bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
SHORT REVIEWS
Authors: Bongaarts John , Greenhalgh Susan , McNicoll Geoffrey , Todaro Michael P. , van de Walk Etienne , Zimmer Zachary
Published: January 2004

Books reviewed in this article:

Gay Becker, The Elusive Embryo: How Women and Men Approach New Reproductive Technologies

Theodore Caplow, Louis Hicks, and Ben J. Wattenberg, The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, 1900–2000

Stephen Moore and Julian L. Simon, It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years

Elisabeth Croll, Endangered Daughters: Discrimination and Development in Asia

Barbara Entwisle and Gail E. Henderson (Eds.), Re‐Drawing Boundaries: Work, Households, and Gender in China

David T. Graham and Nana K. Poku (Eds.), Migration, Globalisation and Human Security

Paul Harrison and Fred Pearce, AAAS Atlas of Population and Environment

Russell King, Paolo De Mas, and Jan Mansvelt Beck (Eds.), Geography, Environment and Development in the Mediterranean

Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict

Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs and United Nations Population Fund, Low Fertility and Policy Responses to Issues of Ageing and Welfare

National Assessment Synthesis Team, Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change. Report for the US Global Change Research Program

Jacques Vaixin and Thérèse Locoh (Eds.), Population et développement en Tunisie: La métamorphose
Testing Evolutionary Hypotheses with Demographic Data
Authors: Clarke Alice L. , Low Bobbi S.
Published: January 2004

An ecological evolutionary viewpoint offers new perspectives on contemporary demographic problems in general and on population–environment issues in particular. In turn, rich and detailed human demographic data can help solve problems of interest in evolutionary theory. Such data have been analyzed in greatest detail in studies of traditional and historical societies. Evolutionary approaches using historical data go beyond small‐sample anthropological studies to the application of the evolutionary approach to large datasets, and illuminate important similarities between small‐scale traditional societies and large modern populations living in evolutionarily novel environments. This article provides a concise update of the breadth of questions and hypotheses of likely interest to demographers and others that evolutionary theorists address using a variety of traditional and historical datasets. It suggests opportunities for additional collaborative work between evolutionary theorists and historical demographers and highlights topics relevant to modern demography.
Death at the Border: Efficacy and Unintended Consequences of US Immigration Control Policy
Authors: Cornelius Wayne A.
Published: January 2004

This article assesses the efficacy of the strategy of immigration control implemented by the US government since 1993 in reducing illegal entry attempts, and documents some of the unintended consequences of this strategy, especially a sharp increase in mortality among unauthorized migrants along certain segments of the Mexico–US border. The available data suggest that the current strategy of border enforcement has resulted in rechanneling flows of unauthorized migrants to more hazardous areas, raising fees charged by people‐smugglers, and discouraging unauthorized migrants already in the US from returning to their places of origin. However, there is no evidence that the strategy is deterring or preventing significant numbers of new illegal entries, particularly given the absence of a serious effort to curtail employment of unauthorized migrants through worksite enforcement. An expanded temporary worker program, selective legalization of unauthorized Mexican workers residing in the United States, and other proposals under consideration by the US and Mexican governments are unlikely to reduce migrant deaths resulting from the current strategy of border enforcement.
Women's Autonomy in India and Pakistan: The Influence of Religion and Region
Authors: Jejeebhoy Shireen J. , Sathar Zeba A.
Published: January 2004

This article compares the lives of women and explores dimensions of their autonomy in different regions of South Asia—Punjab in Pakistan, and Uttar Pradesh in north India and Tamil Nadu in south India. It explores the contextual factors underlying observed differences and assesses the extent to which these differences could be attributed to religion, nationality, or north–south cultural distinctions. Findings suggest that while women's autonomy—in terms of decision‐making, mobility, freedom from threatening relations with husband, and access to and control over economic resources—is constrained in all three settings, women in Tamil Nadu fare considerably better than other women, irrespective of religion. Findings lend little support to the suggestion that women in Pakistan have less autonomy or control over their lives than do Indian women. Nor do Muslim women—be they Indian or Pakistani—exercise less autonomy in their own lives than do Hindu women in the subcontinent. Rather, findings suggest that in the patriarchal and gender‐stratified structures governing the northern portion of the subcontinent, women's control over their lives is more constrained than in the southern region.
Spatial Patterns of Fertility Transition in Indian Districts
Authors: Guilmoto Christophe Z. , Rajan S. Irudaya
Published: January 2004

The article explores the dynamics of Indian fertility at the district level using a child‐woman index developed from the four Indian censuses, 1961 to 1991. It employs statistical and geostatistical techniques to assess fertility change across districts and periods. Fertility decline is evident in every region, but sizable regional differentials exist. A cluster analysis of fertility profiles indicates that a clear spatial pattern of fertility in India has emerged and the pattern intensified because of the process of fertility decline.
First Impressions from the 2000 Census of China
Authors: Lavely William
Published: January 2004

