Intergenerational transfers in industrialised countries

Estimates of the direction of net intergenerational transfers for Britain and Japan indicate that they are from younger to older generations. The estimates are similar to those for the USA by Lee and Lapkoff (1988). In the absence of capital dilution effects, because of these transfers, higher fertility would increase lifetime consumption in these countries. The strength of the transfer effect is somewhat higher for Japan than Britain or the USA, primarily because of longer life expectancy among the Japanese.I am grateful for the help of Professor Naohiro Ogawa and his colleagues at the Nihon University Population Research Institute (NUPRI), who were instrumental in compiling the data for Japan used in the calculations in the paper, which was partly written while I was a visiting research fellow at NUPRI. They are not, however, responsible for the use I have made of the data and their help.     

Intergenerational transfers of resources between older persons and extended kin in Taiwan and the Philippines

This study examines the extent to which older generations actively exchange resources with extended kin in Taiwan and the Philippines. It is critical to understand the position of older generations in the family, because population ageing and declines in family size spur concerns about the tenacity of family support. This research builds upon previous studies that have predominantly focused on parent-child relationships alone or on support received by older parents. Social-network measures are used to estimate overall levels of transfers of resources across generations, and the prevalence and patterns of pathways that link generations and types of kin. Our findings show that the availability of kin is similar in both settings but that transfer activity in the Philippines appears more broadly distributed across family relations, especially siblings, while in Taiwan transfers are more concentrated among lineal kin. These results confirm the importance and diversity of extended kin in systems of family support.     

Intergenerational relations in urban China: Proximity, contact, and help to parents

Although most older Chinese parents live with an adult son or daughter, most adult offspring do not live with parents. We examine the relations of these noncoresident offspring with parents in terms of proximity, frequency of contact, and exchange of help. Based on a 1993 random sample survey conducted in two major Chinese cities, we find that although rates of coresidence are high, noncoresident sons and daughters live close to parents, have frequent contact with their parents, and provide regular help to parents. Relationships with noncoresident sons and daughters are unaffected by whether parents coreside with another child. There is some evidence of closer relationships with sons than with daughters, but parents without a son receive as much help from all children as do parents with sons. The effects of these and other predictors are estimated in multivariate analyses, and results are interpreted in terms of the persistence or change of traditional family norms.     

代际关系、价值观和家庭养老－－关于家庭养老的文化解释

本文从宏观的社会变迁的角度考察了家庭养老的变化问题,作者指出:代际关系、价值观和家庭养老内在一致。随着代际关系、价值观的变迁,家庭养老的内涵、形式、特点及功能都发生了变化。文章指出在做家庭养老的研究时应该将家庭养老视为一个不断变化的与传统的家庭养老不同的概念而不是相反。     

China, US Vow to Collaborate in Anti-AIDS Fight

Chinese and US officials and experts pledged to work more closely to boost China's anti-AIDS efforts with the country being warned its HIV/AIDS epidemic situation is critical. At a high-profile conference in Beijing on November 1, they suggested China and the United States increase exchanges and cooperation in scientific research and personnel training to help address the issue of AIDS in China, which was potentially important for the global fight against the disease. "China is at…     

The role of intergenerational transfers,land, and education in fertility transition in rural Kenya: the case of Nyeri district

This qualitative study reveals how population pressures, land availability, inheritance norms, and educational opportunities intertwine to influence fertility decline in rural Kenya. Focus group discussions with men and women whose childbearing occurred both before and after the onset of rapid, unexpected fertility transition in Nyeri, Kenya allowed individuals who actually participated in, or witnessed, the fertility transition to “voice” their perceptions as to the mechanisms underlying the transition. Findings suggest that, since land inheritance is a cultural norm, land scarcity and diminishing farm size often influence fertility decision-making and behavior via preferences for fewer children. Further, education does not appear to be the driving cause of fertility behavior change, but rather is adopted as a substitute for land inheritance when land resources are scarce. These findings have implications for our understanding of fertility behavior as well as for improving predictions of fertility transition in other rural sub-Saharan African contexts.     

The asymmetric environmental consequences of population change: an exploratory county-level study of land development in the USA, 2001-2011

In this exploratory study, we decompose population growth and decline into their constituent elements to examine how demographic change drives environmental change. Using the example of land development, the analysis integrates county-level measures of births, deaths, in-migration, and out-migration with data on built-up land area from the National Land Cover Database for the years 2001–2006 and then 2006–2011. Drawing from human ecology and environmental demography, we hypothesize that the components of population change will have asymmetric impacts on the construction of the built environment as a form of land development. Results from spatial error models, with a contemporaneous and a temporarily lagged dependent variable, show conditional support for these hypotheses. While each component of demographic change has a unique effect on the dependent variable, the rate at which births increase built-up land area is significantly greater than the rate at which deaths slow this process down.     

