• Population Aging and the Rising Cost of Public Pensions (PDF)

John Bongaarts, Vice President, Policy Research Division, Population Council

Rapid population aging is raising concerns about the sustainability of public pension systems in high-income countries. The first part of this study identifies the four factors that determine trends in public pension expenditures: population aging, pension benefit levels, the mean age at retirement, and the labor force participation rate. The second part presents projections to 2050 of the impact of demographic trends on public pension expenditures in the absence of changes in pension benefits, labor force participation, and age at retirement. These projections demonstrate that current trends are unsustainable, because without reforms population aging will produce an unprecedented and harmful accumulation of public debt. A number of projection variants assess the potential impact of policy options aimed at improving the sustainability of public pension systems. Although the conventional responses are considered, particular attention is given to the demographic options of encouraging higher fertility and permitting more immigration. This analysis is illustrated with data from the seven largest OECD countries. [30, no. 1 (Mar 04): 1–23]

• When Does Religion Influence Fertility?

Kevin McQuillan, Professor of Sociology and Research Associate, Population Studies Centre, University of Western Ontario

Religious affiliation as a determinant of demographic behavior is receiving renewed attention in demography. Interest in the role of cultural factors in affecting fertility and a specific concern with the role of Islam in many developing countries have helped reinvigorate research on the role of religion. This article reviews theoretical and empirical work on that relationship, with special attention to a number of cases in which religion has been identified as an important determinant of fertility patterns. The article concludes that religion plays an influential role when three conditions are satisfied: first, the religion articulates behavioral norms with a bearing on fertility behavior; second, the religion holds the means to communicate these values and promote compliance; and, third, religion forms a central component of the social identity of its followers. [30, no. 1 (Mar 04): 25–56]

• Hidden in Plain Sight: Global Labor Force Exchange in the Chinese American Population, 1880-1940

Kenneth S. Y. Chew, Associate Professor of Social Ecology, University of California at Irvine
John M. Liu, Associate Professor of Social Sciences, University of California at Irvine

Despite a once-conspicuous presence in the Western United States, little is known demographically about the Chinese in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States. The widely accepted model of a declining male “sojourner society,” beset by draconian restrictions on immigration and the impossibility of family formation, is seemingly contradicted by the continuous economic vitality of urban Chinatowns in the United States. This article tests the largely unexamined demographic structure of the Chinese population in the United States through the application of cohort-component projection on census data from 1880 through 1940, including data recently made available as part of the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS). The results fail to support the model of passive population decline, suggesting instead that the Chinese actively engaged in a collective strategy of long-distance labor exchange to maximize economic productivity among Chinese workers in the United States. [30, no. 1 (Mar 04): 57–78]

• Politics and Female Sterilization in Northeast Brazil

André J. Caetano, Postdoctoral Fellow, Brazilian Council on Scientific Development (CNPq) at CEDEPLAR, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil
Joseph E. Potter, Faculty Research Associate, Population Research Center, and Professor of Sociology, University of Texas, Austin

Brazilian fertility has fallen rapidly in the last three decades, even in the Northeast, the country’s poorest region. Female sterilization has become the most common contraceptive method in this region, where 44 percent of married women aged 15–49 years were sterilized as of 1996. While in other regions sterilizations were generally paid for by the patient, politicians and physicians arranged and paid for the large majority of these surgical procedures in the Northeast. The authors present evidence that this phenomenon is the result of the use of sterilization as an electoral good by politicians and physicians in local contexts where politicians regularly provide goods and services to the poor in exchange for votes. This systemic behavior seems to have been little affected by 1997 legislation that regulated family planning, made sterilization legal, and was intended to increase the use of other methods of contraception. [30, no. 1 (Mar 04): 79–108]

Notes and Commentary

• Second Births and the Second Shift: A Research Note on Gender Equity and Fertility

Berna Miller Torr, doctoral candidate, Department of Sociology, Brown University
Susan E. Short, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, and Faculty Associate, Population Studies and Training Center, Brown University

In a set of propositions on fertility transition, Peter McDonald recently proposed that the decline from replacement-level fertility to low fertility is associated with a combination of high levels of gender equity in individual-oriented institutions, such as education and market employment, and low levels of gender equity in the family and family-oriented institutions. Similarly, the “second shift,” or the share of domestic work performed by formally employed women, forms a critical piece of current cross-national explanations for low fertility. Building on this scholarship, the authors explore whether there is empirical evidence at the individual level for a relationship between gender equity at home, as indicated by the division of housework among working couples with one child, and the transition to a second birth. Results, based on a sample of US couples, indicate a U-shaped relationship between gender equity and fertility. Both the most modern and the most traditional housework arrangements are positively associated with fertility. This empirical test elaborates the family-fertility relationship and underscores the need to incorporate family context, including gender equity, into explanations for fertility change. [30, no. 1 (Mar 04): 109–130]

Data and Perspectives

• The Trend in International Health Inequality

Brian Goesling, Research Fellow, Robert Wood Johnson Scholars in Health Policy Research Program, University of Michigan
Glenn Firebaugh, Professor of Sociology and Demography, Pennsylvania State University

Estimates of average life expectancy for 169 countries are used to compute the trend in between-country health inequality from 1980 to 2000. Results show that inequality in the distribution of life expectancy across countries declined in the 1980s, but then increased through the 1990s. The recent turnaround in between-country health inequality is significant because it reverses a long-term trend of declining inequality across countries that began in the first half of the twentieth century. The primary cause of rising inequality across countries is declining life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa, largely owing to HIV/AIDS. Life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa holds the key to the future trend in between-country inequality. [30, no. 1 (Mar 04): 131–146]

Archives

• A. M. Carr-Saunders on Eugenics and the Declining Birth Rate

Book Reviews

• Edward C. Green, Rethinking AIDS Prevention: Learning from Successes in Developing Countries, reviewed by John C. Caldwell
   
• Doris Buss and Didi Herman, Globalizing Family Values: The Christian Right in International Politics, reviewed by Dennis Hodgson
   
• Alberto Alesina and Enrico Spolaore, The Size of Nations, reviewed by Geoffrey McNicoll
   
• David Glimp, Increase and Multiply: Governing Cultural Reproduction in Early Modern England, reviewed by Philip Kreager
   
• Martin King Whyte (ed.), China’s Revolutions and Intergenerational Relations, reviewed by Zeng Yi
   
• Janet Rothenberg Pack, Growth and Convergence in Metropolitan America, reviewed by Franklin D. Wilson

Short Reviews

• Tony Barnett and Alan Whiteside, AIDS in the Twenty-first Century: Disease and Globalization
   
• Frank D. Bean and Gillian Stevens, America’s Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity
   
• A. P. Joshi, M. D. Srinivas, and J. K. Bajaj, Religious Demography of India
   
• Edward Newman and Joanne van Selm (eds.), Refugees and Forced Displacement: International Security, Human Vulnerability, and the State

Documents

• The United Nations on World Population in 2300
   
• Kofi Annan on an Immigration Strategy for Europe