The problem of the aged population in China]

The situation regarding the population of China over age 60 is reviewed. From 1953 to 1980 the aged population doubled in size, with the population in urban areas growing at a faster rate than in rural areas. The author notes that declining birth and mortality rates and longer life expectancy will cause the absolute number of the aged to increase. For China, each percentage point increase in the aged means an increase of 10 million aged people. As the ratio of the aged to the rest of the society becomes increasingly larger, China will become an aged society. Tables on age distribution and life expectancy are included.     

The Soviet Union: population trends and dilemmas

Focus in this discussion of population trends and dilemmas in the Soviet Union is on demographic problems, data limitations, early population growth, geography and resources, the 15 republics of the Soviet Union and nationalities, agriculture and the economy, population growth over the 1950-1980 period (national trend, regional differences); age and sex composition of the population, fertility trends, nationality differentials in fertility, the reasons for fertility differentials (child care, divorce, abortion and contraception, illegitimacy), labor shortages and military personnel, mortality (mortality trends, life expectancy), reasons for mortality increases, urbanization and emigration, and future population prospects and projections. For mid-1982 the population of the Soviet Union was estimated at 270 million. The country's current rate of natural increase (births minus deaths) is about 0.8% a year, higher than current rates of natural increase in the U.S. (0.7%) and in developed countries as a whole (0.6%). Net immigration plays no part in Soviet population growth, but emigration was noticeable in some years during the 1970s, while remaining insignificant relative to total population size. National population growth has dropped by more than half in the last 2 decades, from 1.8% a year in the 1950s to 0.8% in 1980-1981, due mostly to declining fertility. The national fertility decline masks sharp differences among the 15 republics and even more so among the some 125 nationalities. In 1980, the Russian Republic had an estimated fertility rate of 1.9 births/woman, and the rate was just 2.0 in the other 2 Slavic republics, the Ukraine and Belorussia. In the Central Asian republics the rates ranged up to 5.8. Although the Russians will no doubt continue to be the dominant nationality, low fertility and a relatively higher death rate will reduce their share of the total population by less than half by the end of the century. Soviet leaders have launched a pronatalist policy which they hope will lead to an increase in fertility, at least among the dominant Slavic groups of the multinational country. More than 9 billion rubles (U.S. $12.2 billion) is to be spent over the next 5 years to implement measures aimed at increasing state aid to families with children, to be carried out step by step in different regions of the country. It is this writer's opinion that overall fertility is not likely to increase markedly despite the recent efforts of the central authorities, and the Russian share of the total population will probably continue to drop while that of Central Asian Muslim peoples increases.     

Stages of the Demographic Transition from a Child's Perspective: Family Size,Cohort Size,and Children's Resources

This article provides a new characterization of stages of the demographic transition from the perspective of children competing for resources within families and cohorts. In Stage 1 falling mortality increases the size of both families and birth cohorts. In Stage 2 falling fertility overtakes falling mortality to reduce family size, but population momentum causes continued growth in cohort size. In Stage 3 falling fertility overtakes population momentum to produce declining cohort size. We apply our framework to census microdata for eight countries and to United Nations population projections for a larger set of countries. The results suggest that most countries spend two to three decades in Stage 2, with declining family size offset by increasing cohort size. From the perspective of children aged 9–11, many countries enter Stage 3 between 2000 and 2010. Other countries, especially in Africa, will continue to experience increasing cohort size for several more decades.     

The End of the Demographic Transition: Relief or Concern?

Demographic transition theory might seem to imply that, after a period of exceptional population growth resulting from the time lag between mortality and fertility declines, every population, and then the whole world population will stabilize and, consequently, no more acute population problems will appear. Does the claim, recently gaining credibility, that the end of the transition is at hand actually imply a stage without major population problems? Nothing is less sure. First, it is just a claim, the realization of which still entails a period of dramatically rapid population growth in some countries, especially the poorest. But more tellingly, the end of the transition is also the end of the paradigm on which we have been relying to understand and anticipate demographic changes. Nobody knows what might ensue later: How long and low can fertility fall? How long and high can life expectancy increase? How far can population aging go? As many questions without answer and probably as many problems whose size we cannot even imagine lie ahead.     

