Articles
- Has the HIV Epidemic Peaked? / John Bongaarts,
Thomas Buettner, Gerhard Heilig, François Pelletier
This study reviews the highly diverse regional and country patterns of HIV
epidemics and discusses possible causes of the geographic variation in epidemic
sizes. Past trends and projections of the epidemics are presented and the peak
years of epidemics are estimated. The potential future impact of new prevention
technologies is briefly assessed. A final section summarizes the future impact
of the epidemic on key demographic variables. The main finding of this analysis
is that the HIV epidemic reached a major turning point over the past decade. The
peak years of HIV incidence rates are past for all regions, and the peaks of
prevalence rates are mostly in the past except in Eastern Europe, where they are
expected to peak in 2008. But owing in part to the life-prolonging effect of
antiretroviral therapy and to sustained population growth, the absolute number
of infected individuals is expected to keep growing slowly in sub-Saharan Africa
and to remain near current levels worldwide, thus posing a continuing challenge
to public health programs. No country is expected to see a decline in its
population size between 2005 and 2050 that is attributable to high mortality
related to AIDS. [34, no. 2 (Jun 08): 199–224] (offsite
link*)
- Stages of the Demographic
Transition from a Child’s Perspective: Family Size, Cohort Size, and
Children’s Resources / David Lam, Letícia
Marteleto
This article provides a new
characterization of stages of the demographic transition from the
perspective of children competing for resources within families and
cohorts. In Stage 1 falling mortality increases the size of both
families and birth cohorts. In Stage 2 falling fertility overtakes
falling mortality to reduce family size, but population momentum causes
continued growth in cohort size. In Stage 3 falling fertility overtakes
population momentum to produce declining cohort size. We apply our
framework to census microdata for eight countries and to United Nations
population projections for a larger set of countries. The results
suggest that most countries spend two to three decades in Stage 2, with
declining family size offset by increasing cohort size. From the
perspective of children aged 9–11, many countries enter Stage 3 between
2000 and 2010. Other countries, especially in Africa, will continue to
experience increasing cohort size for several more decades. [34, no. 2 (Jun 08):
225–252] (offsite
link*)
- Intergenerational Coresidence
in Developing Countries
/ Steven Ruggles, Misty Heggeness
Newly available census
microdata from IPUMS-International are used to assess trends in
intergenerational coresidence in 15 developing countries. Contrary to
expectations, we find no general decline in intergenerational
coresidence over the past several decades. There have been, however,
significant changes in the configuration of intergenerational
coresidence. Families in which a member of the older generation is
household head—a configuration consistent with traditional patriarchal
forms in which the older generation retains authority—are becoming more
common in most of the countries. Intergenerational families headed by a
member of the younger generation—the configuration one would expect if
intergenerational coresidence were motivated by a need for old-age
support—are on the decline in most of the countries. Multivariate
analysis reveals that intergenerational families headed by the older
generation are positively associated with measures of economic
development. These findings are at variance with widely accepted social
theory. We hypothesize that housing shortages, economic stress in the
younger generation, and old-age pensions may contribute to the change.
More broadly, in some developing countries rising incomes may have
allowed more people to achieve their preferred family structure of
intergenerational coresidence following traditional family forms. [34, no.
