Subsidy policies with capital accumulation: Maintaining employment levels

We study a dual economy model of growth and unemployment in the presence of Harris-Todaro type labor migration. The model is a discrete time model of economic growth with given population but endogenous migration of labor. The economy tries to reach development in the quickest possible time while not allowing unemployment to rise above a socially acceptable level. We characterize situations under which maximizing the accumulation of capital in each period is optimal. We also study how particular taxes and subsidies affect unemployment and capital accumulation. Finally, we show that a higher initial capital stock does not necessarily mean a quicker attainment of self-sustained full employment.     

Three Centuries of Global Population Growth: A Spatial Referenced Population (Density) Database for 1700–2000

The Earths surface has changed considerably over the past centuries. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the early 1700s, humans from the Old World started to colonize the New World. The colonization processes lead to major changes in global land use and land cover. Large parts of the original land cover have been altered (e.g., deforestation), leading to extra emissions of GHGs to the atmosphere and enhancing global climate change. The spatial and temporal aspects are still not very well known. More and more global integrated environmental assessments concerning global sustainability require long time series of global change indicators, of which population is an important one. This study presents an update of the geo-referenced historical population maps for the period 1700–2000, part of the History Database of the Global Environment (HYDE), which can be used in integrated models of global change and/or global sustainability.     

Earth,the Business of the Future: From Ego Energy to Eco Energy

Just as we have a turn around manager to save a failing business organization, so it is held, we need a turn around perspective to retrieve the Earth from being in a deficit position. Hence the paradoxical emphasis upon the Earth as the business of the future. Two important distinctions are offered which together provide a new frame of reference for bonding the human and the Earth. The initiating event for the first distinction was a business conference whose purpose was to explore the emerging domain of ego energy. In a parallel way, it is proposed we explore the yet to be discovered domain of eco energy. With eco energy we open our narrowed human window to cosmic perception. With cosmic perception, the energy of the universe can flow through us. The second distinction is between looking at and seeing. Looking at refers to treating our world as a collection of objects. As a collection of objects the Earth can be processed as a series of business transactions. With seeing we relate to our world as a communion of subjects. Such seeing offers transforming power for the human and the Earth to engage in the dialogue of powerful listening and speaking on both individual and planetary scale. These two sets of distinctions are sounded like echo chambers against ten ecologically guiding statements. These ten guiding statements become a reality-testing, experiential framework. Such a turn around perspective offers a different vision to be operationalized in our individual, community, and business lives. Then we can see clearly and respond with eco energy to the Earth, the business of the future!     

Have the relative employment prospects for the low-skilled deteriorated after all?

Has the relative unemployment propensity for the low-skilled increased during the 1990s? We address this question empirically, based on two notions of low skills; i) low education, and ii) low ability, conditioned on education and work experience. Ability is identified by previous earnings. Evaluated by the education-based measure, we find that unemployment propensity has not developed unfavourably for the low-skilled. Evaluated by the ability-based measure, it has. We uncover a steady deterioration of employment prospects for persons with low ability relative to others with similar formal qualifications. The adverse employment effects of being low-skilled are stronger the higher is formal education.All correspondence to Knut Røed. The paper is part of the project Sorting, exposed groups and labour market programs financed by the Research Council of Norway. We wish to thank Rolf Aaberge, Paul Gertler, Harald Goldstein, Karl Ove Moene, Jon Strand, Steinar Strøm, Asbjrn Rødseth and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. Responsible editor: John F. Ermisch.     

Demographic Efficiency: Concept and Estimation

The concept of demographic efficiency is proposed and data envelopment analysis (DEA) is introduced as a method for determining which countries are demographically efficient. While the purpose of the paper is primarily to introduce the concept and the method, several simple examples are used for purposes of illustration. The first two explore how efficiently countries have converted their level of development (the input) into male and female life expectancy at birth (the outputs). The second two reverse the postulated relationship, treating life expectancies as inputs reflecting general health status of a population, and level of development as the output. Countries are said to be efficient if they have achieved the maximum output observable for a given level of input, or if they have minimized the inputs needed to achieve a prescribed level of output. Together, the efficient cases form an efficiency frontier. DEA, a form of linear programming, also permits the degree of inefficiency of countries lying behind this frontier to be measured by calculating the extent of the output slacks that are present. Output slacks are the shortfalls in the level of performance that could have been achieved given the inputs available, and may themselves be treated as independent variables in explorations of the sources of demographic inefficiency. One example of such an exploration is offered—an attempt to account for shortfalls in female life expectancy, given levels of development.     