The global and regional impact of mortality and fertility transitions, 1950-2000

During the second half of the twentieth century, world population grew at a record pace, both in absolute and relative terms, from 2.5 billion to 6 billion (or 1.75 percent annually). Demographers have long identified rapid mortality declines as the main explanation. This article finds that one-fourth of today's world population is alive because of mortality improvements since mid-century. Very rapid growth is unlikely to continue as substantial fertility declines also occurred in recent decades. This article finds that already by the year 2000, these fertility declines have almost exactly compensated for the impact of mortality declines from mid-century levels. This result may suggest homeostasis, but analyses of underlying trends contradict this impression. First, the impact of fertility declines will soon and significantly exceed that of mortality declines. Second, that mortality and fertility declines jointly affect the size of the world population by less than one percent conceals a significant impact on the population's age composition as well as on regional population sizes.     

Stationary and stable population]

The properties of stationary and stable population models are discussed. In particular, the changes in population size and age structure that will occur under assumptions of constant fertility and mortality rates and no migration are explored.     

The origins of agriculture: Population growth during a period of declining health

The increase in the Neolithic human population following the development of agriculture has been assumed to result from improvements in health and nutrition. Recent research demonstrates that this assumption is incorrect. With the development of sedentism and the intensification of agriculture, there is an increase in infectious disease and nutritional deficiencies particularly affecting infants and children.Declining health probably increased mortality among infants, children and oldest adults. However, the productive and reproductive core would have been able to respond to this increase in mortality by reducing birth spacing. That is, agricultural populations increased in size, despite higher mortality, because intervals between births became shorter.     

The UN Population Division on Replacement Migration

The most salient demographic trend pictured by the influential set of population projections prepared by the Population Division of the United Nations (a unit in the UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs) is the continuing substantial increase—albeit at a declining rate—of the global population during the coming decades. According to the “medium” variant of the most recent (1998) revision of these projections, between 2000 and 2050 the expected net addition to the size of the world population will be some 2.85 billion, a figure larger than that of the total world population as recently as the mid‐1950s. All of this increase will occur in the countries currently classified as less developed; in fact, as a result of their anticipated persistent below‐replacement levels of fertility, the more developed regions as a whole would experience declining population size beginning about 2020, and would register a net population loss of some 33 million between 2000 and 2050. A report prepared by the UN Population Division and released on 21 March 2000 addresses some of the implications of the changes in population size and age structure that low‐fertility countries will be likely to experience. The 143‐page report, issued under the eyecatching title Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?, highlights the expected magnitude of these changes by the imaginative device of answering three hypothetical questions. The answer to each of these questions is predicated on the assumption that some specified demographic feature of various country or regional populations would be maintained at the highest level that feature would exhibit, in the absence of international migration, in the United Nations' medium population projections (as revised in 1998) during the period 1995–2050. The selected demographic features are total population size, the size of the working‐age population (15–64 years), and the so‐called potential support ratio: the ratio of the working‐age population to the old‐age population (65 years and older). The illustrative device chosen for accomplishing the specified feats of preserving the selected demographic parameters (i.e., keeping them unchanged up to 2050 once their highest value is attained) is international migration. Hence the term “replacement migration.” Given the low levels of fertility and mortality now prevailing in the more developed world (and specifically in the eight countries and the two overlapping regions for which the numerical answers to the above questions are presented in the report), and given the expected future evolution of fertility and mortality incorporated in the UN population projections, the results are predictably startling. The magnitudes of the requisite compensatory migration streams tend to be huge relative both to current net inmigration flows and to the size of the receiving populations; least so in the case of the migration needed to maintain total population size and most so in the case of migration needed to counterbalance population aging by maintaining the support ratio. Reflecting its relatively high fertility and its past and current record of receiving a large influx of international migrants, the United States is a partial exception to this rule. But even for the US to maintain the support ratio at its highest—year 1995—level of 5.21 would require increasing net inmigration more than tenfold. The country, the report states, would have to receive 593 million immigrants between 1995 and 2050, or a yearly average of 10.8 million. The extreme case is the Republic of Korea, where the exercise calls for maintaining a support ratio of 12.6. To satisfy this requirement, Korea, with a current population of some 47 million, would need 5.1 billion immigrants between 1995 and 2050, or an average of 94 million immigrants per year. (In the calculations, the age and sex distribution of migrants is assumed to be the same as that observed in the past in the main immigration countries. The fertility and mortality of immigrants are assumed to be identical with those of the receiving population.) The “Executive Summary” of the report is reproduced below, with the permission of the United Nations. Chapters of the full report set out the issues that prompted the exercise; provide a selective review of the literature; explain the methodology and the assumptions underlying the calculations; and present the detailed results for the eight countries and two regions selected for illustrative purposes. A brief discussion of the implications of the findings concludes the report. As is evident even from the figures just cited, immigration is shown to be at best a modest potential palliative to whatever problems declining population size and population aging are likely to pose to low‐fertility countries. The calculations, however, vividly illustrate that demographic changes will profoundly affect society and the economy, and will require adjustments that remain inadequately appreciated and assessed. The criteria specified in the UN calculations—maintenance of particular demographic parameters at a peak value—of course do not necessarily have special normative significance. Past demographic changes, with respect notably to the age distribution as well as population size, have been substantial, yet they have been successfully accommodated under circumstances of growing prosperity in many countries. But the past may be an imperfect guide in confronting the evolving dynamics of low‐fertility populations. As the report convincingly states, the new demographic challenges will require comprehensive reassessments of many established economic and social policies and programs.     