2 (Jun
08): 253–282] (offsite
link*)
- Two Approaches to
Measuring Women’s Work in Developing Countries: A Comparison of Survey
Data from Egypt / Ray
Langsten, Rania Salem
Keyword and activities list
approaches to measuring women’s work are compared. The two approaches
were applied to the same population of women in Egypt in two consecutive
surveys. The widely used keyword approach underestimates women’s work
rates, disproportionately excluding poor and poorly educated women,
particularly those working in nonformal jobs. The activities list
approach captures these missed economic activities and also the multiple
jobs women hold simultaneously. Survey measurement of women’s work must
be improved to fully account for women’s contributions to economic life
and to better understand the relationship of work to such other
important variables and processes as reproductive change, child welfare,
and economic development. [34, no. 2 (Jun 08):
283–306] (offsite
link*)
Notes and
Commentary
- Demography, Culture, and Policy:
Understanding Japan’s Low Fertility
/ Patricia Boling
Insights into the causes
of Japan’s prolonged and sharp fall in total fertility rate come
from comparing Japan with France. The two countries share dirigiste
administrative approaches, family policy reform undertaken under the
auspices of pragmatic right wing parties and justified on
pronatalist grounds, and involvement of demographic experts in
crafting and shepherding such policies. But the countries differ
with respect to their total fertility rates (France 1.98, Japan
1.29) and the effectiveness of their family policies. Thus comparing
them can help identify areas of divergence that might explain these
differences and assist in the project of theory building. Several
salient explanations are rooted in Japan’s labor market: it exacts
high opportunity costs from parents who interrupt their careers to
raise children, keeps ideal workers from having much time for their
families, assumes and reinforces a traditional gender ideology, and
hires few young workers into good jobs. [34, no. 2 (Jun 08):
307–326] (offsite
link*)
Data and Perspectives
- Natural Increase: A New Source of Population
Growth in Emerging Hispanic Destinations in the United States
/
Kenneth M. Johnson,
Daniel T. Lichter
Updated US Census Bureau
estimates and race/ethnic-specific birth and death data for the
post-2000 period are used to highlight the increasing role of
natural increase as an engine of population growth in emerging
Hispanic destinations. Newly emerging Hispanic growth areas are
distinguished from established and high-growth areas from the 1990s.
The findings document that recent Hispanic population gains have
been generated increasingly by natural increase—the excess of
Hispanic births over deaths. Hispanics accounted for 46 percent of
the population gain and 53 percent of the natural increase in
nonmetro America in 2000–2005. Yet, Hispanics represented only 5.4
percent of the nonmetro population in 2000. In metro areas, they
accounted for 50 percent of the population gain and 47 percent of
the natural increase, although they comprised only 14 percent of the
metro population. Current trends suggest that the ascendancy of the
US Hispanic population is likely to continue unabated, whether
restrictive immigration legislation is enacted or not. The growth of
the Hispanic population, caused increasingly by natural increase,
has taken on a demographic momentum of its own. [34, no. 2 (Jun 08):
327–346] (offsite
link*)
Archives
(offsite
link*)
-
Knut Wicksell on the Benefits of Depopulation
The possible effects of declining population numbers on human
societies have attracted increasing attention in recent years. This is hardly
surprising. Despite continuing improvements in mortality, downward trends in
fertility have yielded negative rates of natural increase in a growing number of
countries. In the first half of the present decade, deaths were more numerous
than births in every country in Eastern Europe. Current total fertility rates
are below replacement level, sometimes by a wide margin, in the rest of Europe,
as well as in East Asia, Northern America, Australia, and in some countries of
Southeast Asia, West Asia, and Latin America. As their age distributions become
less supportive of population growth, many countries in these regions will
shrink in size unless natural decrease is offset by net immigration.
But concern with potential population decline is far from novel. As early as
1890, Arsène Dumont’s book, Depopulation et civilisation,
addressed the issue as it pertained to France. In the years leading up to World
War I, numerous commentaries by social scientists and politicians in Western
countries were written on the nearing prospect of population decrease—seemingly
foreshadowed by the then steadily falling birth rates. Most such accounts were
gloomy. A short essay by Knut Wicksell, Can a country become underpopulated?,
is a notable example of the smaller, optimistic subcategory of that literature.
The essay is reproduced below, translated from the original Swedish, in an
abbreviated form, from Knut Wicksell,
Selected Essays in Economics, Volume 2,
ed. Bo Sandelin, copyright ©1999, Routledge, pp. 125–135 (the excerpt is from
pp. 125–129 and 133–134), by permission of Taylor
&
Francis Books UK. The essay originally appeared in 1914 in
Ekonomisk Tidskrift 16(6), pp. 195–208.
