Political demography: Powerful trends under-attended by demographic science

The interconnections between politics and the dramatic demographic changes under way around the world have been neglected by the two research disciplines that could contribute most to their understanding: demography and political science. Instead, this area of ‘political demography’ has largely been ceded to political activists, pundits, and journalists, leading often to exaggerated or garbled interpretation. The terrain includes some of the most politically sensitive and contested issues: alleged demographically determined shifts in the international balance of power; low fertility, population decline, and demographic ageing; international migration; change in national identity; and compositional shifts in politically sensitive social categories and human rights. Meanwhile many governments and non-governmental actors have actively pursued varieties of ‘strategic demography’, deploying fertility, mortality, or migration as instruments of domestic or international policy. Political scientists and demographers could and should use their knowledge and analytic techniques to improve understanding and to moderate excessive claims and fears on these topics.     

The Editor,the Publisher,and His Mother: The Representation of Lesbians and Gays in the New York Times

The attention and prominence given to issues in media outlets may affect the importance citizens attribute to them, so the actors who influence mass media coverage decisions may have political power in society generally. This article seeks to measure the relative influence of journalists, social trends, events, government officials, editors, and owners on the New York Times coverage of lesbians and gays from 1960 to 1995. Although many factors affected the nature and frequency of such coverage, the findings of this article show that the owners of the Times exerted decisive influence. Documentary evidence reveals that the Times' owners actively intervened to suppress coverage of lesbians and gays until 1987, even as reporters and editors recognized that increased social visibility made them newsworthy. Statistical analysis confirms that, although some actual events and statements of officials attracted attention from the newspaper throughout the period, they were more likely to generate prominent coverage after 1987 when the stories were consistent with the enthusiasms of the owners.     

Population Scenarios Based on Probabilistic Projections: An Application for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Probabilistic population forecasts offer a number of advantages to users. However, in some cases population is one component of a larger analysis that may take a different approach to uncertainty. For example, integrated assessments of environmental issues such as climate change or ecosystem degradation have typically used a small number of alternative scenarios to explore uncertainty in future environmental outcomes. In such cases, population projections that are provided only as probability distributions are difficult to use. I present a method of employing probabilistic population projections to derive individual, deterministic projections that can be used within scenarios for integrated assessments. The principal advantages of this approach are that (1) it provides a less ad hoc way of defining deterministic projections intended to be consistent with more comprehensive scenarios that describe, among other things, future socio-economic developments; (2) it provides more flexibility in specifying input assumptions for deterministic projections as compared to choosing off-the-shelf projections, allowing population assumptions to be tailored to the scenario; and (3) it provides a quantitative assessment of the uncertainty associated with any given deterministic projection. I describe the application of the method to the development of population projections used in integrated scenarios for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an international scientific effort to assess the current conditions of and future outlook for global ecosystem goods and services. Results show that the MA scenarios are each consistent with a relatively wide range of demographic outcomes. For some scenarios, ranges of plausible outcomes in some regions overlap substantially, indicating that particular population projections could be consistent with more than one scenario. In other cases, uncertainty ranges for different scenarios are distinct, indicating that a projection consistent with one scenario is unlikely to be also consistent with another. Comparing variances of the conditional projections also provides insight into how much different storylines constrain future demographic developments. The development of the MA projections points to important areas of future research on correlations among demographic rates and on uncertainty across scales. It also serves as an illustration of how probabilistic and alternative scenario-based approaches to uncertainty can be combined within a single integrated analysis.This revised version was published online in April 2005 with corrections to figures 1-3.     

Assessing the Need for a New Medical School: A Case Study in Applied Demography

This case study illustrates how applied demographers operate in a politically charged context of competing interests—here, justifying the decision to locate a new public medical school in one medically underserved region rather than another. We show how to use demographic and other data to gauge the magnitude of future demand for physicians; formulate demographic assumptions about the future to serve decisionmakers’ needs; and frame information to help improve decision making through objective analysis. We detail the steps in projecting future physicians per capita using a method based on the economic concept of physician demand rather than the social concept of need. Our method is computationally simple, intuitive, and easily understood by policymakers. Our case study offers applied demographers a practical approach to physician workforce planning and can be used as an instructional exercise for students, assigned to replicate these projections elsewhere and distill their implications.     

Replacement Migration: A Questionable Tactic for Delaying the Inevitable Effects of Fertility Transition

This article critiques a recent U.N. Population Division report, Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations? The report explores the use of increased immigration to bolster future population size and change age distribution patterns in a group of developed countries. Fertility rate declines and lengthening life expectancies associated with demographic transition inevitably yield an aging population and a falling potential support ratio (PSR), a situation which some demographers and economists view with alarm. As the U.N. report itself suggests, replacement migration can only temporarily delay population aging and decline. These issues are ultimately better addressed through changes in retirement policy. Population projections should be used only with great caution in designing long-term demographic policy. In particular, some assumptions used to make the U.N. projections are questionable, and even minor changes in those assumptions would yield substantially different policy conclusions. Replacement migration also raises difficult environmental questions by moving large numbers of people from low to high per-capita consumption nations. Modest population decline, particularly in more developed countries, may have significant local and global environmental and climate policy benefits.

