Demographic Trends in Ukraine: Past,Present, and Future

Ukraine, during the first half of the twentieth century, underwent a series of man‐made demographic catastrophes—World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, the 1932/33 famine linked to land collectivization, the massive deportations and executions of Stalin's Great Terror, and World War II. This article assembles estimates of the demographic impact of these deadly events. In their absence, it is estimated that Ukraine's hypothetical population would have been 87 million on the eve of independence in 1991, instead of its actual 52 million. Pre‐independence demographic losses were episodic and driven by external forces. By contrast, since independence in 1991, Ukraine has experienced a sustained demographic crisis of its own making. Ukraine's population declined from 52 million in 1990 to 45 million by 2013. Fertility, while it has recovered from its lowest point, remains at a TFR of about 1.5—far below replacement. Emigration, although the greatest hemorrhage of young people in the 1990s is over, is still of concern. The loss of Crimea and the unsettled state of affairs in Southeastern Ukraine give further cause for concern.     

农村青年的现状和未来

2005年10月20~22日中国人民大学人口与发展研究中心在联合国教科文组织的资助下主办召开了“改革开放中的农村青年人口问题”全国学术研讨会。来自国务院各部委的官员和决策者,以及全国各地百余位人口学、社会学者以及青少年工作者参加了此次会议。与会代表就改革开放中农村青年面临的问题和挑战,主要涉及农民工问题、农村教育与发展、人力资本与青年发展、生殖健康与计划生育、价值观与代际关系以及流动儿童等问题进行了交流和探讨。本刊这一期特别设立“农村青年人口论坛”,发表中共中央办公厅研究员李荣时、农业部政策法规司巡视员张红宇、国务院研究室社会司副司长邓文奎在大会上的发言,以期引起对农村青年人口问题更广泛关注和更深入探讨。     

Quality of Life in Hong Kong: Past Accomplishments And Future Prospects

Following several decades of rapid economic expansion, development in Hong Kong has arrived at a new crossroads. The pace of economic growth is no longer as rapid as during earlier decades, competition with other East Asian societies has grown more acute and many of the territory’s recurrent, sometimes hidden, social problems appear to be undermining selected aspects of Hong Kong’s quality of life. And Hong Kong’s political tensions with the central government in Beijing have become more confrontational since its return in 1997 to Chinese political sovereignty. This article: (1) summarizes the current state of social development in Hong Kong; (2) identifies the major social, political and economic challenges that confront Hong Kong at the beginning of a new development decade; (3) compares selected aspects of Hong Kong’s social development with that of other East Asian societies; and (4) suggests a variety of policy options that are available to leaders in Hong Kong’s for promoting a more balanced approach to social and economic development. The article also illustrates the use of social reports and social reporting in advancing development assessment and planning.     

现行生育政策与未来家庭结构

本文从探讨“四二一”家庭数量研究的操作性困难入手，提出了“Ｘ二”家庭的研究命题，提高了分析的操作性，并使该研究具有一般意义。本文抓住独生子女属性这一关键，以１９９０年人口普查数据为基数，对中国现行生育政策不变条件下子女一代队列的终身独生子女比例进行了估计，进而计算了不同时期成年人口中的独生子女比例，在此基础上估计出时期城乡成年人口按独生子女属性划分的不同类型婚姻组合的期望概率，借以描述现行生育政策对未来家庭结构变化的影响和未来家庭结构变化的程度。     

The Future Direction of Social Indicator Research

Social Indicators Research -     

The Movement Beyond (Lifestyle) Migration: Mobile Practices and the Constitution of a Better Way of Life

Abstract

This article revisits my ethnography of the British in rural France to question how mobility in post‐migration life was deemed intrinsic to the better way of life that they sought through their migration. Through the exploration of the migrants’ everyday lives, I reveal that the migrants’ mobile practices and their expectations of mobility contributed towards the perceived success of their new lives and were thus significant to the ongoing process getting to a better way of life. Beyond this example, the article also demonstrates how the findings of mobilities researchers may be mobilized in traditional anthropological fieldwork.     

Importance is Not Unimportant: The Role of Importance Weighting in QOL Measures

The effect of relative domain importance as a weighting mechanism in quality of life (QoL) measures has been a topic of debate for decades. Studies investigating the role of domain importance in QoL measures have produced mixed results. The mixed results may very well be the consequences of a limited choice of global satisfaction or QoL measures, measurements of domain satisfaction, measurements of domain importance and weighting approaches applied to date. This study investigated the effect of importance weighting without assigning any arbitrary weighting function of domain importance. A cluster analysis was first used to classify individuals into groups, based on their perceived importance of various life domains, and then the relationship between global life satisfaction measure and the composite of domain satisfaction scores between these groups was compared. Results of this study showed that the relationship between global life satisfaction and composite of satisfaction scores did not remain consistent for respondents with different importance rankings of major life domains, which suggested an important effect of domain importance in QoL measures.     

