POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW

United States of America (New York) 17

SEPTEMBER 1996 - VOLUME 22, NUMBER 3

97.17.1 - English - Kevin M. WHITE, Medical School, and Samuel H. PRESTON, Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphie, PA 19104-6298 (U.S.A.)

How many Americans are alive because of twentieth-century improvements in mortality? (p. 415-429)

The article estimates the number of living Americans who owe their existence to mortality declines that have occurred in the twentieth century. The estimate is made by projecting the US population from 1900 to 2000 using the mortality rates of 1900 rather than the rates actually observed. A distinction is made between people who would have been born and died and those who would never have been born because of a prereproductive death to an ancestor. Results indicate that the US population would be only one-half its current size if the mortality conditions of 1900 had been maintained: one-quarter of the population would have been born and died, and one-quarter would never have been born. The proportion alive because of mortality improvements shows little variation by sex and age, although it is greatest among the very young and the very old. Mortality reductions below age 15 contributed about two-thirds of the increase in the number of persons alive today. (UNITED STATES, MORTALITY DECLINE, POPULATION GROWTH)

97.17.2 - English - Stan BECKER and Robert E. BLACK, Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, 615 North Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21205-2179 (U.S.A.)

A model of child morbidity, mortality, and health interventions (p. 431-456)

The authors present a macro model of morbidity and mortality in children under five years of age. Monthly disease-specific incidence and case fatality rates form the basis of the model, and the efficacy and coverage of disease-specific interventions alter these values. In addition, frailty is modeled via relative risks of mortality based on five groups, determined for newborns by the birthweight distribution and, at ages after the first month, by the proportion of children surviving a given illness who become more frail and the proportion not ill and with adequate nutrition who become less frail. A validation of the model was carried out using data from the Demographic Surveillance System in Matlab, Bangladesh. The model very closely predicts the observed mortality level. Scenarios for improvements in coverage of specific interventions in settings in South Asia, West Africa, and South America are modeled and their effects on mortality gauged. The model provides a useful tool for those wishing to know the mortality impact of specified mixes of interventions in a given setting. (INFANT MORTALITY, MORBIDITY, HEALTH POLICY, DEMOGRAPHIC MODELS)

97.17.3 - English - Ronald R. RINDFUSS, Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University Square, CB# 8120, 123 West Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-3997 (U.S.A.), Karin L. BREWSTER, Center for the Study of Population, Florida State University (U.S.A.), and Andrew L. KAVEE, Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (U.S.A.)

Women, work, and children: Behavioral and attitudinal change in the United States (p. 457-482)

The United States at mid-century had a strong norm that mothers of young children should be full-time homemakers. Since then, there has been a strong trend toward higher levels of labor force participation of mothers of preschool-age children. Since the early 1970s, this trend in labor force participation has been accompanied by stable fertility rates. In this article, using attitudinal data, the authors show that there has been a substantial weakening of the norm that mothers of preschool children should stay home with their children. This change in measured attitudes is pervasive and appears to have been led by well-diffused behavioral change. The authors conclude by arguing that this change in attitudes has played an important role in the stabilizing of US fertility levels. (UNITED STATES, SOCIAL NORMS, MOTHER, HOUSEWIVES, LABOUR FORCE PARTICIPATION, ATTITUDE)

97.17.4 - English - John BONGAARTS, Research Division, The Population Council, One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, New York, NY 10017 (U.S.A.)

Population pressure and the food supply system in the developing world (p. 483-503)

Trends in agricultural production in the developing world between 1962 and 1989 are analyzed to obtain estimates of the contributions to the past expansion of the food supply made by increases in land use, cropping frequency, crop yields, and imports. Countries with high and low population densities responded quite differently to rising demand for food. During the next half century, rapid population growth and continued improvements in the quantity and quality of diets will result in a large (perhaps threefold) rise in the demand for food. While no persistent global shortages of food are foreseen, several problems -- induding degradation of environmental resources, food production in the densest and poorest countries, and undernutrition -- require concerted attention. (DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, POPULATION PRESSURE, FOOD REQUIREMENTS, FOOD SUPPLY)

97.17.5 - English - Ester BOSERUP, Nevedone, CH-6614 Brissago (Switzerland)

