Understanding the demographic implications of climate change: estimates of localized population predictions under future scenarios of sea-level rise

Significant advances have been made to understand the interrelationship between humans and the environment in recent years, yet research has not produced useful localized estimates that link population forecasts to environmental change. Coarse, static population estimates that have little information on projected growth or spatial variability mask substantial impacts of environmental change on especially vulnerable populations. We estimate that 20 million people in the United States will be affected by sea-level rise by 2030 in selected regions that represent a range of sociodemographic characteristics and corresponding risks of vulnerability. Our results show that the impact of sea-level rise extends beyond the directly impacted counties due to migration networks that link inland and coastal areas and their populations. Substantial rates of population growth and migration are serious considerations for developing mitigation, adaptation, and planning strategies, and for future research on the social, demographic, and political dimensions of climate change.     

HIV and population dynamics: A general model and maximum-likelihood standards for East Africa

In high-prevalence populations, the HIV epidemic undermines the validity of past empirical models and related demographic techniques. A parsimonious model of HIV and population dynamics is presented here and fit to 46,000 observations, gathered from 11 East African populations. The fitted model simulates HIV and population dynamics with standard demographic inputs and only two additional parameters for the onset and scale of the epidemic. The underestimation of the general prevalence of HIV in samples of pregnant women and the fertility impact of HIV are examples of the dynamic interactions that demographic models must reproduce and are shown here to increase over time even with constant prevalence levels. As a result, the impact of HIV on population growth appears to have been underestimated by current population projections that ignore this dynamic.     

The dynamics of labrador Inuit Fertility: An example of cultural and demographic change

Based on quantitative data of unusual depth, the article outlines several possible correlations between demographic and cultural change experienced by the Inuit of Labrador. Starting with an examination of aboriginal reproductive behaviour, the author reviews the influence of modernization on native fertility, paying particular attention to the introduction of Christian values. He asks for a multidimensional approach which takes into account the sensitivity of fertility to a wide range of environmental factors. The results suggest that contrary to the Malthusian dogma, some aboriginal arctic societies seem to have practiced several fertility-reducing techniques.With thanks to the Rev. Siegfried Hettasch and Dr. John C. Kennedy for providing access to the church records employed in this study.     

Aggregate population and economic growth correlations: The role of the components of demographic change

The results of recent correlations showing a negative impact of population growth on economic development in cross-country data for the 1980s, versus “nonsignificant” correlations widely found for the 1960s and 1970s, are examined with contemporaneous and lagged components of demographic change, convergence-type economic modeling, and several statistical frameworks. The separate impacts of births and deaths are found to be notable but offsetting in the earlier periods. In contrast, the short-run costs (benefits) of births (mortality reduction) increase (decrease) significantly in the 1980s, and the favorable labor-force impacts of past births are not fully offsetting.     

新疆维吾尔族人口的空间分布与变动

新疆维吾尔自治区地处西部边陲,是一个拥有47个民族成分的大家庭,占全国总面积的1/6。维吾尔族是这个大家庭的一员,也是其中人口最多的民族。该民族的形成与发展经历了漫长的历史时期,人口的空间分布状况与变动情况也有其独特的规律性和特点。尤其是新中国成立后50年来,维吾尔族人口发生了巨大的变化。下面我们就来用定性和定量两方面来分析新疆维吾尔族人口的空间分布与变动情况。     

Policy review: thoughts on addressing population and climate change in a just and ethical manner

Many believe that linking population growth to the issue of climate change will help to place family planning back into the political realm as an urgent matter of national and environmental security. Others worry, however, that focusing on the environmental impacts of demographic change places at risk the hard-fought and long-developed global consensus that individual rights and empowerment are what matters most in fostering sustainable development and stabilizing population growth. This paper focuses on United States population policy. It presents a brief historical background and summarizes the state of scientific evidence regarding the impacts of population growth on climate change. It then analyzes some of the underlying ethical issues involved in advancing an advocacy argument around increasing family planning as a way to slow population growth and mitigating climate change. Finally, it recommends a way in which advocates can frame the connections between population growth and climate change in a just and ethical manner.     

