Marshall on the population question. Part II

Marshall's treatment of the laws of returns, technical progress, capital formation, and international trade having been reviewed in Part II of this paper, included in the first instalment, his treatment of the genesis of living standards and of the circumstances whereon depend mortality, nuptiality, natality, and natural increase is examined in Part III, the first in the present instalment. Marshall's analysis of the behaviour of living standards reflects his “sociology” and helps to explain why he made no use of the optimum concept; it also reflects his conception of economic development. In Part IV his treatment of natural selection, competition, migration, location theory, and poverty and its cure is reviewed. It is concluded that Marshall's views respecting population represent both a continuation of those of his predecessors and a break therewith and serve nicely, in some instances, to bridge the gap between the demographic theories of the classical economists and those expressed in the second quarter of the present century.     

Marshall on the population question. I

English economic thought was dominated for close to a half century by the system of economic analysis developed by Alfred Marshall (1842–1924) whose views relating to population are examined. The demographic and economic changes taking place within Marshall's lifetime are briefly summarised in the Introduction. There follows in Part I a review of the opinions of Marshall's predecessors and contemporaries respecting both the behaviour of the laws of returns, technical progress, etc., and the circumstances on which population growth had depended or was likely to depend. The optimum is included among the concepts here treated. Reactions to the late nineteenth-century decline in natality are noted. In Part II Marshall's treatment of the laws of returns and of capital formation, together with their significance for the population question, is examined. His treatment of technological and organisational change and of international trade as counterbalances to population growth is considered. His failure to make use of the optimum concept is remarked as is the theory of economic growth that appears to underly his analysis of demographic development.     

Demographic implications of aboriginal out-marriage

Unpublished 1991 Census data show that more than half of Aboriginal marriages involve a non-Aboriginal spouse and that 83 per cent of resultant children identify as Aboriginal. Out-marriage is therefore a major but so far overlooked influence on Aboriginal population growth and regional differences in out-marriage rates are a major cause of higher Aboriginal population growth in cities. High and rising rates of out-marriage have overtaken rising levels of Aboriginal self-identification in importance and imply that the Aboriginal population is destined to continue growing rapidly. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Employment, Education and Training.     

甘肃省人口婚姻意愿调查分析

本文利用问卷调查数据,分析了甘肃省居民婚姻意愿现状,主要对择偶标准、期望初婚年龄、期望夫妻年龄差和期望婚居模式四个方面进行分析。调查发现,甘肃男性择偶时较看重身体健康,甘肃女性择偶时较看重经济收入;甘肃居民的平均初婚年龄逐步提高;绝大多数居民期望婚姻中丈夫的年龄大于妻子,且倾向于男大于女1-2岁;从夫居和独立居住是普遍接受的婚居模式。虽然现代婚姻观对甘肃居民有一定影响,但是这里的婚姻观仍较传统。     

老年照料问题的挑战与对策——老年照料产业初探

随着人口老龄化的加剧和社会的发展 ,老年生活照料问题日益突出 ,本文对这一问题的严峻性、对策谈一点看法     

Four theories of population change and the environment

Conclusion It is clear from the discussion of the four principal frameworks used to study population and land use that there is no consensus on the relationship. Most of the debate has centered on the two rivalpolicies of the neoclassical economists and the classical economists or natural scientists. Consensus has been difficult to reach mainly because the empirical evidence is weak and inconclusive, and the diverse experiences of different regions make it difficult to generalize for policy. Because the linkage is unclear, it seems premature to conclude that curbing population growth is the only or most important remedy for land degradation.It is relevant to note that this paper has focussed only on land degradation. It may be that population change plays a more conclusive role in affecting other aspects of the environment.The National Research Council is the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author.     

Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in the Measurement of Rural Poverty: The Case of Iran

Poverty reduction is one of the major challenges confronting mankind and a principal obstacle to well-being for a large proportion of the world’s population. New paradigms of development as advocated by Chambers and others focus strongly on poverty reduction. Poverty is increasingly recognised as a multifaceted concept that can be elucidated through both qualitative and quantitative analysis. In researching poverty it is desirable to recognise both the value position of researchers and the values of local people. This paper uses qualitative and quantitative data and considers both outsiders’ and insiders’ views through the use of participatory approaches in selected rural areas of Iran. A poverty index is constructed and validated in a six-stage process. On the basis of the findings, a number of recommendations are made about appropriate approaches to the investigation of poverty.     

