Population Density is a Key Factor in Declining Human Fertility

In studying the complex determinants of human fertility, social scientists have given little attention to population density, although reproduction has been shown to be density-dependent for a wide variety of other species. Using fixed effects models on the time series of 145 countries and controlling for key social and economic variables, we find a consistent and significant negative relationship between human fertility and population density. Moreover, we find that individual fertility preferences also decline with population density. These findings suggest that population density should be included as a variable in future studies of fertility determinants.

Political instability, gender discrimination, and population growth in developing countries

This paper introduces gender discrimination and population growth into a model of political economy. The government keeps up the military for the sake of political instability in the country. It is shown that if the risk of internal conflicts is high, then the government needs a bigger military and a larger supply of young men for it. The government is then willing to boost population growth by keeping women outside the production (e.g. neglecting their education or restricting their movement). Some empirical evidence on the interdependence of political instability, population growth, and gender discrimination is provided.

Population pressure and dynamics of household livelihoods in an Ethiopian Village: an elaboration of the Boserup-Chayanovian framework

The purpose of this study is to analyse the mechanisms and effects of population pressure on rural livelihood system in South central Ethiopia from 1950 to 2004. In Sub-Sahara Africa population pressure takes two different forms: (1) a pressure on existing household to accommodate a growing number of children (change in household dependency ratio); (2) An increased demand for new livelihood positions in a situation where the total resources available for households may be constrained (change in density ratio). We blended the approaches of Boserup and Chayanov to understand how families make their living when dependency and density ratios change over time. We collected data using a life course and cohort study approaches to capture the dynamics and to compare the past with the present. We found out that livelihood strategies took different forms when both dependency and density ratios were low and when they were on the increase. When both ratios were low livelihood strategies took the form of agricultural extensification and this was due to the relative availability of land. When both ratios were on the increase, livelihood strategies took the forms of agricultural intensification and diversification.

Population dynamics and monetary policy

This paper shows that in a general equilibrium model with interest-rate feedback rules of the Taylor-type population dynamics give rise to multiple steady states. Under an active monetary policy, real determinacy occurs only around the steady state with zero net financial wealth, where aggregate consumption is equally distributed among agents of different generations. By contrast, in a neighborhood of the steady state displaying a positive stock of financial wealth and intergenerational inequality, real determinacy requires monetary policy to be passive. Changes in the demographic profile of the economy are shown to have relevant implications for the aggregate accumulation of wealth.

Social time preference revisited

The article reconsiders the implications of the choice of pure social time preference for intergenerational equity in the presence of a time-consistent utilitarian social welfare criterion. The analytic framework is a setting with overlapping generations, lifetime uncertainty, population growth and technical progress. The analysis identifies upper and lower bounds for the feasible range of social discount rates and draws a corresponding distinction between “gerontocratic” and “Stalinist” optimal plans. The paper corrects a number of inaccurate propositions in a related earlier contribution by Marini and Scaramozzino (2000) to this journal.

Measuring population pressure on the landscape: comparative GIS studies in China,India, and the United States

Measures of the effects of population pressure on the landscape using traditional methods for classifying urban territory are inadequate. The crude scale at which population densities are calculated and dependence on country-specific administration divisions hinder their ability to address such questions as the environmental impacts of cities and suburbs and make cross-national comparisons particularly difficult. This paper examines comparative urbanization measures among three case studies: the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong Province of China, the Indian state of Kerala, and the southern part of Florida in the United States. It proposes a measure based on the distribution of local population densities, taking advantage of the detailed data on small area populations and land area available in modern censuses and model-derived population databases such as LandScan, and the increasing potential of spatial analysis using geographic information systems (GIS). Examined with a similar set of thresholds, the resulting density distributions offer the potential to show better the ecological effects of population than do traditional measures.

Large,But Adaptable? A Successful Population Policy and Its Long Term Effects

A restrictive population policy led to almost doubling the number of newborns from one year to another in Romania in the 1960s. Twenty years later, this large generation (of women) enters a marriage market with few eligible older mates, in a society where marriage is a must. In this article, I analyze this social experiment within the broader frame of the marriage squeeze/two sex models. Using various data from censuses and surveys, I argue that the marriage market is flexible even when is confronted with disproportionately large cohorts. If the social pressure toward marriage is strong, the marriage rates do not necessarily fall, but the mating age patterns change.

