Stochastic Population Forecasting Based on Combinations of Expert Evaluations Within the Bayesian Paradigm

This article suggests a procedure to derive stochastic population forecasts adopting an expert-based approach. As in previous work by Billari et al. (2012), experts are required to provide evaluations, in the form of conditional and unconditional scenarios, on summary indicators of the demographic components determining the population evolution: that is, fertility, mortality, and migration. Here, two main purposes are pursued. First, the demographic components are allowed to have some kind of dependence. Second, as a result of the existence of a body of shared information, possible correlations among experts are taken into account. In both cases, the dependence structure is not imposed by the researcher but rather is indirectly derived through the scenarios elicited from the experts. To address these issues, the method is based on a mixture model, within the so-called Supra-Bayesian approach, according to which expert evaluations are treated as data. The derived posterior distribution for the demographic indicators of interest is used as forecasting distribution, and a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm is designed to approximate this posterior. This article provides the questionnaire designed by the authors to collect expert opinions. Finally, an application to the forecast of the Italian population from 2010 to 2065 is proposed.     

American Catholicism and the International Family Planning Movement

This paper examines the role of the American Catholic Church in the international family planning movement and discusses elements of the Catholic opposition to birth control. The paper argues that the reaction of American Catholics to government support for contraceptive services was based not only on the Church's condemnation of particular contraceptive methods, but also on a variety of other factors including class and ethnic hostility between Catholics and the promoters of family planning, jurisdictional disputes over what institutions would guide family life, the perceived threat that government support of family planning was to the authority of the Church and the Church's understanding of sex and women. The role of an American theology of political compromise and accommodation in mitigating the American Catholic Church's opposition to organized family planning is assessed.     

政府购买卫生计生基本公共服务研究

由于人口众多、需求多样并存在财政的刚性约束,通过政府购买方式推进基本卫生计生公共服务是时势所需。以是否政府核心职能、服务质量度量难易、服务可描述性、监督难易、竞争程度、居民需求、政府财力七个因素为指标,通过专家小组讨论法,对各项卫生计生基本公共服务的可购买性及可控性、可外包性做出了评定,并讨论了购买承接方选择、购买模式、央地分工、“十三五”路线图等问题。还针对近年来各地在购买卫生计生基本公共服务中遇到的资质要求不一、绩效评估不科学、公众不信任、无谓服务突出等问题,提出了相应的对策措施。     

特大城市如何调控人口规模?

随着城市化快速推进,我国的大城市发展迅速,特大城市①从1997年的34个增长到2007年的63个。近年来,某些特大城市显现出来的一系列交通拥堵、资源匮乏、环境污染、住房紧张、公共服务失衡等城市问题,引发了各方热议。特大城市人口规模如何调控?如何管理,越来越成为各方关注的热点和焦点。以往在优先发展大城市还是优先发展小城镇方面一直存在着分歧,对城市人     

Staatsbildungsprozesse und Figurationen rebellischen Verhaltens

The paper compares rebellious behavior and violence described in folk lyrics of Austrian poacher songs and the American ?WildWest“ outlaw songs. There are significant differences in the degree and in the importance of violence between these particular folk traditions. Thus, these songs help to understand emotional aspects of the state-building process which are widely neglected by merely macro-sociological accounts. In the context of the Civilizing Theory, the paper poses the question why in some cases themyth of the rebel-hero is based on violence like in the American outlaw songs. Other cases know the glorification of non-violent rebellious behavior as well like the Austrian poacher songs which regards violence as dishonorable. These results cause some modifications in the theories of the state-building process because emotions may play a more central role to justify or to de-stabilize power and domination.     

