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.
Transitions to Adulthood
Unexplored Elements of Adolescence in the
Developing World
To provide a foundation of information on the
lives of young people, the US National Academies published Growing
Up Global: The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries
in May 2005. The volume detailed the
findings of an expert panel—led by Cynthia B. Lloyd, Population Council
director of social science research—on transitions to adulthood in
developing countries. As part of its three-year information-gathering
process, the panel commissioned background papers to provide more focused
treatment of certain issues where existing literature was lacking. Ten of these background papers were selected
by the editors for publication in a companion volume, The Changing
Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries: Selected Studies,
which was published in December 2005. Some of the most important
contributions of the volume are its essays on adolescents in China and on
adolescent marriage.
Experimental Programs
Expanding a Successful Health Care Initiative
What is
the best way to help institutions replace poorly functioning policies
and programs with ones that have been shown to work well? “In Ghana, we
are taking mechanisms that work for individual behavior change and
adapting them for the purpose of policy and program change within
institutions,” says Population Council demographer James F. Phillips.
Phillips and his Council colleagues are collaborating with the Ghana
Health Service to help that organization overcome the gap between
research and action.
-
Demography
Bengali Perceptions of Adult Mortality Trends Distorted
Nostalgia for the “good old days,” a familiar sentiment in the developed
world, may be common in the developing world as well. Recent research in
Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal has revealed that,
despite well-documented progress in health and an acknowledged
improvement in child mortality rates, many rural Bengalis firmly believe
that adult health and survival have declined in recent years.
Demographers Sajeda Amin, of the Population Council, and Alaka Malwade
Basu, of Cornell University, encountered this attitude while conducting
interviews on women’s and men’s motivations for reproduction. They were
intrigued and decided to further explore this surprising worldview.
Epidemiology
Education, Wealth Play Different Roles in Health
Much research
has shown that the more educated and wealthy people are, the more likely
they are to be healthy. Very few researchers, however, have investigated
the relative contributions of education and wealth to various
health-related processes. Population Council demographer Zachary Zimmer
and University of Michigan researcher James S. House collaborated on a
study of the roles played by education and wealth in the onset and
progression of ill health.
Aging
How Long Will We Live? Demographers Refine Estimates
Estimates of current life expectancy at birth are routinely provided by
national and international statistical agencies and are important to
policymakers because they measure progress in lowering a country’s overall
level of mortality. The United Nations Population Division publishes
estimates of life expectancy for all countries in the world, ranging from
a low of 37 years in Sierra Leone to a high of 80 years in Japan for the
period 1995-2000. These numbers may be overestimated by up to a few years
in contemporary countries with high life expectancy, say two demographers
who have analyzed past and future trends in mortality. In a paper
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
John Bongaarts, vice president and director of the Population Council’s
Policy Research Division, and Griffith Feeney, an independent consultant,
question the accuracy of underlying calculations that generate life
expectancy figures, identify a distortion in the calculations, and provide
a formula to amend the figures.
2003
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.”
2002
Case Studies
New Book Documents Transformations in Reproductive Health Programs
Worldwide
In the eight years since the Programme of Action was issued at the
International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo,
how well have reproductive health and population programs addressed its
mandates? The Population Council recently published Responding to Cairo:
Case Studies of Changing Practice in Reproductive Health and Family
Planning, a book of 22 case studies evaluating this global response. The
book, coedited by Population Council researcher Nicole Haberland and
consultant Diana Measham, adds a critical new dimension of analysis to the
body of material documenting efforts to promote ICPD goals.
Demography
Demographic Change and Regional Affiliations in East Asia
Although most research on regionalization lies within political science,
significant demographic influences on the process warrant examination.
Recently, Population Council demographer Geoffrey McNicoll explored these
influences in the East Asian case—examining how population change is
affecting the emergence of Asian regional affiliations and identities,
from simple trade pacts to deeper levels of economic and even cultural
integration.
2001
Investigación y Política
¿Qué vínculos existen entre la investigación y la política?
Por mucho tiempo, en el
ambiente científico se ha debatido sobre los vínculos entre hallazgos de
investigación y diseño de políticas. ¿Hasta qué punto los investigadores
deben intentar transmitir sus resultados a los tomadores de decisión de
los gobiernos? ¿Qué situaciones impiden o facilitan la comunicación entre
investigadores y diseñadores de políticas?
Reforma de los Sistemas de Salud
Vinculación de la reforma del sector salud con la salud reproductiva
En muchos países del
mundo, dos fuerzas están transformando al sector salud: las reformas para
expandir la cobertura de servicios y para hacerlos más equitativos y
eficientes, y la adopción de un amplio modelo de atención a la salud
reproductiva (SR) de conformidad con acuerdos internacionales. Aunque en
teoría estos movimientos convergen, un estudio descubrió que no se están
aprovechando oportunidades de cooperación entre ambas fuerzas.
|