我国人口老龄化过程中的女性化趋势研究

本文利用联合国世界人口展望的相关数据资料,对我国人口老龄化过程中女性化趋势的特点和变化趋势以及相关的影响因素进行了探讨。研究发现,与绝大多数国家一样,我国也存在老年人口的女性化现象,但在相当一段时间内我国老年人口中的女性比例低于世界多数国家的水平,且老年妇女中高龄老人所占比重相对较低,这是我国社会中长期存在的性别歧视所导致的女性死亡水平相对偏高所致。随着未来我国社会经济的发展,特别是女性各年龄段死亡风险的进一步降低,未来我国老年人口的女性化程度将逐步加深。     

The future of world population

Analysis of future population trends reveals a regional pattern of continued growth, dependent upon basic assumptions about demographic factors and the priority given to human rights, socioeconomic development, and global interdependence. Developing countries will account for 85-87% of world population growth, and the most rapid increase will occur in Africa. The optimum size of population remains debatable. Ecologist argue for a reduction to 1-2 billion people in order to be in balance with nature and maintain a high quality of life. A rapid, but plausible, fertility decline would result in a population of 10 billion by 2070. The lowest feasible UN projection is 8 billion. A 1-2 billion world population would not be feasible without drastic mortality increases and fertility declines. Population control is a highly charged and complex issue; feminists are not about to place responsibility for environmental degradation on women's excess fertility. The spirit of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is that women have the right to determine family size with personal integrity and freedom rather than suffer coercion for the rights of society. Family planning is a necessary ingredient for achieving the goal of desired family size. The quality of life may be undermined by upholding human rights, without recognition of the context of socioeconomic development and global interdependencies. Global economic conditions, political crises, and environmental degradation can undermine even the best national development efforts. The most difficult task ahead is addressing priorities and forming a consensus. Human rights, socioeconomic conditions, and global interdependencies must be satisfied in a mutually beneficial way. When national and global goals conflict, a compromise must be reached. There are many unknowns. The challenge is to "identify a set of policies that will stabilize world climatic conditions, promote economic development, enhance the quality of life, and respect human rights." Investment in human capital, such as education and health, will help women to avoid unwanted pregnancies. Improving the status of women is key to socioeconomic development, human rights, and global interdependencies.     

Increasing longevity and medicare expenditures

Official Medicare projections forecast that the elderly population will be less healthy and more costly over the next century. This prediction stems from the use of age as an indicator of health status: increases in longevity are assumed to increase demand for health care as individuals survive to older and higher-use ages. In this paper I suggest an alternative approach, in which time until death replaces age as the demographic indicator of health status. Increases in longevity are assumed to postpone the higher Medicare use and costs associated with the final decade of life. I contrast the two approaches, using mortality forecasts consistent with recent projections from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Social Security Administration. The time-until-death method yields significantly lower-cost forecasts. The hypothetical cost savings from improved health care small, however, relative to the size of the Medicare solvency problem caused by population aging.     

