Search

The article presents the authors' views in response to a comment on their paper "Patterns of Low and Lowest-Low Fertility in Europe," published in a 2004 issue of the journal "Population Studies." In their comment, the critics have argued that the cohort-fertility analysis in the aforesaid paper is weak on theoretical grounds and the empirical analysis is incomplete. The authors affirm that they agree with the comment that, as a society, the Netherlands differs from Southern Europe and even more from Central and Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, from a contemporary global perspective, these differences should not be overemphasized. They say that in their analyses, they used the Netherlands as a reference case of a country with an extraordinary pattern of late childbearing that is not associated with lowest-low fertility levels. However, the critics believe that these unusual characteristics invalidate the use of the Dutch example in the paper. So, this criticism is misconceived. It is precisely the unusualness of the fertility pattern in the Netherlands that makes it a useful reference point in the study of low and lowest-low fertility.

The contributors to this discussion were invited to submit comments, each from a different standpoint, on the paper by John Caldwell and Thomas Schindlmayr that appeared in the preceding issue of the journal. The invitation was issued with the approval of these authors, and the journal is grateful to them for allowing their paper to be used to generate debate on the issues they had raised. The discussion is followed by the authors' response to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A list of scholars who reviewed papers submitted to the journal in 2011 and 2012, including Lonnie Aarssen, Alicia Adsera, and Martin Bell, is presented.

The article lists the editors that passed their reviewing papers to the journal including Mary Abbott, Linda Adair and Juha Alho.

A list of the referees for papers submitted to "Population Studies" in 2005 and 2006 is presented.

The article presents the authors' comments on the paper entitled, "Patterns of Low and Lowest-Low Fertility in Europe," by Francesco C. Billari and Hans-Peter Kohler, published in a 2004 issue of the journal "Population Studies." In their comment, the authors argue that the original authors' comparison of cohort-fertility patterns in the lowest-low fertility countries of Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe with Dutch cohort patterns is weak on theoretical grounds and that the empirical analysis is incomplete. The empirical analysis demonstrates that in the young cohorts of Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, childbearing may very well decline below the levels observed in the Netherlands and in other West European countries. This is already happening in Southern Europe. Moreover, the childbearing surplus in early adulthood is evaporating, and the recuperation that would be needed for completed cohort fertility in these countries to remain above that of many West European countries is of such magnitude that it is doubtful whether it could occur.

The article lists researchers who have refereed papers related to population studies submitted to the journal. Some of these researchers are Omar Ahmad from University of Ghana, George Alter from Indiana University, Barbara Anderson from University of Michigan, Alaka Basu from Cornell University, David Bishai from John Hopkins University, Lisa Cameron of University of Melbourne, Sam Clark from University of Pennsylvania, Donald Cox from Boston College, Benjamin Davis from Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, David Dunson from Duke University, Sumit Guha from Brown University, Hugh Gravelle from University of York, Roger Jeffery from University of Edinburgh, James Lee from University of Michigan, Nancy Luke from Brown University, Orly Manor from Tel Aviv University, Cynthia Osborne from Princeton University, Kelly Raley from University of Texas, Ann Stevens from University of California at Berkeley, John Stillwell from University of Leeds, Susan Watkins of University of Pennsylvania, and Thomas Vartanian from Bryn Mawr College.

The article lists reviewers for the periodical "Population Studies" from 2009 to 2010. People mentioned include Stan Becker, Eva Bernhardt, and Ann Biddlecom.

The article provides notes to the contributors of papers to the journal "Population Studies". All typing, including footnotes, references, extracts and quotations to be double-spaced and on one side of the paper, which should preferably be A4 in size. Footnotes should be numbered consecutively throughout the paper and should preferably be typed at the bottom of the page to which they relate, or alternatively following the last page of the article, with triple spacing between each note. Three copies of all typing complete with figures, tables and references should be prepared. The top copy and one carbon should be submitted for editorial purposes and should be sent to Population Studies, Population Investigation Committee, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, Aldwych, London WC2A 2AE. One carbon copy should be retained by the author. Brief corrections should be inserted above the line involved and not in the margins. Any diversions in wording, spelling or punctuation from the original should be explicitly indicated or explained.

