Document Type
Book
Publication Date
2012
Abstract
Paul Demeny, founding editor of Population and Development Review, retired following the publication of Volume 38 in 2012. This collection of essays on population and public policy marks the occasion and celebrates his scholarly career.
The opening essays in this supplement to Population and Development Review cover population renewal in affluent societies, the management of intergenerational relations throughout history, and the sustainability issues confronting the modern welfare state. Another set of contributions is concerned with the historical experience with low fertility; the puzzles that ultra-low fertility and natural population decrease pose for theorists of human behavior; the relationship between fertility decline and democratization; and the intractable problems for social policy in Japan created by ultra-low fertility and extreme population aging. Several essays examine the role of public policy in lowering high fertility; others offer novel insights on natural and human capital and technology.
A final group of essays concerns theory and data: social change modeled as a cohort succession process; the life expectancy–income relationship in cross-section and over time; the demographic transition among the elderly population as a delayed analogue of the familiar demographic transition; and the possible demise of the centuries-old instrument of data collection that is the population census.
Recommended Citation
McNicoll, Geoffrey, John Bongaarts, and Ethel P. Churchill (eds.). 2012. "Population and Public Policy: Essays in Honor of Paul Demeny," supplement to Population and Development Review, Vol. 38. New York: Population Council, https://www.jstor.org/stable/i23655104.
Language
English