The Demography of Future Global Population Aging: Indicators,Uncertainty, and Educational Composition

This is an expanded version of comments on the future of the demography of aging at an invited session of the 2008 annual meeting of the Population Association of America. In an introduction, John Haaga offers reasons for a revival of interest in population aging, including greater realization of plasticity in aging trajectories at both individual and societal levels. Linda Martin proposes that population scientists working in aging emulate those studying fertility and family planning in previous decades, learning from interventions (in this case, aimed at increasing retirement savings and reducing disability at older ages). Changes in family structure will increasingly affect new cohorts of the elderly, and Linda Waite speculates on the ways in which changes in the economy, medicine, and the legal environment could affect the social context for aging. Research on mortality at older ages is “alive and well” asserts James Vaupel, who sets out six large questions on mortality trends and differentials over time and across species. Lastly, Wolfgang Lutz expands the scope of projections, showing the considerable uncertainty about the timing and pace of population aging in the developing world and the effects on future elderly of the increases in educational attainment in much of the world during the second half of the twentieth century.     

Australian primary maternity units: Past,present and future

Primary maternity units are commonly those run by midwives who provide care to women with low-risk pregnancies with no obstetric, anaesthetic, laboratory or paediatric support available on-site. In some other countries, primary level maternity units play an important role in offering equitable and accessible maternity care to women with low-risk pregnancies, particularly in rural and remote areas. However there are very few primary maternity units in Australia, largely due to the fact that over the past 200 years, the concept of safety has become inherently linked with the immediate on-site availability of specialist medical support.The purpose if this paper is to explore the various drivers and barriers to the sustainability of primary maternity units in Australia. It firstly looks at the historical antecedents that shaped primary level maternity services in Australia, from the time of colonisation to now. During this period the space and management of childbirth moved from home and midwifery-led settings to obstetric-led hospitals. Following on from this an analysis of recent political events shows how Australian government policy both supports and undermines the potential of primary maternity units. It is important that researchers, clinicians and policy makers understand the past in order to manage the challenges facing the development and maintenance of midwifery-led maternity services, in particular primary maternity units, in Australia today.     

The Commission on Population Growth and the American Future: its origins,operations, and aftermath

The origins, organization, and operation of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future and the response to its report are described. The origins of the Commission are traced to a concern with the consequences of U.S. population growth on the part of such key individuals as John D. Rockefeller 3rd and Paul Ehrlich. Because the Commission was a statutory creation of Congress, its membership included 4 Congressmen in addition to 20 distinguished citizens representing a spectrum of groups and views. The evaluation of the consequences of growth, as opposed to the means of reducing fertility, became the major concern of the research effort. Several issues led to differences within the Commission: 1) A narrow versus a broad definition of the scope of the report; 2) differing perceptions of the population problem as manifested by the ecological view, the "unwanted fertility" school, and the social justice view. The social science work contracted by the Commission had a significant impact on the final report's substance: 1) the demographic work on population projections was crucial to the analysis of the consequences of growth; 2) evaluating the demographic capability of national "growth center strategy" had an influence; and 3) the need to eliminate unwanted fertility was confirmed as a necessary priority. The basic thrust of the Commission's report was to recomment slowing growth in order to maximize the quality of life.     

The legacies of context: Past and present influences on contraceptive choice in Nang Rong,Thailand

This study explores the ways in which women's contraceptive behavior in a rural area of Thailand is shaped by both past and present context, based on the life course framework. Although the importance of contextual influences for contraceptive behavior is well established in the literature, relatively little research has been conducted that explores how behavior is influenced by historical and contemporaneous contextual factors and by individual life experiences. In addition, much of this research has neglected the role of the normative environment within which contraceptive use takes place. The focus of this paper centers on the effect of contraceptive environment at both early and late stages of the life course and on how this effect is shaped by individual experience with migration to urban areas. This study takes advantage of a unique, prospective longitudinal data set with detailed information on community context at multiple points in time, an important improvement upon prior research. The results show that contraceptive behavior is particularly responsive to current community context, with past context primarily exerting an indirect effect on behavior through shaping current contextual influences.