     

Reporting The Women's Movement

This article examines and compares how four British and American newspapers reported the second-wave feminist movement during its most active political period, 1968–1982. Through the use of both content analysis and critical discourse analysis, this study reveals that despite socio-political differences, both US (The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune) and UK (The Times, Daily Mirror) newspapers used a similar range of discourses when addressing the women's movement and its members. While coverage overall can best be described as fragmented and contradictory, I argue that on the surface, there was significantly more “positive” or supportive articles on the women's movement than previous scholars have noted. However, these news stories rarely addressed the ways in which capitalism and patriarchy oppress women as a group, and often created a demarcation between “legitimate” and “de-legitimate” feminists, the latter being anyone who deviates from traditional feminine norms. Such constructions therefore were not only politically incapable of challenging women's oppression, but helped construct feminism as a dirty word, a connotation which still exists today. This paper will also address the emergence and eventual dominance of oppositional discourses, examining the patriarchal and capitalist ideologies used in both countries to rebuff the movement, its members and their goals.     

The United Nations on World Population in 2300

The Population Division of the United Nations biennially issues detailed population estimates and projections covering the period 1950–2050. The most recent revision of these estimates and projections, the 2002 assessment, was released in February 2003. At irregular intervals, the Population Division also publishes long‐range projections. The most recent of these, covering the period up to 2150, was issued in 2000, based on the 1998 assessment. On 9 December 2003, the Population Division released the preliminary report on a new set of long‐range projections, dovetailing with the 2002 assessment, that extend over a much longer time span: up to 2300 ( http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/longrange2.htm ). Unlike previous long‐range projections, which, apart from China and In‐dia, were prepared for large regional groupings only, the new projections are elaborated separately for 192 countries. Given the enormous uncertainties of the character of demographic trends over such an extended period, the information content of these projections is somewhat elusive. However, they are expected to be used to provide the demographic input for long‐range models of global climate change. Long‐range population projections also serve to demonstrate the unsustainability of certain seemingly plausible assumptions as to the future course of particular demographic parameters. In the present case, for example, the high‐fertility projection, reflecting a sustained total fertility rate at the relatively modest level of 2.35, by 2300 would yield a population of some 32 billion in the countries now classified as less developed. Or, in a yet more extreme exercise 0/reductio ad absurdum, maintaining constant fertility at present rates would result in a population size of some 120 trillion in the countries now classified as least developed. Apart from the “high fertility” and “constant fertility” models just cited, the projections are calculated for three additional instructive variants: “low fertility,”“medium fertility,” and “zero growth.” Underlying each of the five variants is a single assumption on mortality change: expectation of life at birth creeping up, country‐by‐country, to a 2300 level ranging between 88 and 106 years. International migration is set at zero throughout the period 2050‐2300 in each variant. Thus the projections are unabashedly stylized and surprise‐free, providing a simple demonstration of the consequences, in terms of population size and age structure, of clearly stated assumptions on the future course of demographic variables. Reproduced below is the Executive Summary of the preliminary report on the UN long‐range projections presented to a UN technical working group on long‐range projections at its December 2003 meeting in New York and slightly revised afterward. A full final report on this topic by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat will be published later in 2004.     

Evaluating multi-regional population projections with Taylor’s law of mean–variance scaling and its generalisation

Organisations that develop demographic projections usually propose several variants with different demographic assumptions. Existing criteria for selecting a preferred projection are mostly based on retrospective comparisons with observations, and a prospective approach is needed. In this work, we use the mean–variance scaling (spatial variance function) of human population densities to select among alternative demographic projections. We test against observed and projected Norwegian county population density using two spatial variance functions, Taylor’s law (TL) and its quadratic generalisation, and compare each function’s parameters between the historical data and six demographic projections, at two different time scales (long term: 1978–2010 vs. 2011–2040; and short term: 2006–2010 vs. 2011–2015). We find that short-term projections selected by TL agree more accurately than the other projections with the recent county density data and reflect the current high rate of international migration to and from Norway. The variance function method implemented here provides an empirical test of an ex ante approach to evaluating short-term human population projections.     