Spillover Between Work Attitudes and Overall Life Attitudes: Myth or Reality?

It is widely believed that work attitudes influence attitudes toward life overall. We investigated a multivariate model of work attitudes and overall life attitudes using survey data from two nationally representative (U.S.) data sets, one cross-sectional and one longitudinal. Including a comprehensive set of control variables, we found only weak support for the attitudes spillover perspective, suggesting that employees often compartmentalize or segregate their work and nonwork lives. We consider theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

City Effect and Urban Overload as Program Indicators of the Regional Policy

The paper explores the constraints of an optimal regional policy, and itidentifies them through program indicators of city effect and overload.Based on a `programming approach to the regional analysis, and on the``optimal centrality' concept as meeting point of the city-effect andcity-overload curves, the paper outlines a core list of indicators ofcity-effect and overload, quantifying their dimensions (as findings ofresearch conducted for the European Commission, from 20 cities in 4countries of the EU: France, Germany, Italy and United Kingdom).Further, a ``strategy' for an appropriate urban-regionalreorganization, and for an appropriate `ambit of measuring urban lifequality, is outlined. And finally the misleading risks of comparisons inthe wrong spatial `ambit of data collecting about quality of life, arediscussed.     

A simple method for projecting or estimating α and β: An extension of the Brass Relational Gompertz Fertility Model

This paper proposes a simple method that analytically links the parameters and , which are not demographically interpretableand measurable in the Brass Relational Gompertz Fertility Model, with demographic measures of median age and interquartile range. We also extend the Brass model that deals only with age-specific fertility to age-parity-specific fertility, first marriage, divorce, remarriage, and leaving the parental home. The method has been successfully tested by fittings to 180 reliable observed demographic schedules in various countries and periods, and to nearly 10,000simulated schedules with various combinations of possible values (including the extremes) of and . Our proposed method that uses median age and interquartile range instead of and as input is useful in the population and family household projections. It releases the traditionalunrealistic assumption in population projections that the curve of the fertility schedule moves to the right or left in a parallel way. Instead, using our proposed method, one can assume that the demographic events would be delayed or advanced, while the curve becomes more spread or more concentrated, or, more specifically, assume that young people delay the events more than the older persons do, or vice versa. Our proposed method is also useful to formulate assumptions on future demographic trends for purposes of policy analysisand planning. It can be used to indirectly estimate demographic schedules when the detailed age-specific data are not currently available, which is useful for developing countries and sub-region studies in developed countries. A crucial point for a successful application of the method is that the standard schedule chosen can capture the general pattern of the demographic process in the population under study.     

Geographic compactness vs. race/ethnic compactness and other criteria in the delineation of legislative districts

Several criteria have evolved in law and tradition to constrain the delineation of Congressional and State and local legislative districts, such as population equality, geographic compactness, race/ethnic compactness, and integrity of political boundaries. Among the various criteria, I focus on compactness, and in particular, the legal and mensural aspects. Following the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, racial compactness has been employed more and more frequently as a primary criterion, and with reduced restraint compared with other criteria, except perhaps for population equality. In Thornburg v. Gingles (1986), the Supreme Court recognized racial/ethnic compactness and polarization in voting practices as prerequisites for newly established majority-minority districts. In Shaw v. Reno (1993), the Court reaffirmed the principle of geographic compactness as against racial compactness by noting that the shape of Cong. Dist. 12 of North Carolina was bizarre and that it was drawn solely on racial grounds. With this decision, race/ethnic compactness and, by extension, the broad interpretation of the Voting Rights Act have been put in conflict with geographic compactness as criteria. More recently, in Miller v. Johnson (1995), use of race as a predominant factor in district delineation, apart from compactness, was rejected. These developments should renew interest in and support for formal statistical guidelines in evaluating geographic compactness in redistricting plans. Many formulas for measuring compactness have been proposed and tested. Here the commonly used perimeter/circle measure and the circumscribed area/circle measure are compared by an examination of some simple geometric figures and 1990-Census-based C.D.'s. Some problems with these measures are noted, and a new measure, the CV/radii measure (the complement of the coefficient of variation of the radii of the district), is proposed and illustratively applied.     

