SHORT REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Helen Macbeth and Paul Collinson (eds.) Human Population Dynamics: Cross‐Disciplinary Perspectives Jane Menken, Ann K. Blanc, and Cynthia B. Lloyd (eds.) Training and Support of Developing‐Country Population Scientists: A Panel Report Erin Phelps, Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., and Anne Colby (eds.) Looking at Lives: American Longitudinal Studies of the Twentieth Century Stephen H. Schneider, Armin Rosencranz, and John O. Niles (eds.) Climate Change Policy: A Survey United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Statistical Yearbook 2001: Refugees, Asylum‐seekers and Other Persons of Concern—Trends in Displacement, Protection and Solutions World Bank World Development Report 2003. Sustainable Development in a Dynamic World: Transforming Institutions, Growth, and Quality of Life World Health Organization World Health Report 2002: Reducing Risks, Promoting Healthy Life     

SHORT REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon 2006 State of the Future Ian Gold in and Kenneth Reinert Globalization for Development: Trade, Finance, Aid, Migration, and Policy Lindsey Grant (ed. ) The Case for Fewer People: The NPG Forum Papers Moni Nag Sex Workers of India: Diversity in Practice of Prostitution and Ways of Life United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs , Population Division Population, Resources, Environment and Development Database, Version 4.0 World Health Organization Working Together for Health: The World Health Report 2006     

Fertility Behaviour and Wealth Situation in Nigeria: Evidence from 2013 Demographic and Health Survey

With the growing interest in evaluation of quality of life, emerging number of methods are presented. Each contribution varies depending on the matter of interest, and all of them address the issue of subjective weighting factors. The objective of this paper is to explore possibilities to enhance Better Life ranking methodology, available from the Better Life initiative website, using I-distance method. The result was twofold: firstly, we pointed out potential shortcomings of subjectively chosen weights of Better Life ranking methodology by employing our I-distance approach. Secondly, we provided detailed information on how each Better Life indicator contributes to the final position and emphasize the essential indicators in the process of ranking. We have collected the latest available data for 2014, including all 24 indicators of the Better Life composite index. After that we have compared the two ways of rankings, i.e. the I-distance ranking and the Better Life ranking, emphasizing the improvement offered by the I-distance methodology. Further, through iterative exclusion of indicators based on the level of their significance, we have reached the highest quality of the model. That model includes the following six indicators: personal earnings, water quality, life satisfaction, household net adjusted disposable income, employment rate, rooms per person. Hereby, we have compared and presented ranking changes at each iteration for the top 10 countries, which offer a level of consistency in their rank. In addition, one of the objectives is to help policymakers focus on the key indicators in order to improve the ranking of the country, showing governments and administrations which indicators are the most important to invest into. Moreover, our approach could be the foundation for impartial framework of the quality of life’s assessment, independent of subjectively formed weighting factors.     

Alfred Sauvy: Statistician,Economist, Demographer and Iconoclast (1898–1990)

Articles appearing in this journal are indexed in Current Contents Environmental Periodicals Bibliography Population Index CICRED's Review Sociological Abstracts Geo Abstracts GEOBASE Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life.     

Appraisal of Lifecolon; ``Area' Versus ``Dimension' Conceptualizations

The aim of the present work was to study the relationship between theresponses given by participants from various age groups and situations toa life appraisal questionnaire constructed from an area (work, spouse,family, friends) x dimension (acceptance, autonomy, mastery, purpose)matrix. When subjected to confirmatory factor analyses, the response datawere more supportive of an ``area' model than of a ``dimension' model. Whensubjected to an exploratory factor analysis, they revealed a seven-factorunderlying structure, which was more easily interpreted in terms of areasthan in terms of dimensions, and the effects of age and gender on thesefactors were the expected ones. When this seven-factor structure waslinked to a global measure of well-being, only factors with a clear ``area'definition could explain a significant part of the variance. These factorswere Love life, Family life, Leisure, and Occupational Life.     

The Best Years of Life: A Study of Older Hong Kong Chinese

This study examines elderly respondents’ self-reported best years of life and the reasons to support their choices. A total of 842 Chinese people aged 60 and over participated in this cross-sectional study, giving an overall response rate of 91%. This study used information from an index entitled The Best Years of Life, which was developed in 1975 by the USA’s National Council on the Aging. The conceptual framework was informed by Daniel J. Levinson’s developmental theory. A little more than 50 percent of the respondents said the best years of life had been in pre-adulthood and early adulthood (ages 10–49), while about 23.5 percent the best years had been in late adulthood (age 60-plus). The patterns of the respondents’ self-reported best years of life showed considerable diversity, and no single pattern can be considered typical. The respondents’ unique personal experience may account for this.     