The importance of demographic analyses in state- and local-level policy evaluations: A case study analysis of property taxes in Texas,USA

The reluctance of policy-makers to incorporate detailed demographic analyses in policy analyses often means that population composition is ignored in state and local policy evaluations. This article uses standard demographic projection, standardization and rate decomposition techniques to examine the implications of changing population composition for the property tax revenue base of Texas. The authors find that if current socioeconomic differentials persist into the future, projected compositional changes in the household population of Texas will significantly impact property tax revenues. Thus revenue projections based on aggregate growth and current average property value would seriously overestimate future property tax revenues in Texas because changes in the composition of the population lead to disproportionate growth in households likely to live in lower valued housing unite. The results indicate that the continuing focus of state and local policy-makers on changes in population size alone may be ill-advised and demonstrate the increasing importance of local- and state-level demographic analysis in a period of increasing Federal devolution of service provision.     

“Little Lena's a Big Girl Now”

Lena Zavaroni became famous as a child star on the British TV talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1974, suffered from anorexia from age thirteen, and subsequently died from complications associated with the problem in 1999, age thirty-five. This article uses 165 press articles from 1974 to 1999 to analyse how Zavaroni's relationship with anorexia was constructed in the British popular press. Existing feminist work suggests that stars with anorexia are worth studying because they make eating disorders popularly visible, with the coverage providing an occasion to analyse how the media constructs anorexia in relation to particular ideologies of femininity. But this article argues that it is important to explore how discourses on fame become intertwined with discursive constructions of anorexia, shaping how such problems are explained and gendered. Because Zavaroni appeared in the media as a child, her trajectory also dramatises how anorexia is seen to be linked not only with the role of the media, but with the development of female identity. Thus, whilst bringing stardom and celebrity into the frame, this article thus seeks to contribute to the feminist work which interrogates how popular constructions of anorexia mark out normative/disordered femininities.     

Bayesian Estimation of Age-Specific Mortality and Life Expectancy for Small Areas With Defective Vital Records

High sampling variability complicates estimation of demographic rates in small areas. In addition, many countries have imperfect vital registration systems, with coverage quality that varies significantly between regions. We develop a Bayesian regression model for small-area mortality schedules that simultaneously addresses the problems of small local samples and underreporting of deaths. We combine a relational model for mortality schedules with probabilistic prior information on death registration coverage derived from demographic estimation techniques, such as Death Distribution Methods, and from field audits by public health experts. We test the model on small-area data from Brazil. Incorporating external estimates of vital registration coverage though priors improves small-area mortality estimates by accounting for underregistration and automatically producing measures of uncertainty. Bayesian estimates show that when mortality levels in small areas are compared, noise often dominates signal. Differences in local point estimates of life expectancy are often small relative to uncertainty, even for relatively large areas in a populous country like Brazil.     

Software for demographic research

Software that has been specifically developed to perform demographic analyses on both microcomputers and mainframes is reviewed. The emphasis is on those programs with wide distribution. Consideration is given to packages of demographic programs; fertility estimation and analysis; mortality estimation and analysis; nuptiality; migration; data collection, management, and quality testing; and population projections and models. Information is included on the addresses of the distributors of the software packages and programs.     

Media Coverage of the Greenhouse Effect

Following brief reviews of (a) the decisive role of the media in American politics and (b) earlier studies of media partiality and superficiality, this paper examines media coverage of the greenhouse effect. It does so by comparing two pictures. The first picture emerges from reading all 100 greenhouse-related articles published over a five-month period (May–September 1997) inThe Christian Science Monitor, New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, andThe Washington Post. The second picture emerges from themainstream scientific literature. This comparison shows that media coverage of environmental issues suffers from both shallowness and pro-corporate bias. The biospheric implications of these two flaws are touched upon. Printers are educated in the Belief that when Men differ in Opinion, both Sides ought equally to have the Advantage of being heard by the Publick; and that when Truth and Error have fair Play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter. Dr. Benjamin Franklin Editor, The Pennsylvania Gazette, 1729–1748 I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time. Thomas Jefferson, 1807 Third President of the United States, 1801-9     

A Multidimensional Approach in International Comparative Policy Analysis Based on Demographic Projections

The present study adopts a multidimensional approach to classifying countries in international comparative policy analyses. The article builds a data-based typology founded on future demographic projections of the United Nations. Latent class analysis is used to identify various demographic profiles of countries based on fertility rates, net migration rates, and dependency ratios. There is great value in identifying future changes in population composition, as it enables governments to set policy agenda, prioritize needs, and prepare better for what lies ahead. The paper demonstrates the value of such typology to social services, by analyzing the demographic profiles and estimating their implications for future challenges in educational provision. The contributions of the paper to international comparative policy analysis are discussed.     