The 2000 census of China has several notable innovations, including a sample long form containing detailed items on migration, housing, and employment. Preliminary data indicate rapid urbanization and continued rapid social change in the 1990s, and apparent success in the government's drive to curtail population growth. Although a post‐enumeration survey indicates that overall data quality is good, the rise of a mobile “floating population” and pressures of the birth planning program caused problems for the enumeration of migrants and infants. Data released to date have been silent on two important issues, fertility and rising sex ratios.
The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Adult Mortality in Zimbabwe
Authors: Feeney Griffith
Published: January 2004

In June 2000, an estimated 25 percent of adults in Zimbabwe were living with HIV/AIDS. Statistical data on the impact of the epidemic, though problematic in many ways, are better for Zimbabwe than for many other countries in sub‐Saharan Africa. This analysis presents estimates of adult mortality in Zimbabwe based on multiple sources, including registered deaths adjusted for incomplete reporting, estimated at approximately 50 percent. Comparison of estimates from different data sources shows that they are subject to substantial errors. At the same time, the estimates leave no doubt that adult mortality risks in Zimbabwe more than doubled between 1982 and 1997. The evidence that this rise is due to AIDS deaths is circumstantial, but very strong; there is no credible competing explanation.
How Long Can We Live? A Review Essay*
Authors: Wilmoth John R.
Published: January 2004

Bjørn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World

Andrew Mason and Georges Tapinos (eds.), Sharing the Wealth: Demographic Change and Economic Transfers between Generations

Nancy Foner, Ruben G. Rumbaut, and Steven J. Gold (eds.), Immigration Research for a New Century: Multidisdplinary Perspectives
SHORT REVIEWS
Authors: Bongaarts John , Dayton Julia , Greenhalgh Susan , McNicoll Geoffrey , Todaro Michael P.
Published: January 2004

Books reviewed in this article:

Lourdes Benería with Savitri Blsnath (eds.), Gender and Development: Theoretical, Empirical and Practical Approaches

Margaret Jolly and Kalpana Ram (eds.), Borders of Being: Citizenship, Fertility, and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific

John Loxley, Interdependence, Disequilibrium and Growth: Reflections on the Political Economy of North‐South Relations at the Turn of the Century

William Petersen, From Birth to Death: A Consumer's Guide to Population Studies

Zeba Ayesha Sathar and James F. Phillips (eds.), Fertility Transition in South Asia

M. A. B. Siddique (ed.), International Migration into the 21st Century: Essays in Honour of Reginald Appleyard

Ewa Tabeau, Anneke van den Berg Jeths, and Christopher Heathcote (eds.), Forecasting Mortality in Developed Countries: Insights from a Statistical, Demographic and Epidemiological Perspective

Arne Tostensen, Inge Tvedten, and Mariken Vaa (eds.), Associational Life in African Cities: Popular Responses to the Urban Crisis

United Nations Population Fund, The State of World Population 2001. Footprints and Milestones: Population and Environmental Change
Can Economic Growth Be Sustained? A Post‐Malthusian Perspective
Authors: Ruttan Vernon W.
Published: January 2004

In the United States and in other economically advanced countries, rapid productivity growth in the material‐producing sectors has been the major source of productivity growth for the entire economy. Over the next several decades, continuing structural change will result in a decline in employment in the material‐producing sectors to near or below 10 percent. A simulation exercise is employed to demonstrate how continued slow productivity growth in the service sectors dampens the rate of productivity growth of the entire economy. It is unlikely that productivity growth in the US economy can be sustained at anywhere near the relatively high rate achieved since the mid‐1990s.
Longevity Advances in High‐Income Countries, 1955–96
Authors: White Kevin M.
Published: January 2004

The advance of life expectancy within high‐income countries from 1955 to 1996 is well represented by a straight‐line trend. This explains more of the variance on average, and in 19 of 21 high‐income countries, than logged or unlogged age‐standardized death rates. Change in life expectancy in individual countries over this period was partially predicted by a country's level relative to the rest of this group of high‐income countries and partially by a country's own prior rate of advance, with substantial convergence toward the group mean for both measures.
Cigarette Use and the Narrowing Sex Differential in Mortality
Authors: Pampel Fred C.
Published: January 2004

What explains the recent reversal in many countries of century‐long trends toward a growing female advantage in mortality? And might the reversal indicate that new roles and statuses of women have begun to harm their health relative to men? Using data on 21 high‐income countries that separate smoking deaths from other deaths, this study answers the first question by showing that the reversal in the direction of change in the sex differential results from increased levels of smoking among women relative to men. Using additional cross‐national data on cigarette consumption and indicators of gender equality, this article answers the second question in the negative by showing that the declining female advantage in smoking mortality results from patterns of the diffusion of cigarette use rather than from improvements in women's status. Evidence of continued improvement in the female mortality advantage net of smoking deaths, and the likely decline of smoking among women in the future, imply that the recent narrowing of the differential will reverse.
The End of the Demographic Transition: Relief or Concern?
Authors: Vallin Jacques
Published: January 2004