The World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization: On the Cross‐Border Movement of People

The globalization of the world economy can be measured in terms of increases in international trade, greater levels of foreign investment and technology transfers, and the liberalization of financial markets. Accompanying and facilitating these trends have been institutional innovations and reforms, creating regimes under which international economic relationships can be managed and disputes resolved. The role of the World Trade Organization is an evident case in point. The rising scale of international migration can also be seen as a globalizing trend. Here, however, with the exception of the special case of refugees, there is no governance regime in place or in prospect at the international level. Occasional past efforts by UN agencies to stimulate formal discussion of what such a regime might look like have led nowhere: countries are simply unwilling to contemplate any weakening of their sovereign right to control entry. Proposing how to fill this perceived lacuna in the international system is one of the tasks on the agenda of the Global Commission on International Migration. The Commission, an independent body set up in 2003 by a small group of UN member states, plans to present a report to the UN Secretary‐General in mid‐2005. In the meantime, the subject has been explored by another group—the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization. This commission was set up by the International Labour Office in 2002. It was co‐chaired by Tarja Halonen, president of Finland, and Benjamin William Mkapa, president of Tanzania. Its 24 other members included economists (among them Deepak Nayyar, Hernando de Soto, and Joseph Stiglitz), politicians, and business and labor leaders, as well as a number of ex‐officio ILO representatives. After several meetings and an extensive series of consultations held during 2002 and 2003, its report, A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All, was issued in February 2004. The report argues that the benefits of globalization must be more equitably distributed. To this end, the globalizing trends in the world economy should be matched by similar advances in social and political institutions. One of the features of the existing imbalance is that “goods and capital move much more freely across borders than people do.” In addition to the many other recommendations the Commission has for what it terms the governance of globalization are proposals on the management of international migration. “Fair rules for trade and capital,” the Commission argues, “need to be complemented by fair rules for the movement of people.” The long‐run objective should be “a multilateral framework for immigration laws and consular practices˙˙˙that would govern cross‐border movement of people,” paralleling “the multilateral frameworks that already exist, or are currently under discussion, concerning the cross‐border movement of goods, services, technology, investment and information.” The Commission's thinking on migration is in some respects reminiscent of the views of the ILO's first director, Albert Thomas, in the days of the League of Nations. Writing in 1927, Thomas envisioned, if only as a distant ideal, “some sort of supreme supernational authority which would regulate the distribution of population on rational and impartial lines, by controlling and directing migration movements and deciding on the opening‐up or closing of countries to particular streams of immigration.” (See the Archives section of PDR 9, no. 4.) The excerpt below consists of §428–§446 of the report, a section titled The cross‐border movement of people.     

Effect of aggregation on the estimation of trend in mortality

There are three approaches to analyzing and forecasting age‐specific mortality: (1) analyze age‐specific data directly, (2) analyze each cause‐specific mortality series separately and add the results, (3) analyze cause‐specific mortality series jointly and add the results. We show that if linear models are used for cause‐specific mortality, then the three approaches often give close results even when cause‐specific series are correlated. This result holds for cross‐correlations arising from random misclassification of deaths by cause, and also for certain patterns of systematic misclassification. It need not hold, if one or more causes serve as “leading indicators”; for the remaining causes, or if outside information is incorporated into forecasting either through expert judgment or formal statistical modeling. Under highly nonlinear models or in the presence of modeling error the result may also fail. The results are illustrated with U.S. age‐specific mortality data from 1968–1985. In some cases the aggregate forecasts appear to be the more credible ones.     

The Influence of the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation Normative Content in Measuring the Level of Service

Human Rights to Water and Sanitation (HRWS) have been consolidated as relevant frameworks to measure different levels of services. It is essential to move forward with specific initiatives that interpret the content of these human rights and operationalize them through specific metrics. However, some critical issues emerge in attempting this. Different approaches are proposed in this article to tackle this challenge: (1) utilizing a participatory technique to discuss the relative importance of the normative criteria to define water and sanitation services, (2) defining a short list of key indicators to measure the different dimensions of HRWS, and (3) assessing the impact of different weighting systems in the constructing an aggregated index, which has been proposed as a useful tool to monitor water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) from a rights perspective. Two municipalities (in Mozambique and Nicaragua) were selected as initial case studies. The results suggest that there is a common understanding among the experts about prioritization of the HRWS criteria. Differences in the relative importance given to the HRWS criteria can be explained due to the particularities of the local context. Further, the research suggests that expert opinions may be partially conditioned by targets and indicators proposed at the international level. Although the influence of weighting techniques on aggregated measures and their utilization in the decision-making process are limited, this methodology has a great potential for adapting specific WASH metrics to different regional, national, and/or local contexts taking into account the HRWS normative content.     

