Population Studies-a Journal of Demography 

About: Population Studies-a Journal of Demography is an academic journal published by Taylor & Francis. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Population & Fertility. It has an ISSN identifier of 0032-4728. Over the lifetime, 2712 publications have been published receiving 95123 citations.

The Changing Relation between Mortality and level of Economic Development

Abstract: Summary A very simple technique has been used to shed light on a number of questions about the influence of economic level on national mortality trends and differentials. Scatter-diagrams of the cross-sectional relation between national income per head and life expectancy are developed for three decades during the twentieth, century. The relations established appear to shift systematically during the century. In general, in order to attain a certain life expectancy between 40 and 60 a nation requires an income level almost three times greater in the 1930s than in the 1960s This shift is corroborated by a changing structure of mortality by cause of death for populations at equivalent mortality levels. The magnitude of the shifts, combined with regional income data suggests that some 75–90 per cent of the growth in life expectancy for the world as a whole over these three decades is attributable to factors exogenous to a nation's contemporary level of income Through similar techniques, improved nutrition an...

Trends in cohabitation and implications for children s family contexts in the United States

Abstract: This paper documents increasing cohabitation in the United States, and the implications of this trend for the family lives of children. The stability of marriage-like relationships (including marriage and cohabitation) has decreased despite a constant divorce rate. Children increasingly live in cohabiting families either as a result of being born to cohabiting parents or of their mother s entry into a cohabiting union. The proportion of births to unmarried women born into cohabiting families increased from 29 to 39 per cent in the period 1980-84 to 1990-94, accounting for almost all of the increase in unmarried childbearing. As a consequence, about two-fifths of all children spend some time in a cohabiting family, and the greater instability of families begun by cohabitation means that children are also more likely to experience family disruption. Estimates from multi-state life tables indicate the extent to which the family lives of children are spent increasingly in cohabiting families and decreasingly in married families.

Education as a factor in mortality decline: an examination of Nigerian data

Abstract: The debate between those who see economic development and those who regard advances in medical technology as bearing major responsibility for mortality decline usually gives little attention to different stages of social change when economic or medical conditions are fixed. However Nigerian statistics analyzed here show that very different levels of child survivorship result from different levels of maternal education in an otherwise similar socioeconomic context and when there is equal access to the use of medical facilities. Indeed maternal education in Nigeria appears to be the single most powerful determinant of the level of child mortality. The statistics come from 2 surveys undertaken in 1973: one of 6606 women in Ibadan city and the other of 1499 women in a large area of southwest Nigeria. Proportions of children surviving are compounded into an index of child mortality to increase the frequencies in individual cells and standardize maternal age when child survivorship is correlated with a range of factors and 2 component indices are also constructed to detect change over time. It is concluded that womens education in societies like that of the Yoruba in Nigeria can produce profound changes in family structure and relationships which in turn may influence both mortality and fertility levels. Education may well play a major role in the demographic transition and this role may help to explain the close timing of mortality and fertility transitions. (Authors)

Demand Theories of the Fertility Transition: An Iconoclastic View

Abstract: This paper challenges the widely held and influential view that the fertility transition is largely the consequence of changing parental demand for children brought about by changes in the economic costs and benefits entailed in childbearing. Using evidence from both historical and contemporary populations we argue that demand theories do not offer a plausible explanation of the fertility transition. Instead, we propose that ideational, rather than structural, economic change lies at the heart of the transition. In particular, we suggest that attitudes to birth control, broadly defined, play a crucial role.