Marital fertility control among the Qing nobility: implications for two types of preventive check

Demographers, as early as Malthus, have assumed that the preventive checks, delayed marriage and celibacy, were absent in traditional China. In this paper on the Qing (1644-1911) imperial lineage, we demonstrate that, instead, there may have been a different, more 'modern' preventive check: fertility control within marriage. Marital fertility of lineage couples during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was low to moderate. Such low fertility was the product of three behavioural mechanisms: late starting, early stopping and, most significantly, long spacing. Couples apparently regulated their fertility according to their economic resources and the sex of their surviving children. Moreover, they did so, we suggest, by regulating their coital frequency. Deliberate fertility control, in other words, was already within the 'calculus of conscious choice' for some Chinese well before this century. the speed of contemporary sinitic fertility transitions may accordingly be attributed to the fact that they did not require a change in attitudes, only the diffusion of new incentives and effective technologies.     

Marital Fertility Control Among the Qing Nobility: Implications for Two Types of Preventive Check

Demographers, as early as Malthus, have assumed that the preventive checks, delayed marriage and celibacy, were absent in traditional China. In this paper on the Qing (1644–1911) imperial lineage, we demonstrate that, instead, there may have been a different, more ‘modern’ preventive check: fertility control within marriage. Marital fertility of lineage couples during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was low to moderate. Such low fertility was the product of three behavioural mechanisms: late starting, early stopping and, most significantly, long spacing. Couples apparently regulated their fertility according to their economic resources and the sex of their surviving children. Moreover, they did so, we suggest, by regulating their coital frequency. Deliberate fertility control, in other words, was already within the ‘calculus of conscious choice’ for some Chinese well before this century. The speed of contemporary sinitic fertility transitions may accordingly be attributed to the fact that they did not require a change in attitudes, only the diffusion of new incentives and effective technologies.     

Is There Evidence of Birth Control in Late Imperial China?

In recent publications James Lee, Wang Feng, Cameron Campbell, and Zhongwei Zhao argue—contrary to what has long been the view of most sinologists—that people in late imperial China deliberately controlled their fertility through a combination of late starting, early stopping, and long spacing. The present article challenges this argument and the data offered in its support. It attempts to show that though they did not want as many children as possible, most Chinese couples did want to raise as many sons as possible. What is interpreted by the revisionists as evidence of birth control is better understood as evidence of poverty.     

Malthus on norway

Abstract Malthus visited Norway in 1799 and his impression of the country's demographic experience was important in determining the character of the second edition of his Essay on the Principle of Population. He relied for the most part on non-statistical sources. This led him to exaggerate, e.g. the size of households, the number of unmarried farm servants and to miss important features, e.g. differences in marital age patterns, regional variations in fertility and nuptiality. The bias of his itinerary and of his main informants is also apparent. Statistical material not available to Malthus indicates that he was right to stress the late age at marriage in Norway but wrong to ignore the operation of the positive check. Mortality was frequently high in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Norway, much higher than Malthus ever realized. This destroys the symmetry, as well as the morality, of Malthus's exposition.     

On the scale of global demographic convergence, 1950-2000

The second half of the twentieth century saw global demographic change of unprecedented magnitude, with pronounced falls in both mortality and fertility in many developing countries. This article assesses the extent to which these changes have led to the convergence of demographic patterns around the world. It considers not just the levels of fertility and mortality in each country at different points in time, but also the size of each population. It also disaggregates China and India into their constituent provinces and states in order to provide estimates for units more typical of the size of the populations of other countries. The note presents proportions of the world's population according to the levels of life expectancy and total fertility they experienced in the early 1950s, the late 1970s, and around 2000. The graphs and tables thus produced give a convenient and novel way to view the scale and nature of demographic convergence over the last 50 years.     

Mortality–fertility synergies during the demographic transition in the developed world

The classic theory used to explain the demographic transition assumes that mortality is the key explanatory variable influencing the decline in fertility. However, the empirical results obtained in what is known as the Princeton European Fertility Project have led many specialists to question this assumption. Using both national and provincial aggregated data for 25 countries over a long time span, the analysis reported in this paper found that mortality does indeed play a fundamental role in accounting for the main demographic changes that occurred both before and during the transitional period. Others’ research based on individual data has shown clearly that the number of surviving children was indeed an important factor for reproductive decisions. My analysis, using aggregated data, reached largely similar conclusions regarding the role of mortality in changing reproductive trends, via its impact on nuptiality and marital fertility at different stages of the demographic transition.     

