A proposed explanation of the fertility gap differentials by socio-economic status and modernity: The case of Egypt

The present paper is part of a larger analysis of data collected in the summer of 1970 in the city of Cairo.1 A joint study between the Institute of Statistical Studies and Research and Centre for Sociological Studies, Cairo. The present analysis is based on a sub-sample of 569 households.     

Reactions of Developing‐Country Elites to International Population Policy

The authors examine the global diffusion of international population policy, which they consider a cultural item. The process of cultural diffusion is often seen as spontaneous: items of Western culture are in demand because they are universally attractive. Yet cultural flows may also be directed, they may be unattractive to their intended recipients, and their acceptance may depend on persuasion and material incentives. The authors consider the range of responses of national elites to the new population policy adopted by the United Nations at Cairo in 1994. Strongly influenced by feminists, the Cairo Program of Action promotes gender equity and reproductive health and demotes previous concerns with population growth. The data are interviews with representatives of governmental and nongovernmental organizations involved in population and health in five developing countries. To interpret the interviews, the authors draw on two theoretical frameworks. The first emphasizes the attractiveness of new cultural items and the creation of a normative consensus about their value. The second emphasizes differentials in power and resources among global actors and argues that the diffusion of cultural items can be directed by powerful donor states. Interviews in Bangladesh, Ghana, Jordan, Malawi, and Senegal portray a mixed reception to Cairo: enthusiastic embrace of certain aspects of the Cairo policy by some members of the national elite and a realistic assessment of donor power by virtually all. Strategies of rhetoric and action appear to be aimed at maintaining and directing the flows of donor funds.     

Cairo and the changing definition of population and development issues

The goal of the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo in September 1994, was to agree on a Programme of Action in the field of population and development which would supersede the Plan of Action agreed to at Bucharest in 1974 and subsequently amended ten years later in Mexico City. The main purpose of the present paper is to characterize some of the principal intellectual and ideological developments of the last 20 years which have had an impact on the definition of this goal. I conclude with some brief comments on the Programme of Action adopted by consensus at the Conference. This is an amended version of the paper I presented at the Seventh National Conference of the Australian Population Association (in a Plenary Session entitled ‘Messages from Cairo’), held in Canberra in September 1994.     

The United Nations on the Implementation of the Cairo Program of Action

Progress and challenges in implementing strategies on population and development were the focus of a Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly that met at UN headquarters in New York, 30 June-2 July 1999. Participating at the Assembly were representatives of nearly 180 governments, with some 150 of these, and a number of observers and nongovernmental organizations, making statements. The delegates reviewed and appraised the implementation of the Program of Action adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development held at Cairo in 1994. The main topics discussed concerned women's rights, reproductive health issues, and abortion. The Assembly's work culminated in the adoption of a 106-paragraph statement titled Key actions…, formally issued as United Nations Document A/S-21/5. The document is reprinted below in full. It affirms the comprehensive approach to population and development issues articulated at the Cairo conference and identifies needs for further action. Also reproduced below is the address delivered at the Special Session by Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations. According to a popular lapidary characterization of the program adopted at the 1994 conference, that program concluded that “population is not about numbers.” Thus the Secretary-General's address is particularly notable for a clear affirmation of the importance of the quantitative dimension of the population issue. “[W]e have to stabilize the population of this planet. Quite simply, there is a limit to the pressures our global environment can stand.”     

The ideology of population control in the UN draft plan for Cairo

This paper examines the influence of population control ideology on the draft plan for the UN Cairo Conference on Population and Development. It is argued that this draft plan can only be fully understood in the context of the recent history of the population control movement and of the empirical reality of population control in particular countries. The paper focuses on the origins of the ideology of population control in the eugenics movement initially, and more recently in organisations such as International Planned Parenthood Federation. The role of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in promoting an incremental approach towards the wider acceptance of population control since the first intergovernmental conference on population in Bucharest in 1974, is outlined. Despite the serious loss of credibility for the UN, through the association of the UNFPA with the Chinese population control programme — the most coercive programme of its type in history — the UN in the draft plan for Cairo continues to promote the ideology of population control. This paper argues for the need to develop a more positive model of development, which acknowledges the complementarity between the lack of development of poorer countries and their potential for significant progress, and the overdevelopment of industrialised regions, whose future growth is increasingly based on intense competition for shrinking markets.This article is based on a paper, presented to the International Geographical Union Congress at Prague, 21–27 August 1994.     

China Population and Developmenl

The Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) paid great attention to the sexual and reproductive health of adolescents. One of the top priorities of the ICPD Programme of Action is to provide adolescents with necessary sexual and reproductive health information and services, ensure their right to reproductive health education and services, and help them develop risk-free behaviours and healthy lifestyles.     

