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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.

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.

In the developed world, the historic process of fertility decline was interrupted by an unexpected period of increasing fertility called the baby boom. Recent studies suggest that a similar trend change in fertility may have occurred in many less developed nations at approximately the same time. Using cohort fertility data for 26 less developed countries from around the world taken from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, International (IPUMS-I), this paper aims to ascertain the extent to which these trend changes occurred in a large sample of countries around the world. It offers convincing proof of the existence of an upward shift in fertility among cohorts born during the 1930s, which was common to many countries in the less developed world. Despite many similarities with the baby boom, there are also differences stemming, mostly, from its timing with respect to the demographic transition. [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.

In certain countries population data are available in grouped form only, usually as quinquennial age groups plus a large open-ended range for the elderly. However, official statistics call for data by individual age since many statistical operations, such as the calculation of demographic indicators, require the use of ungrouped population data. In this paper a number of mathematical models are proposed which, starting from population data given in age groups, enable these ranges to be degrouped into age-specific population values without leaving a fractional part. Unlike other existing procedures for disaggregating demographic data, ours makes it possible to process several years' data simultaneously in a coherent way, and provides accurate results longitudinally as well as transversally. This procedure is also shown to be helpful in dealing with degrouped population data affected by noise, such as those affected by the age-heaping phenomenon. [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]

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 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]

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 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]

The paper presents a new type of parametric transition rate model that is particularly suitable for studying household and union formation. In such studies, it is often not easy to determine the moment at which individuals actually enter the population at risk - or at least when the risk begins to become socially important. Even in the presence of regulations stipulated by law, one might be interested in studying 'social' timetables. We assume that there is a constant rate for any duration and that after a certain threshold point a log-logistic rate is added, with this threshold as its time origin. This can be justified in a behavioural sense by assuming that random and social transitions arise from separate processes. We then apply the model to union formation in Italy and show how threshold and intensity effects generated by theoretical hypotheses can be revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its inception in 1974, the South African family planning programme has been widely believed to be linked with white fears of growing black numbers. The programme has been repeatedly attacked by detractors as a programme of social and political control. Yet, in spite of the hostile environment, black women's use of services has steadily increased. Using historical and anthropological evidence, this paper delineates the links between the social and political context of racial domination and individual fertility behaviour. It is argued that the quantitative success of the family planning programme is rooted in social and economic shifts conditioning reproductive authority and fertility decision-making. State policies of racial segregation and influx control, ethnic 'homeland' politics, and labour migration of men transformed opportunities and constraints for black women and men, and altered local and household expectations of childbearing. Women came to manage their own fertility as they increasingly found themselves in precarious social and economic circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-racial (mixed-race) people constitute a growing percentage of the United States (US) population. The study reported in this paper used residential segregation measures as a proxy for social distance, to examine whether segregation levels of multi-racial groups differ from those of mono-racial groups in the US in 2010. First, we find that all multi-racial groups considered in the study experience lower levels of segregation at county level than their mono-racial counterparts. However, black-whites and Hispanic-whites experience higher levels of segregation than other multi-racial groups. Second, we find region and minority composition of counties are associated significantly with segregation levels for multi-racial groups, but relative income is not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution to the study of the literacy transition in Britain, Ireland, and Australia also touches on the relationship between literacy and international migration. Some 20,000 emigrants arrived in Australia in 1841 and their literacy is here established at the individual level, and then related to regional origins, occupations, religion, sex, and family status in the British Isles. The new Australian data offer unusual evidence to juxtapose with the prevailing account of British and Irish literacy. The paper makes systematic comparisons of the immigrant evidence with existing literacy findings for the populations of England and Wales, of Ireland, and the colonial population of Australia in the year 1841. The results also show extraordinary similarity of rank orderings between the Australian data and the conventional sources. The results show that the immigrants were consistently more literate than the home and the receiving populations and indicate a substantial link between migration and literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population estimates play an important role in the allocation of resources at many levels of government and commerce but little is known about the accuracy of age-specific population estimates. Such knowledge is crucial, as resource allocation is often targeted at populations of particular age, and decisions need to be based on the reliability of the estimates. This paper presents a multi-level statistical analysis of the accuracy of age-specific population estimates made for British local authorities in 1991. The aim of this work is to identify the factors that influence accuracy, and to investigate how these influences interact. Our analyses show that the following area characteristics are key factors: true population size; intercensal population change; and percentages of unemployed residents, armed forces residents, and students. In addition, we find that the overall type of method used to calculate estimates is important, and that its effect varies both with area characteristics and with age-group. Local census methods are found to be generally superior, but a low-cost apportionment method, if implemented well, may be as effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the timing and means of the fertility transition on the Greek island of Mykonos in the period 1879 to 1959. By combining the results of family reconstitution with oral evidence, an unusual insight into the pathways of the fertility transition of this island population is offered. The paper concludes by outlining a model of the adoption of fertility control, a model which sees the transition from high to low fertility as a transition from spacing to stopping, and from innovation of methods to innovation of ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1758, an article containing the view that resources limit population growth was published in Copenhagen. This paper gives a short presentation of the author Otto Diderich Lütken's life and literary production. His radical views on the question of population are given, and a comparison is made with the theories of Thomas Robert Malthus. A brief account of his views on other economic issues is also presented. The literature concerning his writings is reviewed. A discussion of who influenced him, and of his influence on others, ends this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demographic projection models describe the development over time of the population in terms of events. A consistency problem arises if projected numbers of events are required to satisfy certain constraints: the consistency problem can be seen as a generalization of the well-known two-sex problem in nuptiality models. This paper presents a very general characterization of consistency problems, using matrix notation, as well as a slightly less general algorithm to solve them. The preferred specification of the objective function to be minimized by the algorithm leads to a solution that can be interpreted as a generalization of the harmonic-mean approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents views of the author on the paper related to relation between the actual growth rate of any population and its intrinsic rate of natural increase, by Samuel Preston, published in November 1988 issue of the journal "Population Studies." The author says that according to the paper the momentum of population growth is entirely confined to the age span above T number. In a population whose vital rates have suddenly changed to stationary levels, those younger than T number neither more nor less than they will number in the ultimate stationary population.