中国省级人口转变的时空演变进程——基于聚类分析的实证研究

综合运用建国60年以来的人口自然变动以及生育和死亡转变的数据,从实证研究的角度通过聚类分析刻画我国省级人口转变在时间和空间上的演变进程。时间序列聚类的结果表明,各省的生育率、死亡率和人口自然变动的转变过程具有不同步性,转变模式各具特色;而多时点连续聚类的结果充分体现了我国省级人口转变在空间上的扩散过程和在时间上的推移过程,以及省级人口转变趋同的速度不断加快的特点。此外,对省级人口转变和社会经济发展进程一致性的比较,反映出两者既有一致性也有非一致性,社会经济发展对省级人口转变时空演变进程有一定的影响,但非决定性影响。     

Mortality,marriage, and growth in pre-industrial populations

It has been widely assumed that in pre-industrial European populations postponement of marriage was a major check on fertility, and that marriage was contingent upon access to a livelihood in the form of a homestead or a craft. Death made room for new families, and the age at inheritance might therefore be an index of the age at marriage. High mortality should then mean early marriage and high fertility. When the effect of a uniform increase in the force of mortality on the “natural rate of growth” is estimated quantitatively, it is found that fertility response is of the same magnitude as the change in mortality so that within a wide range mortality differentials alone would not suffice to account for persistent differentials in growth rates. The assumption of a reasonably effective control through the prudential check is thus strengthened.     

Famine Mortality in Nineteenth-Century Japan: The Evidence from a Temple Death Register

Economic and demographic historians who have studied Japan's early modern period argue that preventive checks to fertility were the primary cause of Japan's stationary population in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and that the role of ‘positive’ checks was negligible. This paper presents evidence and a claim that mortality crises – famines in particular – also played an important role in checking population growth during this period. It analyses data from the death register of Ogen-ji, a Buddhist temple in the Hida region of central Japan. These data provide a remarkably detailed picture of the short-term demographic consequences of Japan's last great famine, the Tenpō famine of the 1830s. ‘Normal’ mortality patterns, by age and sex, are compared with patterns of mortality during the famine. Mortality of males rose considerably more than that of females, with the greatest rise occurring among young boys aged 5–14 and adult men aged 30–59. A surprising finding was that mortality at ages 0–4 rose relatively little, in part a consequence of a marked fall in the number of births during the famine. The Tenpō subsistence crisis was not the sole cause of population stagnation in the Ogen-ji population, but it was a prominent feature of the ‘high mortality regime’ that this population experienced during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.     

Fertility decline in the modern world and in the original demographic transition: Testing three theories with cross-national data

This study uses aggregate data on a large number of the world's societies to test three theories of fertility decline in the modern world and in the original demographic transition. One prominent theory relates fertility decline to the changing economic value of children. With industrialization and overall modernization the economic value of children's labor shifts from positive to negative. This interpretation has been challenged by those who claim that the flow of wealth in preindustrial societies is always from parent to child rather than from child to parent. An alternative interpretation is that fertility levels reflect people's efforts to promote their reproductive success, and that this requires the careful tracking of infant and child mortality. Fertility rates are adjusted to the rate of infant and child survival, and will be high when survival rates are low and low when survival rates are high. A third theory emphasizes female empowerment. Fertility will be high when women are highly subordinated to men, but as women gain more autonomy and control over their own lives they reduce their fertility levels because, among other possibilities, higher levels of fertility present them with serious burdens. We tested all three theories through multiple regression analyses performed on two samples of societies, the first a large sample of the world's nation-states during the period between 1960 and 1990, and the second a sample of now-developed societies between 1880 and 1940. Our findings showed that infant mortality was an excellent predictor of fertility, and that female empowerment was a good predictor. However, there was only weak support for the argument that the economic value of children's labor plays an important role in fertility decisions. The findings were discussed in the context of a broader interpretation of fertility behavior in societies with high levels of industrialization and modernization.     

China's demographic dilemmas

The year 2000 marks the end of a tumultuous century in China's population history, which weathered the demographic effects of devastating famines, wars, and epidemics and population growth and change. This paper examines the effect of population policies on the demographic dilemmas of China. In the 1950s, China had seen the fastest demographic transition in history, with a dramatic decline in mortality rates, followed by a decrease in fertility rates. However, in the 1970s, revisions in population control measures, changes in age structure, and fluctuations in age at marriage resulted in lower fertility rates. The struggles encountered by China in regulating fertility are described; these include the different methods of birth control, gender preference, marriage, population aging, and minority populations. Population and development issues within the context of urbanization, employment, education, health care, economy, and environment are also discussed. Future implications of these findings indicate the need for a systematic, effective, and complete environmental clean-up, as well as fertility and population policies.     