Demographic transition theory might seem to imply that, after a period of exceptional population growth resulting from the time lag between mortality and fertility declines, every population, and then the whole world population will stabilize and, consequently, no more acute population problems will appear. Does the claim, recently gaining credibility, that the end of the transition is at hand actually imply a stage without major population problems? Nothing is less sure. First, it is just a claim, the realization of which still entails a period of dramatically rapid population growth in some countries, especially the poorest. But more tellingly, the end of the transition is also the end of the paradigm on which we have been relying to understand and anticipate demographic changes. Nobody knows what might ensue later: How long and low can fertility fall? How long and high can life expectancy increase? How far can population aging go? As many questions without answer and probably as many problems whose size we cannot even imagine lie ahead.
Long‐Range Population Projections Made Simple
Authors: Goldstein Joshua R. , Stecklov Guy
Published: January 2004

Recent developments in mathematical demography offer a new, simple means of producing long‐range population projections. The well‐known extant such projections, produced by the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, rely on elaborate cohort‐component projection methods that require a large number of detailed assumptions and are difficult to replicate. Building upon recent results in the formal demography of nonstable populations, the authors show that analytic methods produce estimates of future population size very similar to those obtained through traditional methods. Simplicity is a virtue in making projections, allowing sensitivity tests of assumptions and avoiding the misleading impression of precision associated with more complicated methods. Cohort‐component methods should still be used for short‐ and medium‐term forecasts and projections. For the long term, however, analytic methods should supplement or even replace traditional projections.
Historical Population Estimates: Unraveling the Consensus
Authors: Caldwell John C. , Schindlmayr Thomas
Published: January 2004

The mid‐twentieth century witnessed the emergence of a remarkable consensus on quantitative estimates of world population growth after 1650. This was the achievement of Walter Willcox, supported and modified by Alexander Carr‐Saunders and John Durand, and was endorsed by United Nations publications. It had its origins in eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century work, largely carried out in Germany. Willcox was particularly interested in demonstrating seventeenth‐century population growth as evidence of the global impact of European expansion, and this probably led to a too‐ready acceptance of estimates with little real basis. More recent estimates do little to shake the consensus, but extend the historical series back over two millennia or further. The article examines the strength and influence of a consensus based in the earlier period on surprisingly insecure data. It then turns to the most suspect element in the consensus, the pre‐twentieth‐century estimates for Africa. Finally, little hope is expressed that future researchers will be able to establish reliable estimates, especially for dates earlier than the eighteenth century.
The Epidemiologic Transition Revisited: Compositional Models for Causes of Death by Age and Sex
Authors: Salomon Joshua A. , Murray Christopher J. L.
Published: January 2004

For decades, researchers have noted systematic shifts in cause‐of‐death patterns as mortality levels change. The notion of the “epidemiologic transition” has influenced thinking about the evolution of health in different societies and the response of the health system to these changes. This article re‐examines the epidemiologic transition in terms of empirical regularities in the cause composition of mortality by age and sex since 1950, and considers whether the theory of epidemiologic transition presents a durable framework for understanding more recent patterns. Age‐sex‐specific mortality rates from three broad cause groups are analyzed: Group 1 (communicable diseases, maternal and perinatal causes, and nutritional deficiencies); Group 2 (noncommunicable diseases); and Group 3 (injuries), using the most extensive international database on mortality by cause, including 1,576 country‐years of observation, and new statistical models for compositional data. The analyses relate changes in cause‐of‐death patterns to changing levels of all‐cause mortality and income per capita. The results confirm that declines in overall mortality are accompanied by systematic changes in the composition of causes in many age groups. These changes are most pronounced among children, for whom Group 1 causes decline as overall mortality falls, and in younger adults, where strikingly different patterns are found for men (shift from Group 3 to Group 2) compared to women (shift toward Group 2 then Group 3). The underlying patterns that emerge from this analysis offer insights into the epidemiologic transition from high‐mortality to low‐mortality settings.
On the Modernity of Traditional Contraception: Time and the Social Context of Fertility
Authors: Johnson‐Hanks Jennifer
Published: January 2004

