Longevity Among Hunter‐ Gatherers: A Cross‐Cultural Examination

Post‐reproductive longevity is a robust feature of human life and not only a recent phenomenon caused by improvements in sanitation, public health, and medical advances. We argue for an adaptive life span of 68‐78 years for modern Homo sapiens based on our analysis of mortality profiles obtained from small‐scale hunter‐gatherer and horticultural populations from around the world. We compare patterns of survivorship across the life span, rates of senescence, modal ages at adult death, and causes of death. We attempt to reconcile our results with those derived from paleodemographic studies that characterize prehistoric human lives as “nasty, brutish, and short,” and with observations of recent acculturation among contemporary subsistence populations. We integrate information on age‐specific dependency and resource production to help explain the adaptive utility of longevity in humans from an evolutionary perspective.     

Two‐and‐a‐Half Cheers: A Review Essay on the International Migration Report 2002*

Amy Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability Surjit S. Bhalla, Imagine There's No Country: Poverty, Inequality, and Growth in the Era of Globalization John Firor and Judith Jacobsen, The Crowded Greenhouse: Population, Climate Change, and Creating a Sustainable World Joel Perlmann and Mary C. Waters (eds.), The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multiracial Individuals     

Re‐theorizing Family Demographics

Two dominant theories within family research foresee a long‐term decline in marriage, fertility, and partner stability. They also assume that this “less‐family” scenario will be spearheaded by higher‐educated strata. Trends in the latter half of the twentieth century seemed to provide ample support for both predictions. However, recent signs of change in family behavior raise doubts about their continued validity. In a number of countries we see a halt to, and even reversal of, fertility decline and of couple instability. In parallel, we observe a reversal of the social gradient on both dimensions. Applying a multiple equilibrium framework, we propose a theoretical framework that helps explain both the phase of marital and fertility decline and the subsequent recovery. We focus especially on the endogenous dynamics of the process, which, we argue, depend on the conditions that favor rapid diffusion. Our core argument is that the turnaround is driven by the diffusion of gender‐egalitarian norms.     

Captain George Henry Lane‐Fox Pitt‐Rivers and the Prehistory of the IUSSP

Captain George Henry Lane‐Fox Pitt‐Rivers, Secretary General of the International Union for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems (IUSIPP, 1928–ca. 1942), the precursor of today's International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP, 1947–present), was a central figure in population science during the 1930s. With his pro‐Nazi activism, anti‐Semitism, Red‐baiting, and failure to leave any intellectual mark of consequence, he is an idiosyncratic and in some ways unattractive subject. However, an examination of Pitt‐Rivers's role as Secretary General reveals a wealth of information about the IUSIPP as it lurched toward collapse. It casts light, as well, on the struggle for scientific legitimacy between eugenic racialists and reformers in the 1930s, a struggle in which he played a controversial and divisive role. Using a combination of newly discovered and old archival material, this article traces Pitt‐Rivers's involvement with the Union, the British eugenics establishment, Nazi population science, and far‐right British politics during this turbulent decade when demography emerged as an international discipline.     

The Effect of Couple Disagreement about Child‐Timing Intentions: A Parity‐Specific Approach

Using couple data from a longitudinal study conducted in Italy, a country with persistently low fertility levels, we examined the effect of partners' discrepant child‐timing intentions on reproductive behavior. We found that the effect of couple disagreement on subsequent fertility is parity‐specific and does not depend on whether only the male or the female partner intends to have a(nother) child. The disagreement tends to produce an intermediate childbearing outcome at parities zero and one, while the outcome is shifted more toward agreement on not having a(nother) child at parity two. The empirical evidence suggests that gender equality in reproductive decisionmaking is not driven by partners' equal bargaining power or partners' equal access to economic resources. The findings indicate that the predictive power of child‐timing intentions strongly improves if both partners' views are considered in fertility models, and thus support the adoption of couple analysis in fertility research.     

Sex‐Selective Abortions in India

Provisional estimates from the 2001 census of India, which showed unusually high sex ratios for young children, have sparked renewed concern about the growing use of sex‐selective abortions to satisfy parental preferences for sons. According to the 1998–99 National Family Health Survey (NFHS‐2), in recent years the sex ratio at birth in India has been abnormally high (107–121 males per 100 females) in 16 of India's 26 states. Data from NFHS‐2 on abortions, sex ratios at birth, son preference, and the use of ultrasound and amniocentesis during pregnancy present compelling evidence of the extensive use of sex‐selective abortions, particularly in Gujarat, Haryana, and Punjab. The authors estimate that in the late 1990s more than 100,000 sex‐selective abortions of female fetuses were being performed annually in India. Recent efforts to expand and enforce government regulations against this practice may have some effect, but they are not likely to be completely successful without changes in the societal conditions that foster son preference.     

Long‐Range Population Projections Made Simple

Recent developments in mathematical demography offer a new, simple means of producing long‐range population projections. The well‐known extant such projections, produced by the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, rely on elaborate cohort‐component projection methods that require a large number of detailed assumptions and are difficult to replicate. Building upon recent results in the formal demography of nonstable populations, the authors show that analytic methods produce estimates of future population size very similar to those obtained through traditional methods. Simplicity is a virtue in making projections, allowing sensitivity tests of assumptions and avoiding the misleading impression of precision associated with more complicated methods. Cohort‐component methods should still be used for short‐ and medium‐term forecasts and projections. For the long term, however, analytic methods should supplement or even replace traditional projections.     

Longevity Advances in High‐Income Countries, 1955–96

The advance of life expectancy within high‐income countries from 1955 to 1996 is well represented by a straight‐line trend. This explains more of the variance on average, and in 19 of 21 high‐income countries, than logged or unlogged age‐standardized death rates. Change in life expectancy in individual countries over this period was partially predicted by a country's level relative to the rest of this group of high‐income countries and partially by a country's own prior rate of advance, with substantial convergence toward the group mean for both measures.     

Cohort Reproductive Patterns in Low‐Fertility Countries

This account reports on a project in progress that aims to obtain a comprehensive picture of contemporary fertility levels and trends in 27 low‐fertility countries. Cohort analysis is applied to review the fertility experience of women born from the 1930s through the 1970s. This choice of dates ensures that not only completed fertility but also the fertility patterns of women in the midst of or near the onset of their reproductive period are examined. In most of the 27 countries, completed fertility of successive cohorts has been declining. It appears plausible that the trends discerned in the analysis will continue in the foreseeable future. For these trends to be reversed, women who are about to enter or who are in the midst of their reproductive periods would have to adopt fertility patterns markedly different from those of women born in the 1960s and 1970s.