This paper demonstrates that, to a close approximation, the intrinsic growth rate of a population is equal to the mean of age-specific growth rates below age T, the mean length of a generation. This mean is normally close to the growth rate of the entire population block below age T. Therefore, when a disparity exists between the intrinsic growth rate and the actual growth rate of a population (whether or not net migration is included in both rates), it must be attributable to an unusual growth rate of the population block above age T. One implication is that the 'momentum of population growth' is entirely confined to the age span above T, approximately age 28 in developing countries to-day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In ordinary demographic projection, the starting age structure of a population ceases to matter after a time, whatever changes the birth and death rates undergo within bounds. The inhomogeneous or 'weak' ergodic theorem asserts this eventual independence of starting state. Does the same independence hold true for inverse projection? This paper proves that the answer is 'yes' provided the model life-table family satisfies certain reasonable conditions, but that the answer can be 'no', if more extreme life-table families are allowed. The inhomogeneous ergodic theorem for inverse projection proved here, and the counter-examples to its extension, have implications for the validation of aggregative reconstructions in historical demography and to the contemporary forecasting of sub-populations subject to constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of levels of life expectancy and their patterns of change among six socio-economically differentiated sub-populations of England and Wales for the period 1851-1911. Differences in mortality levels among these sub-groups and their rates of change are analyzed with respect to three groups of explanatory variables, viz., environmental, stratification and demographic variables. Their relative importance for different periods is assessed and discussed. The findings show consistency with two previous studies, which have suggested that medical advances had little effect on the increase in life expectancy during the second half of the nineteenth century. The present paper supports the results of one study in that public health measures affected life expectancies earlier, while subsequently, the increase in standards of living was more important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The net reproduction ratio (NRR) is a useful measure of the growth of a population from one generation to the next. Like the expectation of life, it is based on a stable or Malthusian population and is not influenced by the actual population structure. Its use in this country was first advocated by Robert Kuczynski in the 1930s and, despite some reservations, it is still published for this and many other countries, particularly in the United Nations Demographic Yearbook. Kuczynski attributed its origin to Richard Boeckh, who, at the relevant time, around 1890, was Director of the Statistical Office of the City of Berlin. Boeckh discusses his data and the problems met. He estimates, for example, that two-ninths of all illegitimate children are subsequently legitimized by the marriage of their parents. In a census they are reported as legitimate, producing an inconsistency between census and registration data. He checks reliability, for example by showing that the decrease in the number of marriages with successive numbers of children is regular. At that time, no details of mother's age at birth were collected at registration in England. For this reason, Farr starts with Norwegian data as preferable to those from Scotland, Sweden or Denmark where this information was also available.