Many studies of fertility implicitly equate temporal management, biomedical contraception, and “modernity” on the one hand, and “tradition,” the lack of intentional timing, and uncontrolled fertility on the other. This article questions that equation, focusing on the widespread use of periodic abstinence in southern Cameroon. Drawing on field data and the Cameroon Demographic and Health Survey, the article investigates how local concepts of timing shape both contraceptive choice and the evaluation of methods as “modern” or “traditional.” Cameroonian women prefer periodic abstinence because they perceive it as “modern,” a modernity tied both to the social context in which it is taught and to its unique temporal form. By contrast, Depo‐Provera, pills, and the IUD are seen as less‐than‐modern, because they are less exigent of temporal control. The reliance on a behavioral, rather than technological, contraceptive method parallels the experience of the European fertility transition. Cameroonian women draw on a complex social repertoire in making contraceptive choices; methods are preferred or rejected not only on the basis of their efficacy in averting pregnancy, but also because of their correspondence to models of legitimate social action. Reproductive practices may have social motivations that are unrelated to fertility per se.
Sociodemographic and Health Profiles of the Oldest Old In China
Authors: Yi Zeng , Vaupel James W. , Zhenyu Xiao , Chunyuan Zhang , Yuzhi Liu
Published: January 2004

Unique data from a 1998 healthy longevity baseline survey provide demographic, socio‐economic, and health characteristics of the oldest old, aged 80–105, in China. This subpopu‐lation is growing rapidly and is likely to need extensive social and health services. A large majority of Chinese oldest old live with their children and rely mainly on children for financial support and care. Most Chinese oldest old had no or very little education. Ability to function independently in daily living declines rapidly and self‐rated health declines moderately across the oldest old ages. As compared to their urban counterparts, the rural oldest old have far less pension support, are significantly less educated, and are more likely to be widowed and to rely on children for support. Apart from higher rates of survival, the female oldest old in China are far more disadvantaged than the male oldest old.
Does Population Matter? A Review Essay*
Authors: Ahlburg Dennis A.
Published: January 2004

Books reviewed in this article:

Andrew Mason (Ed.),Population Change and Economic Development in East Asia: Challenges Met, Opportunities Seized

Emma Rothschild,Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment

Klaus M. Leisinger, Karin Schmitt, and Rajul Pandya‐Lorch,Six Billion and Counting: Population Growth and Food Security in the 21st Century

Barry Bogin,The Growth of Humanity

Nigel Harris,Thinking the Unthinkable: The Immigration Myth Exposed
SHORT REVIEWS
Authors: Amin Sajeda , Bongaarts John , Greenhalgh Susan , McNicoll Geoffrey , Todaro Michael P.
Published: January 2004

Books reviewed in this article:

Andrew Geddes, Immigration and European Integration: Towards Fortress Europe?

Urs Luterbacher and Detlef F. Sprinz (Eds.), International Relations and Global Climate Change

Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer (Ed.), Cultural Perspectives on Reproductive Health

Per Pinstrup‐Andersen and Rajul Pandya‐Lorch (Eds.), The Unfinished Agenda: Perspectives on Overcoming Hunger, Poverty, and Environmental Degradation

Anisur Rahman, Indian Labour Migration to the Gulf

Minna Säävälä, Fertility and Familial Power Relations: Procreation in South India

United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Report on the World Social Situation 2001
Chinese Reproductive Policy at the Turn of the Millennium: Dynamic Stability
Authors: Winckler Edwin A.
Published: January 2004

In the 1990s, as fertility fell below replacement, China's state birth planning program began reforms, first to improve its state‐centric approach to birth limitation and then to incorporate some elements of a more client‐centered approach. In 2000 and 2001, as part of a regime shift toward “rule by law,” China both further institutionalized and further reformed the program. A March 2000 Decision and a December 2001 Law reaffirm the need for state planning of population and births but mandate a shift in both methods and goals. Methods should shift from direct to indirect regulation, reducing negative effects such as coercion and corruption and increasing positive benefits such as helping poor women develop. Goals should shift from just limiting births toward also delivering reproductive health services. Reforms are occurring also through supporting regulations and changes of procedure within existing regulations. These policies chart a new course for implementation over the next decade.
The End of the Fertility Transition in the Developed World
Authors: Bongaarts John
Published: January 2004

By the late 1990s the average period total fertility rate in the developed world had declined to 1.6, a level substantially lower than projected in the 1970s and 1980s. This article examines recent trends and patterns in fertility in the developed world with particular emphasis on the effects and implications of changes in the timing of childbearing. The main objective is to demonstrate that while fertility in these countries is indeed low, women's childbearing levels are not as low as period measures such as the total fertility rate suggest. To obtain a full understanding of the various dimensions of fertility change. several indicators are examined, including period and cohort fertility by birth order and childbearing preferences. An analysis of these indicators demonstrates that period fertility measures in many developed countries are temporarily depressed by a rise in the mean age at childbearing. The distortion of the TFR is as great as 0.4 births per woman in Italy and Spain. These effects have been present in many developed countries since the 1970s and could continue for years into the future. But tempo effects are temporary, and once the postponement of childbearing ends—as it eventually must—the corresponding fertility‐depressing effect stops, thus putting upward pressure on period fertility. Countries with very low fertility and substantial tempo effects may well experience rises in fertility in the near future if the timing of childbearing stabilizes. Even if this happens, however, it seems unlikely that fertility will rebound to the replacement level.
Children's Economic Roles in the Maya Family Life Cycle: Cain, Caldwell, and Chayanov Revisited
Authors: Lee Ronald D. , Kramer Karen L.
Published: January 2004