Peer counseling: the young helping the young

Reports on the use of peer counseling in sex and fertility control for adolescents in the Philippines. Among the programs described are the early and innovative program at De La Salle University, which includes a telephone hotline; a similar phone service used by the Kapatiran sa Kaunlara Foundation in Manila; and the Catholic Education Association of the Philippines. Universitites in Manila and other cities have also developed programs. The types of problems peer counselors are likely to encounter and ways in which they are frequently handled are noted, the importance of sound training is stated, and the key role of experience in the development of good counselors is emphasized. Counselors are generally offered some kind of incentive (college credits or an honorarium) but the personal rewards are noted as being possibly more significant.     

Judicial intervention as policy: Impacts on population distribution and redistribution in urban areas in the United States

Two interrelated issues have increasingly occupied the attention of the courts, as judges, lawyers and expert witnesses wrestle with the issue of school desegregation and mandatory busing. The first of these issues concerns the extent to which there are causal relationships between schools and housing patterns, while the second issue revolves around the impact of mandatory busing on white flight (either as population relocation or public school abandonment). The courts have chosen to accept the tenuous argument of a causative relationship between schools and housing and to downplay the considerable impacts of their court orders requiring mandatory busing. These court orders have directly influenced population distributions and may affect population redistribution in the future.     

现阶段中国移民对俄远东地区经济发展绩效分析

现阶段俄远东地区人口形势持续恶化,外国劳动力促进地区经济发展的效应日益显现,其中中国移民对远东经济的稳定与发展起着十分重要的作用。中国移民加入远东经济建设对一些发展不力的产业部门如农业、木材采伐与加工业、市场零售业、公共饮食业起到积极的促进作用。从俄区域经济发展角度来看,吸纳中国移民是地区经济发展的必然选择。     

Women–Family in Quality Perspective

Bringing together women and family in quality perspective bring about interesting discussions in this paper. By integrating previous studies and considering expert opinions, we determinate the variables and dimensions with respect to women’s existence regarding their roles both in the family and at work. Many activities carried out by women represent the consumer aspects of their role. Women undertake these activities to fulfill their needs, which can be classified in the order of preference using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need. Women success can be measured based on their ability to perform their roles successfully. We identify women’s performance by using quality approach of Personal Quality Maintenance (PQM), which is widely applied in many organizations in order to maintain the service delivery, which meets the customer satisfaction. The effort to enhance women’s satisfaction for their success in playing the multirole in the family and at work is our main consideration. This study may contribute a new point of view regarding for the women’s welfare and existence.     

Gender dysphoric/gender variant (GD/GV) children and adolescents: summarizing what we know and what we have yet to learn

The optimal approach to treating minors with gender dysphoria/gender variance (GD/GV) is much more controversial than treating these phenomena in adults. This is because children have limited capacity to participate in decision making regarding their own treatment, and even adolescents have no legal ability to provide informed consent. Minors must, therefore, depend on parents or other caregivers to make treatment decisions on their behalf, including those that will influence the course of their lives in the long term. Presently, the highest level of evidence available for selecting among the various approaches to treatment is best characterized as "expert opinion." Yet, opinions vary widely among experts and are influenced by theoretical orientation and assumptions and beliefs regarding the origins of gender identity, as well as its perceived malleability at particular stages of development. This article outlines some of the more salient points raised by the clinicians who treat GD/GV and their discussants. This article summarizes what the editors believe is known and what has yet to be learned about minors with GD/GV, their families, their treatment, and their surrounding cultures.     

Gaydar: a social-cognitive analysis

Gaydar is a popular culture term that refers to the ability for one individual to correctly identify the sexual orientation of another. Recent studies have documented a phenomenon that mirrors gaydar. The purpose of this paper is to provide a cognitive analysis of the "gaydar" phenomenon. Gaydar is best regarded as a high skill. As such, work in the areas of expert-novice research and cognitive apprenticeship is relevant. Determining someone's sexual orientation is a problem to be solved. Gay and lesbian individuals are more likely to have participated in informal social training or apprenticeship to become "expert" at it, especially in comparison with heterosexual individuals. Cultural forces prompt the necessity for a skill like gaydar.     