Knut Wicksell
(1851–1926) has earned an enduring place in the history of economic
thought as one of the founders of modern macroeconomics, and he
exerted an important influence on the Scandinavian welfare states as
they developed in the twentieth century. His interest in population,
although a minor sideline in his oeuvre, developed early, reflecting
Malthusian concerns with the effect of diminishing returns on
material standards of living. In an 1880 address he deemed Sweden,
then with some 5 million people, to be overpopulated by a
substantial margin. However, his later views on the subject, as
expressed in the essay below, exhibit a judicious balance of
arguments. There are circumstances, he observes, when a diminishing
population can be beneficial and even necessary. The downward trend
need not be irreversible: it is likely to correct itself as material
circumstances change. If, however, it becomes the norm “that parents
regulate the size of their families as they themselves see fit,”
family egoism may “lead to a constantly declining population, even
below the lower limit that would represent the most desirable
population for the nation as a whole.” Individual motives for
choosing a smaller family size “have no direct connection with the
country’s need of young people.” Thus, “individual and collective
interests might come into conflict,” as is the case in other domains
of social interaction. In such a situation the “collective will
clearly has to replace the individual will.” Just as there is a
social interest in the quality of the population, as manifested in
the state’s involvement in the physical and intellectual upbringing
of the young, so there is a social interest in the quantity of the
rising generation.
Wicksell assumed
that economic support and encouragement by the state could prompt
people to have larger families. But he also thought that such direct
support might not be necessary. Parents are motivated to have few
children by “the desire to keep the children’s inheritance intact”
and by “the anxiety to provide the children with careful
upbringing”—thus facilitating upward social mobility or at least
preventing loss of social status. Greater emphasis by the state on
“the education and upbringing of the young” will help assuage such
anxieties. Moreover, a stationary or declining population would be
conducive to increased income per capita and a larger share for
labor in the national product. Thus “no one who was in a position to
provide society with bright, healthy children would be deterred from
doing so by private economic motives.” A new condition of social
equality would ensue, he suggests, “at a far higher level of social
prosperity than at present, but without any tendency to put this
prosperity at risk again by either too high or too low a birth
rate.”
That optimistic
conclusion—arguably validated at least for Scandinavia by that
region’s twentieth-century social and economic history—is also
extended internationally. It is “obviously futile, indeed, absurd,”
Wicksell asserts, “to strive to compete in terms of population with
nations that because of extrinsic circumstances . . . possess the
conditions for population growth that one’s own country may lack.”
Danger can arise from excessive pressure on the means of
subsistence, but this “merely goes to show that complete success in
solving the problem of population, like all social issues, can only
be achieved by international cooperation, not by individual
countries.” Competition in terms of population size, even if that
were possible, would be a “very sorry solution.” It is “surely
better to seek by suitable means to induce the neighbour, too, to
adopt more rational social practices, which of course ultimately can
only be to his own benefit.” Pessimism in this regard is
unwarranted. “After all, the old notion that only certain peoples or
races are inclined to allow their birth rate to decline is utterly
refuted . . . [A]t the present time fertility is decreasing almost
everywhere.” Transposed to the global scene, Wicksell thus
formulated the rationale for including population control as a key
component of foreign development policy—a strategy that would be set
in train by the Scandinavian states and by other Western countries
half a century later.
Book Reviews
(offsite
link*)
-
The Growth and Collapse of Pacific Island
Societies: Archaeological and Demographic Perspectives /
Patrick V. Kirch and Jean-Louis Rallu (eds.)
Reviewed by Peter Hiscock
-
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s
Guide
to Global Warming / Bjorn Lomborg
Reviewed by Brian C. O’Neill
-
Valuing Children: Rethinking the
Economics
of the Family / Nancy Folbre
Reviewed by Peter McDonald
-
The Demography of Armed Conflict /
Helge Brunborg, Ewa Tabeau, and Henrik Urdal (eds.)
Reviewed by Thomas Homer-Dixon
Short
Reviews (offsite
link*)
-
Watering the Neighbour’s Garden: The Growing Demographic Female
Deficit in Asia / Isabelle Attané and Christophe Z. Guilmoto
(eds.)
-
Demographic Transition Theory / John C. Caldwell
-
Population Aging, Intergenerational Transfers and the Macroeconomy
/ Robert Clark, Naohiro
Ogawa, and Andrew Mason (eds.)