This paper examines the impact of the demographic transition upon the potential supply of, and demand for, family support for the aged in Australia. Using census and survey information on population cohorts entering old age, comparisons are drawn concerning their surviving issue, household composition and family membership. Long-term changes in fertility are shown to have had only a small impact upon the supply of potential carers among relatives and, although the demographic transition has led to a more universal inclusion of old people in family networks, there have not been major changes through time in the proportions living in extended family households. Short-term changes, however, such as low fertility during the 1930s, have caused disordered cohort flow, with the result that current generations of the elderly are members of deprived cohorts in terms of their access to family support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on population dynamics which is based on birth intervals and parity progression. The parity progression model developed in this paper enables you to calculate the future population that will result from the operation of a given set of parity progression ratios and birth-interval distributions on an initial series of births distributed by order, just as the conventional method of population projection allows you to calculate the future population that will result from the operation of given age-schedules of fertility and mortality on an initial age distribution. The parity progression model embodies an approach to the measurement of fertility which is based on parity progression schedules, just as Lotka's model is based on age-specific birth rates. Parity progression schedules which incorporate parity progression rates and birth-interval distributions are arguably the most natural approach to the measurement of fertility. When people think about having children, they think in terms of whether or not and when to have a first or a subsequent birth.

This paper focuses on population change in Bali. Bali is a relatively small island with a population of about 2.5 million. Consequently, a growing trend toward demographic stability there may be small consolation to some who are concerned with rapid growth in Java, where the population exceeds 90 million. However, Bali is of interest for other reasons as well. Unlike some other Asian societies where there have recently been major declines in birth rates, such as Taiwan, Singapore and Korea, Bali's declining growth rate has occurred largely in the absence of such social processes as rapid urbanization and industrialization. Much of the new information presented in this paper was collected during the Model Banjar Survey, which was conducted in eastern Bali in 1979. The study was commissioned to gather socioeconomic information from a large sample of households from communities in different social and natural environments. More than 100 variables were examined, including vital statistics, health indices, housing, literacy, education, and household economic data.

This paper presents a census-based method for estimating adult mortality. The method proposed here has several advantages over existing intercensal procedures. First, it is non-parametric in the sense that no model life-table system is required as in the other procedures; mortality conditions are inferred directly from the data. Nevertheless. when age-misreporting is severe, it may still be advisable to use the method in conjunction with model life tables in the manner that have been outlined. Secondly, the system is much easier to use than others, particularly when intercensal periods are not an integer multiple of five years. Thirdly, it is easy to use the estimation equations to identify the sensitivity of estimates to errors in the data, particularly to differences in completeness of coverage of the two censuses. The general advantages and disadvantages of intercensal estimation are well known. The main advantages are that data for using them are abundant and that no assumptions of stability are required.

