Kenneth Hill, Professor, Department of Population and Family Health Sciences, Johns Hopkins University
Rebeca Wong, Research Scientist and Associate Director, Maryland Population Research Center, University of Maryland Migration to the United States increased sharply in the 1980s and 1990s, raising political concerns. The immigrant flow from Mexico, both authorized and unauthorized, was particularly large. Good data would contribute to rational discussion of this politically charged issue, but data on immigration, particularly of the unauthorized, are notoriously poor. This article applies residual estimation techniques to data from the 1990 and 2000 population censuses of Mexico and the United States (Mexico-born population) to quantify the intercensal migration flow, arguing that the reasons why unauthorized migrants might avoid enumeration in the United States would not adversely affect data from Mexico. Results suggest that the annual net flow of migrants aged 10 to 80 years from Mexico to the United States averaged between 324,000 and 440,000 between 1990 and 2000. A sensitivity analysis indicates that these results are quite robust (especially those using US data) to likely errors. [31, no. 1 (Mar 05):1–18]
- Actual and de facto Childlessness in Old Age: Evidence and Implications from East Java, Indonesia
Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill, British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow, St. Antony's College and Institute of Human Sciences, Oxford University
Philip Kreager, Lecturer in Human Sciences, Somerville College, and Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Institute of Ageing, Oxford University The demographic study of child supply has long concentrated on the implications of reproductive excess, rather than a lack of children. In recent years attention to population aging has begun to redress this emphasis, but even in aging research the comparative study of childlessness has a low profile. Data collected as part of anthropological and demographic research on aging in Indonesia are used to question current assumptions and to introduce issues and concepts that shed new light on current levels and experiences of childlessness. In our East Javanese study community 25 percent of the elderly have no living children, and another 15 percent have one child. Provincial and national data indicate that these findings are part of a wider pattern, corroborated by historical evidence from Indonesia, Europe, and populations elsewhere in the world. Analysis of the East Javanese data shows that childlessness is a composite category. Demographic childlessness occurs where a combination of proximate determinants (nuptiality, mortality, primary and pathological sterility) leads to no childbearing and child survival. De facto childlessness arises where there is a lack of support from any children. Actual childlessness aggregates demographic and de facto childlessness, net of adoption or remarriage where these provide alternative access to children. Analysis also takes into account the practices of patronage, charity, and kin support to assess the implications of childlessness in old age where state support is lacking.
[31, no. 1 (Mar 05): 19–55]
- How Far Has Fertility in China Really Declined?
Robert D. Retherford, Coordinator, Population and Health, East-West Center, Honolulu
Minja Kim Choe, Senior Fellow, Population and Health, East-West Center, Honolulu
Jiajian Chen, Senior Fellow, Population and Health, East-West Center, Honolulu
Li Xiru, Director, Division of GIS and Environmental Statistics, Department of Population, Social, Science and Technology Statistics, National Bureau of Statistics of China, Beijing
Cui Hongyan, Deputy Director and Senior Statistician, Division of Population Census, Department of Population, Social, Science and Technology Statistics, National Bureau of Statistics of China, Beijing According to births in the last year as reported in China's 2000 census, the total fertility rate (TFR) in the year 2000 in China was 1.22 children per woman. This estimate is widely considered to be too low, primarily because some women who had out-of-quota births according to China's one-child family policy did not report those births to the census enumerator. Analysis of fertility trends derived by applying the own-children method of fertility estimation to China's 1990 and 2000 censuses indicates that the true level of the TFR in 2000 was probably between 1.5 and 1.6 children per woman. A decomposition analysis of change in the TFR between 1990 and 2000, based on our best estimate of 1.59 for the TFR in 2000, indicates that about two-fifths of the decline in the conventional TFR between 1990 and 2000 is accounted for by later marriage and less marriage, and three-fifths by declining fertility within marriage. The analysis also applies the birth history reconstruction method of fertility estimation to the two censuses, yielding an alternative set of fertility estimates that are compared with the set derived by the own-children method. The analysis also includes estimates of trends in fertility by urban/rural residence, education, ethnicity, and migration status. Over time, fertility has declined sharply within all categories of these characteristics, indicating that the one-child policy has had large across-the-board effects. [31, no. 1 (Mar 05): 57–84]
- The Weakening Position of University Graduates in Singapore's Labor Market: Causes and Consequences
Stephen J. Appold lectures in the Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore. Pulled along by global developments, Singapore is rapidly developing a "knowledge-based economy." Between 1990 and 2000, gross domestic product more than doubled (in constant dollars), and the number of managerial and professional jobs almost doubled. Such advances should be a boon to middle-class Singaporeans, but, instead, they find themselves under increasing economic pressure despite the increased need for educated labor and the surplus of manual labor. On the basis of analysis of available data, the article documents the deteriorating relative position of the well-educated in the labor market and explores the role of migration in that process.