Alfred Marshall on the Growth of Population

Classical views of population, as expounded in the works of Smith, Malthus, and Mill, retained their influence through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth—until sidelined, many would argue, by the marginalist revolution in economics. Oddly, Alfred Marshall (1842–1924), the major figure in that revolution, was, when it came to population, himself firmly in the classical tradition. He diverged from it in two main respects. Writing in the late nineteenth century he had of course to take account of Darwinian theory, with the potential implications it suggested for differential fertility. And, deriving from his interests in industrial organization and efficiency and in biological analogies in economics, he gave greater attention than his forebears to the possibility that returns to labor could routinely be increasing as well as diminishing. Marshall, the preeminent economist of his time, was for most of his career professor of political economy at the University of Cambridge. His major work, Principles of Economics, was first published in 1890, and then in a series of revised editions over the rest of his life. The final—8th—edition appeared in 1920. (A “ninth” variorum edition was issued in 1961.) The Principles has been described, by G. J. Stigler, as the second greatest work in the history of economics. The contributions to theory and method warranting such praise, however, are chiefly in the later parts of the volume. Up to and including Book IV (The Agents of Production: Land, Labour, Capital and Organization), the reader is given the impression, according to Keynes, of “perusing a clear, apt and humane exposition of fairly obvious matters.” Certainly in comparison to the rest, these early sections were left fairly intact in their 1890 form over subsequent editions. But Keynes also remarks, in his lengthy obituary of Marshall, how deceptive that surface smoothness could be—and notes that Marshall “had a characteristic habit in all his writings of reserving for footnotes what was most novel or important in what he had to say.” The excerpts below are taken from Book IV, Chapters IV (§§1–2, 4–5) and XIII (§3), of the 1890 edition of the Principles. In the first, Marshall presents a brief, selective history of population doctrines up to Malthus, and then the doctrine “in its modern form”; in the second, from the concluding chapter of Book IV, he explores the applicability of the law of increasing returns—stated, earlier in the chapter, as: “An increase of labour and capital leads generally to improved organization, which increases the efficiency of the work of labour and capital.”     

我国人口分布、迁移的生态环境因素分析

人口分布、迁移受环境、历史、经济等多因素影响,但从经济因素分析人口问题,所占比例较大。本文着重分析区域生态环境与人口分布、迁移的相互影响的关系,并认为:为协调我国人口分布、迁移与区域生态环境之间的关系,关键有两点新思路,一是允许人口分布数量的不均衡存在,二是重视人口迁移的高质量转变。     

温室效应:人口要负多大责任?

由于各国经济利益不一致,气候变化谈判博弈艰难。在这种形势下,人口控制对减少温室气体排放的意义,近来被国际社会部分人士及中国政府重新提及,值得关注。自1972年世界环境大会以来,发达国家对世界人口问题的看法发生过180度的转变,否认发展中国家人口快速增长对经济的不利作用,否认人口与环境问题相关的观点,渐成西方学术界主流,由学术界蔓延到西方政府,并深刻影响着发展中国家许多学者的认识。文章论述了人口规模对温室气体排放的影响,试分析了上述西方主流观点在研究方法上存在的问题。目前,中国正进入快速工业化阶段,对庞大人口不断放大的经济、资源、环境影响,本文认为必须有极为清醒的认识。     

August Lösch on Population and Business Cycles

The German economist August Losch (1906–45) earned a permanent place in the history of economic ideas through his work on general equilibrium theory applied to a spatially distributed economy. His pathbreaking contribution in that field is synthesized in The Economics of Location (English translation 1954, first edition Die raumliche Ordnung der Wirtschaft, published in 1939). Lb'sch's early theoretical and empirical work, however, was focused on the interaction of demographic and economic change, in particular the effect of population on economic fluctuations—in traditional terminology, the business cycle. His statistical investigations of the preindustrial era, reaching back to the seventeenth century, indicated that the dominant causal relationship went from the economy to population, a connection that much subsequent work also confirms. But his research on the history of German economic development under capitalist conditions showed primarily a reverse set of influences at work: from population, in particular from fluctuations in the rate of population growth, to the business cycle. This theoretical and empirical contribution, first published in German in 1936, is most accessible to readers of English in a paper presented in December of the same year at the annual meeting of the Econometric Society in Chicago and published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in August 1937 under the title “Population cycles as a cause of business cycles.” Excerpts from this article—the opening paragraphs and the closing section titled “Explanation”—are reproduced below. Losch sees the relationship as mediated by changes in labor supply and consequent responses in building activity, demand for consumer goods, and, in particular, stimulus or else depressing influence on the capital goods industries as the rate of population growth increases or falls. He cautions that his empirical work supporting his proposition was limited to Germany and may not apply everywhere. He suggests, however, that the effect of immigration on the United States economy is probably congruent with the thesis.     