Sending or Receiving Stations? The Dual Influence of Railroads in Early 20th-Century Great Plains Settlement

This study investigates how railroads shaped settlement patterns in the twentieth century US Great Plains using railroad, population census, and environmental data. The substantive question speaks to recent theoretical and methodological interests in contextual and ecological issues. Drawing from theories of transportation and development, I use spatially-oriented techniques to empirically test long-held claims about the relationship of railroads to population development. The Great Plains is a region where settlement is commonly attributed to railroad expansion. Study results show a complex relationship between county population growth and the presence of railroads during the period after the railroad heyday and before the widespread adoption of the automobile, 1900–1930. Counter to the nineteenth century pattern, the association between population change and railroads is negative. Yet the relationship is conditioned by the stage of county development; in the first decade, railroads are receiving stations for counties with smaller population density and sending agents for more settled places; the reverse is observed during the 1920s; and no significant relationship exists during the 1910s. Spatial effects are addressed in the analysis, and theoretical and statistical implications for scholarship concerning transportation and spatial units of analysis are discussed.

Projecting Long-Term Care Expenditure in Four European Union Member States: The Influence of Demographic Scenarios

This study examines the sensitivity of future long-term care demand and expenditure estimates to official demographic projections in four selected European countries: Germany, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom. It uses standardised methodology in the form of a macro-simulation exercise and finds evidence for significant differences in assumptions about demographic change and its effect on the demand for long-term care, and on relative and absolute long-term care expenditure. It concludes that mortality-rate assumptions can have a considerable influence on welfare policy planning. Relative dispersion between country-specific and Eurostat official estimates was found to be higher for the United Kingdom and Germany than for Italy and Spain, suggesting that demographic projections had a greater influence in those countries.

Ageing of a giant: a stochastic population forecast for China, 2006–2060

This paper presents a stochastic population forecast for China with a special emphasis on population ageing. The so-called scaled model for error was used to quantify the uncertainty attached to the population predictions. Data scarcity was a major problem in the specification of the expected error of the population forecast. Therefore, the error structures estimated for European countries were used with some modifications, taking into account the large size and heterogeneity of the Chinese population. The stochastic forecast confirms the expectation of extremely rapid population ageing during the first half of the twenty-first century in China. The old age dependency ratio (OADR) will certainly increase. Simply maintaining the current demographic rates (no international migration) would drive the OADR to 0.42 in 2060, four times the current level. Including expected declines in mortality and net outmigration in the projection would increase the median OADR in 2060 to 0.59, with a 80% prediction interval of [0.47, 0.75]. In particular, the oldest-old population will grow much faster than any other age group. This development has major implications for policy-making in China.

Strategic altruistic transfers and rent seeking within the family

This paper examines the rent-seeking behavior of “selfish” children in competing for parental transfers. The paper extends Chang and Weisman (South Econ J 71:821–836, 2005), that focuses on compensated transfers, to allow for non-compensated transfers à la Buchanan (J Law Econ 26:71–85, 1983) and derives results for the case in which children’s time contributions as perceived by their parents are a merit good (e.g., service), pure waste (e.g., bugging), or a mix of both. For an increase in the proportion of time contributions that are pure waste, parents find it optimal to reduce the size of an overall transfer, thereby lowering the levels of wasteful rent-seeking activities by their children within the family.

Welfare effects of illegal immigration

This paper analyzes the welfare effect of illegal immigration on the host country within a dynamic general equilibrium framework and shows that it is positive for two reasons. First, immigrants are paid less than their marginal product, and second, after an increase in immigration, domestic households find it optimal to increase their holdings of capital. It is also shown that dynamic inefficiency may arise, despite the fact that the model is of the Ramsey type. Nevertheless, the introduction of a minimum wage, which leads to job competition between domestic unskilled workers and immigrants reverses all of the above results.

Birth and Fortune Revisited: A Cohort Analysis of Underemployment, 1974–2004

The cohort is a key concept in the study of social demography and social change. The enduring influence of cohort membership can arise from history-based and/or size-based effects. The most prominent proponent of size-based cohort effects is Easterlin (Birth and fortune: The impact of numbers on personal welfare, 1980) who argues that individuals hailing from unusually large cohorts will experience adverse labor market conditions relative to the members of the smaller cohorts that bracket them. Drawing on data from the March Current Population Survey for the period spanning 1974–2004, we examine the influence of relative cohort size on underemployment. The results provide modest support for the Easterlin thesis, showing the odds of underemployment to be greatest among members of relatively large cohorts, net of other significant predictors. The results also show that the impact of relative cohort size differs by educational level, suggesting that adverse economic conditions produced by large cohort size can be offset by broader changes in the labor market and other social institutions.