This article examines the relationship between household demographic pressure and interage transfers for a group of Maya subsistence agriculturists in Yucatán, Mexico. The authors use data from a field study conducted in 1992–93 on individual time allocation, relative productivity by age and sex, and caloric costs of activities to estimate age schedules of average consumption and production. Using these, they investigate the net costs of children to their parents and find that children have a negative net asset value up to the time they leave home. The direction of net wealth flows in this group is downward, from older to younger, and in economic terms the internal rate of return to children is highly negative up to the time they leave home. Nonetheless, children play a critically important role in the family's economic life cycle. On average, girls offset 76 percent of their consumption costs before leaving home at age 19, and boys offset 82 percent before leaving home at 22. Without the contributions from children as a group, parents would have to double or triple their work effort during part of the family life cycle if they were to raise the same number of children. By the thirteenth year of the family life cycle, children as a group produce more than half of what they consume in every year, and after the twentieth year children produce more than 80 percent of what they as a group consume. The authors also find that the elderly in the sample, ages 50 to 65, produce more than they consume. Thus while children have a negative net asset value to parents, the timing of their children's economic contribution across the family life cycle plays a key role in underwriting the cost of large families.
A Biodemographic Interpretation of Life Span
Authors: Olshansky S. Jay , Carnes Bruce A. , Brody Jacob
Published: January 2004

The life span of individuals and the life expectancy of the populations they comprise have always been topics of interest to scientists and the lay population. In modern times, forecasts of life span and life expectancy have become particularly important public policy issues because of their influence on the future solvency of age‐entitlement programs. The authors present a brief discussion of the origin of the notion of life span, discuss its relevance and importance in light of recent developments in the emerging field of the biodemography of aging, and explore the theoretical and biological forces that influence the duration of life of sexually reproducing species.
Uncertainties in the Composition of World Population in the Twenty‐First Century
Authors: Singer Max
Published: January 2004

Past interest in long‐range global population projections has been almost exclusively centered on future population size and, to some extent, on changes in the age structure. Uncertainties concerning future demographic dynamics are typically dealt with by preparing multiple projections, distinguished by differing fertility trajectories ranging from high to low. The usual assumption, that the constituting units of the global population— countries and regions—all follow the same variant projection (such as high or low), masks another potential uncertainty of future population dynamics: uncertainty in the composition of the global total by the relative sizes of its constituting units. Using a set of long‐range population projections covering the period 2000–2100, this note explores plausible ranges of this uncertainty with reference to six constituting units of the global population.
SHORT REVIEWS
Authors: Amin Sajeda , Bongaarts John , Casterline John B. , Greenhalgh Susan , McNicoll Geoffrey , Todaro Michael P.
Published: January 2004

Books reviewed in this article:

Laurel Bossen, Chinese Women and Rural Development: Sixty Years of Change in Lu Village, Yunnan

Fabrizio Butera and Gabriel Mugny (EDS.), Social Influence in Social Reality: Promoting Individual and Social Change

Harold Coward and Daniel C. Maguire (EDS.), Visions of a New Earth: Religious Perspectives on Population, Consumption, and Ecology

Martha C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach

Fred C. Pampel, The Institutional Context of Population Change: Patterns of Fertility and Mortality across High‐Income Nations

Demetrios G. Papademetriou and Deborah Waller Meyers (EDS.), Caught in the Middle: Border Communities in an Era of Globalization

Per Pinstrup‐Andersen and Ebbe Scniøler, Seeds of Contention: World Hunger and the Global Controversy over GM Crops

Walter Scheidel (ED.), Debating Roman Demography
Eating Meat: Evolution, Patterns, and Consequences
Authors: Smil Vaclav
Published: January 2004

Carnivorousness is a part of human evolutionary heritage, but typical meat intakes were limited in virtually all preindustrial societies. Rising meat consumption has been a key marker of the universal dietary transition that has accompanied economic modernization. Meat is now the largest source of high‐quality animal proteins, and in some countries its annual supply is as high as 100 kg or more per capita. At the same time, high average intakes of red meat and poultry have had a number of undesirable agronomic, economic, nutritional, and environmental consequences. Fortunately, most of these negative effects can be alleviated by reducing excessively high meat consumption and by managing better both the production of feeds and the feeding of animals.
The Emergence of Lowest‐Low Fertility in Europe During the 1990s
Authors: Kohler Hans‐Peter , Billari Francesco C. , Ortega José Antonio
Published: January 2004

