The President of Russia on Population

Russian president Vladimir Putin's 2005 annual address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, delivered on 25 April, was widely noted in the world press for the startling statement that “the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century.” The address also contained a brief passage discussing the demographic problems of Russia. This passage, touching upon the issues of high mortality and the low birth rate, and commenting on drug abuse and alcoholism and on immigration policy, is reproduced below. The president expressed confidence that by creating conditions to “encourage people to have children, lower the mortality rate and bring order to immigration,” the size of the Russian population will gradually stabilize. (The United Nations medium population projection for Russia, which assumes gradual improvement of fertility and mortality, reaching a TFR of 1.85 and an expectation of life of 72 years by the 2040s, as well as net immigration exceeding 2 million persons, foresees a decline from the current 143 million to 112 million by 2050.) The full English text of the address can be accessed at http://president.kremlin.ru/eng/ .     

D. V. Glass on the Problems of a Declining Population

During the past quarter century fertility has dropped below replacement levels in many parts of the world. According to United Nations estimates, in 2005 this was the case in 65 countries, comprising 43 percent of the world's population. In many cases, most notably in Europe and East Asia, the shortfall of fertility from the level that would be necessary in the long run to sustain a stationary population is substantial. In Europe, for example, the average total fertility rate for the period 2000–2005 was 1.4. Indefinite maintenance of such a level implies a shrinkage of the total population by one‐third over a generation–roughly every 30 years. Accompanying that rapid decline of total numbers would be an age structure containing a preponderance of the elderly, posing extreme adjustment difficulties for the economic and social system. Societies that wish to avoid radical depopulation would have to engineer a substantial rise infertility–if not to full replacement level (slightly more than two children per woman), then at least to a level that would moderate the tempo of population decline and make population aging easier to cope with. An additional counter to declining numbers, if not significantly to population aging, could come from net immigration. This is the demographic future assumed in the UN medium‐variant projections for countries and regions currently of very low fertility. Thus, for example, in Europe over the period up to 2050 fertility is assumed to rise to 1.85 and net immigration to amount to some 32 million persons. The UN projections also anticipate further improvement in average life expectancy–from its current level of 74 years to 81 years. This factor slows the decline in population size but accelerates population aging. Under these assumptions, Europe's population would decline from its present 728 million to 653 million by 2050. At that time the proportion of the population over age 65 would be 27.6 percent, nearly double its present share. Demographic change of this nature is not a novel prospect. It was envisioned in a number of European countries and in North America, Australia, and New Zealand in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Concern with the possible economic and social consequences generated much discussion at that time among demographers and social scientists at large and also attracted public attention. Possible policy measures that might reverse the downward trend of fertility were also debated, although resulting in only hesitant and largely inconsequential action. The article by D. V. Glass reproduced below is an especially lucid and concise treatment of demographic changes under conditions of low fertility and their economic and social implications. It appeared in Eugenics Review (vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 39–47) in 1937 when the author was 26 years old. Glass's line of argument is broadly representative of the main focus of demographic analysis in the mid‐1930s on aspects of population dynamics, applying the then still novel analytical tool of the stable population model. It also echoes the work of economists then witnessing the great difficulties capitalist economies faced in adjusting to structural changes in consumer demand and labor supply. While Glass addresses these issues primarily with reference to England and Wales, he sees the issues as affecting all industrialized countries. The Malthusian problem of relentless population growth he persuasively declares to be irrelevant for these countries. The Western world faces the opposite problem: population decline, a trend only temporarily masked by the effects of an age distribution that still has a relatively high proportion of women in the child‐bearing ages, reflecting the higher fertility level of the past. A stationary population, Glass cogently argues, is to be welcomed, and he considers the absolute size at which zero growth would be achieved relatively unimportant. In contrast, a continuous population decline would have “thoroughly disastrous” results in an individualist civilization and in “an unplanned economic system.” And, he concedes, somewhat quaintly, that sustained below‐replacement fertility would pose a great problem “even in a country in which the means of production were owned communally.” Glass's conclusions about the reversibility of low fertility are as pessimistic as those of most informed observers today. Still, he sees hope in a future “rationally planned civilization” that would “produce an environment in which high fertility and a high standard of life will both be possible.” In this context, high fertility means the level necessary to sustain the population in a stationary state. By present‐day standards the level Glass calculates as needed for long‐term zero growth is indeed fairly high: 2.87 children per woman. But that figure reflects the fact that, when he wrote, mortality up to age 50 was still fairly high and fertility occurred almost wholly within marriage; it also assumes zero net immigration. In the last 70 years much has changed in each of these three components of population dynamics, both in England and Wales and in the rest of Europe. Still, Glass's commentary remains highly relevant to the discussion of the problems of low fertility today. David Victor Glass (1911–78) was associated with the London School of Economics throughout much of his scientific career. He followed R. R. Kuczynski as reader in demography in 1945 and became professor of sociology in 1948. His work on demography, population history, and population policy had already made him one of the most influential demographers in pre‐World War II Britain. After the war he rose to international prominence through pioneering work on the Royal Commission of Population; through his research on historical demography, the history of demographic thought, and social mobility; and through founding, in 1947, the journal Population Studies, which he edited until his death.     

