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In Japan, an article is sometimes sold with a questionnaire postcard. Accumulation of cards mailed back from customers can be regarded as an inditial response from two transfer elements in a series, purchasing articles and mailing cards. Successful fit of the data was obtained in this study by assuming that each intervening step is a process with a constant rate or its combination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of these studies was to find large groups with significantly less coronary atherosclerosis than New Yorkers and to investigate the possible reasons for these differences. Direct comparison of hearts and measurements of coronary artery wall thickness, autopsy series, and clinical diagnoses of outpatients and hospital admissions revealed that the amount of coronary atherosclerosis and the number of myocardial infarcts is significantly less in East and West Africans compared to New Yorkers matched for age and sex. The factors producing these differences are apparently operative in childhood. East Africans were found to have a shorter blood clot-lysis time, fewer venous (and arterial) thromboemboli and lower serum lipid levels, with a lower relative percentage of serum linoleates, than age-matched New Yorkers.

The continuous decline in fertility in the United States since 1957, while affecting all elements of the population, has been most pronounced and most rapid among those groups which previously had the highest fertility - blacks, American Indians and Mexican Americans-all of whom experienced fertility declines more rapid than those experienced by urban whites between 1957-1960 and 1967-1970. Among urban whites, fertility decline has been heavily concentrated among those of low income. The decline was especiallyrapid for third and higher order births, suggesting a heavy concentration of completed fertility at two-child families. The rapid decline, and the narrowing of the traditionalfertility differentials among various subgroups have important implications in the areasof poverty, education, the role of women in society and the dynamics of local area growth.

During the eight years from 1940 to 1947, inclusive, in spite of the war, the population of Japan as now constituted increased by about 8,000,000. About 6,900,000 was due to an excess of births over deaths and 1,100,00 to net immigration. During the two years 1948 and 1949, the increase amounted to about 4,000,000, most of which came from an excess of births over deaths. By the end of 1949, the total number of persons had almost reached the 83,000,000 mark. When it is remembered that the land area of Japan is somewhat smaller than that of California, that only about one-sixth to one-fifth of this area is sufficiently level for farming, and that mineral deposits are relatively unimportant, it is not surprising that many of the Japanese people, and many non-Japanese as well, are concerned regarding the present ratio of the population to its means of support, and the future trend of this ratio. The official statistics which begin during the 1870's show a gradual increase in the crude birth rate from 25 per 1,000 during 1875-79 to 35 during 1920-24, but there is evidence indicating that fertility declined during this period and that the reported rise of the rate was due to the improvement of the basic statistics.

Changes in fertility for the 46 prefectures of Japan are traced from 1920 to 1965, using census and vital statistics. During the period, substantial declines were recorded in both marital-fertility levels and the proportions of women of childbearing age who were married. Regional variation is pronounced in the timing of the onset of the decline in marital fertility. Only in the most industrialized districts did marital fertility begin to fall before 1950; thereafter, sharp declines were recorded in all parts of Japan. The marriage proportion, in contrast, was falling rather steadily throughout the islands between 1920 and 1950, after which the proportion stabilized. The decline in overall fertility that occurred before 1950 was caused, then, primarily by a reduction in the proportion married; only after 1950 did a decline in marital fertility become a major factor. The time pattern of change in marital-fertility levels and proportions married for Japan differs from that observed in western Europe, where low proportions married are recorded in the earliest national censuses. Apparently a fall in proportions married in western Europe preceded by one or two centuries the major sustained declines in marital fertility that were part of the so-called demographic transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the notable features of Japan's criminal statistics in recent years has been the increase in juvenile delinquency. Offences by persons under 20, which had been increasing steadily after the end of the Second World War in 1945, reached a peak in 1951 and thereafter decreased until 1954. After 1955, however, the curve turned upwards again, exceeding in 1960 the 1951 peak, and has since continued to rise. There is a link between the increase in juvenile delinquency and the extremely rapid pace of Japan's industrialization and the problems of concentration in urban areas which this has brought about. Firstly, a high rate of economic growth has produced a flood of commercialistic amusements. Since even adults are susceptible to the stimulus of these new pleasures, it is inevitable that young people should be even more easily led astray. Secondly, children without academic ability, particularly the children of poor parents, whose school records tend to be affected by their social circumstances, lose all hope for the future. This is one of the factors contributing to the high rate of delinquency among fairly young children in Japan. It is very important to apply educational and social treatment with groups of juvenile delinquents, and to find out how to turn their abundant energy to constructive use in society.

The article reports that the April 1953 issue of the "Population Bulletin" revealed that the Japanese birth rate has declined. Japanese birth rate in 1947 stood at 34.3 per thousand, the highest it has reached in the decade dating 1941-1951. It declined to 32.8 in 1948-1949. It dropped by 4.6 points by 1950, 2.6 points by 1951 and around 2.0 points by 1952. Since 1947, the decrease in birth rate has amounted to a drop of 11.3 points, a five-year decline unprecedented in the annuals of vital statistics throughout the world.

This article looks back at the statistical problems on the relationship between the demographic and economic expansion of Japan. The data relating to the number of population cannot be used as it stands for measuring the population increase in Japan since the last century. During the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries, neither the demographic, nor the political and economic expansion beyond national frontiers, were part of Japan's national program. There is no evidence pointing to a definite upward trend in population during that period. Population was kept down by rudimentary, but efficient and peaceful, checks. There are strong reasons, however, to believe that it was appreciably higher than suggested by official records. We know little of the trend of population in the decades preceding the Meiji restoration in 1868, but it follows that the increase in the nineteenth century was possibly less than commonly accepted hiherto. All the evidence points to a remarkable, but neither unique or inexplicable, increase of population since the Meiji restoration. The improvements made gradually in statistical recording, call, however, for extreme caution when endeavoring to measure and to explain this increase, at least as regards the earlier Meiji period.

The effects of education on current migration propensities in the United States are examined for each age group, and an estimate is made of how these age-specific differentials cumulate over a lifetime in determining the number of times that individuals at different educational levels can expect to move over the course of their lives. The independent effects of age, education, and occupation are also examined. Two other sections investigate trends in educational selectivity of migration in the United States and international comparisons of occupational differences in migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the regional income disparity and internal migration of population in Japan. According to the results of the 1960 population census, which were released recently, 26 out of the 46 prefectures in Japan had experienced depopulation during the interval between the 1955 and 1960 censuses. Similar depopulation was also reported for approximately three-fourths of all municipalities, the smallest civil divisions, altogether numbering 3,511 as of the day the census was taken. The same census also revealed that the total population of Japan in 1960 was 93,419,000, which represented an increase of 4,143,000 over the 1955 figure. This increase is creditable almost entirely to the gains registered for the four metropolitan areas which have developed around the nuclear cities of Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, and Fukuoka. There is no denying the fact that, due to the fall of the birth rate substantially more than the death rate, the rate of natural population increase has declined considerably in all prefectures since 1950.