Resource management and fertility in Mexico’s Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Campos</Emphasis>, cash,and contraception in the lobster-fishing village of Punta Allen

This case study examines the link between marine resource management, and the universal contraceptive use among married couples in the lobster-fishing village of Punta Allen, located in the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, Quintana Roo, Mexico. Several reasons appear to contribute to small desired and actual family sizes. Some of these include a medical clinic staff effective in promoting family planning, cooperative and private resource ownership, changing cultural attitudes, geographical limitations to population and economic growth, and a desire to conserve the environment for aesthetic and economic motives. Lastly, families desired to preserve a sustained balance between benefiting from lobster harvests today and safeguarding this marine resource for their children in the future.

Environmentally Responsible Happy Nation Index: Towards an Internationally Acceptable National Success Indicator

Amidst increasing attention to happiness studies by economists, the New Economics Foundation launched in July 2006 the Happy Planet Index (Marks et al. 2006). This is the ratio of the average happy life years (HLY) to the per capita ecological footprint of the country concerned. HLY is in turn the product of the average happiness (or life satisfaction) index and the life expectancy index. Some essential revisions to this index are proposed to reach an internationally acceptable national success indicator that aims positively at long and happy lives but negatively at the external costs of environmental disruption. Hopefully, this ‘environmentally responsible happy nation index’ will lead to some re-orientation of both the market and national governments towards something more fundamentally valuable.

Life expectancy, money, and growth

We examine the effect of an increase in life expectancy on portfolio choices of individuals and, thereby, on economic growth in a simple endogenous growth model populated by overlapping generations, in which money is introduced based on the money-in-the-utility-function approach. It is shown that an increase in longevity raises the balanced growth rate and lowers the inflation rate, offsetting the Tobin effect, if spillovers from accumulated capital to labor productivity sufficiently raise wage income and real savings, and, if not, it may retard economic growth and aggravate inflation. Under plausible conditions, the former will be the case.

Levels of Mental Health Continuum and Personality Traits

Empirically, mental health and mental illness are not opposite ends of a single measurement continuum. In view of this fact, Keyes (J Health Soc Behav, 43:207–202, 2002) operationalizes mental health as a syndrome of symptoms of both positive feelings (emotional well-being) and positive functioning (psychological and social well-being) in life. In his comprehensive model, the presence of mental health is described as flourishing in life, and the absence of mental health is characterized as languishing in life. The aim of this study was to investigate the discriminatory power of Big Five personality traits in discriminating among the levels of mental health continuum using an Iranian university student sample. Findings revealed that respondents with different levels of mental health differed significantly on four of the five personality traits (extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and agreeableness). All in all, the results of this study converged with prior findings about the importance of Big Five personality traits in predicting well-being.

The importance of being mature: the effect of demographic maturation on global per capita GDP

Given that savings behaviour and worker productivity have strong life-cycle components and given that demographic profiles vary across countries, population age structure should be linked to differences in levels of economic development. In this paper, we measure the economic importance of age structure variation for the global economy. We find that demographic maturation has been associated with nearly half of the evolution of global per capita GDP since 1960. We also find that age structure differences can account for just over half of the variation in worldwide per capita GDP (i.e. the lack of sigma convergence) observed since 1960.

“Backslanted X” fertility dynamics and macroeconomics

A large number of pairs of countries exhibit a dynamic pattern in which: (1) Fertility in both countries declines across time; (2) initially, one country has a higher fertility and a lower per-capita income than the other; and (3) in time, as per-capita incomes converge, fertility rates in the poorer country become lower than in the richer one. This article documents the prevalence of such dynamics and offers a theoretical model in which these dynamics emerge endogenously. Assuming differences in the degree of utility substitution between consumption and rearing children across countries generates all three components of these dynamics.

Forecasting German mortality using panel data procedures

Reliable forecasts of life expectancies are of importance for the financial stability of social security systems and the life insurance industry. A discrete-time stochastic process and a continuous-time stochastic process are proposed to model the dynamics of German mortality rates from which life expectancies are calculated. More precisely, a panel data model is utilized, which distinguishes between a common time effect and a common age effect. The model is easy to fit, yields interpretable parameters, and allows for a simple analysis of the forecast error. The main applications of the model are the forecast of mortality rates—and the resulting life expectancies—and the pricing of mortality derivatives.