Changes in the Quantum of Russian Fertility During the 1980s and Early 1990s

To investigate whether Russia's dramatic fertility changes pre‐ and post‐Soviet times were due primarily to tempo effects, as has been argued recently, or to quantum effects, this study standardizes for factors that distort conventional fertility indexes. A time series spanning 1978–93 of period parity‐progression ratios for the Russian Federation is constructed applying the PADTFR technique, which takes into account age, parity, and time elapsed since the birth of the previous child, to data from the Russian micro census of February 1994 (2.8 million maternity histories). Both the fertility rise of the 1980s and the fertility fall of the early 1990s are found to be primarily due to changes in the probability of a second birth. The impact of tempo on the conventional TFR is significant, but of relatively minor magnitude in comparison to changes in the quantum of fertility. The social and economic context in which the fertility change took place is described.     

On Integrating Immigrants in Germany

Immigration to Germany in the decades following World War II made the Federal Republic the host of the largest number of immigrants in Europe. The size of the population with an immigration background is on the order of 15 million, nearly one‐fifth of the total population. (Many of these are ethnic German returnees.) Although restrictive policies and a less dynamic economy in recent years slowed the annual number of immigrants and asylum seekers, the interrelated demographic influences of very low fertility, negative natural population increase, and population aging make continuing future immigration likely and, judged by influential domestic interests, desirable. Anxieties about inadequate integration of immigrants in German society are, however, apparently strongly felt by large segments of the native population. The “Grand Coalition” government that took office in November 2005 considers the formation of an effective policy of integration a high priority. On 14 July 2006 an “Integration Summit” was convened in the Chancellery with the active participation of representatives of immigrant groups. Chancellor Angela Merkel called the Summit “an almost historical event.” Reproduced below in full is a non‐official English translation of a government statement (entitled “Good coexistence—Clear rules”) presented to the participants at the opening of the meeting. Intended as a “start of the development of a national integration plan,” the statement highlights existing deficiencies of integration, especially problems with second‐ and third‐generation immigrants: lack of mastery of the German language, weaknesses in education and training, high unemployment, lack of acceptance of the basic rules of coexistence, and violation of the law. The importance of these issues is underlined by a demographic fact noted in the statement: by 2010 it is expected that in Germany's large cities 50 percent of the population under age 40 will have an immigrant background. The statement recognizes the government's responsibility to help immigrants learn German and become better informed about the country's laws, culture, history, and political system. In turn, it demands reciprocal efforts from migrants living permanently and lawfully in Germany. The original German text of the statement is available at the Bundeskanzleramt home page: « http://www.bundesregierung.d »     