The article comments on a previous article related to fertility crisis in modern societies that appeared in the March 2004 issue of the journal Population Studies. Social researchers Francesco Billari, Tomas Frejka, John Hobcraft, Miloslav Macura and Dirk J. van de Kaa broadly endorse authors' paper, while adding valuable supplementary and complementary material. Authors concur with most of the regional and technical elaborations they propose. However, authors take issue with some of the points raised by van de Kaa and Hobcraft, most of which refer to authors' article. Authors assume that no one regards the Western demographic transition over the last century or two as being independent of the Industrial Revolution, as being something that would have happened if incomes had stayed at eighteenth-century levels. If the world passes, in little more than two centuries, from being one of high fertility with a potential for rapid growth as mortality falls, to one where global population is declining then researchers who do not seek overarching explanations may be little heeded.

The article presents an appendix note on a statistical question raised in the preceding paper.

The article discusses author's comment on the article "Some Comments on W.H. James's Article," by M. Henry in the November 1964 issue of the journal "Population Studies." M. Henry suggests modifications to the author's estimates to make them directly comparable with previous estimates. He concludes that there remains a disparity and to account for this he offers theoretical criticism of the methods used by the author in the study and objects to the values assigned to the mean duration of post-partum sterility. In modifying the author's estimates he considers the effect of spontaneous abortion. Author's study suggested that the probability of a woman's aborting might not increase much as she grows older. It seems possible that the apparent increase, or the greater part of it, could be explained as due to a statistical artifact. In any case it seems that M. Henry is providing an inappropriate factor to make the author's fecundability estimates comparable with earlier estimates based on conception waits.

A most important general conclusion of recent work in demography is that the present custom of analyzing population statistics only in terms of reproduction rates and other indices obtained from the fertility rates of women while taking no account of the numbers of men is unsatisfactory. The logical consequence of the present analysis would be a reproduction rate by computing the consistent nuptiality is in the stable population and by applying current fertility rates to obtain a reproduction rate. The measure of the fertility of marriage suggested above would be obtained by taking a group of marriages occurring at the same moment and calculating the average number of live births produced by them throughout their existence.

This paper discusses the theories of and the relationships between the direct and indirect methods of standardizing death rates for males, females, and persons. The author notes that the standardization procedures have two objectives, to eliminate the disturbing influences of varying age and sex distributions, and to provide reliable indications of the overall comparative mortalities of different groups. The author also points out that the Registrar General's methods and publications have always fulfilled the objectives in a thorough and practical manner.

This article discusses the role of the foreign-language press in migrant integration. In studying transatlantic migration in the nineteenth century, one might analyse the rhythm of economic growth in the principal sending countries of Europe and attempt to find a relationship between the course of migration and the changes in pace of American economic development. One might also relate the findings of such an economic analysis to a set of demographic data showing. The results of such a study would be of interest to students of select disciplines like economics and demography. There is, however, a large body of social sciences including, for instance, history, sociology, social psychology, criminology and social geography, which contribute special tools for the study of cultural factors affecting the volume and direction of international migrations. Emotional attachments to a community and to acquaintances, to a culture or language, to political and social institutions or to a way of life must be considered as factors inhibiting Trans-Atlantic movement and affecting the adjustment of migrants in the U.S.

This article focuses on the article "Rural-Urban Fertility Differentials in Southern Nigeria: An Assessment of Some Available Evidence," by A. Okore, published in the 1980 issue of the journal "Population Studies." Okore correctly draws attention to the fragmentary nature of fertility studies in Nigeria although he neglects the difficulties of comparing their results. A more crucial omission is that he makes no reference to the ethnic composition of the different regions. When comparing the completed family sizes in Okore's studies several difficulties arise apart from the limitations inherent in cross-sectional data. However, in general his table indicates lower completed fertility for Yoruba women aged 45--49. In the age group 40-44, the mean number of children ever born in the Yorubaland studies range from 4.0 in rural Western Nigeria in 1966 to 6.2 in Dhadike's 1964 Lagos survey. Okore does not indicate the size of the Ibo urban area, Umuahia. which he surveyed, but since the non-Yoruba areas are at a less advanced stage of the urbanization transition than Yorubaland, this obviously has theoretical implications.