-
Europe’s Coming Demographic Challenge: Unlocking the Value of
Health / Nicholas Eberstadt and Hans Groth
-
Perspectives on Mortality Forecasting / Stockholm Committee
on Mortality Forecasting
-
Ages, Generations and the Social Contract: The Demographic
Challenges Facing the Welfare State / Jacques Véron, Sophie
Pennec, and Jacques Légaré (eds.)
Documents
(offsite
link*)
-
The International Food Policy Research Institute on the World Food
Situation
Food costs—basically the costs of wheat, corn (maize), rice, and
other foodgrains—have risen sharply over the last several years,
cutting into living standards of the poor in many countries and
threatening severe hardship and increased malnutrition in some. News
reports describe domestic political repercussions, including urban
riots; there are calls for expanded international assistance. The
trends and events that together have contributed to this outcome are
set forth in a report, The World Food
Situation: New Driving Forces and Required Actions, issued by
the International Food Policy Research Institute in December 2007.
The author is Joachim von Braun, IFPRI’s Director General. The “new
driving forces” are found on both the demand and supply sides of the
food equation. Increased cereal demand can be tied to the changing
food preferences that come with rising incomes and urbanization,
notably through greater consumption of meat and milk. Major
supply-side forces are the surge in energy prices affecting costs of
fertilizer, mechanical cultivation, and transport; large-scale
diversion of corn to ethanol production, especially in the United
States; and weather-related events such as the extended drought in
Australia’s wheat belt, seen as a harbinger of coming effects of
global warming on climate change and variability. Historically low
world grain inventories, following a run-down in stocks over recent
years, and commodity-price speculation have also been factors in the
price increases. In the short run, grain supplies are inelastic;
prospects for a strong supply-response in the longer term are
better, although they may be harmed to some extent by policy
measures now being put into place, such as price controls and export
restrictions.
The citation to the report is: Von Braun, J.
The world food situation: New driving
forces and required actions. Food Policy Report 18.
Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2007.
The first section of the report, titled “The World Food Equation,
Rewritten,” is reprinted below, reproduced with permission from the
International Food Policy Research Institute
(www.ifpri.org). The full report can be found online
at
http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/fpr/pr18.asp.
-
The European Parliament on the Demographic Future of Europe
In October 2006 the European Commission, the executive branch of the
European Union, issued a “Communication” titled The demographic
future of Europe—from challenge to opportunity. Given its
institutional stamp, this brief—only 19 pages covering a big
subject—elicited considerable attention and debate. (A symposium on
it appeared in Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, 2007.)
In 2007, the subject was also taken up by the European Parliament,
which has a long record of concern with the demographic situation of
Europe—more strictly, of the European Union. A Resolution on the
demographic future of Europe adopted by the Parliament at its
meeting in Strasbourg on 21 February 2008 took note of the
Commission’s brief and various earlier documents, as well as the
formally expressed views of various Parliamentary committees
(notably those on Employment and Social Affairs and on Women’s
Rights and Gender Equality). The introductory “General
considerations” section of the Resolution and two of the four
following sections, on “Demographic renewal” and on “Integrated
immigration,” are reproduced below. (The two omitted sections
discuss human resources and solidarity between generations and
regions.)
The “challenge of demographic renewal” addresses the ways in which
public policies could influence birth rates when they are deemed
socially undesirable—in this instance meaning excessively low. There
are considerable differences in levels of fertility among EU's
member countries (here the EU25). The Resolution takes it for
granted that these differences are explained by, or at least closely
related to, policy differences. “[S]ince Member States’ birth rates
[that is, TFRs] range from 1.25 to 2.0, it is possible to influence
birth rate curves favourably through coordinated public policies.”
The list of proposed remedies for low fertility rests on the key
assumption that families or individuals would like to have more
children but are inhibited by their circumstances, primarily
material. Thus the Resolution “insists on the need to create a
family-friendly environment and to improve living conditions for
families and children and for realising families’ real aspirations.”
Fiscal constraints on the room for maneuver in further extending
welfare-state policies are not discussed in the Resolution. Instead,
Member States should “identify good practices in favour of families,
family benefits systems and social services of general interest for
protecting and helping families.” Young parents pursuing their
training and studies should be “targeted specifically”; similarly,
young single mothers. Maternity leave and parental leave should be
lengthened and child care facilities should be improved.