Quality of Life and Quality of Living Conditions in Rural Areas: Distinctively Perceived and Quantitatively Distinguished

In the last decades, large amount of effort and resources have been spent in projects and programs aiming to develop rural communities. The ultimate goal of such projects is supposed to be the improvement of the Quality of Life (QOL) of these communities. Although improving the Quality of the Living Conditions (QLC) is an acceptable strategy to reach that goal, all too often there is significant confusion between the two concepts. In this paper we argue that QLC and QOL can not be dissociated, but they are distinct. Our hypothesis is that we can make this distinction objectively. For that purpose, we develop an Index of the Quality of Living Conditions (IQLC) and an Index of the Quality of Life (IQOL). Each index is obtained by combining partial indicators of the conditions of several aspects in several dimensions (e.g., social, environmental, and economic). While the assessment of living conditions to obtain the IQLC is done by project staff, the IQOL is based on the manifestation of the farmers about their satisfaction in living those conditions. The IQLC and the IQOL result, then, from different views of the same aspects of life in a given context. Therefore, their objective measurement can be a useful instrument to evaluate the effectiveness of improvements on living conditions proposed by institutions and their professionals to improve the quality of life of rural communities.     

A pilot study in the use of the quality of life interview schedule

The purpose of this study was to refine the Quality of Life Interview Schedule (QUOLIS¢) approach to measuring the quality of life of developmentally handicapped adults who are unable to complete a written questionnaire or a verbal interview. Emphasis was placed on the evaluation of intra- and inter-rater agreement. Ten interviews were conducted. Informants were primarily parents and residential counselors. The results indicate that the QUOLIS¢ approach is generally acceptable to informants, the rating scales are sensitive, and the majority of scores have substantial to almost perfect correlations of intra- and inter-rater agreement.     

The Influence of Parent and Peer Attachments on Life Satisfaction in Middle Childhood and Early Adolescence