Development theory: An analytical framework and selected applications (p. 505-515)

This note suggests a framework for a concise interpretation of contending theories of development and for description of a variety of development processes. The framework posits flows between six structures that have a certain stability, yet yield to change if they are exposed to strong or persistent pressure. The structures are: environment, population, technology level, occupational structure, family structure, and culture. Schematically, the six structures can be located as points on a circle, with arrows between any two structures to indicate the origin and direction of pressure any structure may exert on another. The framework may be used to describe the dynamic in micro- or macro studies or to distinguish among major conceptional approaches in development theory. (DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY, THEORY, RESEARCH METHODS)

97.17.6 - English - Lincoln C. CHEN, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, 9 Bow Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (U.S.A.), Friederike WITTGENSTEIN, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health (U.S.A.), and Elizabeth McKEON, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (U.S.A.)

The upsurge of mortality in Russia: Causes and policy implications (p. 517-530)

This note summarizes conclusions reached at a recent international conference that considered the causes and policy implications of the upsurge of mortality in Russia following the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. The mortality crisis is genuine, not a case of 'Glasnost in statistics.' There is little evidence to support the popular perception that the crisis is due to environmental deterioration or the collapse of medical services. These problems are real but they do not account for the rise in mortality. Rather, the crisis is the manifestation of economic, social, and political pathologies in Russian society. The responsible causes are probably a combination of historical and contemporary forces: catch-up effects from previous lifestyle risks and deferred deaths from the successful anti-alcohol campaign in the late 1980s; and current turmoil characterized by economic impoverishment, widening social inequality, and the breakdown of political institutions. Russia does not and did not conform to the standard model of 'health transition' distilled from Western experience. Although there are some signs that the crisis may be abating, its future course remains uncertain. (RUSSIA, MORTALITY INCREASE, MORTALITY TRENDS, TRANSITIONAL SOCIETY)

97.17.7 - English - Paul E. WAGGONER, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, P.O. Box 1106, 123 Huntington, New Haven, CT 06504 (U.S.A.), Jesse H. AUSUBEL and Iddo K. WERNICK, Program for the Human Environment, Rockefeller University, New York (U.S.A.)

Lightening the tread of population on the land: American examples (p. 531-545)

People transform land by building, logging, and farming. The less land humans use, the more remains in its natural state. The authors search the past century for principles and trends influencing land use in the United States and contemplate the future when Americans might number an additional 100 million. Examples from American cities, counties, and states suggest that land covered by the built environment increases less than in proportion to population. For example, despite the rising use of paper relative to gross national product, the declining use of lumber combined with improved forestry kept the area of forest land fairly steady as population rose. Similarly, rising yields and changing tastes have countered the impact of rising population and wealth on crop-land area. All told, a lightening tread of Americans on the land in the next century could spare for nature over 90 million hectares, an area equal to 100 times the size of Yellowstone National Park. (UNITED STATES, POPULATION PRESSURE, LAND USE)

DECEMBER 1996 - VOLUME 22, NUMBER 4

97.17.8 - English - Constance A. NATHANSON, Department of Population Dynamics, School of Hygiene and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University (U.S.A.)

Disease prevention as social change: Toward a theory of public health (p. 609-637)

This article argues that public health policies are critical to the prevention and control of disease. However, public health policies are not adopted and implemented in a vacuum: they are the outcome of social and political change. The forces of change need to be understood in order for them to be harnessed in the interest of public health. The article proposes a conceptual framework to account for variation in the initiation and implementation of public health policies directed at reducing levels of mortality. This framework incorporates three sets of variables: pertaining to states, to social movements, and to constructions of risk. The framework's usefulness for analytic purposes is tested in two case studies describing public health policymaking in France and the United States. Applicability of the framework in other settings is briefly discussed. (UNITED STATES, FRANCE, HEALTH POLICY, PREVENTIVE MEDECINE, SOCIAL CHANGE, METHODOLOGY)

97.17.9 - English - John BONGAARTS, Research Division, The Population Council, New York (U.S.A.), and Susan Cotts WATKINS, Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (U.S.A.)