An Italian Statement on International Migration

Increasing realization of the implications of persisting below‐replacement fertility in Europe—shrinking absolute numbers combined with a rising proportion of the elderly—is giving new salience to policy considerations regarding immigration in the countries most affected by low fertility. The recent United Nations report on “replacement migration” (see the Documents section in the June 2000 PDR) highlighted the issue through illustrative calculations showing the size of immigrant streams that would be needed for achieving specified demographic targets in selected lowfertility countries, given continuation of present fertility and mortality trends. For example, the UN report suggested that in Italy—which has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world—maintaining a constant population over time would require a net influx of some 12.6 million immigrants during the next 50 years, and maintaining a constant labor forceage population (ages 15–64) would require a net inflow of 18.6 million. Yet immigration policy in Western Europe has become increasingly restrictive during the last quartercentury, and the official policy stance that regulating immigration is strictly within the domain of a country's sovereign right has been assiduously maintained. (International treaty obligations qualify that right in the case of bona fide asylum seekers; however, the definition of that category is also subject to the discretion of the receiving countries.) Thus, although within the European Union national borders are open to EU citizens, the power of regulating immigration from outside the EU is retained by the individual countries rather than subject to EU‐wide decisions. Suggestions coming from the developing countries to follow up the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development with an intergovernmental conference on international migration and development were set aside by the potential immigrant‐receiving countries as overly contentious. A statement by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Italy, Lamberto Dini, delivered at the 55th General Assembly of the United Nations, 13 September 2000, may be a sign of a notable shift in official approaches to immigration policy by at least one EU member state. The statement, in a departure from the practice of touching lightly upon a wide range of issues in international affairs, typical in high‐level ministerial speeches given at that UN forum, is devoted essentially to a single topic: international migration. It characterizes migration “between or within continents” as an international problem and advocates “coordinated and integrated” instruments in seeking a solution. It suggests that “today, with a declining birth rate and an aging population, Europe needs a strategy that embraces the complex process of integrating people from different regions of the world.” The rules for international migration, the statement claims, should be set in a global framework, such as provided by the United Nations. In the “age of globalization,”“a solidarity pact is needed to find the best and most effective way of balancing the supply and demand of labor.” With the omission of opening and closing ceremonial passages and a brief comment on the problem of debt relief, the statement is reproduced below.     

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.     

Relative cohort size: source of a unifying theory of global fertility transition

Using United Nations estimates of age structure and vital rates for 184 countries at five‐year intervals from 1950 through 1995, this article demonstrates how changes in relative cohort size appear to have affected patterns of fertility across countries since 1950—not just in developed countries, but perhaps even more importantly in developing countries as they pass through the demographic transition. The increase in relative cohort size (defined as the proportion of males aged 15–24 relative to males aged 25–59), which occurs as a result of declining mortality rates among infants, children, and young adults during the demographic transition, appears to act as the mechanism that determines when the fertility portion of the transition begins. As hypothesized by Richard Easterlin, the increasing proportion of young adults generates a downward pressure on young men's relative wages (or on the size of landhold‐ings passed on from parent to child), which in turn causes young adults to accept a tradeoff between family size and material wellbeing, setting in motion a “cascade” or “snowball” effect in which total fertility rates tumble as social norms regarding acceptable family sizes begin to change.     

Long‐Term Contribution of Immigration to Population Renewal in Canada: A Simulation

We analyze the direct and indirect demographic contribution of immigration to the foreign‐origin composition of the Canadian population according to various projection scenarios over a century, from 2006 to 2106. More specifically, we use Statistics Canada's Demosim microsimulation model to assess the long‐term sensitivity to immigration levels and the frequency of mixed unions of the share of immigrants in Canada and of persons who have at least one ancestor who arrived after 2006. The results of the simulations show that the population renewal process through immigration happens at a fast pace in a high immigration and low fertility country such as Canada. Under the scenarios developed, immigrants who entered after 2006 and their descendants could form the majority of the population by 2058 at the earliest and by 2079 at the latest and could represent between 62 percent and 88 percent in 2106. They also show that mixed unions are a key element of the speed at which the changes are likely to occur in the long run.     