日本失去的二十年——基于中日人口红利比较的视角

"人口红利"是人口因素与经济增长关系研究的深入和发展。亚洲地区经济高速增长和工业化国家人口老龄化条件下经济增长,分别对应第一次"人口红利"和第二次"人口红利"。中国与日本相比,无论是经济增长模式还是人口转变模式,都有着极为相似之处,本文旨在通过对比分析中日两国人口发展与经济发展之间的变化,借鉴日本人口红利期的经验和教训,为中国充分实现第一次人口红利、创造第二次人口红利提供参考。     

Adolescent social isolation and premature mortality in a Swedish birth cohort

Research shows consistently that social ties are important for longevity, and they may be particularly important during adolescence. An absence of social ties, or social isolation, during adolescence may adversely affect long-term health and wellbeing. While prior research has examined associations between isolation from friends and long-term health, and having no siblings and mortality, no study (of which we are aware) considers jointly both the role of having no friends and no siblings, nor more generally with whom adolescents spend time, and the risk of premature mortality. This paper extends the literature by drawing on data from the Stockholm Birth Cohort Study to examine the association between different types of social isolation during adolescence (i.e., an absence of friends, siblings, and time with other adolescents) and the risk of premature mortality by midlife. Results suggest that having no siblings, being unliked at school, and spending (mostly) no time with other adolescents, increases the risk of premature mortality. The association between being unliked and premature mortality was attenuated by demographic and adolescent characteristics. Consistent with our expectations, net of a robust set of covariates, adolescents who had no siblings and mostly spent no time with other adolescents (i.e., isolates) were the group most vulnerable to premature mortality by midlife. However, this was only true for females.

     

Trends in U.S. adult chronic disease mortality, 1960–1999: age,period, and cohort variations

In this paper, I examine temporal changes in U.S. adult mortality by chronic disease cause of death and by sex over a 40-year period in the second half of the twentieth century. I apply age-period-cohort (APC) analyses that combine conventional approaches and a new method of model estimation to simultaneously account for age, period, and cohort variations in mortality rates for four leading causes of deaths, including heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, and breast cancer. The results show that large reductions in mortality since the late 1960s continued well into the late 1990s and that these reductions were predominately contributed by cohort effects. Cohort effects are found to differ by specific causes of death examined, but they generally show substantial survival improvements. Implications of these results are discussed with regard to demographic theories of mortality reductions, differential cohort accumulation of health capital and lifetime exposures to socioeconomic and behavioral risk factors, and period changes in diagnostic techniques and medical treatment.     

The Role of Migration in the Urban Transition: A Demonstration From Albania

Although natural increase has been recognized as the main driver of postwar urban growth in developing countries, urban transition theory predicts a dominant role for population mobility in the early and late phases of the process. To account for this discrepancy between theory and empirical evidence, I demonstrate the complex role played by internal and international migration in the pattern of urban growth. Using a combination of indirect demographic estimations for postwar Albania, I show that the dominant contribution of natural increase from the 1960s to the 1990s was induced by a limited urban in-migration; this was due to the restrictions on leaving the countryside imposed under communist rule and, thereafter, to the redirection abroad of rural out-migrants. Although young adults in cities also engaged in international movements and significantly reduced their fertility, the indirect effects of rural-to-urban migration attenuated the fall in urban birth rates and postponed demographic aging. In-migrants swelled urban cohorts of reproductive age and delayed the urban fertility transition. Despite a high level of urban natural increase in Albania, I thus conclude that the role of population mobility dominated in the early and most recent phases of urban growth. The results also have implications for our understanding of demographic processes during the second urban transition in developing countries.     