The spatial dynamics of stratification: Metropolitan context, population redistribution, and black and Hispanic homeownership

Racial and ethnic inequality in homeownership remains stubbornly wide, even net of differences across groups in household-level sociodemographic characteristics. This article investigates the role of contextual forces in structuring disparate access to homeownership among minorities. Specifically, I combine household- and metropolitan-level census data to assess the impact of metropolitan housing stock, minority composition, and residential segregation on black and Hispanic housing tenure. The measure of minority composition combines both the size and rate of growth of the coethnic population to assess the impact on homeownership inequality of recent trends in population redistribution, particularly the increase in black migration to the South and dramatic dispersal of Hispanics outside traditional areas of settlement. Results indicate remarkable similarity between blacks and Hispanics with respect to the spatial and contextual influences on homeownership. For both groups, homeownership is higher and inequality with whites is smaller in metropolitan areas with an established coethnic base and in areas in which their group is less residentially segregated. Implications of recent trends in population redistribution for the future of minority homeownership are discussed.     

Age-structure,urbanization, and climate change in developed countries: revisiting STIRPAT for disaggregated population and consumption-related environmental impacts

We focus on three environmental impacts particularly influenced by population age-structure—carbon emissions from transport and residential energy and electricity consumption—as well as aggregate carbon emissions for a panel of developed countries, and take as our starting point the Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology (STIRPAT) framework. Among our contributions is to further disaggregate population into three particularly key age groups: 20–34, 35–49, and 50–64, and by doing so demonstrate that population’s environmental impact differs considerably across age groups, with the older age groups (ones typically associated with larger households) actually exerting a negative influence. Furthermore, those age-specific population influences are different (in absolute and relative terms) for the different environmental impacts we analyze. Also, we find that urbanization, in developed countries, best measures access to a country’s power grid, and thus, is positively associated with energy consumption in the residential sector. Finally, we suggest some modeling and methodological improvements to the STIRPAT framework.     

Apostles and Zionists: The influence of religion on demographic change in rural Zimbabwe

Religion has acted as a brake on demographic transition in a number of historical and contemporary populations. In a study in two rural areas of Zimbabwe, we found substantial differences in recent demographic trends between Mission and Independent or `Spirit-type' churches. Birth rates are higher in some Spirit-type churches and, until recently, infant mortality was also higher. Recent increases in mortality were seen within Mission churches but not in Spirit-type churches. Missiological and ethnographic data indicate that differences in religious teaching on healthcare-seeking and sexual behaviour and differences in church regulation could explain this contrast in demographic patterns. More restrictive norms on alcohol consumption and extra-marital relationships in Spirit-type churches may limit the spread of HIV and thereby reduce its impact on mortality. These contrasting trends will influence the future religious and demographic profile of rural populations in Zimbabwe.     

Apostles and Zionists: the influence of religion on demographic change in rural Zimbabwe

Religion has acted as a brake on demographic transition in a number of historical and contemporary populations. In a study in two rural areas of Zimbabwe, we found substantial differences in recent demographic trends between Mission and Independent or "Spirit-type" churches. Birth rates are higher in some Spirit-type churches and, until recently, infant mortality was also higher. Recent increases in mortality were seen within Mission churches but not in Spirit-type churches. Missiological and ethnographic data indicate that differences in religious teaching on healthcare-seeking and sexual behaviour and differences in church regulation could explain this contrast in demographic patterns. More restrictive norms on alcohol consumption and extra-marital relationships in Spirit-type churches may limit the spread of HIV and thereby reduce its impact on mortality. These contrasting trends will influence the future religious and demographic profile of rural populations in Zimbabwe.     