Social interactions and contemporary fertility transitions (p. 639-682)

An analysis of fertility transitions in 69 developing countries since 1960 finds that the relationship between development and pretransitional fertility, the timing of the onset of transitions, and the pace of fertility decline after transition onset deviate substantially from what would be the case if fertility and development, as measured by the Human Development Index, were closely linked. A few noteworthy empirical regularities were identified, including a shifting threshold of development necessary for the onset of transition. This implies that, once a few countries in a region enter the transition, other countries follow sooner than expected. Also, the pace of fertility decline is not related to the pace of development, as might be expected, but rather to the level of development when the transition began. To explain these findings, the authors propose a key role for social interaction. Social interaction, they suggest, operates at three levels of aggregation. Personal networks connect individuals; national channels of social interaction such as migration and language connect social and territorial communities within a country; and global channels such as trade and international organizations connect nations within the global society. Through these channels, actors at all three levels exchange and evaluate information and ideas, and exert and receive social influence, thus affecting reproductive behavior. Development is important in understanding the timing and pace of fertility change, but social interaction is likely to have an independent influence on fertility. Given current levels of development and the proliferation of channels of social interaction, it is likely that few countries will fail to experience a fertility transition over the coming three decades. (DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION, FERTILITY DECLINE, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, SOCIAL SYSTEM)

97.17.10 - English - John KNODEL, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (U.S.A.), and Gavin W. JONES, Australian National University, Canberra (Australia)

Post-Cairo population policy: Does promoting girls' schooling miss the mark? (p. 683-702)

One emphasis of the new population paradigm that emerged at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo concerns gender inequality in education and the need to promote girls' schooling at the secondary level, both as a goal of human development and as a means to encourage lower fertility in developing countries. A critical weakness of this approach to population and development policy is that it fails to address the socioeconornic inequality that deprives both boys and girls of adequate schooling. Such unbalanced attention to one dimension of inequality detracts from the attention accorded to other dimensions. Moreover, while female disadvantage remains an important feature of educational access in some regions, there are numerous countries, even within the developing world, where the gender gap in education is absent or modest, and in almost all countries it has been diminishing substantially over the last few decades. By contrast, the authors contend, inequality in education based on socioeconomic background is nearly universal and, in most cases, more pronounced than gender inequality. Data from various developing countries, especially Thailand and Vietnam, document this situation. (DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, ENROLMENT RATE, EDUCATION OF WOMEN, SEX DIFFERENTIALS, SOCIO-ECONOMIC DIFFERENTIALS)

97.17.11 - English - Neil G. BENNETT, National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia University (U.S.A.), and S. Jay OLSHANSKY, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago (U.S.A.)

Forecasting US age structure and the future of social security: The impact of adjustments to official mortality schedules (p. 703-727)

The level of future expenditures on such old-age entitlement programs in the United States as Social Security and Medicare, and the development of public policy to fund these programs, are dependent on accurate estimates of the current and future size of the beneficiary population. Since most persons who will be eligible to draw benefits from these programs over the next 65 years have already been born, the critical demographic factor for projecting the size and age structure of the beneficiary population is mortality. Recent studies question the validity of old-age mortality rates in the United States, in large part because of problems with age misstatement and because of what appear to be unusually low death rates in North America relative to other low-mortality populations with reliable data. The authors examine the consequences of adjusting old-age mortality rates for observed and forecasted life expectancies, for forecasts of the size of the older population, and for the projected funding of selected age-entitlement programs in the United States. Forecasts made using adjusted mortality schedules lead to estimates of life expectancy at birth and at older ages that, over the next 60 years, are lower than those published by the Census Bureau and the Social Security Admistration. (UNITED STATES, AGED, POPULATION PROJECTIONS, LIFE TABLES, AGE DISTRIBUTION, SOCIAL SECURITY)

97.17.12 - English - Jean-Claude CHESNAIS, Institut National d'Etudes D�mographiques, 27 rue du Commandeur, 75675 Paris Cedex 14 Paris (France)

Fertility, family, and social policy in contemporary Western Europe (p. 729-739)

Period total fertility rates are below replacement level in all Western European countries. Mediterranean countries, commonly labeled traditional, Catholic, and family oriented, exhibit the lowest fertility levels, whereas Sweden -- the cradle of the modern liberal welfare state and the country in which empowerment of women is most fully realized -- has the highest fertility in Western Europe. In seeking an explanation for the fertility differential, this note compares the status of women in Italy and Sweden and contrasts attitudes and policies toward the family in Italy and Germany with those in Britain and Sweden. The evidence suggests that in advanced industrial societies, higher status of women may be a precondition for raising fertility to replacement level. (WESTERN EUROPE, BELOW REPLACEMENT FERTILITY, COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS, WOMEN'S STATUS)

97.17.13 - English - William H. FREY, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (U.S.A.)

