistani demographer recently retired from the United Nations

Pakistan's population growth rate rose steadily from about 2.6 percent per annum in the early 1960s to a high of about 3.5 percent during the late 1980s. Since then it has declined to an estimated 2.1 percent for 2003. Growth rates calculated from the population censuses, which show a very different picture, are distorted by differential accuracy of enumeration. During the period of rising growth rates, fertility was constant at just under 7 children per woman while life expectancy at birth rose by nearly 20 years. Fertility decline began in the late 1980s, bringing the population growth rate down with it. Remarkably, there appears to have been little change in life expectancy over the past 15 years. [29, no. 3 (Sep 03): 483-492]

Archives

• Kenneth Boulding on Possible Consequences of Increased Life Expectancy

Book Reviews

• Kenneth W. Wachter and Rodolfo A. Bulatao (eds.), Offspring: Human Fertility Behavior in Biodemographic Perspective. The Biology of Behavior and the Study of Human Fertility: A Review Essay by John G. Haaga
   
• Paul-André Rosental, L'intelligence démographique: sciences et politiques des populations en France (1930-1960), reviewed by Etienne van de Walle
   
• James R. Carey, Longevity: The Biology and Demography of Life Span, reviewed by Shiro Horiuchi
   
• Susan Scott and Christopher J. Duncan, Demography and Nutrition: Evidence from Historical and Contemporary Populations, reviewed by Richard H. Steckel
   
• Laura R. Woliver, The Political Geographies of Pregnancy, reviewed by Ann E. Biddlecom

Short Reviews

• Max Essex, Souleymane Mboup, Phyllis J. Kanki, Richard G. Marlink, and Sheila D. Tlou (eds.), AIDS in Africa, Second Edition
   
• Virginie Guiraudon and Christian Joppke (eds.), Controlling a New Migration World
   
• Anke Niehof and Firman Lubis (eds.), Two Is Enough: Family Planning in Indonesia under the New Order 1968-1998
   
• Donald T. Rowland, Demographic Methods and Concepts
   
• Thomas Scharping, Birth Control in China, 1949-2000: Population Policy and Demographic Development
   
• Nelly P. Stromquist, Education in a Globalized World: The Connectivity of Economic Power, Technology, and Knowledge
   
• United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2001 Revision
   
• Yunxiang Yan, Private Life Under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-1999

Documents

• On the Tasks of a Population Commission: A 1971 Statement
  by Donald Rumsfeld