人口增长率与人口规模关系的实证研究——基于中国省际面板数据的分析

文章在内生经济理论的框架下推导了在一定条件下人口增长率与人口规模负相关的结论,同时基于1954年至2007年的数据,运用动态面板数据模型验证了人口增长率与人口规模负相关。文章的动态面板协整检验表明,我国人口规模每增加一亿,人口增长率将减少2.13‰,我国人口规模将会达到15.4亿的峰值,然后人口增长率出现负增长。最后文章的格兰杰因果检验也表明,人口规模的变化是人口增长率变化的格兰杰原因。     

Demographic Consequences of Gender Discrimination in China: Simulation Analysis of Policy Options

The large number of missing females in China, a consequence of gender discrimination, is having and will continue to have a profound effect on the country’s population development. In this paper, we analyze the causes of this gender discrimination in terms of institutions, culture and, economy, and suggest public policies that might help eliminate gender discrimination. Using a population simulation model, we study the effect of public policies on the sex ratio at birth and excess female child mortality, and the effect of gender discrimination on China’s population development. We find that gender discrimination will decrease China’s population size, number of births, and working age population, accelerate population aging and exacerbate the male marriage squeeze. These results provide theoretical support for suggesting that the government enact and implement public policies aimed at eliminating gender discrimination.     

Post-War trends in Maori population growth

Abstract Recent levels and trends of mortality and fertility of the minority Maori population of New Zealand are analysed. On this basis two projections for the year 1976 are presented, the first assuming a further rise in life expectation, which has already increased rapidly over the last two decades; and the other that both mortality and the consistently high fertility levels will be reduced. The conclusion is that, regardless of which projection one accepts, growth will be rapid (an increase of 60% to 70% in the period 1961-76), although the age distribution will be different at the youngest ages. Unless fertility is reduced, as in Projection 2, the dependency burden of Maori family heads will be extremely heavy.     

Studying the fertility peak in Beijing]

Beijing, China, is experiencing a baby boom in response to 2 periods of large population increase in the mid-1950s and early 1960s. The average number of annual births was 220,000 in the first period and 269,000 in the second period. The causes of the large increase in the population in the first period were an improvement of health conditions which led to a reduction in mortality, immigration flow, and an erroneous population policy. The causes in the second period were recuperative fertility after three years of natural calamity and increased fertility among immigrants. Net migration had an important role in population growth these two periods; it also will have an important impact in future population changes. According to population projections, another baby boom is expected to occur before the end of the end of the century. During the up-coming baby boom period, 1.54 million births are expected, 190,000 per annum. The average increase in population size is expected to 127,000 per year. In the peak year, it may be around 200,000. Thanks to the family planning (FP) program the occurrence of the third baby boom in Beijing has been postponed and the duration will be shortened. From 1972 to 1982, 2.57 million births was averted due to FP, which drastically reduced pressure on the demand for resources and on the momentum of the next baby boom. Another baby booms is not expected during the early half of the 21st century, although an elevated birth rate within the range of normal fluctuation is predicted. The projection was based on the assumption of restricted migration and the enforcement of the FP program. The realization of the projected population will depend on deferred marriage, deferred child-bearing, prolonged birth spacing, the prevention of high parity fertility, the maintenance of the current population policy, and control over the reproductive behavior of the new migrant population.     

Post-War trends in Maori population growth

Recent levels and trends of mortality and fertility of the minority Maori population of New Zealand are analysed. On this basis two projections for the year 1976 are presented, the first assuming a further rise in life expectation, which has already increased rapidly over the last two decades; and the other that both mortality and the consistently high fertility levels will be reduced. The conclusion is that, regardless of which projection one accepts, growth will be rapid (an increase of 60% to 70% in the period 1961–76), although the age distribution will be different at the youngest ages. Unless fertility is reduced, as in Projection 2, the dependency burden of Maori family heads will be extremely heavy.     