Polygyny and reproductive behavior in sub-saharan Africa: A contextual analysis

In this paper I examine the effect of polygyny on aggregate reproductive behavior. I argue that within countries there exist different polygyny regimes, each exhibiting a unique reproductive pattern. Using the 1988/1989 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS1) data, I identify three distinct regimes: low-polygyny, mid polygyny, and high-polygyny regimes. The results of the bivariate and multivariate analyses reveal strong differences in reproductive preferences and behaviors across polygyny regimes. High-polygyny regimes, for instance, maintain a value orientation that favors and encourages high reproductive performance. The force of this pronatalism operates equally for men and women; but whereas men in this regime attain their reproductive goals by marrying multiple wives, women attain theirs by maximizing their reproductive capabilities. This maximization occurs through early initiation of sexual/reproductive activity, universal marriage and minimal interruption of marriage, nonuse of contraception within a union, and a positive attitude toward high fertility.     

Aids and population growth in sub-Saharan Africa: Assessing the sensitivity of projections

Despite different models to project the course of the AIDS pandemic and a scarcity of data to provide standard input parameters for those models, a limited consensus emerges from distinct sets of population projections. In sub-Saharan Africa, population growth rates are projected to remain positive in spite of the pandemic over the next few decades. To investigate this conclusion, alternative projections of an HIV/AIDS epidemic and its related mortality are first produced from different sets of input parameters and assumptions. Their incorporation into the population projections of a fast-growing country illustrates the robustness of projected population growth rates under very different scenarios of the future epidemic but with the common assumption that it will not affect the mortality of the uninfected population, fertility nor migration. This paper then shows that the projected growth rates are much less robust when interactions between the epidemic and the demographic regime are allowed and identifies several potential mechanisms for such interactions. In particular, it suggests that improving our confidence in the medium-term projections of the demographic impact of AIDS in the region requires less a refinement of the projections of the epidemic than a better understanding of its impact on the timing of the postulated fertility decline.     

Population dynamics in Germany: the role of immigration and population momentum

The effects of changes in rates of mortality, fertility, and migration depend not only on the age-specific patterns and levels of these rates, but on the age structure of the population. In order to remove the influences of the age structure and concentrate on the effects of the demographic rates themselves, a common practice is to analyze the influences of the rates for a standard age structure. This paper analyzes current and future population changes in Germany, using a stationary population equivalent model (SPE) that shows long-term effects of current fertility, mortality, and international migration patterns. Results indicate that the German population will eventually decline because of below replacement fertility, if net immigration does not counteract this decrease. This means, for instance, that the long-term stationary population levels for Germany will decrease by approximately 6.5 million during a decade in which current fertility, mortality, and international migration levels prevail. The paper also reports how various other assumptions for mortality, fertility, and international migration affect the SPE model for Germany.     

Chronic movers and the future redistribution of population: A longitudinal analysis

This research has two purposes. First, it examines individual- and household-level factors related to the propensity to move. The findings reveal that mobility is largely a matter of habitual movers changing residence repeatedly and frequently. The second objective is concerned with strengthening the foundation for projecting aggregate levels of mobility: (1) how does repeated movement manifest itself at the metropolitan scale? and (2) for predictive purposes, which aggregate indices capture the most important features of local population composition? Mobility rates were found to vary principally with the prevalence of chronic movers in an SMSA. These findings have several implications for policies designed to guide future population distribution. First, an SMSA’s capacity to correct local manpower imbalances by exchanging human capital with other areas may depend partially on its relative abundance of habitual movers. Second, the likelihood that new cities would attract disproportionate numbers of hypermobile persons might enhance their role within the framework of a broader distribution policy. The question posed here is whether high intrinsic levels of population turnover in some cities might fit into a larger strategy for realigning population growth and distribution nationally.     

A machine learning analysis of drought and rural population change on the North American Great Plains since the 1970s

Population and Environment - Machine learning techniques have to date not been widely used in population-environment research, but represent a promising tool for identifying relationships between...     

How socioeconomic and environmental factors impact the migration destination choices of different population groups in China: an eigenfunction-based spatial filtering analysis

Population and Environment - Understanding how different factors impact migration destination choices is one of the main research themes in demographic studies. The current study uses relative...     

Correction to: How socioeconomic and environmental factors impact the migration destination choices of different population groups in China: an eigenfunction-based spatial filtering analysis

Population and Environment - The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. The names of Yaojun Zhang and Xiwei Wu were inadvertently interchanged.     

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.