Tribal membership requirements and the demography of ‘old’ and ‘new’ Native Americans

This paper examines the twentieth-century population recovery of Native Americans with reference to urbanization, intermarriage, and differing definitions of the Native American population from census and tribal enrollment data. The recent increase in the Native American population reflected in regular US decennial censuses since 1960 is discussed in terms of changing self-identification of individuals as Native American. Also discussed are criteria for enrollment in Native American tribes, particularly blood quantum requirements. Census enumerations are compared with tribal enrollment data, and it is illustrated that a large proportion of those identifying as Native American in the census are not enrolled in Native American tribes. Special attention is given to how Native American tribal enrollment criteria might impact future population size.     

Sexual and Reproductive Strategies Among Serbian Gypsies

This paper deals with a full range of sexual and reproductive behaviors among different tribes of Gypsies in Serbia. The examined traits include rates of fertility, mortality, age distribution, education, crime rates, and parental care. In addition, Gypsy traditions of culturally prescribed sexual behavior are also studied. It is found that Gypsy tribes employ different reproductive strategies, ranging from an extreme, for humans, r (reproductive) strategy to a more typical K (parental) strategy. The reasons bringing about these differences come from the Gypsies' readiness to adjust their behavior and reproduction in order to create the most favorable strategy in a given environment. This paper elucidates and contrasts the more typical r-selected Gypsies with a group of K-selected Gypsies living in a Serbian village.     

China's ‘later’ marriage policy and its demographic consequences

Using data from China's One-Per-Thousand Fertility Survey conducted in 1982, a cohort analysis is carried out to estimate the demographic consequences of the later marriage policy implemented in the People's Republic of China. The findings show that the later marriage policy had a strong positive effect on mean age at first marriage and first birth but a negative impact on the length of the first-birth interval, suggesting that the depressing effects on fertility of the administratively enforced postponement of marriage are more or less offset by adjustments over the first-birth interval by Chinese couples.     

Community-Run Fisheries: Avoiding the “Tragedy of the Commons”

This paper discusses how fishing communities around the world avoid destructive overfishing through local and largely informal self-management. The paper offers many examples that undermine the widespread assumption that the tragedy of the commons is inevitable without government regulation.     

Macro-effects of changes in household preferences for children

The basic ideas underlying the analysis in this paper are that family size can be viewed as an economic life cycle decision and that there are decision trade-offs among fertility, consumption, and leisure. A micromodel of life cycle choice is developed and embedded in an economic-demographic macromodel. The macromodel is then used in a series of computer experiments to assess the effects on the population and the economy of changes in household preferences for children. The experiments include factual and counterfactual simulations of Canadian historical demographic experience and simulations of alternative future scenarios. The analysis and conclusions have general relevance for countries that have been through a fertility boom-and-bust sequence.We are grateful for the support received from Health and Welfare Canada's Review of Demography and Its Implications for Social and Economic Policy and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We are grateful also to Christine H. Feaver, who carried out the computer-related aspects of the work on which this paper is based.     

Application of Granger-Sims causality tests to monthly fertility data, 1958–1984

When applied to monthly age specific data, Granger-Sims causality tests provide a useful technique for identifying the effective lag between business cycles and fertility in the United States. Male and female monthly age specific unemployment rates are used as a proxy for the business cycle, and test results are presented for first and higher order birth rates, as well as total age-specific monthly fertility rates. The period is subdivided (January 1958 – May 1973 and June 1973 – December 1984) in order to identify possible trends. Four results hold in all cases studied, with respect to the relationship between unemployment and fertility. (1) Noncausality is rejected in the direction from unemployment to fertility, and no feedback effect is indicated; thus the relationship is one of simple causality. (2) In the critical decision period from 9–16 months prior to realized fertility rates, the sign of the effect of unemployment on fertility is negative: this holds for both male and female unemployment rates. (3) There appears to have been a shortening of the effective lag between unemployment and fertility, of perhaps 2 – 3 months, between periods 1 (1959 – 1973) and 2 (1973 – 1984). (5) The strength of the (negative) relationship between unemployment and fertility appears to have increased from period 1 to period 2.Presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Chicago, April 30, 1987. This paper has benefitted from discussions with and comments by Andrew Weiss, Clive Granger, Lee Ohanian and Pietro Balestra, and from comments by two anonymous referees. For help in obtaining previously unpublished data, the authors are grateful to Stephanie Ventura (NCHS), G. P. Goings (BLS) and Paula Schneider (Bureau of the Census). Financial support was provided by the University of Southern California     