Lowest‐low fertility, defined as a period total fertility rate at or below 1.3, has rapidly spread in Europe during the 1990s. This article traces the emergence of this new phenomenon to the interaction of five factors. First, tempo and compositional distortions reduce the total fertility rate below the associated level of cohort fertility. Second, socioeconomic changes—including increased returns to human capital and high economic uncertainty in early adulthood—have made late childbearing a rational response for individuals and couples. Third, social interaction effects reinforce this behavioral adjustment and contribute to large and persistent postponement in the mean age at birth. Fourth, institutional settings favor an overall low quantum of fertility. Fifth, postponement–quantum interactions amplify the consequences of this institutional setting when combined with ongoing delays of child‐bearing. The article concludes with speculations about future trends in current and prospective lowest‐low‐fertility countries.
The Ethnic Composition of Families in Russia in 1989: Insights into the Soviet “Nationalities Policy”
Authors: Botev Nikolai
Published: January 2004

A sample from the 1989 Soviet census is used to study the ethnic composition of families in the Russian Federation on the eve of the breakup of the Soviet Union. The aim is to gain insight into the consequences of the Soviet “nationalities policy” through examining the marriage patterns of different ethnic groups and the nature of the relations between these groups. The analysis is based on general log‐linear models. The main findings are: there was a relatively well‐pronounced tendency toward endogamy; Russians were the least endoga‐mous, while Chechens were the most endoga‐mous among the 11 ethnic groups included in the analysis; “zones of attraction” related to exogamy were well discernible, the two most pronounced being within the Eastern Slav and Turkic groups; testing for cohort effects revealed a decrease in endogamy when older and middle cohorts were compared, while the differences between middle and younger cohorts were in many cases not statistically significant.
Reactions of Developing‐Country Elites to International Population Policy
Authors: Luke Nancy , Watkins Susan Cotts
Published: January 2004

The authors examine the global diffusion of international population policy, which they consider a cultural item. The process of cultural diffusion is often seen as spontaneous: items of Western culture are in demand because they are universally attractive. Yet cultural flows may also be directed, they may be unattractive to their intended recipients, and their acceptance may depend on persuasion and material incentives. The authors consider the range of responses of national elites to the new population policy adopted by the United Nations at Cairo in 1994. Strongly influenced by feminists, the Cairo Program of Action promotes gender equity and reproductive health and demotes previous concerns with population growth. The data are interviews with representatives of governmental and nongovernmental organizations involved in population and health in five developing countries. To interpret the interviews, the authors draw on two theoretical frameworks. The first emphasizes the attractiveness of new cultural items and the creation of a normative consensus about their value. The second emphasizes differentials in power and resources among global actors and argues that the diffusion of cultural items can be directed by powerful donor states. Interviews in Bangladesh, Ghana, Jordan, Malawi, and Senegal portray a mixed reception to Cairo: enthusiastic embrace of certain aspects of the Cairo policy by some members of the national elite and a realistic assessment of donor power by virtually all. Strategies of rhetoric and action appear to be aimed at maintaining and directing the flows of donor funds.
Sex‐Selective Abortions in India
Authors: Arnold Fred , Kishor Sunita , Roy T. K.
Published: January 2004

Provisional estimates from the 2001 census of India, which showed unusually high sex ratios for young children, have sparked renewed concern about the growing use of sex‐selective abortions to satisfy parental preferences for sons. According to the 1998–99 National Family Health Survey (NFHS‐2), in recent years the sex ratio at birth in India has been abnormally high (107–121 males per 100 females) in 16 of India's 26 states. Data from NFHS‐2 on abortions, sex ratios at birth, son preference, and the use of ultrasound and amniocentesis during pregnancy present compelling evidence of the extensive use of sex‐selective abortions, particularly in Gujarat, Haryana, and Punjab. The authors estimate that in the late 1990s more than 100,000 sex‐selective abortions of female fetuses were being performed annually in India. Recent efforts to expand and enforce government regulations against this practice may have some effect, but they are not likely to be completely successful without changes in the societal conditions that foster son preference.
SHORT REVIEWS
Authors: Bongaarts John , Greenhalgh Susan , Hewett Paul , McNicoll Geoffrey , Todaro Michael P. , Zimmer Zachary
Published: January 2004

Books reviewed in this article:

Kamran Asdar Ali, Planning the Family in Egypt: New Bodies, New Selves

David I. Kertzer and Dominique Arel (EDS.), Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses

Peter Lloyd‐Sherlock (ED.), Healthcare Reform and Poverty in Latin America

Ishwar Modi (ED.), Ageing and Human Development: Global Perspectives

United Nations Development Programme, Regional Bureau for Arab States, Arab Human Development Report 2002: Creating Opportunities for Future Generations

United Nations Population Division, World Population Ageing 1950–2050

Jacques Vallin, France Meslé, and Tapani Valkonen (EDS.), Trends in Mortality and Differential Mortality

Myron Weiner and Michael S. Teitelbaum, Political Demography, Demographic Engineering