That Teenage Feeling

This article deconstructs news media representations of two custody abductions that took place in Aotearoa New Zealand in the mid-2000s. In the first case, the father abducted his five-month-old daughter; in the second case, the mother was held responsible for the abduction of her six-year-old son even though he was in the presence of his maternal grandfather. The analysis demonstrates that the media's pejorative construction of the mothers at the center of both cases was facilitated by a number of significant gaps and silences in the narration of the abductions. These silences, in lending support to a fathers' rights construction of custody disputes in which mothers are to blame for dispossessing fathers of their children, reveal the media's reliance on pro-father discourses, particularly fathers' rights discourse.     

Using Capabilities as an Alternative Indicator for Well-being

This paper examines the potential of self-reported information on capabilities as an alternative indicator and aggregator for well-being. We survey a population of 18 year old first-year Bachelor students in applied economics and business studies and demonstrate a way in which capabilities can be measured on the level of life domains as well as on the general level of ‘life as a whole’. The data confirm the theoretical hypothesis that the set of capabilities is larger than the achieved functionings. We investigate and compare which variables influence general capabilities and satisfaction with life. We find that both concepts are equally depending on the ‘mood of the day’. On the other hand, we find some diverging influences that call for a debate on the (policy) relevance of different well-being concepts and their determining variables. The capabilities interpretation of well-being points to an important role of the parents (especially when they are divorced or rather strict) while the information on satisfaction is more related to personal and situational characteristics (such as not being single or the number of family visits).     

西北少数民族地区乡村社会流动的经济后果分析——以宁夏固原和甘肃临夏为例

本文以宁夏固原和甘肃临夏地区的田野调查为例．分析了西北少数民族地区目前频繁发生的乡村社会流动所带来的经济后果。研究表明,乡村社会流动推动了民族地区和全国的城市化进程,缓减了农业和农村的压力,改善了流动参与的家庭收入结构,提高了流动参与者参与市场经济的能力。同时,也带来农村经济分化进一步拉大,地方政府崇拜劳务输出,村民经济利益至上及低端的劳动力循环等不利于流出地经济发展和村庄整合的负向后果。     

Power in families,communication, and fertility decision-making

Decisions on family size and fertility regulation are made within the household, and yet little research has focused on the effects of power relationships within families on demographic decisions. To clarify the situation, the paper presents an original framework, linking bases of power between husbands and wives, resulting communication processes, and decision-making outcomes. The framework is applied to decision-making regarding contraceptive use or abortion, which can be a passive decision, a unilateral decision made openly or surreptitiously by one partner, or a joint decision between husband and wife, depending upon the particular power relationship pre-dominating in the family: coercive, reward, legitimate, referent, expert, or informational power. To illustrate the utility and viability of this framework, available data from fertility surveys and anthropological studies conducted in Latin America are reviewed and analyzed, as well as policy implications for the design of family planning delivery programs.The author wishes to thank Kurt W. Back, Mead T. Cain, Michele G. Shedlin, Joanne Spicehandler, and J. Mayone Stycos for their comments on an earlier version of this paper, and Luis de la Macorra for his permission to cite data collected by PROFAM-PIACT de México. Requests for reprints should be directed to Paula E. Hollerbach, The Population Council, Center for Policy Studies, One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, New York, New York 10017.     

U.S. births and limit cycle Models

Lee's (1974) formal demographic feedback models summarize the implications for births and age-structure of neo-Malthusian theories of baby booms such as those of Easterlin. For some parameter values, such models imply sustained cycles, so-called "limit cycles", in births. Frauenthal and Swick recently reestimated a continuous-age version of Lee's basic cohort model with U.S. series and, contrary to Lee's original findings, concluded that "limit cycles oscillations have been occurring in U.S. births." This article disputes their conclusion, ascribing it to an inconsistency in detrending procedures. Furthermore, it corrects Lee's original conclusion by showing that his alternative period labor-force feedback model, estimated from U.S. series, leads to cycles of implausibly long period. This article thus reopens the question of whether any feedback model could account for the observed cycles in U.S. births.