This article focuses on the present value of population growth in the western world. At the centre of any analysis of the effect of additional population on income through the production of technical knowledge is this indigestible kernel: no matter how small the contribution to technology of the additional individual, it will some day, though perhaps a long time ahead, inevitably lead to income per head being higher than it would otherwise have been, ceteris paribus. There is also a sub-plot to the story. In a modern society, workers' transfers of income to retired persons are large in comparison to transfers to children. This means that any given individual benefits if some other individual has more children, ceteris paribus; this effect raises the discount rate at which the present value of population growth is positive above what it would otherwise be in any given model. This paper concentrates on the main argument, however. In the calculations, transfers to retired persons and for child services are disregarded as are negative environmental adjustment costs, positive environmental externalities of all sorts, especially those that decrease the entropy of the earth, and changes in work and savings patterns due to larger numbers of dependants.

Recent research, while drawing attention to the serious dearth of information, has given new emphasis to the importance of marriage as a population determinant in pre-industrial England. This paper sets out the results of a study of nuptiality in three south Warwickshire parishes between the late seventeenth and the early nineteenth centuries. It looks first at a number of serious problems which beset the subject in the Midlands. Bearing these in mind, certain tentative conclusions were put forward about the customary age at first marriage prevailing within this locality. It appeared that until the third quarter of the eighteenth century the mean for both sexes remained above 273 years, and was associated with low bridal pregnancy and illegitimacy rates. The latter increased during the period 1750-75. and were probably accompanied after 1770 by a secular fall in the age at marriage. The changes were found in both market-town and village, they began before reliance on outdoor relief became widespread, and were more noticeable amongst brides than grooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of population's impact on the economy has frequently been developed in the context of the dependency rate argument. The dependency rate, typically measured as the proportion of the total population outside the labour force, is a summary statistic which is intended to capture the influence of a population's age structure on the process of economic growth. This paper focuses on only one- and possibly the least understood - of the dependency rate economic influences, the saving rate. Indeed, at certain stages of economic development, the negative saving rate of the elderly could well be greater than the rate for those who have not yet entered the labour force. A debate on the relative merits of the competing models is outside the scope of the present paper. However, it is important to recognize that the interpretation of the economic impact of the dependency rate depends critically on the specific model employed. There are several modifications to the "naive" dependency-rate argument as it pertains to saving which appear critical to an analysis of this demographic statistic as a proxy for economic behaviour.

In this paper, the Monte Carlo model for simulating the reproductive history of a cohort of women is described in detail. The purposes of the model are both substantive and methodological, since it investigates the quantitative effects on reproductive performance of changes in such factors as mortality, marriage patterns, use of contraceptives and their effectiveness, size of family desired, fecundity and pregnancy wastage. The paper consists of five sections: a discussion of problems to which the model is directed, a brief description of population models, a description of the present model, a presentation of some illustrative results, and a discussion of the possible role of the model.

Contraceptive effectiveness is conventionally measured by a pregnancy rate, which reveals little about the way in which pregnancy risks vary among couples. In this paper, a technique is presented for estimating curves of pregnancy risk. The technique is applied to data from the Family Growth in Metropolitan America study for purposes of estimating how much couples would have to improve their initial contraception in order to realize, by contraception alone, the caliber of family limitation claimed by respondents late in their childbearing period.

