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.
HIV/AIDS
Unsafe Behaviors Most Common Among Poor Women
Around the world, HIV infects about 1 percent of
15–24-year-olds, but in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, more than 14
percent of people in this age group are infected, according to a 2003
population-based survey by Lovelife and the Reproductive Health Research
Unit in Johannesburg. Young women are at particularly high risk of
infection. South Africa has three infected 15–24-year-old females for
every infected male of the same age. Poverty may play a key role in HIV
risk. Population Council health economist Kelly Hallman investigated the
effect of socioeconomic disadvantage on the sexual behaviors of young
women and men in KwaZulu-Natal, the most populated South African
province. She found that poverty is more consistently correlated with
unhealthy sexual behaviors among females than among males.
Urban Studies
Transformation in World's Cities Explored
Historically, developing countries have been largely rural. As a result,
demographers have focused on life cycle events in mainly rural contexts.
During the next 30 years, however, most of the world’s population growth
will occur in the cities and towns of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Recognizing the need for a better understanding of issues related to urban
population growth, the National Research Council formed the Panel on Urban
Dynamics, co-chaired by Population Council economist Mark Montgomery. The
members reviewed existing literature and conducted new analyses. A report
of their findings was published by National Academies Press.
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
Urban Studies
Public Services Found Lacking in Many Developing-Country Cities
Population Council demographers
recently completed a comprehensive examination of the availability of
basic public services in cities and town of developing countries around
the world. Using data from the Demographic and Health Surveys of 43
countries, they discovered striking differences in the distribution of
these basic services. Moreover, recent political changes underway in many
developing countries may be making the delivery of basic services more
difficult.
|