Two suggested measures are less familiar. Although they have been
proposed before, they were generally considered politically
farfetched, hence their surfacing in an official document is
noteworthy. One makes reference to the social and economic value of
“informal family work in the form of caring for children” and asks
for “examining the possibility of recognising length of service,
social security and pension rights for those who carry out such
informal work,” notably in the form of “additional retirement
pension entitlements.” The other proposed novel measure
(articulated, however tentatively, in the section on immigration
although it is more relevant to fertility) is prompted by a
perceived bias in existing political institutions. Specifically, the
Resolution “considers that the crucial issue in an ageing society is
that of political representation of minors, who represent the common
future, and hence the political future, of the community yet
currently have no voice and exert no influence on decision-making.”
Thus “giving a voice and political representation” to minors “calls
for a thorough, wide-ranging debate.”
On immigration, the Resolution’s language echoes many past
statements, emphasizing its advantages for the EU. Immigration
“could be a positive contribution from an economic, social and
cultural point of view” and “particularly offers regions
experiencing net outward migration the opportunity to stem the
negative impact of demographic change.” Integration of migrants is a
“strategically important policy measure”; policies should
“facilitate the establishment of migrants in the European Union.”
Immigration policies should be “coordinated among member states by
ensuring that immigrants enjoy the same living and working
conditions.” But ”human trafficking “ should be fought and
“employers who employ and/or exploit illegal workers” should be
penalized. Beyond economic considerations, “the choice of family
integration should remain a possibility for migrants who so wish.”
Immigration, however, should not be disadvantageous to the countries
of origin; the risk of “brain drain” needs to be taken into account.
A conspicuous feature of the Resolution is the scarcity of
quantitative references in speaking about demographic matters.
Occasional intriguing numbers do appear, such as the claim that in
the EU “infertility is on the increase and now occurs in 15% of
couples.” On fertility more broadly, no suggestion is offered on the
level below which corrective measures are called for. On
immigration, lack of numbers renders the Resolution’s injunctions
particularly opaque. The Commission’s Communication did cite a
Eurostat projection that envisaged a net inflow from outside the EU
of some 40 million persons between 2004 and 2050 and termed this
estimate “conservative.” What net immigration the European
Parliament might consider appropriate for the coming decades is not
mentioned in the Resolution.
-
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on India's Gender Imbalance
India is one of a number of countries, mostly East and South Asian,
that record anomalous male-dominated sex ratios at birth.
Under-enumeration of girl children may be partly responsible, but
the larger cause is the selective abortion of female fetuses in
societies showing strong cultural or economic preferences for sons
over daughters. Fetal sex determination became simple with the
development of ultrasound technology. The sharp rise in the ratio of
boys to girls in the youngest population age groups seen in the
Indian censuses of 1981, 1991, and 2001—especially in the
northwestern states of Punjab and Haryana—coincides with the spread
of this technology, notwithstanding that its use for this purpose
has been outlawed since the early 1990s. (Abortion is legal in India
but the principle of parental sovereignty in reproductive decisions
is overruled in this case in the name of the collective interest.)
In a recent speech Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called attention to
the gender imbalance and supported a nationwide campaign to end sex
discrimination in this “gray area of national concern.” The Prime
Minister’s speech was delivered on 28 April 2008 to the National
Conference on “Save the Girl Child,” New Delhi, a meeting organized
by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. It is reprinted below.
The Prime Minister describes selective abortion of a female fetus as
a reprehensible practice. Its origin is found in the “patriarchal
mindset,” its prevalence ascribed to “unscrupulous parents” and
“unethical conduct on the part of some medical practitioners”
offering sex determination services. The remedy, he says, lies in
education and empowerment of women. While that may well be the case
in the longer run, cross-sectional research findings are less than
supportive. The gender imbalance is positively associated with
parental education and social status—whether linked to greater
affordability of sex determination services or to the enhanced
agency of higher-status parents in reproductive decisions. The text
of the speech can be found at
http://pmindia.nic.in/lspeech.asp?id=677.
* Journal subscribers will be able to access a PDF
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a fee.
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