Social Development Trends in Europe, 1970–1994: Development Prospects for the New Europe

The European region is undergoing dramatic social change. Among other regional and international forces, these changes are rooted in: the collapse of the former Soviet Union; the sudden appearance of a large number of “new” – mostly poor and politically unstable – European nations; and, the emergence of economic trading blocs in North America and Asia. At the same time, the majority of “established” European nations are experiencing sluggish rates of economic growth, moderate to high levels of inflation, high unemployment, escalating demands on public social services, and low fertility in combination with high rates of population aging and immigration from developing countries. Despite the seriousness of the dilemmas confronting the region, European development accomplishments of the past 25 years suggest that the region's leaders already possesses the resources required to solve its complex, social, political, and economic challenges.     

R. F. Harrod on Reviving the Birth Rate

Continuing below‐replacement fertility and projected declines in population size are demographic features of many European countries and Japan. They are variously met with complacent acceptance, calls for higher rates of immigration, or—often last and least—proposals for increasing the birth rate. Fertility was also low in the 1930s, and some of the policy debate from that period resonates today. In England and Wales, fertility then had been declining for half a century. Over the decade 1931–40, it averaged 1.8 children per woman—moreover, with net emigration. Worries over this situation and its likely consequences led to the setting up in 1944 of a Royal Commission on Population, charged with considering “what measures, if any, should be taken in the national interest to influence the future trend in population.” In a memorandum submitted to the Commission in that year, the economist R. F. Harrod set out a detailed proposal to encourage childbearing through a scheme of family endowments. Part of the introductory section of Harrod's submission, arguing the case for state intervention and for material rather than ‘spiritual’ measures, is reproduced below. An evident problem in offering economic incentives for childbearing is that, to induce a given behavioral change, well‐off families would require much larger incentives than the poor. Hence child endowments that aspire to effectiveness across the income distribution have to be skewed toward the upper end. Harrod argues that this is as it should be, that policy should establish neutrality between large and small family sizes, and that this is a conceptually separate issue from poverty alleviation. ‘We should seek a re‐distribution of national income favourable to the parents of larger families and the plan should be put into effect whether or not another re‐distribution as between rich and poor is proceeding at the same time.’ He remarks on the implausibility of the government's being able to ‘talk up’ fertility— thereby generating some kind of costless ideational change, a ‘spiritual aufklärung.’ Later pans of the submission not reprinted here cover the specific details of the proposal. The proposed annual benefit per child (intended for every child after the second, with half‐rates payable for the second child) is paid for 18 years. It is substantial and increases with the child's age—at ages 13–18, for most of the income range it amounts to 20–30 percent of the father's income (or mother's, if hers is higher). Harrod also discusses further the rationale for making the endowments (and the compulsory contributions—a flat 5 percent of income—that finance them) proportional to income. To make his case Harrod draws on the dysgenic and population‐quality arguments popular at the time: worry about ‘race decline’ and ‘a general lowering of standards and of efficiency if the parents who are best equipped in experience, knowledge and culture are relatively infertile.’ In the event, the Commission recommended a flat schedule of family allowances, together with tax exemptions for dependent children calculated to provide some income‐based benefit. These were justified on population as well as equity and welfare grounds, ‘since the handicaps of parenthood have played a large part in the fall of average family size below replacement level.‘ Population quality issues—the subject of several other submissions—were sidestepped by calling for further research. By the time the Commission's report was finally published, in 1949, the baby boom was well underway: average fertility over 1946–50 was 2.4. Roy Forbes Harrod (1900–78) was one of the foremost economists of his day. His career was largely spent at Christ Church College, Oxford. A student and sometime colleague of Keynes, his best‐known early work was centered on identifying a dynamic equilibrium growth path for the economy—building on Keynes's static equilibrium analysis. As stylized (by others), this came to be called the Harrod‐Domar growth model, a formulation basic to growth theory. Harrod was editor of the Economic Journal for the period 1945–66. He was active in politics and as an economic adviser to both Labour and Conservative governments. He was knighted in 1959. The extract is reprinted from volume 5 of the Papers of the Royal Commission on Population (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1950), pp. 80–85.     