Shifts in household demographics herald economic changes for Thailand

In Thailand, dramatic changes in households and the health status of the population have led to important implications for the economic sector. These changes affect health, education, housing, employment and transportation. A new book on the economic impact of demographic change by Andrew Mason and Burnham O. Campbell is referred to as a full discussion of the issues. National planning and projections must include household characteristics as well as numerical projections. The analysis of Mason and Campbell is summarized in this article. Important changes are occurring in the size, rate of growth, and age structure of Thailand's population. Life expectancy has risen to 63 years for men and 68 years for women. Fertility has fallen to 2 children/woman. Population growth was 1.9% in 1990. In 1990, there were only 1 in 3 under the age of 15, and these numbers are expected to shrink to 1 in 4 by the year 2000. 60% of the population is of working age; this is expected to increase to 65% by the year 2000. The 60 years old population is expected to be 7.5% of the total in the year 2000. The average household has 1.6 children. 96% of households live with a relative. The expectation is that household size will continue to decrease and the number of households will continue to grow. The number of elderly heads of households is expected to rise to 11% by 2010. Households will become "adultified." The policy implications for education are that the school age population will gradually decreases but the number enrolled will increase. Primary school enrollment will stabilize and then decline after 1995. Secondary school enrollment will increase and level off in 2005. Total enrollment will increase from 10.5 million in 1990 to 11.4 million in 2000 and decline to 10.7 in 2015. These changes will allow for improvements in the quality of education and expand educational attainment. In health care, the demand for maternal and child health services will decline; changes will occur in the kinds of medical care needed.     

Future population growth: researchers in three countries quantify causes and propose policies

This article discusses Population Council analyses conducted by social scientists from India, Kenya, and the Philippines. These scientists agreed that population momentum would continue to increase population size, and that governments must strengthen and create a range of economic, health, and social programs and policies to slow population growth. Multiple approaches will be needed. John Bongaarts is credited with being the first to identify the key role of population momentum and to decompose growth into unwanted fertility, high desired fertility, and population momentum. Unwanted fertility is responsible for about 19% of projected population growth in India, 26% in Kenya, and 16% in the Philippines. High wanted fertility accounts for 20% of future growth in India, 6% in Kenya, and 19% in the Philippines. Population momentum can account for under 50% or over 90% of growth. Unwanted fertility can be addressed by fulfilling unmet need and increasing knowledge of methods, reducing the fear of side effects and disapproval, and eliminating poor service. Family planning programs need to be strengthened and integrated with maternal and child health services. Preferred and actual family sizes can be reduced by lowering infant mortality by means of increasing infant and child health services and girls' educational attainment. Population momentum can be addressed by delaying age at marriage and childbearing through improving social conditions. Investments in human development through education, training, and income generation can create the conditions for slowing population growth. Countries should decompose population growth into its components of unwanted and high wanted fertility and population momentum as a means of distributing resources most effectively.     

Immigration and the stable population model

This paper reports on work aimed at extending stable population theory to include immigration. Its central finding is that, as long as fertility is below replacement, a constant number and age distribution of immigrants (with fixed fertility and mortality schedules) lead to a stationary population. Neither the level of the net reproduction rate nor the size of the annual immigration affects this conclusion; a stationary population eventually emerges. How this stationary population is created is studied, as is the generational distribution of the constant annual stream of births and of the total population. It is also shown that immigrants and their early descendants may have fertility well above replacement (as long as later generations adopt and maintain fertility below replacement), and the outcome will still be a long-run stationary population.     

Extinction risk assessment of declining wild populations: The case of the southern Bluefin Tuna

We estimate the extinction probability of a large and decreasing population, the southern bluefin tuna. This tuna was listed as critically endangered by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) in 1996. However, the absolute population size is still large and the extinction probability within the next half century is negligible if the recent population decline rate does not increase in the future. IUCN’s criterion with respect to the population decline rate should be linked to the absolute population size, if this is estimated. Several methods estimating the probability of extinction conclude that the southern bluefin tuna population will be below 500 mature individuals within the next 100 years and may be listed as vulnerable. These analyses suggest that extinction risk assessment is useful for management action for taxa that still have large population and are rapidly decreasing.