Population dynamics and life-cycle consumption

This paper presents a model where aggregate consumption depends on both the level of wealth and the age structure of population. The explicit consideration of an endogenous rate of time preference permits to analyze the important role of population ageing as a determinant of aggregate saving. Received: 23 October 2001/Accepted: 13 February 2002 I would like to thank an anonymous referee for his comments. Financial support from CNR and MURST is gratefully acknowledged. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno.     

Identity conflict or adaptive flexibility? Bisexuality reconsidered

A definition of bisexuality is offered, followed by a discussion of two opposing models of bisexual functioning: the "conflict model," which views bisexuality as problematic, stemming from identity conflict and confusion that marks a transitional stage to a homosexual orientation; and the "flexibility model," which views bisexuality as the coexistence of heteroeroticism and homoeroticism, as the successful integration of homosexual and heterosexual identities into a dual sexual orientation. The Kinsey data are reviewed in an effort to determine the incidence of bisexuality in the U.S. population. Finally, specific clinical and empirical studies investigating bisexual subjects are reviewed in light of the two models.     

近年来我国人口迁移研究的研究设计与数据特点

从人口迁移研究的研究设计和数据特点出发 ,本文对人口迁移研究的数据类型和我国近年来人口研究的数据特点进行了总结和讨论。在此基础上提出我国人口迁移研究应当加强对流出地、非迁移人口和长期数据的搜集 ,以及对人口迁移的各方面影响的研究     

The future of sex mortality differentials in industrialized countries: A structural hypothesis

This paper advances the hypothesis that the future of sex mortality differentials in industrialized countries may depend on the future mortality rates of blue collar men. Data are presented to support the argument that mortality rates from ischemic heart disease for this population subgroup play a significant role in current differentials and, furthermore, that sexsocial class-mortality differentials correspond to social structural differences in protection against and/or exposure to health risks. Research and policy implications of this argument are addressed briefly.The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the World Health Organization.     

J. R. Hicks on the Economics of Population

Sir John Hicks (1904–89), professor of political economy at Oxford University from 1952 to 1965, was one of the foremost economists of his time, making notable contributions to the theory of wages, general equilibrium theory, and welfare economics. He received (jointly with Kenneth Arrow) the 1972 Nobel prize in economics. Value and Capital (1939), his best-known book, is held as a classic; his 1937 exegesis of Keynes's General Theory has long been a staple of undergraduate economics. Population does not figure appreciably in his writings, although an almost offhand footnote attached to the concluding paragraph of Value and Capital suggests that it could have: “[0]ne cannot repress the thought that perhaps the whole Industrial Revolution of the last two hundred years has been nothing else but a vast secular boom, largely induced by the unparalleled rise in population.” (He added: “If this is so, it would help to explain why, as the wisest hold, it has been such a disappointing episode in human history.”) In his late work, A Theory of Economic History (1969), however, the principal driving force in economic development is depicted as the expansion of markets. A sustained discussion of the topic of population by Hicks is contained in one of his earlier books. The Social Framework: An Introduction to Economics (Oxford University Press, 1942). Chapters 4 and 5 of this book treat “Population and Its History” and “The Economics of Population”; one of the appendixes is “On the Idea of an Optimum Population.” Chapter 5 and this appendix are reprinted below. The Social Framework was written as an introductory text, although its lucid style characterized all of Hicks's work. It covered both theory and applications with particular attention to the then novel subject of national accounting. Hicks described the book as “economic anatomy” in contrast to the “economic physiology” of how the economy works. Chapter 5 gives equal attention to under- and overpopulation, both seen as posing dangers. The Preface to the 1971 (fourth) edition of The Social Framework notes that the population and labor force chapters “have been rather substantially altered—to take account of the curious things that have happened in these fields (which one might have expected to be slow moving).” In 1971 he is more cautious than in 1942 about suggesting that slowing population growth might have been a factor in the 1930s depression, and readier to admit of countries where “a continuing rise in population, even while there is some continuing agricultural improvement, is likely to lead in the end to unemployment and destitution.” The appendix on optimum population was retained through all editions.     