Immigration, domestic migration, and demographic balkanization in America: New evidence for the l990s (p. 741-763)

The recent scrutiny given to the impact of post-1965 immigration to the United States has largely overlooked an important longterm consequence: social and demographic divisions, across regions, that are being created by distinctly different migration patterns of immigrants and domestic, mostly native-born migrants. Evidence for 1990-95 shows a continuation of: highly focused destinations among immigrants whose race-ethnic and skill-level profiles differ from those of the rest of the population; migration patterns among domestic migrants favoring areas that are not attracting immigrants; and accentuated domestic outmigration away from high immigration areas that is most evident for less educated and lower-income long-term residents. These separate migration patterns are leading to widening divisions by race ethnicity and population growth across broad regions of the country. These patterns are likely to make immigrant assimilation more difficult and social and political cleavages more pronounced. (UNITED STATES, IMMIGRATION, INTERNAL MIGRATION, GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION, ETHNIC COMPOSITION)

MARCH 1997 - VOLUME 23, NUMBER 1

97.17.14 - English - Malcolm POTTS, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley (U.S.A.)

Sex and the birth rate: Human biology, demographic change, and access to fertility-regulation methods (p. 1-39)

Success, in evolutionary terms, means contributing more surviving offspring to the next generation than competing individuals of the same species in the same population. Human conception is a probabilistic event occurring against a background of frequent, usually infertile sex, which helps bond parents together. Humans have an innate drive for sex and for nurturing their children as they arrive, but they have no biological predisposition for a specific number of children. In preliterate societies, in the absence of artificial means of fertility regulation, pregnancies are spaced several years apart by unconscious physiological mechanisms based on breastfeeding. In preliterate and in preindustrial urban societies, socially successful individuals commonly had larger than average families. Once people have unconstrained access to a range of fertility-regulation options (including safe abortion), family size falls in all groups and in all societies. In such a context, social success tends to be associated with the accumulation of material wealth, rather than with having more children. The argument that development causes fertility decline is flawed because people cannot make choices about family size without realistic access to fertility-regulation technologies, and such access is historically recent and remains geographically limited. Where access to fertility regulation is constrained, the richer and more educated are usually better able than the less privileged to surmount the barriers between them and the needed technologies, hence the common inverse relationship between income and family size. Policies derived from this perspective are discussed. (EVOLUTION, DIFFERENTIAL FERTILITY, COITAL FREQUENCY, FAMILY SIZE, FAMILY PLANNING)

97.17.15 - English - Rosamond NAYLOR, Walter FALCON, Institute for International Studies, Stanford University (U.S.A.), and Erika ZAVALETA, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University (U.S.A.)

Variability and growth in grain yields, 1950-94: Does the record point to greater instability? (p. 41-58)

The outcome of the 'race' between population and food is of enduring contemporary interest. The two variables that are set opposite each other in the race are fundamentally different in character. Population is primarily a stock concept that rises monotonically, whereas food production is overwhelmingly a flow variable that exhibits substantial year-to-year fluctuations. These latter fluctuations, in turn, cause significant economic and nutritional consequences at the household level. Assessing the pattern of these annual fluctuations in cereal yields with respect to their magnitude, geographic incidence, and change over time is thus of evident interest in questions concerning food security. This article assesses the growth and variability of corn, wheat, and rice yields from 1950 to 1994 on a global and regional basis. The results suggest that any broadly held notions of greatly increasing instability in global grain yields are probably wrong. More important, yield variability has not risen significantly between 1950 and 1994 in the developing world as a whole. Instability in corn yields has increased, however, in the developed world -- particularly in North America -- and in Africa. Higher yield variability is not necessarily a portent of disaster, but adjustments in trade, livestock, or storage are not instantaneous, automatic, or costless. Even worldfood 'optimists' need to worry about the possible effects of two or three successive 'bad' corn crops in North America. (FOOD PRODUCTION, POPULATION GROWTH)

97.17.16 - English - Naohiro OGAWA, Population Research Institute, Nihon University, Tokyo (Japan), and Robert D. RETHERFORD, Program on Population, East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii (U.S.A.)