人发大会以来中国成就

1994年开罗国际人发大会以来，中国认真履行对国际人发大会《行动纲领》和“千年发展目标”的承诺，统筹解决人口问题，在人口和计划生育及生殖健康领域取得可喜进步，并促进了经济社会的全面、协调和可持续发展，促进了人民健康水平和生活质量的提高。     

Challenges to reproductive health in Australia

Reproductive health in Australia is assessed using the parameters outlined in the UN 1994 Cairo conference; some limitations of that approach are noted and further aspects of reproductive health identified and discussed. While many of the basic goals of reproductive health, for example low maternal mortality and widespread contraceptive use, have been largely achieved in Australia, the gains have not been uniform and certain groups such as indigenous Australians, those in rural and remote areas, young people and men remain disadvantaged. The remaining challenges cannot be met within the health system alone but require broader systemic interventions.     

第五届亚太生殖健康大会

为推动开罗国际人口与发展大会《行动纲领》及“千年发展目标”在亚太区域如期实现,2009年10月18-20日,由中国国家人口计生委、中国计划生育协会、中国人口学会、国际计划生育联合会、联合国人口基金、人口与发展南南合作伙伴组织等共同举办的第五届亚太生殖健康大会在北京召开。     

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     

Respondent characteristics in citizen evaluation of municipal services

Research on citizen surveys tend to focus on how to conduct a survey and how to best utilize the survey data. How respondent characteristics affect responses to a survey has received only cursory treatment in the literature. The present study investigated the role of demographics and generalized attitude, two types of respondent characteristics, in citizen evaluations of municipal services. Of particular interest was the pattern of respondent-responses interaction across time. The Automatic Interaction Detector (AID) was used to analyze survey data collected annually from 1974 through 1979 by a University-affiliated Urban Studies Center in a mid-size metropolitan area. Results indicated that these respondent characteristics could account for a substantial portion of the variance associated with service evaluation. However, the relationship between respondent characteristics and service evaluations is nonlinear, interactively complex and lacking in consistency across time. This widely varying pattern of respondent-responses interactions across time was explained in terms of the effect of a third exposure-experiential factor. Implications for future research and for using citizen survey data in public policy analysis and program development were discussed.     

Womens education and diffusion of the fertility transition: The case of Egypt 1960–1996 in 4905 administrative subdivisions

Egypt comprises thousands of small geographic units. Total fertility rates are reconstructed for the 4905qism, qarya, medina, markaz andshiyakhat covering non-desert Egypt at the 1960, 1976, 1986 and 1996 censuses. This fine spatial scale reveals that heterogeneity across subdivisions increased during the fertility transition, illustrating the rapidity of change. Spatial patterns appear in the fertility upsurge of 1974–85, which is accompanied by a large but temporary reduction in heterogeneity. Fertility varies greatly between subdivisions and geographic differentials underlie the expected and observed association between fertility, literacy, family transfers and industrialization. Cairo led the decline of fertility, but that decline is counterbalanced by rapid economic growth and persistently high levels of illiteracy. A similar pattern of fertility change is observed for the chief city of the Muhafaza and its surrounding area. Egypt presents an archetype of demographic transition as improved economic and educational status diffuses across the country, moderated by its specific geography.     

Why the silence on population?

The tripling of the world’s population growth since 1960 has received little public attention the past decade. Six reasons for the silence around this subject constitute a “perfect storm”. The first five are: visibility of actual fertility decline in the developed countries as well as a number of the developing ones; well justified attention to the impact of high levels of consumption on the environment; an implicit welcome by conservative political and religious forces to reduced needs for family planning; the tragedy of AIDS dominating international health concerns; and the 1994 Cairo conference’s focus on examples of coercive family planning while nearly ignoring the coercion of women forced into unwanted childbearing. These five relatively new developments have been supported by standard demographic theory containing an assumption that couples naturally want many children, making it difficult to see the many barriers blocking women’s options to manage their own childbearing.     

A Population Policy Rationale for the Twenty‐First Century

I propose that the primary goal of twenty‐first‐century population policies should be to strengthen the human resource base for national and global sustainable development. I discuss the shortcomings of the three dominant twentieth‐century population policy rationales: acceptance of replacement‐level fertility as a demographic goal; realizing a “demographic dividend” from the changing age structure; and filling the “unmet need” for family planning. I demonstrate that in all three cases the explicit incorporation of education into the model changes the picture and makes female education a key population policy priority. Population policies under this new rationale could be viewed as public human resource management. I argue that 20 years after the Cairo ICPD the international community needs a new rationale for population policies in the context of sustainable development and that a focus on human capital development, in particular education and health, is the most promising approach.     