[31, no. 1 (Mar 05): 85–112]
Notes and Commentary - Why Is Fertility Lower in Wealthier Countries? The Role of Relaxed Fertility-Selection
Lonnie W. Aarssen, Professor, Department of Biology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada Lower fertility in wealthier countries can be explained in evolutionary terms by three key factors: (i) higher fertility in poorer countries—an evolutionary consequence of many generations of intense "fertility-selection" favoring innate behaviors promoting high fertility, especially in males; (ii) the empowerment of women in wealthier countries that serves to reduce fertility directly—an evolutionary consequence of selection favoring an inherent preference for lower fertility in females, combined with release from the evolutionary effects of a long history of male control over female fertility; and (iii) offspring access in wealthy countries to public health care, welfare, and other social services, which combined with inherited wealth for offspring, virtually eliminates competition between families for the resource needs of offspring. The combined consequences of (ii) and (iii) mean that the fertility-selection so prevalent in poor countries is relaxed in wealthy countries, thus allowing random genetic drift to produce an increased relative frequency of innate behaviors promoting low fertility and discontentment with high fertility. [30, no. 1 (Mar 04): 113–126]
- Brave New Worlds: Philosophy, Politics, and Science in Human Biotechnology
S. Philip Morgan, Professor and Chair of Sociology, Duke University
Suzanne Shanahan, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Duke University
Whitney Welsh, graduate student in sociology, Duke University Advances in biotechnology have important applications to the core demographic concerns of human reproduction and longevity, raising a number of difficult ethical issues. In the debate over those issues, however, the voices of demographers and other social scientists are nearly silent. In the United States the dominant bioethical arguments currently heard come from a conservative political and ideological position, represented, for example, by the President's Council on Bioethics and in particular by its chairman, Leon Kass. A critical discussion of Kass's writings identifies the philosophical roots of that position and highlights its logic and limits. Kass's specific arguments on cloning can be challenged by applying them to an earlier and revolutionary technology, birth control; his views on death and dying would argue for curtailing investment in life-extending technology. Conservatism of this kind ignores social science perspectives and forecloses opportunities for social change. [30, no. 1 (Mar 04): 127–144]
Archives - Sidney Webb on the Penalization of Parenthood
Book Reviews - Limits to Growth Revisited: A Review Essay on Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update, reviewed by Vaclav Smil
- Robert William Fogel, The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100: Europe, America, and the Third World, reviewed by Samuel H. Preston
- E. A. Wrigley, Poverty, Progress, and Population, reviewed by David Levine
- Tomas Frejka and Jean-Paul Sardon, Childbearing Trends and Prospects in Low-Fertility Countries: A Cohort Analysis, reviewed by Thomas K. Burch
- Roderic Beaujot and Don Kerr, Population Change in Canada (second edition), reviewed by Anatole Romaniuc
- Wolfgang Lutz, Warren C. Sanderson, and Sergei Scherbov (eds.), The End of World Population Growth in the 21st Century: New Challenges for Human Capital Formation and Sustainable Development, reviewed by John G. Haaga
- Emmanuel Todd, After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order, translated by C. Jon Delogu, reviewed by Geoffrey McNicoll
Short Reviews - Loretta E. Bass, Child Labor in Sub-Saharan Africa
- Paige Whaley Eager, Global Population Policy: From Population Control to Reproductive Rights
- Han Entzinger, Marco Martiniello, and Catherine Wihtol de Wenden (eds.), Migration between States and Markets
- James Gustave Speth, Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment
- United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Economic and Social Survey 2004: International Migration
Documents - Social Security in China: Government White Paper
- The US National Intelligence Council on the Changing Geopolitical Landscape
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