The paper draws attention to the profound changes that are taking place in the proportions of the population of Great Britain that are single, married and widowed at various ages. These changes are the net result of a number of demographic, economic and sociological developments, such as the decrease in mortality rates and the changing balance of the sexes. After discussing an abortive attempt to forecast the future progress of the proportions, based on changes that have taken place in the recent past, the paper describes a method of estimating the pro- portions of each sex that are likely to be found in each marital status at the various attained ages in future years if the experience of the years 1950-52 in Great Britain as regards rates of marriage, divorce, widowhood and re-marriage continue indefinitely, subject to minor modifications to ensure that the numbers of marriages, etc., for the two sexes are consistent, and that the total number of married men equals that of married women. The variations in the proportions in each marital status in Great Britain during the past thirty years and those to be expected during the next thirty years, and ultimately, if the experience of the years 1950-52 persists, are set out and analysed. It is shown that, whereas the proportion of men never marrying has up to the present been about half the proportion of women never marrying, the continuance of present trends would result in the proportion of men never marrying becoming double that for women. This notable change is to be attributed, in the main, to the effect of improved vitality in childhood in replacing the excess of women at the younger adult ages by an excess of men. It is pointed out that, in the event, this change may not be fully realised, because a net emigration of men or a net immigration of women may mitigate the relative dearth of potential brides in future; but the proportions never marrying set out in the paper show the directions towards which current conditions are tending. The consequential changes for other marital statuses are also set out and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forecasts of life expectancy (LE) have fuelled debates about the sustainability and dependability of pension and healthcare systems. Of relevance to these debates are inequalities in LE by education. In this paper, we present a method of forecasting LE for different educational groups within a population. As a basic framework we use the Li-Lee model that was developed to forecast mortality coherently for different groups. We adapted this model to distinguish between overall, sex-specific, and education-specific trends in mortality, and extrapolated these time trends in a flexible manner. We illustrate our method for the population aged 65 and over in the Netherlands, using several data sources and spanning different periods. The results suggest that LE is likely to increase for all educational groups, but that differences in LE between educational groups will widen. Sensitivity analyses illustrate the advantages of our proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on Dutch colonial registers (thombos), this paper reconstructs fertility for two districts in Ceylon, 1756–68. It overcomes challenges in data quality by establishing the outer bounds of plausible estimates in a series of scenarios. Among these, total fertility rates (TFRs) averaged 5.5 in one district, but only 2.7 in the other. These figures exclude the victims of infanticide, a custom noted in European travelogues between about 1660 and 1820. Sex ratios among children differed depending on the number of older siblings, and overall, 27 per cent of girls are missing in one district and 57 per cent in the other. There was little significant variation either in the TFR or the sex ratio by socio-economic status, suggesting that poverty was not a key factor in motivating infanticides. Instead, we argue that at least parts of Ceylon had a forward-looking culture of family planning in the eighteenth century, which was lost in subsequent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Bayesian statistics offers an alternative to classical (frequentist) statistics. It is distinguished by its use of probability distributions to describe uncertain quantities, which leads to elegant solutions to many difficult statistical problems. Although Bayesian demography, like Bayesian statistics more generally, is around 250 years old, only recently has it begun to flourish. The aim of this paper is to review the achievements of Bayesian demography, address some misconceptions, and make the case for wider use of Bayesian methods in population studies. We focus on three applications: demographic forecasts, limited data, and highly structured or complex models. The key advantages of Bayesian methods are the ability to integrate information from multiple sources and to describe uncertainty coherently. Bayesian methods also allow for including additional (prior) information next to the data sample. As such, Bayesian approaches are complementary to many traditional methods, which can be productively re-expressed in Bayesian terms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents the reply of the author and co-authors to an article about the analysis of differences in the fertility patterns between national populations and over time. In their comments to our paper Osona and Kohler make a number of interesting and potentially helpful points. While their comments do not, in general, appear to be in conflict with our opinions, we are concerned that they have misunderstood one specific point. In their first section, on the analytical relationship between Hadwiger parameters and demographic measures, the authors re-present some known results. Those results, of course, were not the essential point of our paper, which was concerned primarily with the analysis of differences in fertility patterns. The functions were fitted in order to gain understanding of the differences in the patterns between countries and periods. The correspondences between variables to which they refer were used in order to investigate the effects of departures from the models in cases of distorted distributions. In their section dealing with reparameterization the authors propose an alternative to our presentation of the Hadwiger mixture model. Their explicit interpretation of the Hadwiger parameters as the total fertility, the mean age at childbearing, and the variance of the fertility schedule is possibly a step forward for the use of the model in demography.