人口结构、城镇化与碳排放——基于跨国面板数据的实证研究

文章基于美国、中国、日本、英国等9国1961～2010年的面板数据对人口年龄结构、城镇化与碳排放之间的关系进行实证分析。结果表明,人口规模、人均GDP、二氧化碳排放强度、化石能源占能源消费总量的比重及人口结构与全球碳排放显著相关。此外,人口城镇化率与碳排放的关系呈倒U形,即在人口城镇化的早期会促进二氧化碳的排放,但随着城镇化的进一步扩大则会抑制碳排放;而人口的年龄结构,尤其是人口的老龄化程度对碳排放量的影响则具有U形的特点,即在人口老化的初期由于老年人群的消费模式会减少碳排放,但当人口老龄化进一步加剧后,老年人对医疗护理等方面的需求增多,以致需要更多的经济活动支持这部分开支,因而会造成碳排放的增加。     

Trends in late-life disability in Taiwan, 1989-2007: the roles of education, environment, and technology

This analysis offers the first strong evidence of trends in late-life disability in an emerging economy. For the population of Taiwan aged 65 and older, consistent measures of limitations in seeing, hearing, physical functions, instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs), and activities of daily living (ADLs) were available for three to six survey waves, depending on the outcome, from 1989 to 2007. Limitations in seeing, hearing, and IADLs declined substantially, but trends were mixed for physical functions and flat for ADLs. The remarkable reduction in difficulty telephoning, an IADL, may reflect changes in telecommunications infrastructure and highlights the roles of environment and technology in disability outcomes. Trends for urban residents were more advantageous than those for rural residents for seeing and hearing, but less so for physical functions and IADLs. Were it not for the substantial increase in educational attainment, trends in all outcomes would have been less favourable.     

人口和计划生育统计公报2007年第2号 2006年全国人口和计划生育抽样调查主要数据公报

2006年8月，国家人口和计划生育委员会组织实施了第六次全国（不含香港、澳门特别行政区和台湾省，下同）人口和计划生育抽样调查。本次调查采取三阶段、与规模成正比的概率抽样方法，在全国120个统计监测县（市、区）进行，对全国有较好的代表性。共调查1200个村（居）委会，     

Cohort Succession in the US Housing Market: New Houses, the Baby Boom, and Income Stratification

Federal housing policy in the US across the postwar period supported the construction of new houses more than public provision or renovation of older structures as a means of ensuring a sufficient supply of quality dwellings. Understanding trends in new housing in particular is thus crucial to understanding the housing regime. Following Myers (Housing demography: Linking demographic structure and housing markets. University of Wisconsin Press, 1990; Housing Studies, 14, 473–490,1999), this paper conceptualizes historical change in the housing stock within a demographic framework as the movement of cohorts of households through cohorts of housing stock. Recent evidence suggests that a new cohort of houses arose in the 1980s and 1990s (larger with more amenities than past vintages), and that buyers of those new houses were increasingly affluent. In this paper, I link the succession to a new cohort of houses to household cohort succession and examine the increasing affluence of new house buyers by age and cohort, focusing especially on the entry of the Baby Boom generation exactly when the new cohort of houses arrived. I use US Census microdata for 1960–2000 to develop a cohort longitudinal dataset, and analyze historical change in stratification in new house ownership. I find significant shifts between cohorts in income inequality among new house buyers, with implications for the capacity of the housing regime to meet the future needs of an increasingly diverse population.

Forum 2: the migrant climate: resilience,adaptation and the ontopolitics of mobility in the Anthropocene

ABSTRACT

While modernist or ‘top-down’, ‘command-and-control’ approaches to climate and migration worked at the surface or ontic level of the redistribution of entities in time and space, resilience approaches call for a different approach to mobility. These discourses construct mobilities that are more transformative; in fact, ones that question traditional liberal modernist notions of time and space and of entities with fixed essences. These mobilities do not concern moving entities in space but rethinking mobility in relation to space. Mobility then becomes more a matter of changing the understandings and practices relating to spaces and entities than of moving things from one place to another. Becoming ‘mobile’ thus would apply to the development of capabilities or ‘response-abilities’ to sense, adapt, recompose, repurpose and reimagine problems and possibilities; taking responses to crises beyond the static and binary conceptions of mobility and space.     

The hospitals and population growth: The voluntary general hospitals, mortality and local populations in the English provinces in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries part 2

Summary In the second part of this article the number and nature of hospital cases treated in the light of physical, medical and surgical limitations are examined. Each hospital's records of treatment are summarised and discussed. Whether or not the hospitals were able to tackle successfully some of the major diseases and causes of death and thereby exert a positive influence in reducing mortality rates is then considered. Two main conclusions are drawn. First, that the hospitals had a positive role to play within their patient catchment areas, but that this was insufficient to affect national mortality trends decisively. Secondly, the hospitals' influence was of greater importance before the mid-nineteenth century. Despite advances in medical knowledge and techniques, population pressure, overcrowding and the growing incidence of serious cases in hospitals coupled with outbreaks of 'hospital diseases' meant that the results of hospital treatment may have become less impressive. But even then, mortality levels in the hospitals were low and the hospitals did not merit their reputation of being 'gateways to death' or as institutions 'which positively did harm'.