Interagency working group on demographic projections

The Interagency Working Group on Demographic Projections held its 8th session in Amman, Jordan during May 1977. Under discussion at the session was the progress of work in the field of demographic projection. A report of the current activity of preparing illustrative national population projections by sex and age based on assumptions obtained from intensive empirical observations was reviewed. Information was also provided concerning the computer program developed by ESCAP. Future ESCAP work in this area would include the preparation of projections for urban and rural populations of each country which take into account more than 1 assumption on mortality. 1 of the important recommendations made in the session was that future demographic projections should be presented by developed and developing regions and that the developing regions should include the subregion of "least developed countries."     

Issue-Relevant Values and Opinions About Gay Rights: Beyond Equality and Morality

Although many studies have examined the role of values in shaping public opinion, the number of values that inform this research is limited. This article employs the concept of issue-relevant values as a means to explore the broader range of values associated with policy issues. After discussing the concept in general terms, the article explores issue-relevant values pertinent to public opinion about gay rights. Using the policy examples of employment nondiscrimination and same-sex couple adoption, the present study identifies, measures, and assesses several values that add to the very short list previously used to explain public opinion about gay rights issues. Content from interest-group Web sites and news media coverage of the two issues aided in identifying the values. Data from an original Internet survey yield valid measures of the values. Multivariate analyses indicate that the values behave in predictable ways: they are strongly influenced by partisanship, and they strongly affect opinions about the two issues. The performance of the values is consistent with findings from previous research on the partisan basis of values and the value-based nature of opinions. The article concludes with suggestions for further empirical and theoretical work that could apply and extend the concept of issue-relevant values.     

Popweaver: a program for interpolation and visualization of census and other sparsely collected data

Demographic data is essential to inform socio-economic, epidemiological and other time series analyses. However, demographic data based on interpolations performed on census surveys spaced several years apart often bear severe quality problems, which propagate into studies that make use of those datasets. We present Popweaver, a user-friendly and free software that allows users to interpolate demographic data (stratified by age, geography, socio-economics, and other layers), visually inspect them, and generate ready-to-submit figures and three-dimensional spreadsheets with the results for further analyses. We illustrate the use of Popweaver with census data (1980, 1991, 2000, 2010) from Brazil, and its potential to reveal important demographic trends.     

Life Satisfaction of Middle-Aged and Older Chinese: The Role of Health and Health Insurance

The Chinese government has launched a series of health reforms to establish universal health insurance coverage, particularly for vulnerable groups, including middle-aged and older adults. However, the current public health insurance system is highly fragmented, consisting of different programs with different levels of premiums and benefits. We analyse whether the universal health insurance system increases the life satisfaction of middle-aged and older Chinese people and to what extent the type of health insurance affects the life satisfaction of this group. Our study is based on data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, a nationally representative longitudinal survey of Chinese aged 45 and above, in 2011, 2013, and 2015. We find that the life satisfaction of middle-aged and older adults does not depend on having any health insurance coverage but varies with the type of health insurance coverage, controlling for potential confounding variables such as health status, occupation, hukou status, and other demographic variables. Individuals covered by the most generous program, the Government Medical Insurance, reported a higher life satisfaction. In comparison, individuals covered by the Urban Employee Medical Insurance, the Urban Resident Medical Insurance, and the New Rural Cooperative Scheme reported a lower life satisfaction by 0.155, 0.106, and 0.112 standard deviations, respectively. Our results suggest that establishing a more equitable health insurance system should be the next step in health reforms in China.

     

The IMF on Policies Responding to Demographic Change

In its semiannual report World Economic Outlook, the International Monetary Fund presents its analysis of major economic policy issues and assessment of economic prospects, along with more detailed treatment of a selected current topic. The special topic in the 300-page report published in September 2004 is “The Global Demographic Transition,” treated in Chapter III of the document. An excerpt from the section of that chapter titled “Policies to Meet the Challenges of Global Demographic Change” is reproduced below with the permission of the IMF. Footnotes and the figure included in the excerpt have been renumbered. The title of Chapter III is “How Will Demographic Change Affect the Global Economy?” The tone of the discussion is set by the opening epigraph, a quotation from the UK's 1949 Report of the Royal Commission on Population: “It seems possible that a society in which the proportion of young people is diminishing will become dangerously unprogressive, falling behind other communities not only in technical efficiency and economic welfare, but in intellectual and artistic achievement as well.” Accordingly, the focus of the analysis, like that of the commentary by US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan reprinted in the preceding Document item in this issue, is on the consequences of population aging and on the desirable policy responses to that process. The discussion broadly parallels Greenspan's but with a wider compass, including some consideration of the effects of aging in developing countries. It emphasizes the need for counteracting adverse effects of demographic change through a combination of policy measures, since “the size of the reforms” (such as increasing labor force participation, inducing later retirement, and attracting more immigrants) “that would be needed in any single area [is] sufficiently large that they would be politically and economically difficult to achieve.”