Zhang Weiguo, Economic Reforms and Fertility Behavior: A Study of a North Chinese Village
Population Policy Dilemmas in Europe at the Dawn of the Twenty‐First Century
Authors: Demeny Paul
Published: January 2004

The article discusses issues raised by persistent below‐replacement fertility in Europe. The continent's demographic predicament is highlighted by comparing age structures and relative population sizes between populations in and outside Europe—such as those of Russia and Yemen and those of an enlarged 25‐country European Union and a 25‐country hinterland to the EU in North Africa and West Asia—during the past 50 years and prospectively up to 2050, based on United Nations estimates and projections. Potential geopolitical aspects of the population shifts are considered. European policy responses to them are found largely wanting. With respect to the key demographic variable, fertility, explicit pronatalism is rejected by most European governments. A set of policy measures that commands wide support, with the hoped‐for side effect of raising birth rates, seeks to make women's participation in the formal labor force compatible with childrearing. The effectiveness of such measures, however, is likely to be limited. Continued below‐replacement fertility, higher immigration from outside Europe, negative population growth, and loss of demographic weight within the global population are safe predictions for the Europe of the twenty‐first century.
Urban‐Rural Mortality Differentials: An Unresolved Debate
Authors: Woods Robert
Published: January 2004

Historians and demographers have long debated the existence, causes, and consequences of historical differences between urban and rural mortality levels. In Europe it has been usual to observe excess mortality in cities compared to the countryside, but in East Asia, by contrast, it has been found that urban areas had relatively favorable mortality environments. The debate continues because a number of pertinent questions remain to be resolved. For example, the way in which mortality is measured may influence the apparent extent of the differential, as may the way in which“urban” and“rural” are defined. Cultural factors need to be taken into account, including the practices of childrearing and the conventions surrounding baptism. Examples drawn from Japan, China, England, and France illustrate the issues involved in comparative analysis, while the urban‐rural mortality continuum is examined for nineteenth‐century England and Wales using log‐normal distributions.
Shifting Childrearing to Single Mothers: Results from 17 Western Countries
Authors: Heuveline Patrick , Timberlake Jeffrey M. , Furstenberg Frank F.
Published: January 2004

We investigate how recent changes in the Western family have affected childhood living arrangements. For 17 developed countries, we use multistate life table techniques to estimate childhood trajectories of coresi‐dence with biological fathers versus other maternal partners. In all countries childhood exposure to single parenting is more often caused by parental separation than out‐of‐partnership childbearing. Both exposure to single parenting and expectancy of childhood spent with a single non‐cohabiting mother vary widely across countries, with the United States exhibiting the highest levels of each at early 1990s rates. The greatest international variations concern parental cohabitation—its prevalence, durability, and the degree to which its increase has compensated for a decrease in the expectancy of childhood spent with married parents. Overall, we find little evidence of international convergence in childrearing arrangements, except that in countries where parental marriage has declined over time, childrearing has predominantly shifted to single mothers.
Measurement of Household and Family Composition in the United States, 1850–2000
Authors: Ruggles Steven , Brower Susan
Published: January 2004

This article has three goals. First, it explores the effects of changes in census definitions and concepts on the measurement of living arrangements. As part of this analysis, the authors develop new estimates of the number of households and group quarters in each census year since 1850. Second, they evaluate the existing aggregate statistical series on family and household composition, with particular attention to problems in the measurement of subfamilies. Finally, they describe data and methods for developing a consistent set of statistics for the period since 1850 and offer recommendations for the coherent measurement of family and household composition.
Cultural Diversity and Population Policy in Nigeria
Authors: Obono Oka
Published: January 2004

Nigeria's ambitious population policy, adopted in 1988, had its origins in the international population and development thinking of the time, set out in documents such as the World Population Plan of Action and the Kilimanjaro Programme of Action. The policy has had at most a modest effect in curbing the country's high fertility. This failure, it is argued, stems from the policy's implicit assumption of a single, monolithic cultural reality and its disregard of male reproductive motivation. Belief systems in Nigeria are extraordinarily diverse in detail but share a common interest in the fertility of crops, livestock, and people. Patterns of social organization are similarly varied. For an effective population policy, the government needs to find ways of incorporating distinct elements of the cultures of the different ethnic groups, leveraging rather than suppressing the country's cultural diversity.
SHORT REVIEWS
Authors: Bongaarts John , Casterline John B. , McNicoll Geoffrey
Published: January 2004

Books reviewed in this article:

Helen Macbeth and Paul Collinson (eds.) Human Population Dynamics: Cross‐Disciplinary Perspectives

Jane Menken, Ann K. Blanc, and Cynthia B. Lloyd (eds.) Training and Support of Developing‐Country Population Scientists: A Panel Report

Erin Phelps, Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., and Anne Colby (eds.) Looking at Lives: American Longitudinal Studies of the Twentieth Century

