As populations age across East Asia, blood banks face a double squeeze: fewer young donors and more elderly patients needing transfusions. South Korea, Oh Seok Kim notes, has promptly responded … Read more
Projected population growth of about 2 billion in Africa and elsewhere will contribute to poverty, poor reproductive health, environmental degradation and climate change. Frank Götmark, Chukwuedozie Ajaero, Mohammad Mainul Islam, Rhoda … Read more
South Korea is facing a demographic time bomb. The nation is grappling with the world’s lowest fertility rate and a rapidly aging population, which threaten its very future. The unfolding … Read more
Young people in the Global South are following increasingly diverse and ever-changing paths to adulthood. Yet, inequalities persist. Shelley Clark and Khandys Agnant show that despite impressive gains in female … Read more
Rashid Javed and Mazhar Mughal investigate how son preference affects birth spacing in Pakistan. The impact they find is strong, with several negative consequences on the demographic transition of the … Read more
Low and declining female labour force participation in India has been a puzzle and a key policy question in the recent past. Chhavi Tiwari and Srinivas Goli argue that it … Read more
The benefits of the Olympic Games may be numerous and long lasting. Chao Guo highlights the positive role of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games in reducing the risks of both … Read more
Until recently, child survival in India was lower among Muslims than among Hindus, despite the lower average socio-economic status of the former. Dibyasree Ganguly and Srinivas Goli note that this … Read more
As female labour force participation continues to rise in Taiwan, more women are faced with the dual burden of employment and household responsibilities. Jolene Tan highlights the impact of a … Read more
With a total fertility rate of 0.81 in 2021, South Korea has the lowest fertility rate in the world. Within a generally declining trend, and very low levels globally, Jolene … Read more
In India, the percentage of male births has increased since the mid-1980s. Claus Pörtner ties the continuously growing use of prenatal sex selection to India’s falling fertility among highly-educated women. … Read more
In the years between 1975 and 2005, migrants from China to the US were more likely to have a second and third birth than non-migrant Chinese. Wanli Nie and Pau … Read more
Better maternal education has been credited with making a major contribution to infant mortality decline. However, previous studies have overestimated the contribution of better maternal education. Using individual-level data from … Read more
About 3 in 10 women remain permanently childless in Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Permanent childlessness has increased rapidly across East Asia.
Figure 1 – Highly developed countries with the highest levels of childlessness among women born in 1960 and 1972 and with the largest increases in the share of permanently childless women.
Caroline Krafft, Elizabeth Kula and Maia Sieverding show that a long period of stall in the total fertility rate in Jordan has recently ended. Yet data sources disagree on the … Read more
A strong positive association exists between children’s education and parental health in India. Berenike Thoma and Jan-Walter De Neve explain that this positive relationship persists when controlling for a wide … Read more
Young people’s ability to marry increasingly depends on obtaining housing and forming independent households. Ragui Assaad, Caroline Krafft, and Dominique J. Rolando show how Egypt’s 1996 rent liberalization law reversed … Read more
The early results of the 2020 Census of the People’s Republic of China shed light on the highly politicised issue of Han Chinese population shares in the Tibetan areas of … Read more
Results from 2020 population censuses for the United States and China made headlines about population collapse, baby busts and demographic decline. Lopsided lamentations have given little attention to the social, … Read more
The Philippines has the one of the highest numbers of COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia. Using the 2016 National Disability Prevalence Survey, Jeofrey B. Abalos describes the prevalence of chronic … Read more
A striking contrast in demographic and development indicators emerges from a recent analysis of the 640 districts of India, which Sanjay K. Mohanty, Udaya S. Mishra, Rajesh K. Chauhan and … Read more
Racial and ethnic disparities in the relative likelihood of experiencing poverty and affluence in the United States generally narrowed over the 1959 to 2015 period, indicative of moderate steps toward … Read more
Wolfgang Lutz, Jesus Crespo Cuaresma, and Nicholas Gailey show that the “demographic dividend” does not result from the opening of “a window of opportunity” caused by a declining youth dependency … Read more
Rashid Javed and Mazhar Mughal analyze the effects of the pervasive phenomenon of son preference on Pakistani women’s participation in household decision-making. They find that women with at least one … Read more
Marriage and childbearing postponement have contributed significantly to China’s fertility decline, and will continue to do so in the future. With the fall in the number of women of childbearing … Read more
Religious couples tend to have more children than secular ones, suggesting that children add more to the happiness of the former than they do to the latter. Jona Schellekens investigated … Read more