The Apparent Failure of Russia's Pronatalist Family Policies

Russia has a history of pronatalist policies dating back to the 1930s. Two sets of pronatalist measures were implemented during the past 40 years. The one designed in the early 1980s proved to be a clear failure. Instead of raising fertility, completed cohort fertility declined from 1.8 births per woman for the 1960 birth cohort to 1.6 for the 1968 cohort. The government of President Putin became concerned with the dire demographic conditions of high mortality and low fertility in Russia in the 1990s and early 2000s. A comprehensive set of pronatalist measures came into effect in January 2007. The period total fertility rate increased from 1.3 births per woman in 2006 to 1.6 in 2011, which the authorities view as an unqualified success. An unbiased demographic evaluation as well as analyses of Russian experts reveals that apparently the measures mainly caused a lowering of the age at birth and shortening of birth intervals. It appears that any real fertility increase is questionable, i.e. cohort fertility is not likely to increase appreciably. The recent pronatalist measures are likely to turn out to be a failure.     

The Census Bureau on Prospects for US Population Growth in the Twenty‐First Century

The U.S. Census Bureau periodically releases projections of the US resident population, detailed by age, sex, race, and Hispanic origin. The most recent of these, issued 13 January 2000, for the first time extend to the year 2100 and also include information on the foreign‐bom population. (Earlier projections were carried up to 2080.) The extensive tabulations presenting the new set, and detailed explanation of the methodology and the assumptions underlying the projections, are accessible at the Census Bureau's web site: http://www.census.gov . A brief summary of some of the main results of these projections is reproduced below from United States Department of Commerce News, Washington, DC 20230. (The Census Bureau is an agency of the Department of Commerce.) Uncertainties as to future trends in fertility, mortality, and net migration over a period of some 100 years are very great, as is illustrated by the massive difference in the projected size of the population for 2100 in the three variants produced. The “middle” projected population figure of 571 million (which represents a growth of some 109 percent over its current level) is bracketed by “lowest” and “highest” alternative projections of 283 million and 1.18 billion, respectively. With somewhat lesser force, the point also applies to the 50‐year time span considered in the well‐known country‐by‐country projections of the United Nations. These projections are also detailed in three variants: low, middle, and high. The UN projections (last revised in 1998) envisage less rapid growth in the United States during the first part of the twenty‐first century than do the Census Bureau's. The projected population figures for 2050 in the three variants (low, middle, and high) are as follows (in millions):

More Deaths Than Births: Subnational Natural Decrease in Europe and the United States

This article examines the prevalence and dynamics of natural decrease in the subnational populations of Europe and the United States. Natural decrease results from interactions between fertility, mortality, and migration over a protracted period. We document the greater incidence and degree of natural decrease in Europe. In the first decade of the twenty‐first century, natural decrease occurred in 58 percent of European NUTS 3 areas (“counties”) compared to only 28 percent of the US counties. Three critical demographic variables (proportion over 65, child‐women ratio, and proportion of women of childbearing age) each exert a significant and distinct impact on the likelihood of natural decrease. Our spatial regression models reflect remarkable consistency in the influence of each of these variables in Europe and in the US, demonstrating the similarity in the demographic processes that produce natural decrease.     

Science,Modernity, and the Making of China's One‐Child Policy

China's one‐child‐per‐couple policy represents an extraordinary attempt to engineer national wealth, power, and global standing by drastically braking population growth. Despite the policy's external notoriety and internal might, its origins remain obscure. In the absence of scholarly research on this question, public discourse in the United States has been shaped by media representations portraying the policy as the product of a repressive communist regime. This article shows that the core ideas underlying the one‐child policy came instead from Western science, in particular from the Club of Rome's world‐in‐crisis work of the early 1970s. Drawing on research in science studies, the article analyzes the two notions lying at the policy's core—that China faced a virtual “population crisis” and that the one‐child policy was “the only solution” to it—as human constructs forged by specific groups of scientists working in particular, highly consequential contexts. It documents how the fundamentally political process of constituting population as an object of science and governance was then depoliticized by scientizing rhetorics that presented China's population crisis and its only solution as numerically describable, objective facts. By probing the human and historical character of population research, this article underscores the complexity of demographic knowledge‐making and the power of scientific practices in helping constitute demographic reality itself.     

