Focus On: Demography
New Book Explores Political Dimensions of
Population Growth
The demographic
transformation of the world in the 100 years between 1950 and 2050 will be
marked both by a vast expansion in human numbers and by the emergence of a
low-fertility, highly urbanized, and increasingly elderly world population.
These changes pose challenges for national governments and international
institutions. The responses those bodies have arrived at, or must now
formulate, are the subject of the new volume The Political Economy of
Global Population Change, a supplement to the Population Council’s
journal Population and Development Review.
Demography
End to Childbearing Delays Could Lead to Fertility Rise
With fertility in much
of the developed world at historic lows, a lively debate has emerged among
demographers and policymakers: How low will it go? A study by demographer
John Bongaarts, a Population Council vice president, tackles this question
by analyzing the implications of changes in the timing of childbearing.
The study concludes that fertility in many developed countries, especially
those in the European Union, could soon rise somewhat.
Reference Work
New Population Encyclopedia Offers Thorough Review, Reflects Expanded
Scope of Field
The newly published Encyclopedia of Population provides a
comprehensive appraisal of the field of population studies. This reference
work was badly needed as the last encyclopedia of population was published
more than two decades ago in 1982. “In the 1980s, population issues seemed
to many people to connote little else but rapid population growth and
measures to curtail it,” write the editors Paul Demeny and Geoffrey
McNicoll, in their preface. “Today population growth is one concern among
many.”
Social Effects
Friends Strongly Influence Contraceptive Use in Ghana
Population Council researchers are exploring the theory that behaviors
related to contraceptive practices can be contagious. Like viruses, ideas
and practices vary in their “infectiousness.” Under the right
circumstances, people may adopt certain attitudes and behaviors after
exposure to only one or two people exhibiting them. Other ideas and
behaviors may be much less infectious. Population Council researchers John
B. Casterline, Paul C. Hewett, and Mark R. Montgomery collaborated with
scientists at the University of Cape Coast in southern Ghana and other
Council investigators to explore contraceptive use as a form of social
contagion. They recently published their first analysis of data from this
study.
Demography
Decelerating Pace and Human Development Crucial Elements of Fertility
Transition
In a small number of developing
countries fertility has dipped below the replacement level of 2.1 births
per woman. Some demographers have asked whether projections of future
population growth might be made more accurate by changing them to assume
that fertility in the long run will fall below replacement in all
countries, rather than to 2.1 births per woman as is now the assumption.
In March 2002, a United Nations expert group met to debate the possibility
for projecting the course of population growth over the next several
decades. Population Council demographer John Bongaarts, one of the experts
called to comment on this issue contends that simply lowering the assumed
fertility level would be insufficient. He recently published research
outlining additional changes that would be needed to make the fertility
projection model more accurate.
|