The article comments on the study conducted by economist Julia Erickson regarding the non-usage of contraception among few population groups and availability of accurate data on marriage and fertility for the same. Ericksen and colleagues studied the fertility patterns and trends among the old order Amish. Some of the concepts of the study have been criticized. Most demographers hold the concept that a woman cannot give birth to a live child within the first eight months of her marriage in the absence of pre-nuptial conceptions and hence suggested the calculation of conception rates rather than birth rates. As against the concept that fertility decreases with the duration of marriage, the author suggests that some kind of family limitation is practiced which reduces fertility. Also the hypothesis that natural fertility decreases with age is not always true. In some populations fertility declines at a faster rate. Practice of family limitations may be held responsible for this. It is almost impossible to show the beginnings of family limitation from a simple comparison of figures between different populations.

Although the history of birth control in nineteenth-century Britain is a well-researched area, not a great deal of attention has been directed to the obstacles which birth control advocates had to overcome in trying to promote their cause. That the Malthusian League was responsible for disseminating a considerable literature on the question is well known, but the difficulties it faced in the last quarter of the nineteenth century have not been the subject of much study. This paper examines some of these difficulties. Part of the problem for the League lay in the slenderness of its own resources and in the commitment of its leader Drysdale to a particular economic doctrine. A far greater part lay in the publicly expressed opposition to the idea of birth Control. That Opposition came from a wide variety of sources. The obstacles posed by the law, contemporary Christian morality and by the hostility of the medical profession are deal with briefly. Less well known were the obstacles posed by some contemporary versions of Darwinian ideas and by imperialism. But the greatest public opposition to League propaganda. this paper suggests, came from socialists in the 1880s. The paper examines the exchanges between socialists and birth controllers and tries to describe the way in which an accommodation Of viewpoints between them came about in the last quarter of the century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the trend of the birth rate in India between the period 1911 to 1950. The Government of India, in connection with the Census of 1951, has published a report entitled Estimation of Birth and Death Rates in India during 1941-50. In this report the actuaries associated with the census of 1951 have analysed a mass of material and have tried to arrive at firm estimates of the birth and death rates for different regions of India during 1941-50. Economist Kingsley Davis has also tried to compute birth estimates for the major provinces of India during 1926-30. These two publications thus enable you to examine two independently estimated rates of omission in the two decades, i.e. 1926-30 and 1941-50. In the present paper it will be shown that the formula devised for West Bengal is valid for a much larger area, comprising the provinces of Assam, Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. The rates of omission estimated by the author's formula for 1921-30 will be compared with the corresponding rates of omission for 1926-30 as estimated by Kingsley Davis, and it will be shown that in all the cases the two agree quite closely.

Presents an introduction to articles published in the March 1950 issue of the journal "Supplement to Population Studies."

Demographers who use survey data and census data from health and demographic surveillance areas can gain substantially from expanding their repertoire of methods to make use of qualitative methods. Similarly, those who conduct and analyse data primarily from semi-structured interviews or focus groups can benefit from information provided by survey research. This paper presents a systematic mixed-methods model—data-linked nested studies—for sampling respondents for semi-structured interviews from survey or census lists. The paper outlines how to conduct these types of study, and their technical and analytical advantages. It highlights the benefits of building on a strong foundation, the ability to compare samples, and the expansion of the range of evidence for, or against, the validity of the substantive findings. Case studies from two data-linked nested projects—in Malawi and South Africa—are used to describe in detail the nested-study approach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

According to the author, in a paper published in a previous issue of the journal Population Studies, he questioned the validity of the so-called Far Eastern pattern of mortality as a unique regional mortality model. In her response researcher Noreen Goldman makes three major points. First, the Far Eastern mortality pattern as originally formulated by her differs from that defined by the United Nations Population Division. Second, the method used in author's analysis is different from that of her and not effective in discerning mortality patterns. Third, the Far Eastern mortality pattern as defined by her is indeed a unique mortality model. In this article the author comments on these assertions and further demonstrates that the Far Eastern mortality pattern is not unique regional model. Goldman provides some useful information in her rejoinder, but her major conclusions are unconvincing. While her early investigation into mortality changes in East Asia played a notable role in alerting demographers to the deficiencies of life tables for describing mortality experiences outside of the industrialized world, the claim that the Far Eastern mortality pattern is a distinctive regional mortality model is not well founded.