Satisfaction in different life domains wasexamined with respect to parent and peerattachment relationships in middle childhoodand early adolescence. Three hundred threestudents, evenly distributed across sex andgrade (fourth, sixth, and eighth) wereadministered People in My Life, ameasure of attachment relationships, and theMultidimensional Students' LifeSatisfaction Scale. Children and earlyadolescents in this sample generally reportedhigh levels of life satisfaction. Some sex andgrade differences in satisfaction with variouslife domains emerged. Attachments to bothparents and peers predicted life satisfaction,although the influence of these relationshipsvaried as a function of grade level and lifedomain. Findings are reviewed in relation topast research, and implications forprofessional practice are discussed.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this issue. Michelle Goldberg
The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World Barry Popkin
The World Is Fat: The Fads, Trends, Policies, and Products That Are Fattening the Human Race SHORT REVIEWS by John Bongaarts, Susan Greenhalgh, Geoffrey McNicoll David Fitzgerald
A Nation of Emigrants: How Mexico Manages Its Migration M. Michel Garenne
Fertility Changes in Sub‐Saharan Africa Hervé Le Bras
The Nature of Demography James Lovelock
The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning Randall M. Packard
The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria Antoine Pecoud and Paul de Guchteneire (eds .)
Migration without Borders: Essays on the Free Movement of People     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this articles: Paul Collier The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It Michael J. Rosenfeld The Age of Independence: Interracial Unions, Same‐Sex Unions, and the Changing American Family Wolfgang Lutz , Rudolf Richter , and Chris Wilson (EDS.) The New Generations of Europeans: Demography and Families in the Enlarged European Union Laura L. Lovett Conceiving the Future: Pronatalism, Reproduction, and the Family in the United States, 1890–1938 Michel Foucault Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–78 SHORT REVIEWS Sudhir Anand , Fabienne Peter , and Amartya Sen (EDS.) Public Health, Ethics, and Equity James Chin The AIDS Pandemic: The Collision of Epidemiology with Political Correctness Jennifer Cole and Deborah Durham (EDS.) Generations and Globalization: Youth, Age, and Family in the New World Economy Wayne A. Cornelius AND Jessa M. Lewis (EDS.) Impacts of Border Enforcement on Mexican Migration: The View from Sending Communities Rashid Hassan , Robert Scholes , and Neville Ash (EDS.) Ecosystems and Human Well‐being: Volume 1, Current State and Trends Matthias Koch , Claus Harmer , and Florian Coulmas Trilingual Glossary of Demographic Terminology: English‐Japanese‐German/ Japanese‐English‐German/German‐Japanese‐English Ian Pool , Arunachalam Dharmalingam , and Janet Sceats The New Zealand Family from 1840: A Demographic History     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this articles: Taking Stock of Population Studies: A Review Essay Review of Graziella Caselli, Jacques Vallin, and Guillaume Wunsch (eds.) Demography: Analysis and Synthesis Contesting the Cause and Severity of the Black Death: A Review Essay Review of Ole J. Benedictow, The Black Death, 1346–1353: The Complete History Saul Halfon The Cairo Consensus: Demographic Surveys, Women's Empowerment, and Regime Change in Population Policy Helen Epstein The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS SHORT REVIEWS Andrea Cornwall , Elizabeth Harrison, and Ann Whitehead (eds.) Feminisms in Development: Contradictions, Contestations and Challenges Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung The Foreign‐Born Population of the United States: 1850 to 2000 Claude Got , Patricia Delhomme, and Sylvain Lassarre More Could Be Done to Prevent Road Deaths in France Devesh Kapur and John Mc Hale Give Us Your Best and Brightest: The Global Hunt for Talent and Its Impact on the Developing World Esther Katz (ed.) The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger. Volume 2: Birth Control Comes of Age, 1928–1939 Ça?lar Özden and Maurice Schiff (eds.) International Migration, Remittances, and the Brain Drain United Nations Population Fund State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this articles. John F. Kantner and Andrew Kantner The Struggle for International Consensus on Population and Development World Bank World Development Report 2007: Development and the Next Generation Lyla M. Hernandez and Dan G. Blazer (eds .) Genes, Behavior, and the Social Environment: Moving Beyond the Nature/NurtureDebate. World Bank Global Economic Prospects 2007: Managing the Next Wave of Globalization Daniel Jordan Smith A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria Ian Bannon and Maria C. Correia (eds .) The Other Half of Gender: Men's Issues in Development John Broome Weighing Lives Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations The State of Food and Agriculture: Agricultural Trade and Poverty: Can Trade Work for the Poor? John Glad Future Human Evolution: Eugenics in the Twenty‐First Century United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report 2006. Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis     

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Christopher Wills, Children of Prometheus: The Accelerating Pace of Human Evolution Helen Fisher, The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World Lionel Tiger, The Decline of Males Francis Fukuyama, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order Tom Kirkwood, Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Aging Margo J. Anderson And Stephen E. Fienberg, Who Counts? The Politics of Census-Taking in Contemporary America Alain Desrosières, The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning. Translation by Camille Naish of La politique des grands nombres: histoire de la raison statistique. Henk A. de Gans, Population Forecasting 1895–1945: The Transition to Modernity Massimo Livi-Bacci and Gustavo De Santis (eds.), Population and Poverty in the Developing World William A. Jackson, The Political Economy of Population Ageing Dorothy J. Solinger, Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State, and the Logic of the Market     

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this issue. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger Susan E. Klepp
Revolutionary Conceptions: Women, Fertility, and Family Limitation in America, 1760–1820 SHORT REVIEWS
by John Bongaarts, Susan Greenhalgh, Geoffrey McNicoll John Higley , John Nieuwenhuysen, and Stine Neerup (eds .)
Nations of Immigrants: Australia and the USA Compared Michael Lipton
Land Reform in Developing Countries: Property Rights and Property Wrongs Angus Maddison
Contours of the World Economy, 1–2030 AD: Essays in Macro‐Economic History OECD
Doing Better for Children United Nations Development Programme
Human Development Report 2009: Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development Yunxiang Yan
The Individualization of Chinese Society     

SHORT REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Adele E. Clarke , Disciplining Reproduction: Modernity, American Life Sciences, and “the Problems of Sex” Delia Davin , Internal Migration in Contemporary China Anton Kuijsten, Henk de Gans, and Henk de Feijter (eds.) The Joy of Demography… and Other Disciplines: Essays in Honour of Dirk van de Kaa William Petersen , Malthus: Founder of Modern Demography Eric B. Ross , The Malthus Factor: Population, Poverty and Politics in Capitalist Development Nicholas Van Hear , New Diasporas: The Mass Exodus, Dispersal and Regrouping of Migrant Communities Thomas M. Wilson and Hastings Donnan (eds.) , Border Identities: Nation and State at International Frontiers     