Shifting costs of caring for the elderly back to families in Japan: Will it work? (p. 59-94)

Over the next 30 years the percentage of Japan's population who are elderly will rise rapidly to unprecedented levels, and the country's population will become the oldest in the world. The financial pressures on Japan's social security system will be severe. To. alleviate these pressures, the government is attempting to shift some of the costs of the social security system back to families. But fundamental economic, social, and value changes, discussed in this article, are eroding the capacity of the Japanese family to care for elderly parents. It is therefore unlikely that the government will succeed in shifting the costs appreciably. (JAPAN, DEMOGRAPHIC AGEING, AGED, SOCIAL SECURITY, FINANCING, FAMILY)

97.17.17 - English - Gavin W. JONES, Division of Demography and Sociology, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University (Australia)

Modernization and divorce: Contrasting trends in Islamic Southeast Asia and the West (p. 95-114)

During the 1960s and 1970s, divorce rates rose to unprecedented levels in Western countries but plummeted in Islamic Southeast Asia from initially very high values in the 1950s and earlier, continuing thereafter to fall to levels well below those in the West. In Islamic Southeast Asia, explanations emphasize radical change in the mate selection context, linked in particular to extended periods of education for girls, whereby the couples contracting marriage gained a greater stake in its success. Greater wealth, less polygyny, and social and religious pressures to tighten divorce procedures all played a role. In Western countries, by contrast, increased emphasis on individualism and postmaterialist values are usually stressed. In the West, promotion of women's wellbeing emphasized the ease of breaking from unsatisfactory marriages; in Islamic Southeast Asia, the avoidance of entering into such marriages. Although sharing some common elements, the two regions started from such different situations that their divorce trends must be explained in their own terms rather than according to a universalist theory of divorce. (DIVORCE, COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS, MODERNIZATION, ISLAM)

97.17.18 - English - Philippe FARGUES, Centre d'�tudes and de Documentation �conomique, Juridique and Sociale (CEDEJ), Cairo (Egypt)

State policies and the birth rate in Egypt: From socialism to liberalism (p. 115-138)

This note explores the influence that state policies have had on the decline of the birth rate in Egypt during the second half of the twentieth century. The three successive political regimes over this period have pursued similar policies seeking to extend the practice of birth control. Despite this continuity in population policy, the birth rate has exhibited several shifts, alternatively downward and upward, indicating the influence of other factors. The erratic variations of the birth rate, in the short term, appear to parallel the resources available to households, which in turn change in relation to public policies affecting the distribution of income and, more recently, the increasing dominance of market processes in the economy. On the other hand, the long-term trend toward a decrease in the birth rate is paralleled by an increase in the average level of education among women, which for its part results from state policies extending schooling to girls. These results suggest that the analysis of population policies should not be isolated from the global political economy that forms the context of the fertility transition. (EGYPT, ANTINATALIST POLICY, POLITICAL SYSTEMS, BIRTH RATE)

97.17.19 - English - Gerhard K. HEILIG, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg (Austria)

Anthropogenic factors in land-use change in China (p. 139-168)

The author analyzes five anthropogenic driving forces of land-use change in China: population growth, urbanization, industrialization, changes in lifestyles and consumption, and shifts in political and economic arrangements and institutions. The intention is to demonstrate the broad range of factors other than biogeophysical conditions that will affect future land-use patterns in China. A first set of statistical data was collected to analyze these demographic and socioeconomic trends. The author also includes new estimates on China's cultivated land area, indicating that it is more seriously underreported in official statistics than previously acknowledged. (CHINA, LAND USE, POPULATION GROWTH, MODERNIZATION)

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