Fluctuations in birth rates in developed countries have been considerably less regular than many explanatory theories suggest. This paper argues that social interaction, i.e., the dependence of individuals' fertility decisions on the fertility behavior of other population members, is relevant even in developed countries. A formal model for investigating the static and dynamic consequences of social interaction for fertility is developed, and its aggregate implications are tested using a Markov switching regression model. The findings show that social interaction can lead to fluctuations in birth rates that are swift and difficult to foresee, and that these fluctuations are likely to be asymmetric: spells of low fertility have a considerably higher persistence than spells of high fertility. The paper suggests that high birth rates are likely to be followed by spells of low fertility. Transitions from low to high fertility occur at a substantially lower rate than transitions in the opposite direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss some of the health policy implications of an increasing trend in population research and in its interpretation and presentation - a trend to 'political correctness' - defined not in the popular, often derogatory, sense, but as an ideological commitment to certain principles. For one of these commitments, that to the notion of gender equality, greater strength and legitimacy is today commonly sought by tying it to other less controversial goals such as that of better health. But straining for connections between gender equality and positive health outcomes often unduly constrains the research question, the research methods, and the interpretation of the research. When health policy seeks guidance from this research, it can receive signals which are too often incomplete, silent on the many trade-offs of specific policy measures, and, ultimately, perhaps even detrimental to the very goals of gender equity and social justice from which they are derived. Examples of all these possibilities are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the emerging interest in the relationship between homeostatic models and demographic transition theory. Firstly, it considers the nature of fertility measurement and concepts. The paper then goes on to examine evidence from pre-transitional societies in which demographic regimes have been most thoroughly studied, summarizing what is known about their character. The nature and current status of homeostatic theories in demography and the institutional supports of pre-transitional regimes are considered. The implications of the findings on pre-transitional populations for transition theory are then discussed. The paper concludes with suggestions for ways in which studies of transition within a framework of homeostatic regimes could be developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the magnitude of urban-rural differentials in infant mortality in England during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and also compares the timing of decline for a selection of towns of varying size, and their immediate rural hinterlands. Most towns continued to experience short-term fluctuations in infant mortality until the very end of the nineteenth century; however, in some of the adjacent rural communities - where levels of infant mortality were much lower - conditions were sufficiently favourable to allow a continuous decline in infant mortality from at least the 1860s, if not before. The final part of the paper considers the causes of these patterns and their implications for explanations of infant mortality decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses translation formulae for time-dependent cohort and period quantum for non-repeatable events. Cohort quantum expressions are investigated for two cases: one in which period quantum, and another in which the sum of the period rates decreases linearly with time. En both cases the assumption is that period tempo does not change. Sufficient conditions are given for the situation in which the cohort quantum simply equals the period quantum measured at the time when the cohort reaches the mean age of the period schedule of age-specific rates, given that the period rate sum is a polynomial function of time. The paper takes up an issue which was unresolved in the article `Translation formulae for none repeatable events" which appeared in the July 1994 issue of Population Studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evidence presented in this paper shows that differential mortality by economic status is strongly present in the United States today, and that this relationship is monotonic, with men's death rates being lower among the wealthier. Also, the greater the number of spells of poverty, the higher the death rate. These data suggest that differential mortality rates by economic status are being confused with the well-known ethnic differences in mortality. An implication of this paper, therefore, is that ethnic differences in mortality are, in large part, a consequence of poverty or permanent low income, as opposed to genotype. Consequently, it may be just as valid, or even more so, to publish mortality tables by income as by race. A policy implication of this paper is that the redistributive effects of longevity-based transfer systems, such as social security (public pensions), may be less 'progressive' than has been assumed, since would-be poorer recipients are either less likely to live long enough to collect any benefits in the first place, or will not live to collect them for as long as more affluent recipients. In addition, I have failed to find a direct effect of schooling on probability of survival. Hence, the beneficial effect of schooling on longevity must work through its effect upon income, with only the latter directly influencing mortality risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Kingdom