Population Policy Dilemmas in Europe at the Dawn of the Twenty‐First Century

The article discusses issues raised by persistent below‐replacement fertility in Europe. The continent's demographic predicament is highlighted by comparing age structures and relative population sizes between populations in and outside Europe—such as those of Russia and Yemen and those of an enlarged 25‐country European Union and a 25‐country hinterland to the EU in North Africa and West Asia—during the past 50 years and prospectively up to 2050, based on United Nations estimates and projections. Potential geopolitical aspects of the population shifts are considered. European policy responses to them are found largely wanting. With respect to the key demographic variable, fertility, explicit pronatalism is rejected by most European governments. A set of policy measures that commands wide support, with the hoped‐for side effect of raising birth rates, seeks to make women's participation in the formal labor force compatible with childrearing. The effectiveness of such measures, however, is likely to be limited. Continued below‐replacement fertility, higher immigration from outside Europe, negative population growth, and loss of demographic weight within the global population are safe predictions for the Europe of the twenty‐first century.     

Dudley Kirk on Population Changes and Prospective Power Relations after World War II: A View from 1943

The theory of demographic transition in its best‐known modern formulation was developed in the early 1940s by a small group of researchers associated with Princeton University's Office of Population Research, under the leadership of Frank W. Notestein. A notable early adumbration of the theory in print—in fact preceding the most often cited contemporaneous articles by Notestein and by Kingsley Davis—was by Dudley Kirk, one of the Princeton demographers, in an article titled “Population changes and the postwar world,” originally presented by its author on 4 December 1943 at the 38th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Society, held in New York. It is reproduced below in full from the February 1944 issue of American Sociological Review (Vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 28–35). In the article Kirk, then 30 years old, briefly discusses essential elements of the concept of the demographic transition. He characterizes trends in birth and death rates as closely linked to developmental changes: to the transition “from a peasant, self‐sufficient society to an urban, industrial society.” He sees the countries of the world as arranged on a “single continuum of development” and, correspondingly, on a continuum of demographic configurations. These countries, he suggests, may be divided into three broad groups: the first, with high mortality and high fertility, possessing great potential population growth; the second, “caught up in the tide of industrialization and urbanization,” hence exhibiting birth and death rates that are both declining but in a pattern that generates rapid population growth; and a third, with low fertility and low mortality, pointing toward the prospect of eventual depopulation. He describes the temporal and geographic process of material progress and demographic change as one of cultural and technological diffusion emanating from the West. But Kirk's main interest in this article is the effects of the patterns generated by economic change and the ensuing demographic transition on shifts in relative power—military and economic—within the system of nations, both historically and in the then dawning postcolonial era. On the latter score, even if occasionally colored by judgments reflecting perspectives unsurprising in 1943, such as in his assessment of the economic potential of the Soviet Union, Kirk's probing of the likely consequences of evolving trends in power relationships as shaped by shifting economic and demographic weights—issues now largely neglected in population studies—is often penetrating and remarkably prescient. His views on the implication of these trends for the desirable American stance toward the economic and demographic modernization of less developed countries—friendly assistance resulting in rapid expansion of markets, and trade speeding a social evolution that also brings about slower population growth—represent what became an influential strand in postwar US foreign policy. Dudley Kirk was born 6 October 1913 in Rochester, New York, but grew up in California. After graduating from Pomona College, he received an M.A. in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University in 1935 and a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard in 1946. He was associated with Princeton's OPR between 1939 and 1947, where he published his influential monograph Europe's Population in the Interwar Years (1946) and, with Frank Notestein and others, coauthored the book The Future Population of Europe and the Soviet Union (1944). From 1947 to 1954 he was demographer in the Office of Intelligence Research of the US State Department, the first person having that title in the federal government. From 1954 to 1967 he was director of the Demographic Division of the Population Council in New York, and from 1967 until his retirement in 1979 he was professor of population studies at Stanford University. In 1959–60 he was president of the Population Association of America. Dudley Kirk died 14 March 2000 in San Jose, California.     