Demographers study population change across time and place, and traditionally they place a strong emphasis on a long-range view of population change. This paper builds on current reflections on how to structure the study of population change and proposes a two-stage perspective. The first stage, discovery, focuses on the production of novel evidence at the population level. The second stage, explanation, develops accounts of demographic change and tests how the action and interaction of individuals generate what is discovered in the first stage. This explanatory stage also provides the foundation for the prediction of demographic change. The transformation of micro-level actions and interactions into macro-level population outcomes is identified as a key challenge for the second stage. Specific instances of research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents list of books and publications. Some of the books enlisted are: "Changing Economy in Indonesia. A Selection of Statistical Source Material From the Early 19th century up to 1940," by Peter Boomgaard and A.J. Gooszen; "Counterurbanization: The Changing Pace and Nature of Population Deconcentration," edited by A.G. Champion; "Istanbul Households. Marriage, Family and Fertility, 1880-1940," by Alan Duben and Cem Behar; "The Distribution of Welfare in Ghana, 1987-88," by Paul Glewwe and Kwaku Twum-Baah; "Urbanising Britain: Essays on Class and Community in the Nineteenth Century," edited by Gerry Kearns and Charles W.J. Withers; "Demographic Transition in China. Fertility Trends since the 1950s," by Xizhe Peng; "Patterns of Migration in Southeast Asia," edited by Robert Reed; "Gender Differences in Household Resource Allocations," by Duncan Thomas; "Dual Selection Criteria with Multiple Alternatives. Migration, Work Status, and Wages," by Wi P.M. Vijverberg; and "An International Journal of Health Development."