s Old Age Pensions Act of 1908 instituted means-tested, non- contributory pensions for men and women aged 70 or over. The pension and the lack of civil registration of births before 1864 caused many Irish to exaggerate their ages in the Census of 1911. In this paper a linked sample from the manuscript censuses of 1901 and 1911 is used to estimate the magnitude and determinants of this age mis- representation. Our results show three types of age discrepancies: those associated with a significant reduction in age-heaping; those associated with efforts to obtain a pension before age 70; and some apparent age-exaggeration unconnected with the Old Age Pension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, which is published in two parts, is focused on demographic responses to famine in South Asia. In Part I the famines of 1876-78, 1896-97 and 1899-4900 are examined. The data that relate to disasters evince clear regularities. In each of these famines the timing of food-price rises and reductions in conceptions was similar. During the initial stages of famine the death rate was not particularly high. The main period of mortality occurred one full year after the price and conception movements. It coincided with the resumption of the monsoon, and malaria probably played a major role. There was a clear pattern to proportional increases in mortality by age - in these terms older children and adults were hardest hit. In each famine, deaths of males increased most - perhaps partly reflecting the fact that by the time of the main peak in deaths a smaller- than-usual fraction of the female population were either pregnant or lactating. Explanations for some of these regularities are considered. In Part II of the paper (to be published in the next issue) the same basic concerns a propos the Bengal famine of 1943 -44 and the Bangladesh famine of 1974-75 will be examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the behavioural factors which make for continuing high levels of child mortality in rural Punjab, despite favourable conditions in terms of nutrition, income, women's literacy and health care facilities are examined. A major factor is that inadequate attention has been paid to improved health care practices within the home. Women's autonomy, social class, and mothers' education significantly influence child survival. One of the pathways by which mothers' education affects child survival is through improved child care. In this society, a woman's autonomy is Lowest during that part of her life-cycle which also contains her peak childbearing years: this perverse overlap raises child mortality. The risk of dying is distributed very unevenly amongst children, as the majority of child deaths are clustered amongst a small proportion of the families. The death-clustering variable remained significant even after several possible biological and socio-economic reasons for clustering had been controlled. It is argued that this clustering of deaths is partly due to the poor basic abilities of some mothers and other carers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cohort Parity Analysis (CPA) method for the indirect measurement of the extent of marital fertility control makes use of parity distribution data of the kind reported, for specified marriage duration and marriage age (or current age) groups of women, by a fertility census. Corresponding to every such distribution, CPA yields efficient upper and lower bounds on the proportion of controllers in the specified cohort, as well as bounds for the parity distribution of the controllers. As the women who belong to different marriage cohorts are observed at different durations of marriage in a census, it is possible to infer inter-cohort trends in the extent of fertility control (at some specified marriage duration(s)) if one knows the time pattern of the adoption of control among the members of each cohort. It is shown in this paper that robust estimates of the intra- cohort diffusion pattern can be obtained from the census cross-section itself, by supplementing the basic assumptions of the CPA framework with a plausible assumption about the behaviour of the `representative' controller in a given cohort. The estimation technique is illustrated by applications to data for married women in urban Eire from the Census of Ireland in 1911, and to native white married women in the U.S. South from the U.S. Census of 1910. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The model developed in this paper extends Bongaarts's nuclear family model into a general one that accounts for both nuclear and three-generation families, and which is expected to be more widely applicable. In the paper a simulation and comparison of two cohorts of women who are assumed to live out their lives under demographic conditions of China in 1950-70 and 1981 is presented. The status distribution and expected years spent in different parities, marital statuses, being the child of surviving parent(s), being a parent of living children, and having responsibility for both elderly parent(s) and young children etc. are given. The consequences of the dramatic demographic changes are clearly demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inverse projection and back projection are two methods for exploiting long historical series of births and deaths to produce estimates of population size and age structure, net migration, and vital rates. While inverse projection requires extraneous information on population size at scattered dates, back projection does not. In this paper I argue that back projection attempts an impossible task, and can only arbitrarily select one demographic past from among an infinite set of equally plausible and acceptable ones, which are also consistent with the input data. inverse projection, on the other hand, is more modest in its goal, but is robust and straightforward. In an important and outstanding book, Wrigley and