A conversation with Richard Easterlin

After an introduction touching on various biographical highlights, this paper summarizes a wide-ranging discussion with Richard Easterlin which occurred in the Autumn of 1996. We considered the Easterlin Hypothesis – its genesis and current status, together with Easterlin‘s views on attempts to develop measures of relative income – and then moved on to “The Fertility Revolution” and questions regarding the applicability of the theory of household choice in modernizing societies. This was followed by a discussion of his early career development and influences on him at that time, ending with ruminations regarding the current state of economics, and the validity of training given to young economists today. JEL classification: J10, J11, J13 Received February 13, 1997 / Accepted February 26, 1997     

Population and Poverty in Classical Theory: Testing a Structural Model for India

There has for many years been debate over the relationships between population growth rates and poverty. India is a country which provides a good testing ground for hypotheses about this relationship because since Independence a relatively high proportion of the population have lived in poverty; and there also exist reasonable data. This paper develops a simple structural model to investigate the relationship between population growth and poverty in particular, testing a series of hypotheses developed from the work of Marx and Malthus. The data are analysed at state level, and attention is drawn to the problems that this might cause as behaviour is typically determined at the individual household level. The results show that agricultural productivity and the process of landlessness are better predictors of poverty at a state level than the population growth rate. It is argued that the results fit better with the views of Marx than those of Malthus.     

An alternative formulation of the birth function in a two-sex model

The inconsistency in Lotka's stable population model (two different intrinsic growth rates for the two sexes) arises from the fact that he considers two equations (for male and female births), and not because his equation for one sex does not involve the other. Many authors in the past have erroneously put emphasis on the latter point and modified Lotka's equations for male and female births. Since sex ratio at birth is constant, two independent equations for male and female births cannot exist. The correct approach is to attempt to form an equation for all births. The author followed this approach in his earlier works on the problem, but his birth functions were formulated from axiomatic considerations. The present paper provides a new birth function which has an intuitively appealing physical interpretation, and for which the interaction between the sexes is empirically determined from the data.     

Alan Greenspan on the Economic Implications of Population Aging

At the 2004 annual symposium of central bank leaders sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board, devoted his opening remarks on 27 August to a discussion of the economic implications of population aging. The full text of his remarks is reproduced below. Greenspan's high prestige and great influence on US economic policy lend special interest to his views on this much-discussed subject (see also the next Documents item in this issue). He outlines the coming demographic shift in the United States in language that is characteristically cautious and qualified. (The elderly dependency ratio will “almost certainly” rise as the baby boom generation retires, Greenspan says, although elsewhere he terms the process, more accurately, inexorable.) The main factor responsible for population aging he identifies as the decline of fertility. Immigration is an antidote, but, to be effective, its size would have to be much larger than is envisaged in current projections. Greenspan's assessment of the economic consequences of the changing age structure highlights the prospect of a deteriorating fiscal situation in the United States: chronic deficits in the Social Security program over the long haul, assuming that existing commitments for benefits per retiree are met, and even greater difficulties for the health care system for the elderly—Medicare—in which the effects of increasing numbers in old age are amplified by advances in medical technology and the bias inherent in the current system of subsidized third-party payments. The sober outline of policy choices imposed by population aging—difficult in the United States, but less so, Greenspan notes, than in Europe and Japan—underlies the need for counteracting the declining growth of the population of labor force age through greater labor force participation and later retirement. Beyond that, growth of output per worker can provide the key “that would enable future retirees to maintain their expected standard of living without unduly burdening future workers.” This requires continuation of policies that enhance productivity, such as deregulation and globalization, and greater investment. In turn, the latter presupposes greater domestic saving, both personal and by the government, as the United States cannot “continue indefinitely to borrow saving from abroad.” Demographic aging requires a new balance between workers and retirees. Curbing benefits once bestowed is difficult: only benefits that can be delivered should be promised. Public programs should be recalibrated, providing incentives for individuals to adjust to the inevitable consequences of an aging society.