Population and environment in the twenty-first century

In the past 50 years global population grew by 3.7 billion. There is a large unmet need for family planning and wherever women have been given the means and the information to decide if or when to have the next child, then family size has fallen, often rapidly. However, since the UN 1994 Cairo conference on population and development, support for international family has collapsed and fertility declines in many of the poorest countries have stalled. Amongst some of the most vulnerable groups family size has risen. The investment made in voluntary family planning will largely determine whether, in the next 50 years, the global population grows to something less than 8 billion or to over 10. The trajectory taking us to the higher figure could jeopardize any possibility of transitioning the global economy to a biological sustainability. Much precious time has been lost. Almost all the additional growth in population will take place in the world’s poorest countries, and it is imperative that the international community act to improve access to family planning in those countries, within a human rights frame framework.     

Life satisfaction among the rural elderly: What do the numbers mean?

Studies of life satisfaction among the elderly are based almost entirely on quantitative data, yet we have little knowledge of whether such data are consistent and valid representations of satisfaction. The present paper addresses this issue through a comparison of quantitative and qualitative data on satisfaction with housing, family, spouse, self-esteem, health, friends and life as a whole. The data were obtained from 15 elderly men and women living in rural Ontario who had participated in both a survey study of life satisfaction and an intensive qualitative study of loneliness, social activities and social relationships. The values selected by participants from scales of satisfaction were found to be fairly similar overall to judgements made by the investigators on the basis of qualitative data from interviews and diaries. But there were also a number of discrepancies across both participants and domains, and these discrepancies were not systematic. The scale values appear to be at best a superficial representation of participants' satisfaction. It is concluded that quantitative approaches are of limited utility in studies of the quality of life, and that they are most appropriately viewed as supplementary to approaches employing qualitative data and analysis.     

Incorporating husband-wife differences in place utility differentials into migration decision models

This paper extends the micro-level empirical literature on migration decision making by investigating the manner in which husbands' and wives' subjective place utility expectations jointly feed into migration decisions in a low-income country. The authors use expectational data relating to four place utility dimensions and stated migration intentions of 376 village-resident Egyptian couples to test alternative decision models. An ordinal probit estimation technique is employed. The results of the analyses support the hypothesis of husband dominance in migration decisions in this context. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications of the paper for further theoretical refinement and for migration survey design in this and other developing countries.Dr. McDevitt is a Research Associate of the Carolina Population Center, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Gadalla, former Director of The Social Research Center of The American University in Cairo, is currently Visiting Distinguished Professor of Sociology-Demography, San Diego State University, San Diego.This is a revised version of a paper presented at the 1984 annual meetings of the Population Association of America and cited throughout as McDevitt and Gadalla (1984). The authors wish to acknowledge helpful discussions with Amos Hawley in the early stages of the development of the paper and the guidance of David Guilkey and Larry Taylor with the statistical techniques employed in the work reported in the paper. The research was supported in part by grants 1-R01-HD14943 and 1-T32-HD07168 from the National Institutes of Health.     

Reinforcement of family planning service strategy in India

The efforts of the Center for Population Studies at the Administrative Staff College of India offer an excellent example of the way in which resources available in the public and private sectors can be brought together to strengthen national population programs. Since the late 1960s the Administrative Staff College of India has been involved in population programs, and these activities coalesced into the Center for Population Studies which was formally established in 1972. The 1st task of the Center for Population Studies was to provide management inputs into the State of Karnataka for the India Population Project. The attempt was made to build up expertise through research and to subsequently transfer this to operating programs through management training and management consultancy. The delivery of services was identified as the priority area for the Center. The Primary Health Center (PHC) is the biggest component of the delivery system, yet there was little understanding of the working of the PHCs and their problems. Studies were launched to correct this deficiency and this led to a series of training programs for PHC doctors. Along with studying PHCs, the Center was asked to look into the program at higher levels, and this led to a study of the Health Department of the State of Karnataka and its subsequent reorganization. Similar efforts are now underway in several other States of India. The 3rd area of the Center's efforts is hospital administration, and studies have been conducted concerning the management fo hospital systems and training programs offered.     

Fecundability and coital frequency

Abstract The analysis previouslyreported (Population Studies, 23, 1969) of the risk of conceptionon different days of the menstrual cycleis extended so as to take someaccount of the agesof wives. The risks are estimated from data (basal body temperatures and occurrences of coitus) recorded by 241 married couples not using any contraceptives, to whom at least one child had previously been born. A mathematical formula relating natural fecundability to coital frequency is proposed and considered.     

Consensual partnering in Australia: A review and 1991 census profile

This paper is the first part of a two-part examination of consensual partnering in Australia. It reviews the Australian literature on consensual partnering, summarizing evidence of its proliferation since the mid-1960s and also the findings of investigations into its nature and the personal attributes that predispose some people more than others to adopt it. It then discusses the shortcomings of Australian census data as a source for studying consensual unions, before using data from the 1991 Census to present the first elements in a comprehensive profile of the cohabiting population. These cover the basic demography of consensual partnering: the ages, marital statuses and family type distributions of those involved. The second author contributed to this paper while a student of Graduate Studies in Demography, The Australian National University. Views expressed are those of the authors, and are not necessarily those of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.