Schofield use back projection to reconstruct English demographic history from 1539 to 1871. In this paper, inverse projection is used to replicate their reconstruction under assumptions that are in important respects weaker, although these estimates are contingent on independent population size estimates for 1541 and 1696. The results buttress Wrigley and Schofield's reconstruction. However, it is argued that their data and reconstruction cannot offer independent evidence for the general levels of population before the mid-eighteenth century; rather, they help us to interpolate among benchmarks for which we have extraneous evidence, and contingent on these benchmarks, fill in the rich details of the demographic past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the authors attempt to analyze the correlates of differences in infant and child mortality in Costa Rica for the period 1968-73. One approach uses small geographical units (cantons) as the unit for because of an interest in differential child mortality during rapid fertility decline. The period is related to the use of the Census of 1973 as a primary source of data. Among the major findings are a strong favorable effect of provision of medical services on child mortality for small geographical areas and a strong effect of ambient infant mortality (influenced by medical and public health factors) on childhood mortality in the micro-analysis. Education of women remains important at both levels of analysis. Sanitation and level of socio-economic well-being have a weaker but important effect. Fertility and mortality appear to have a significant simultaneous causal interaction. Both `exogenous' and `endogenous' development-related factors appear to play a role in determining differences in child mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A multi-state life table, also known as a multi-dimensional or an increment-decrement life-table is a generalization of the conventional life table. Members of a birth cohort are followed as they age, and move between various states of life. In this paper, the mathematical theory of multi-state life table construction is reviewed. It is shown that the mathematics becomes simple if the matrix approach, initiated by Rogers for the design of multi-regional life tables, is adopted. The theory is used to construct a multi-state nuptiality table for Belgium. An innovative feature of multi-state analysis is that the life tables obtained for each of the marital states are interrelated, since an individual leaving a particular status enters another which eventually may be left again. Life table functions not only depend on age but also on current and/or previous marital status. In the paper it is shown how the patterns of marital change, experienced by Belgian women as they age, differ with their marital status at the age of 20. The differences are particularly large for the pattern of divorce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is an attempt to work out the `continuation rate' for the diaphragm and jelly method by applying the life-table technique as developed by Potter and Tietze to the data obtained in a retrospective survey of women who accepted this method from clinics in Greater Bombay. Some problems, which arise in extending the use of the life-table technique to methods other than the I.U.D. to which it has been widely applied, are discussed. The `continuation' rate as found for the diaphragm and jelly method was slightly higher than that observed for the pill in Singapore. The paper also contains an estimate of the `use-effectiveness' rate of the diaphragm and jelly method by using the life-table technique and points out that the use of this technique, as flow recommended by Tietze, does not adequately take into account Some of the biological considerations which used to figure Prominently in earlier discussions of the subject. For this reason, many of the figures on use-effectiveness which have been published by applying the life-table technique to methods, including the I.U.D., are not strictly comparable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a set of two papers, one of them published in this journal in July 1965, W. H. James defends the menstrual statistics of E. J. Farris and his co-workers and exploits these data to propose a new formula of calendar rhythm that allegedly provides maximum protection for a given amount of abstinence. The present paper argues that Farris's data are open to a suspicion of serious bias. James's estimates of various parameters of the menstrual cycle are questioned mainly on grounds of deficient data. However, it is concluded that his methods of estimation will prove useful in future analyses of menstrual variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assuming that the monthly chance of conceiving, fecundability, is constant for any one woman during the period of observation, but varies from one woman to another in an unspecified way, this paper investigates the expected incidence of first conceptions and the distribution of conception delays. The expected monthly incidence of first conceptions is a decreasing function of time. The mean, variance and higher moments of the distribution of fecundability (p) may be estimated from incomplete data referring to only the first few months of exposure. The distribution of conception delays is distinguished from the distribution of the number of trials needed for conception, and the moments of each are derived. When appropriate data are available to calculate the moments of the conception delay or the number of trials, the squared and cubed deviations of i/p about the harmonic mean fecundability can be estimated. These statistics may be useful descriptions of the discrepancy between an observed distribution and theoretical values expected in a homogeneous population. The correlation between two successive conception delays is also discussed in the article.