There is increasing concern about the lack of accuracy in population projections at national levels. A common problem has been the systematic underestimation of improvements in mortality, especially at older ages, resulting in projections that are too low. In this paper, we present a method that is based on projecting survivorship rather than mortality, which uses the same data but differs technically. In particular, rather than extrapolating trends in mortality, we use trends in life expectancy to establish a robust statistical relation between changes in life expectancy and survivorship using period life tables. We test the approach on data for England and Wales for the population aged 50 and over, and show that it gives more accurate projections than official projections using the same base data. Using the model to project the population aged 50 and over to 2020, our method suggests nearly 0.6 million more people in this age group than official projections. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mortality decline has historically been largely a result of reductions in the level of mortality at all ages. A number of leading researchers on ageing, however, suggest that the next revolution of longevity increase will be the result of slowing down the rate of ageing. In this paper, we show mathematically how varying the pace of senescence influences life expectancy. We provide a formula that holds for any baseline hazard function. Our result is analogous to Keyfitz's ‘entropy’ relationship for changing the level of mortality. Interestingly, the influence of the shape of the baseline schedule on the effect of senescence changes is the complement of that found for level changes. We also provide a generalized formulation that mixes level and slope effects. We illustrate the applicability of these models using recent mortality decline in Japan and the problem of period to cohort translation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Between 1920 and 1940, fertility dropped below replacement level in many Western countries. In today's scholarly literature, the drop is usually explained as a temporary reaction to the exceptional conditions of the inter-war period. This paper confronts that interpretation with the interpretations offered by scholars writing between the wars. According to leading demographers of the time, low fertility was due not to war or economic crisis, but rather to processes that now tend to be associated with the Second Demographic Transition, including secularization, individualization, rising consumerism, and women's emancipation. Since these were seen as structural features of modernization, most inter-war scholars argued that subreplacement fertility would remain an obstinate feature of modern society for an extended period of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study presented in this paper is to disentangle the roles of three mechanisms—selection, adaptation, and disruption—in influencing migrant fertility in Ghana. Using data from the 1998 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, we fit Poisson and sequential logit regression models to discern the effects of the above mechanisms on cumulative fertility and annual probabilities of birth. Characteristics of migrants from four types of migration stream are examined and compared with those of non-migrants at origin and destination. We find substantial support for the selection hypothesis among both rural–urban and urban–rural migrants. Disruption is evident only in the fertility timing of second and higher-order births in Ghana. Our finding that migrants bear children at about the same rates as the natives at destination implies that the growth rate of cities will slow down quickly and that the rural population will continue to have high fertility. Thus to achieve a reduction in the national fertility level, family planning activities need to be directed towards rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inadequate data and apartheid policies have meant that, until recently, most demographers have not had the opportunity to investigate the level of, and trend in, the fertility of South African women. The 1996 South Africa Census and the 1998 Demographic and Health Survey provide the first widely available and nationally representative demographic data on South Africa since 1970. Using these data, this paper describes the South African fertility decline from 1955 to 1996. Having identified and adjusted for several errors in the 1996 Census data, the paper argues that total fertility at that time was 3.2 children per woman nationally, and 3.5 children per woman for African South Africans. These levels are lower than in any other sub-Saharan African country. We show also that fertility in South Africa has been falling since the 1960s. Thus, fertility transition predates the establishment of a family planning programme in the country in 1974. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been demonstrated for many pre-industrial populations that the age at marriage, or marriage duration, influences age-specific marital fertility but the reason for this remains unclear. Among the several mechanisms that may be responsible, the following are often cited: secondary sterility or increased sub fecundity associated with parity; declining coital frequency; the age difference between the spouses; and, importantly, parity-dependent fertility control. If the latter mechanism were partly responsible for the marriage-duration effect in pre-transition populations, it would contradict the concept of the modern fertility transition as the evolution (or revolution) from parity-independent to parity-dependent fertility. The study presented in this paper investigates the relative importance of these alternative explanations. The application of multivariate Poisson regression to the fertility data from two birth cohorts in the Belgian city of Leuven shows that a linearly declining or even concave age-specific fertility pattern, disaggregated by age at marriage, does not imply parity-dependent fertility limitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconstructs the trend in the population sex ratio in India between 1971 and 1996 from available information on changes in sex differentials in mortality in the country since the beginning of the century. It is estimated that, although the mortality of females relative to that of males in India has improved since 1968, the population sex ratio increased between 1971 and 1981, stayed constant between 1981 and 1991, and started to decrease only after 1991. This implies that the recorded decrease and increase in the periods 1971-81 and 1981-91 respectively were both spurious and were the results of undercounts of females in 1971 and 1991. Another implication of this finding is that, owing to the lagged effect of past mortality on current trends in the population sex ratio, this ratio is a bad proxy for use in the study of changes in differential mortality by sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a reformulation of the general growth balance method for estimating census and registration completeness so as to make it applicable even to populations that are affected by migration. It also discusses a new procedure of line fitting that could be useful in countries where the input data are severely affected by age misreporting. The method is applicable to countries where data on age distribution of the population are available for two points in time from either censuses or surveys. Following closely the original proposal of Brass, it involves adjusting the 'partial' birth rates for age-specific disturbances from growth and migration rates. Beyond correcting the death rates, the method is useful in inferring the relative completeness of the censuses, and in deriving a robust estimate of birth rate under certain conditions. The application of the method is illustrated using the example of the male population of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh for the period 1981 to 1991. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1945, at the end of the Second World War, Albania had the highest fertility in Europe with an average of more than six live births per woman. However when Albania emerged from behind the 'olive curtain' in 1990, fertility had fallen to three children per woman, despite a pro-natalist environment and in the virtual 'absence of Contraception and abortion. Nevertheless, after five decades, Albania's position at the top of the European fertility league remains unchanged. This paper documents the fertility transition in Albania during the period 1950-90 and places the demographic results in the context of recent socioeconomic and cultural change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]