Household fertility responses following communism: Transition in the Czech Republic and Slovakia

In central Europe fertility fell during transition from centrally planned to market oriented economies. Families reevaluated fertility plans facing new wages, reduced child-care subsidies, and economic uncertainty. Using micro-data from 1984 and 1993 in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, this paper relates fertility changes following Communism to wages, pricesand risks. Earnings have little impact on fertility timing during transition, though age, job uncertainty, and children conceived during Communism do. In the Czech Republic, changed fertility demand parameters account for much of thefall in fertility. In Slovakia a sizable proportion results from predictable responses to changed incentives.I would like to thank my Czech collaborators Pavel Mahonn, Petr Mateju, and Jiri Vecernk for enabling this empirical work to proceed; T. Paul Schultz, and Jenny Hunt and seminar participants at Yale University, the NEUDC, and the Population Association of America annual meetings and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. I am also indebted to the Mellon Foundation Area Studies Grant program for financial support allowing field work on this topic. I am wholly responsible for all errors. Responsible editor: T. Paul Schultz.     

Education,employment, and fertility in Kinshasa and prospects for changes in reproductive behavior

This paper examines fertility behavior of women in Kinshasa, Zaire's capital city with a population of roughly four million. We look at relationships linking women's education, employment, and fertility behavior (children ever born, age at first marriage, contraception, abortion, breastfeeding, and postpartum abstinence), using data from a 1990 survey of reproductive-age women. Other things equal, there are significant differences by educational attainment and by modern sector employment in lifetime fertility and in most of the proximate determinants as well. The results suggest that modern contraception and abortion are alternative fertility control strategies in Kinshasa, with abortion appearing to play an important role in contributing to the observed fertility differentials by education and employment. The dramatic increases that have taken place in women's access to secondary and higher education are likely to reduce fertility in the future, while the effects of Zaire's current economic and political crisis are uncertain. Our findings are consistent with some of the arguments of Caldwell et al. (1992) on a new type of fertility transition in sub-Saharan Africa. If Zaire seeks to lower fertility, policy efforts should be made to soften the impact of economic crisis on school enrollments and enhance opportunities for young women to remain in school, at least well into the secondary level. Policy should also seek to promote more effective marketing and delivery of modern family planning services, so as to induce women to substitute modern contraception for abortion as a means of controlling their fertility.     

Do family caps reduce out-of-wedlock births? Evidence from Arkansas,Georgia, Indiana,New Jersey and Virginia

During the 1990s, 23 states implemented family cap policies as a means to reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock births among welfare recipients. Using Current Population Survey data from 1989 to 1999, we examine the impact of family cap policies on the birth rates of single, less-educated women with children. We use the first five states that were granted waivers from the Department of Health and Human Services to implement family caps as natural experiments. Specifically, we compare trends in out-of-wedlock birth rates in Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, New Jersey and Virginia to trends in states that did not implement family caps or any other waivers prior to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. We employ several techniques to increase the credibility of results from our natural experiment, such as the inclusion of multiple comparison groups, controls for differential time trends, and difference-in-difference-in-differences estimators. Our regression estimates generally do not provide evidence that family cap policies reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock births among single, less-educated women with children.     

Fertility in China 1982–1990: Gender equality as a complement to wealth flows theory

Some scholars claim there is little variation in Chinese fertility because of coercive family planning policies. This research, however, demonstrates that other factors contribute to significant variation in fertility rates among China's 30 provinces/administrative divisions. Although family planning and socioeconomic development are found to explain significant amounts of variation in fertility for both the 1982 and 1990 census cross-sections, it was also found that gender equality in education had become significant by 1990. Path model results that lag the effects of 1982 socioeconomic development and gender equality in education also indicate that they both have sizable direct effects and moderate indirect effects through family planning behavior on 1990 fertility rates. Discussions include the possibility that the recent free market and institutional reforms, e.g., the decollectivization of agriculture, have contributed a social structure whereby many Chinese families have increased awareness of the opportunity costs associated with their reproductive decision making.