The object of this paper is to outline the results of a different method of studying marital breakdown. The opportunity for making such a study has recently arisen in the course of a national questionnaire survey of child health and growth. The chief purpose of this national survey is to build up a picture of the health and development of a broad sample of British children born in March 1946. While it was not primarily designed with the intention of investigating the subject of marital breakdown, it has provided information on its extent among British families bringing up young children in the post-war years. Furthermore, the survey has given an opportunity for contrasting the home conditions and physical development of children growing up in broken homes with those of a closely matched group of children living in stable families. This paper deals only with the extreme and obvious cases of marital breakdown, and it is restricted to those broken homes in which a legitimate child has continued to live with his or her remaining parent. The few children, who have been entirely removed from parental custody to the care of adoptive or foster-parents or children's homes, and those who were illegitimate, have not been included. It was found that while home circumstances differed considerably, the children of broken homes were not excessively retarded, nor on the whole were they more prone to suffer from childhood ailments or behavior disturbances than those in stable families.

In a previous paper a formula was derived from which the total fertility rate of a group of women could be estimated from the average number of live births to women in the reproductive period. In the present paper the argument is carried further and a method is given by which the total fertility rate may be estimated from the average number of children born to fertile women during the reproductive period. The method given in this paper may, under certain circumstances, have considerable advantages over the previous method suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimates of fertility in small areas are valuable for analysing demographic change, and important for local planning and population projection. In countries lacking complete vital registration, however, small-area estimates are possible only from sparse survey or census data that are potentially unreliable. In these circumstances estimation requires new methods for old problems: procedures must be automated if thousands of estimates are required; they must deal with extreme sampling variability in many areas; and they should also incorporate corrections for possible data errors. We present a two-step procedure for estimating total fertility in such circumstances and illustrate it by applying the method to data from the 2000 Brazilian Census for over 5,000 municipalities. Our proposed procedure first smoothes local age-specific rates using Empirical Bayes methods and then applies a new variant of Brass's P/F parity correction procedure that is robust to conditions of rapid fertility decline. Supplementary material at the project website (http://schmert.net/BayesBrass) will allow readers to replicate all the authors’ results in this paper using their data and programs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The difference in life expectancy between women and men among Israeli Jews is very low relative to the difference in other developed countries, and the reasons for this are not fully understood. This paper explores the contribution of smoking to the observed patterns of sex-specific mortality among Israeli Jews, and to the sex difference in mortality exhibited by this population. The results show that the mortality of Israeli Jewish men is low owing to the relatively weak impact of smoking-related mortality, and that this also contributes to an explanation of the small sex difference. The result is explained by the high level of health-protective behaviour of Israeli Jewish men, including a low intensity of smoking (though not a low prevalence). The findings could have implications for some debates on the determinants of divergences and convergences in mortality, and research into the relationship between mortality and the Mediterranean diet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study presented in this paper is an examination of the long-term impact of genocide during the period of the Khmer Rouge regime (1975–79) in Cambodia. The very high and selective mortality of the period had a major impact on the population structure of Cambodia. Fertility and marriage rates were both very low under the Khmer Rouge, but recovered immediately after the regime's collapse. Because of the shortage of eligible men, the age and education differences between partners tended to decline. The period also had a lasting impact on the educational attainment of the population. The school system collapsed during the period and therefore individuals—especially men—who were of school age at the time have a lower educational attainment than those from the preceding and subsequent birth cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the measurement of infant mortality in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). There are worrying indications that official infant mortality counts, based on administrative data, may understate the true gravity of the problem in 15 countries in the region, including 11 out of 12 CIS countries, and 4 countries in South Eastern Europe. In the case of eight CIS countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia plus Romania, the evidence is strongest, not least because surveys that allow independent estimation of infant mortality have been carried out there. In the case of the remaining six countries, the evidence is more circumstantial, and based on inconsistencies within the official data themselves, combined with information on how live births are defined. However, we find also that surveys are rather blunt instruments, and that the confidence intervals that surround estimates from these surveys are often large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines causality and parameter instability in the long-run relationship between fertility and women's employment This is done by a cross-national comparison of macro-level time-series data from 1960 to 2000 for France, West Germany, Italy, Sweden, the UK, and the USA. By applying vector error correction models (a combination of Granger-causality tests with recent econometric time-series techniques) we find causality in both directions. This finding is consistent with simultaneous movements of both variables brought about by common exogenous factors such as social norms, social institutions, financial incentives, and the availability and acceptability of contraception. We find a negative and significant correlation until about the mid-1970's and an insignificant or weaker negative correlation afterwards. This result is consistent with a recent hypothesis in the demographic literature according to which changes in the institutional context, such as changes in childcare availability and attitudes towards working mothers, might have reduced the incompatibility between child-rearing and the employment of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from censuses and surveys to re-estimate mortality levels and trends in China from the 1960's to 2000. We use the General Growth Balance method to evaluate the completeness of death reporting above the youngest ages in three censuses of the People's Republic of China from 1982 to 2000, concluding that reporting quality is quite high, and revisit the completeness of death recording in the 1973-75 Cancer Epidemiology Survey. Estimates of child mortality from a variety of direct and indirect sources are reviewed, and best estimates arrived at. Our estimates show a spectacular improvement in life expectancy in China: from about 60 years in the period 1964-82 to nearly 70 years in the period 1990-2000, with a further improvement to over 71 years by 2000. We discuss why survival rates continue improving in China despite reduced government involvement in and increasing privatization of health services, with little insurance coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to identify common features in the fertility patterns of the English-speaking world and provide a model basis for comparison of fertility between countries and over time. Attention is focused on the heterogeneity within the fertility patterns of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, similar to that reported earlier for the UK and the Irish Republic. The recent age-specific fertility patterns of these countries display a marked 'bulge' in fertility of women under age 25. A mixture model with two-component: Hadwiger functions provides a suitable fit. The heterogeneity thus suggested is shown to be related to differences in the timing of births by marital status, and its magnitude is related to the proportion of births outside marriage. Additionally, there is some evidence that, in the United States, and to a lesser extent in New Zealand, this heterogeneity in fertility patterns may be explained by ethnic differences in the timing and number of births. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the preceding issue of this journal, a generalized version of the Brass growth balance method was proposed that made it applicable to populations that are not stable and are open to migration. In this companion paper, the results of applying this new procedure to data from India's Sample Registration System for the decades 1971-80 and 1981-90 are discussed. The results at the national level show that, during the decade 1981-90, 5 per cent of the deaths among men, 12 per cent of the deaths among women, and about 7 per cent of births were being missed by the system. Further, it is estimated that the level of under-enumeration in the 1991 Census was more than that of the 1981 Census by 0.7 per cent for males and 1.4 per cent for females. The paper also presents results for major Indian states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1996 the government of India announced a new national population policy that eliminated numerical targets for new contraceptive acceptors. This paper examines the history of target setting in India and factors that led to the elimination of targets. The analysis is based on published and unpublished reports on India's population policy and the family planning programme and interviews with senior Indian and foreign officials and population specialists. Five factors are identified as playing a role in the evolution from target setting to a target-free policy: (1) the research of India's academics; (2) the work of women's health advocates; (3) the support of officials in the state bureaucracy who approved the target-free approach; (4) the influence of the donors to India's family planning programme, especially the World Bank; and (5) the International Conference on Population and Development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]