Stephen H. Schneider, Armin Rosencranz, and John O. Niles (eds.) Climate Change Policy: A Survey

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Statistical Yearbook 2001: Refugees, Asylum‐seekers and Other Persons of Concern—Trends in Displacement, Protection and Solutions

World Bank World Development Report 2003. Sustainable Development in a Dynamic World: Transforming Institutions, Growth, and Quality of Life

World Health Organization World Health Report 2002: Reducing Risks, Promoting Healthy Life
Population in Literature
Authors: Shriver Lionel
Published: January 2004

The treatment of population issues in modern fiction is examined under three headings: fear of population decline, fear of population excess, and fear of population professionals. Writings on population decline cover both the depopulation caused by too‐low fertility and science‐fictional scenarios of natural or human‐made demographic catastrophes. Population excess is chiefly portrayed through ecological dystopias, but includes also depictions of unchecked immigration from poor to rich countries. Population professionals as fictional protagonists range from villainous biomedical and social engineers to feckless family planning workers.
Science, Modernity, and the Making of China's One‐Child Policy
Authors: Greenhalgh Susan
Published: January 2004

China's one‐child‐per‐couple policy represents an extraordinary attempt to engineer national wealth, power, and global standing by drastically braking population growth. Despite the policy's external notoriety and internal might, its origins remain obscure. In the absence of scholarly research on this question, public discourse in the United States has been shaped by media representations portraying the policy as the product of a repressive communist regime. This article shows that the core ideas underlying the one‐child policy came instead from Western science, in particular from the Club of Rome's world‐in‐crisis work of the early 1970s. Drawing on research in science studies, the article analyzes the two notions lying at the policy's core—that China faced a virtual “population crisis” and that the one‐child policy was “the only solution” to it—as human constructs forged by specific groups of scientists working in particular, highly consequential contexts. It documents how the fundamentally political process of constituting population as an object of science and governance was then depoliticized by scientizing rhetorics that presented China's population crisis and its only solution as numerically describable, objective facts. By probing the human and historical character of population research, this article underscores the complexity of demographic knowledge‐making and the power of scientific practices in helping constitute demographic reality itself.
Bridewealth and Birth Control: Low Fertility in the Indonesian Archipelago, 1500–1900
Authors: Boomgaard Peter
Published: January 2004

Before the onset of the present demographic transition, population growth in Indonesia had reached unprecedentedly high levels. This article demonstrates that such high levels were a recent phenomenon. Prior to 1900 rates of natural population increase were low to very low in most areas in Indonesia. This runs counter to expectations based on Hajnal's “Eastern marriage pattern,” which could imply high growth levels in extended family areas, such as most Indonesian regions outside Java in the past. Usually, the low population growth rates in Southeast Asia are attributed to high mortality owing to high levels of violent conflict. It is argued that other factors contributing to such high levels of mortality should receive more attention. In this article it is also argued that low fertility rates, too, played a role in generating low rates of natural increase. The article discusses the influence of marriage patterns, household structure, methods of birth control, adoption, and slavery on fertility.
Cultural and Socioeconomic Influences on Divorce During Modernization: Southeast Asia, 1940s to 1960s
Authors: Hirschman Charles , Teerawichitchainan Bussarawan
Published: January 2004

The conventional model of a rising divorce rate during the process of modernization is a staple element of the sociological theory of the family. This generalization is challenged, however, by traditional high‐divorce societies, primarily in Islamic Southeast Asia, which have experienced a decline in divorce with modernization. In this study, based on micro‐level survey data, the authors explore the social roots of marital disruption in Indonesia and Malaysia and in another Southeast Asian society, Thailand, which has not been identified as a high‐divorce society. Comparable survey data from the 1970s (from the World Fertility Survey) allow for an in‐depth analysis of traditional patterns of divorce before the rapid modernization of recent decades. Two major findings emerge from the multivariate analysis. First, there is a common pattern across all three societies of higher levels of divorce among “traditional” women—those who live in rural areas, marry at young ages, and have lower levels of education. Second, the authors find significant sociocultural (ethnic, regional, religious) differentials in divorce within each country that cannot be explained by demographic and socioeconomic composition. They present an interpretation of how moderately high levels of divorce were accommodated in traditional Southeast Asian societies.
The Benefits from Marriage and Religion in the United States: A Comparative Analysis
Authors: Waite Linda J. , Lehrer Evelyn L.
Published: January 2004

In the United States, married people have better outcomes on a variety of measures of wellbeing than do single persons. People who participate in religious activities show similar advantages relative to those who have no religious involvement. This article présents a comparative analysis of these two social institutions: marriage and religion. A critical review of the literature on how religious involvement and being married affect a range of child and adult outcomes provides evidence of generally positive effects. Religion and marriage have an impact on many of the same domains of life, and there are remarkable similarities in the mechanisms through which they exert an influence.