Birth outcome, not pregnancy process: Reply to van der Veen

In a recent article (Frisbie. Forbes. and Pullum 1996) we documented racial/ethnic differences in birth outcomes according to a more fine-grained classification than has typically been employed in the demographic literature. In his commentary, van der Veen focuses on the measurement of one of the dimensions of that classification, maturity of the infant. as proxied by the fetal growth ratio. The crux of the critique is easily seen in van der Veen's statement that “all of my disagreements with Frisbie et al. 's method arise from their particular use of a postnatal standard for the assessment of intrauterine growth.” Our critic misunderstands our objective: He fails to realize our interest in birth outcome, not pregnancy process, and does not perceive that our intent was to extend the research extant in both the demographic and public-health literatures in which patently postnatal (i.e., ex utero) measures are taken as outcomes interesting in their own right and/or as risk factors for infant mortality and infant and childhood morbidity. Specifically, he does recognize that we purposefully expanded our focus to include moderately compromised births to determine if they were at higher risk than the normal births with whom they are conventionally categorized. Our discussion draws on research cited in the original article, on studies cited by our critic, and on a few more recent investigations. Although we have never argued that ours is the only, or even the best, approach in all cases, we try to clarify the rationale for, and adduce additional empirical evidence of, the utility of the method we used.     

中国人口的迁移转变——基于迁移率的考察

经典人口转变理论侧重死亡和生育转变过程的测量、描述和解释,地理学家将迁移转变纳入人口转变框架,以完善人口转变理论。不过与死亡和生育转变研究不同,中国的迁移研究侧重基于对迁移流动人口规模和结构的考察分析,少有采用人口学意义上的迁移率指标的研究。文章利用2010—2015年历次中国综合社会调查的合并数据,通过人口学方法和泊松回归模型,计算和分析了1950—2015年中国人口迁移率趋势及社会经济差异。中国的迁移转变在宏观趋势上与中国的政治经济变迁高度一致。与死亡和生育转变相比,其波折性更强,说明更易受到经济社会政策变化的冲击。同时也观察到逢“0”和逢“5”年份的申报偏好。另外,迁移的社会经济差异明显。男性迁移率高于女性,但是两性差异在不断缩小;乡城迁移和未婚迁移大幅度增长;而越来越多受教育程度较高人群加入迁移,使得受教育程度越高的人群具有越高的迁移率。可以认为基于迁移率的考察揭示了中国迁移转变更具体生动的过程。     

Does regional variation affect ecological mortality research? An examination of mortality, income inequality and health infrastructure in the Mississippi Delta

Mortality research has often focused on individual-level, socioeconomic, and demographic factors indicating health outcomes. Consistent with a recent trend in the public health field, this research examines mortality at the aggregate, contextual level. Based on Wilkinson’s relative income hypothesis, specifically being manifest through an underinvestment in social goods including health infrastructure, the focus of this study is a regional examination in the effects of income inequality on mortality at the county level. Health infrastructure is included as a mediating variable in the relationship between income inequality and mortality, relating back to Wilkinson’s work. Unlike previous research, regional differences in this relationship are examined to identify variation at the county level in health outcomes. The Mississippi Delta is an adequate test bed to examine the relationship between these variables based on its socioeconomic, demographic, and high inequality characteristics. It is hypothesized that Delta-designated counties within the three-state Delta region distinguish a significant positive relationship between income inequality and mortality, that this relationship is stronger than in non-Delta classified counties, and that health infrastructure significantly mediates the relationship between income inequality and mortality.     

HIV and fertility in Africa: first evidence from population-based surveys

The historical pattern of the demographic transition suggests that fertility declines follow mortality declines, followed by a rise in human capital accumulation and economic growth. The HIV/AIDS epidemic threatens to reverse this path. We utilize recent rounds of the demographic and health surveys that link an individual woman’s fertility outcomes to her HIV status based on testing. The data allow us to distinguish the effect of own positive HIV status on fertility (which may be due to lower fecundity and other physiological reasons) from the behavioral response to higher mortality risk, as measured by the local community HIV prevalence. We show that although HIV-infected women have significantly lower fertility, local community HIV prevalence has no significant effect on noninfected women’s fertility.     

Research on gender in demography: Limitations and constraints

This paper explores the issue of gender in demography, focusing on the question of why we don't know more than we do about the role of gender in demographic processes. Our lack of knowledge is partly explained by demography's research and policy focus on the two questions central to the field in recent decades, fertility decline and the relationship between economic and demographic change. The focus on these issues – sometimes at the expense of other research questions and issues – has meant that some social processes surrounding demographic change, including the role of gender, have not received the attention they deserve. Understanding gender's complex relationship to social behaviors, such as demographic behavior, requires attention to social/cultural context and to power. Demography needs to expand our knowledge of gender through the development of new research questions, research designs, and methodologies. Doing so will give us new insights into demographic processes.