In Defense of Death and the Shorter,Sweeter Life: A Review Essay*

Books reviewed in this issue. Nancy Folbre
Greed, Lust and Gender: A History of Economic Ideas Joel Mokyr
The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700–1850 Robert M. Milardo
The Forgotten Kin: Aunts and Uncles Nathan Keyfitz and Hal Caswell
Applied Mathematical Demography (Third Edition) SHORT REVIEWS Paul Collier
The Plundered Planet: Why We Must—and How We Can—Manage Nature for Global Prosperity Marcia C. Inhorn , Tine Tjornhoj‐ Thomsen , Helene Goldberg , and Maruska la Cour Mosegaard (eds. )
Reconceiving the Second Sex: Men, Masculinity, and Reproduction Elizabeth L. Krause
Unraveled: A Weaver's Tale of Life Gone Modern Fred Pearce
The Coming Population Crash: And Our Planet's Surprising Future Vaclav Smil
Why America Is Not a New Rome Joel P. Trachtman
The International Law of Economic Migration: Toward the Fourth Freedom US Department of Agriculture , Economic Research Service Food Security Assessment, 2010–20 Vienna Yearbook of Population Research 2009 (David Coleman and Dalkhat Ediev , Guest editors )
Special Issue on “Impact of Migration on Demographic Change and Composition in Europe”     

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this issue. Christopher Caldwell
Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West Andrew J. Cherlin
The Marriage‐Go‐Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today David Boyd Haycock
Mortal Coil: A Short History of Living Longer SHORT REVIEWS
by Sajeda Amin, John Bongaarts, Susan Greenhalgh, Geoffrey McNicoll Daryl Collins , Jonathan Morduch , Stuart Rutherford, and Orlanda Ruthven
Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 a day Susan A. Crate and Mark Nuttall (eds .)
Anthropology and Climate Change: From Encounters to Actions Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers (eds .)
Gender Equality: Transforming Family Divisions of Labor George Martine , Gordon Mc Granahan , Mark Montgomery, and Rogelio Fernández ‐Castilla (eds .)
The New Global Frontier: Urbanization, Poverty and Environment in the 21st Century Dambisa Moyo
Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa Vaclav Smil
Oil: A Beginner's Guide Peter Uhlenberg (ed .)
International Handbook of Population Aging United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction Secretariat
2009 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction: Risk and Poverty in a Changing Climate     

SHORT REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Neil J. Diamant, Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949–1968 International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, World Disasters Report 2000: Focus on Public Health Christian Joppke, Immigration and the Nation‐State: The United States, Germany, and Great Britain Peng Xizhe with Guo Zhigang (eds.), The Changing Population of China Sebastiao Salgado, Migrations: Humanity in Transition United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2000 United Nations Population Division, The World at Six Billion United Nations Population Division, World Population Monitoring 1998. Health and Mortality: Selected Aspects World Bank, Can Africa Claim the 21st Century?     

SHORT REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Tom Athanasiou, Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor Ester Boserup, My Professional Life and Publications 1929–1998 Joachim von Braun, Tesfaye Tekxu, and Patrick Webb, Famine in Africa: Causes, Responses, and Prevention John Brotchie, Peter Newton, Peter Hall, and John Dickey (eds.), East West Perspectives on 21st Century Urban Development: Sustainable Eastern and Western Cities in the New Millennium Alex de Sherbinin and Victoria Dompka (eds.), Water and Population Dynamics: Case Studies and Policy Implications Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg, Plundered Kitchens, Empty Wombs: Threatened Reproduction and Identity in the Cameroon Grassfields Peter H. Gleick, The World's Water 1998–1999: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources Inge Kaul, Isabelle Grunberg, and Marc A. Stern (eds.), Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century Patricia W. Lunneborg, The Chosen Lives of Childfree Men Thomas Gale Moore, Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn't Worry About Global Warming United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 1998 Revision. Volume I: Comprehensive Tables; Volume II: The Sex and Age Distribution of the World Population US Agency for International Development and US Department of Commerce, World Population Profile: 1998, with a Special Chapter Focusing on HIV I AIDS in the Developing World