Sustainable Development Goal 3 aims to reduce global neonatal mortality (NNM) to 12 deaths per 1,000 births by 2030. Reducing NNM in India is critical to this goal because it … Read more
Rapid economic and demographic changes can pose serious challenges to governments, especially when a modern welfare system must be built, with a radical shift from family-oriented to state-based social protection.The … Read more
Excess female mortality resulting from gender discrimination in the postnatal period was still common in India at the beginning of the century. Yet, little attention has been paid so far … Read more
Declining fertility and increasing migration are contributing to growing shares of older Thais who will age with few children, or none at all, or whose children live far away.Quashie and … Read more
Although previously unknown among natives in EU28, the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting is a present concern for European policymakers. As many as 500,000 foreign-born girls and women in Europe … Read more
Consanguinity has important implications for public health as it increases the risk of passing on autosomal recessive genetic disorders to the next generation. Thus, it is important that we learn … Read more
More and more countries have been adopting population policies to increase birth rates, in order to deal with the growing challenges of aging (United Nations 2013). Following the recent trend, … Read more
Low fertility levels have become a typical characteristic of industrialised countries where two distinct patterns are observed. A number of countries, especially in southern Europe and East Asia, have persistently … Read more
The three giants of Asia – China, India and Indonesia – make up 40% of the world’s population and 49% of the population of countries defined by the United Nations … Read more
“What God has put together let no man put asunder”. This biblical quote is frequently heard among Filipinos, particularly among the older generations, to discourage young people from leaving an … Read more
A UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry has determined that ISIS acts against the Yazidi religious minority of Sinjar constitute a case of ongoing genocide (OHCR 2016). While ISIS’s intent … Read more
Studies on child health in developing countries often find that children are healthier in urban areas than in rural areas. There are many reasons for this disparity. People in urban … Read more
A fashionable but controversial concept The ‘demographic dividend’ has become a fashionable concept over the past 20 years, and was the focus of the recent UAPS conference held in South … Read more
According to the most recent estimates, under-five mortality¹ in India is decreasing, but the annual number of under-five deaths is still as high as 1.2 million, the largest in the … Read more
In 1980, China launched its national one-child policy, in response to both a huge concern about the prospects of rapid population growth impacting on resources and a desire to increase … Read more
The whole world knows and talks about the “one-child” phenomenon in China. Most of this discussion is tied to analyses of the one-child policy instituted by the Chinese government in … Read more
While divorce is usually lower in Asian than in Western societies, a drastic rise in crude divorce rates has been reported in many East Asian countries in the recent past … Read more
Co-residence between elderly parents and independent, married adult children is a common phenomenon in East Asian societies. For example, according to the 2005 China Inter-Census Survey data, two thirds of … Read more
Employment and childbearing are important stages in a woman’s life course. Their relationship is influenced not only by individual characteristics, but also by the socio-economic and institutional context. Availability of … Read more
China is now facing the challenge of low fertility. Its total fertility rate first fell below replacement level in the early 1990s, and had dropped to only 1.18 children per … Read more
There are four main migration routes to the EU and three of them involve the Mediterranean area. According to EU border agency Frontex, the Eastern Mediterranean route has had the … Read more
Population stabilization in India is of obvious global significance. According to the latest census, India’s population was 1,210 million in 2011, accounting for 17 percent of the global population; if … Read more
The demographic transition, i.e., the passage from the ancient to the modern demographic regime of low fertility and low mortality, can be a highly heterogeneous process, and its impact on … Read more
Son preference and gender bias, which are revealed in births and child mortality, tend to be concentrated in South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Europe, and the South Caucasus—places where patrilineal … Read more
Advocacy is a funny thing. If you feel strongly enough about a cause, as everyone in international development does these days, it is no longer enough to campaign for something … Read more
If there is one gender issue that has mainstream America rightly roiled up today, it has to do with women and work, or more specifically, women at work. Never-ending reports in … Read more
The United Nations Sustainable Development Summit was held in New York on 25-27 September 2015. The 193-member UN General Assembly formally adopted the ambitious agenda “Transforming Our World: 2030 Agenda … Read more
The present world population of 7.3 billion is projected to increase to 8.5 billion or more by 2030, with almost 90 percent of the increase occurring in the developing countries, … Read more