Oswald Spengler on Cosmopolis and Depopulation

Historians are professionally averse to grand civilizational themes, especially where predictions may be entailed. The German historian Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), whose membership in the academic fraternity of his discipline has often been questioned, was an exception. His two‐volume magnum opus. The Decline of the West, published in 1918 and 1922 (English translation, 1928), in its time attracted much public and professional attention. (It remains in print.) It presents an enormously ambitious tableau of universal history seen as the unfolding of the fates of eight cultures, with a focus on four main strands: Indian, Classical, Arabian, and Western. In Spengler's interpretation, imbued with cultural and historical pessimism, the West was exhibiting symptoms found in earlier civilizations in decline. “Civilization,” in Spengler's vision, was a stage that follows cultural flowering—creative manifestations of the culture's unique soul expressed in art and thought. Civilization's preoccupation is with the enjoyment of material comforts; the sequence from “culture” to “civilization” represents the very antithesis of progress. Spengler saw the West as having entered that latter phase in the nineteenth century: a phase in which, in the words of the synoptic chart appended to Volume 1 of The Decline of the West, “The body of the people, now essentially urban in constitution, dissolves into formless mass.” Urbanism, the emergence of “megalopolis,” or “cosmopolis“—the world city—is a distinguishing and crucial feature of that declining civilization. A passage (section V, including some translator's notes) from the chapter titled The Soul of the City in Vol. II of The Decline of the West, which has the subtitle Perspectives of World History, is reproduced below. It offers arresting characterizations of the morphology of urban forms and of the rise of the world city. As longer‐term consequences (for the West “between 2000 and 2200”) Spengler foresaw the “formation ofCeasarism”; “victory of force‐politics over money”; “increasing primi‐tiveness of political forms”; and “inward decline of the nations into a formless population, and constitution thereof as an Imperium of gradually increasing crudity and despotism.” As to demographic consequences, Spengler highlights the emerging “sterility of civilized man“—“an essentially metaphysical turn toward death.”“Children do not happen, not because children have become impossible, but principally because intelligence at the peak of intensity can no longer find any reason for their existence.”“Prudent limitation of the number of births” eventually leads to a “stage, which lasts for centuries, of appalling depopulation.” Immigration apart, the time scale specified by Spengler for depopulation—“for centuries”—may be seen today as relatively cautious. Should Europe's current period fertility level—slightly below a TFR of 1.4—be translated into cohort performance, it would yield an intrinsic annual rate of population growth of roughly ‐1.5 percent. Within 200 years, such a growth rate would reduce a population to 5 percent of its original size. From The Decline of the West: Volume 2 by Oswald Spengler, translated by C. F. Atkinson, copyright 1928 and renewed 1956 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.     

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.     

用孩次递进比模拟“全面二孩”政策调整初期的生育行为--以湖北省为例

以2014年湖北省卫生和计划生育委员会提供的包括“单独”、“双独”方面的数据为基础,描述了生育政策调整下被压抑的生育潜能释放的规律性和用孩次递进比的方法预测“全面二孩”政策调整初期的生育行为,与意愿分析方法相互比照,丰富了当下生育政策下生育行为预测研究。从分析结果可以看出,假定2016年“全面二孩”生育政策调整,湖北省第一年内会新增二孩出生量52621人,占湖北省2014年总出生量的7?41％;三年内最低会新增139262人的二孩生育量。城乡对比发现,农村新增二孩生育占到将近六成,且由抢生而导致的堆积主要集中在农村,40岁后的高龄抢生情况不严重。     

Emptying the Nest: Older Men in the United States, 1880–2000

Between 1880 and 2000, the percentage of married men 60 and older living only with their wives in empty nest households rose from 19 percent to 78 percent. Data drawn from the US census show that more than half of this transformation occurred in the 30‐year period from 1940 to 1970, bookended by moderate increases between 1880 and 1940 and very modest increases after 1970. Two literatures have presented demographic, cultural, and economic explanations for the decline in elderly co‐residence with their children, but none adequately accounts for a sharp change in the mid‐twentieth century. Both aggregate comparisons and multivariate analysis of factors influencing the living arrangements of elderly men suggest that economic advances for all age groups in the critical 30‐year period, along with trends in fertility and immigration, best explain the three‐stage shift that made the empty nest the dominant household form for older men by the beginning of the twenty‐first century.