The Journal of Population Studies
Online ISSN : 2424-2489
Print ISSN : 0386-8311
ISSN-L : 0386-8311
Volume 20
Displaying 1-46 of 46 articles from this issue
Index
Presidential Address
Article
  • Kao-Lee Liaw, Yasuko Hayase
    Article type: Article
    1997 Volume 20 Pages 3-21
    Published: May 31, 1997
    Released on J-STAGE: September 12, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This paper studies the selectivity of the 1982-92 rural/urban migrations of the Africans in Zimbabwe, based on the data from a multidimensional tabulation of all the individual records in the 1992 Population Census. The focus is on the selectivity with respect to gender, place of birth, and educational attainment. The selectivity is interpreted in the context of the country's colonial legacy, cultural norms, and current socioeconomic conditions. Main findings: First, the urban-to-rural out-migration rates of both male and female adult Africans showed practically no declining trend with increasing age : they remained high through all working ages. This could be partly due to the lagged effect of the colonial government's white urban policy which prevented most African urban workers from accumulating much location-specific capital in urban areas as they became older. Second, relative to the male Africans, the female Africans were not only much less able to make rural-to-urban migrations but also much more prone to make urban-to-rural migrations through most working ages. This was related to the heavy reliance of farming on female labor in the indigenous cultural system, and to the relative scarcity of female employment opportunities in urban areas. Third, only male Africans, especially those who were rural-born and had no education, showed a sharp increase in the propensities to make urban-to-rural migration toward old ages. This could be a reflection of the fact that the most important forms of location-specific capital for most elderly African men were a piece of farm land and the privileged status as the elders of patrilineal families in their rural communities, and the fact that many married male migrant workers continued the custom of leaving their wives behind in rural areas. Fourth, the Africans with no education were so unable to migrate from rural to urban areas and so easily pushed out of urban areas that they contributed to the counter-urbanization in the lower strata of the educational hierarchy during a prolonged period of economic stagnation. Fifth, the urban/rural migrations resulted in a substantial improvement in urban human capital and a substantial decrease in rural human capital. With a very high unemployment rate in urban areas and a shortage of young adult labor in rural areas during the current prolonged economic stagnation, these effects represented a massive waste of valuable human resources. However, the government should not initiate regulations to control rural-to-urban migrations.
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  • Hisakazu Kato
    Article type: Article
    1997 Volume 20 Pages 23-35
    Published: May 31, 1997
    Released on J-STAGE: September 12, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The purpose of this paper is to examine the time series property of fertility change and fluctuation in postwar Japan. At first, we tested the null hypothesis in which the macro-fertility index has a unit root by various procedures. It was not rejected against an alternative hypothesis of trend stationarity. We conclude that the change of fertility has moved according to a random walk with a drift, not a "deterministic" trend. Therefore, fertility is influenced by probability factors over the long-term ; hence, there is the possibility that fertility will be reversed upward by an exogenous shock in the future. It is well said that the structure of fertility index had changed in Japan after 1966, the year of Hinoe-Uma. We examined this structural change with the step-wise Chow test and reconfirmed it. The presence of this structural change, however, does not modify the above conclusion of a unit root in fertility index. Assuming that there is a unit root in macro-fertility index, we decomposed TFR into a long-term and a short term factor, and we showed that the avoidance of a notification of birth due to superstition reached about several per cent in the year of Hinoe-Uma. Moreover, as an extension of above conclusions, we examined the possibility of applying the Butz-Ward model to Japanese data. We made clear that the model could not be adopted because there was no cointegration between fertility variable and economic variables of family income and women's wages. The approach using time series analysis, though it has limitations for structural investigation, is a useful tool to explain features of time series change. In this sense, this paper provides a new view on demographic studies.
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  • Shigemi Kono
    Article type: Article
    1997 Volume 20 Pages 37-47
    Published: May 31, 1997
    Released on J-STAGE: September 12, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development which is now past has widely been acclaimed as a profound success for the cause of empowering women and for the future of the mankind. Apart from the fact that it gathered the largest audience of this kind and received the hottest attention from mass media of communication, it has advocated that the neglect of women's health, interest and needs cannot effectively solve the modern population problems, including rapid population growth in developing countries and a threat to environmental disruption. Up to the Cairo Conference, population policies have sought to manage these demographic changes by employing a major instrument of family planning programs through the top-down bureaucratic mechanisms. Recently, however, this macro-oriented policies have been under a heavy attack by the feminist groups and others. Increasingly, women and even men have come to realize that narrow demographic approaches in developing countries by setting up collective goals and target numbers have now become neither to be ethically sound nor effective. A hollistic approach to attaining the quality of life for the mankind by way of empowerment of women and reproductive health/rights has now been considered a more sensible, meaningful and fresh strategy to eventually achieve population stabilization. Yet, such a hollistic approach is not without reservation and criticism against. Widening the mandate in spite of recent international and national financial constraints is one thing. The past family planning programs have actually contributed greatly to a reduction of fertility in the developing world with a relatively limited funds. Why should we throw away the efficiency and efficacy of family planning? This is the second type of reservation. But a most serious criticism comes from the understanding that the Cairo program advocates the laissez-faire behavior for women's reproductivity. With this, how could the women in Sub-Saharan Africa, who have low unmet needs, attain a net replacement of fertility even if a massive provision of reproductive health could be available for them? As some population scientists have written, the most difficult challenges ahead lie in converting the rhetoric and conceptual framework of the Cairo program into programmatic reality. The present author believes that the ICPP in Cairo has made a tremendous breakthrough in population philosophy. But, there remain so many ambiguities, inconsistencies, and furthermore utopian objectives and recommendations, which should be modified and adjusted to reality, the reality of the present staggering population problems facing the humanity.
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  • Shinichi Takahashi
    Article type: Article
    1997 Volume 20 Pages 49-63
    Published: May 31, 1997
    Released on J-STAGE: September 12, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Fertility declines in many developing countries are now accelerating. Many scholars are trying to explain the demographic transition of developing countries as well as developed countries. But it is generally recognized that the explanations have some problems. The author has tried to provide a new explanation of the demographic transition in which two distinctive regimes distinguished in terms of resource use by mankind, that is population adjustment and population transition, have an important role in population changes. Population and the economy in micro situations tend to experience some imbalance in the phase when they utilize mainly renewable resources, particularly renewable energy. There are several ways to adjust any imbalance: one is voluntary fertility control, but this is generally the last to operate in most countries or regions. This is the population adjustment regime. On the other hand industrialization using non-renewable resources, and the development of a market economy make the relationship between population and economy indirect. And in the process some vital transitions occur. One of them is the fertility transition which is on the whole independent from the mortality transition and migration transition. This is the population transition regime. Using this new model this paper tried to explain the demographic transition in the rural northeastern region of Thailand. For this purpose interviews and questionnaire surveys were conducted in 1994 and 1995. The Northeast is the least developed and poorest region in Thailand. But fertility has declined significantly since the 1970s, although a time lag in the decline existed compared to other regions. The main factors contributing to the fertility decline were as follows. In terms of the population adjustment regime, during the early 20th century the imbalance between population and economy which occurred because of the decline in the death rate was adjusted by land encroachment, often accompanied by rural to rural migration, agricultural intensification, and migration to urban regions, particularly Bangkok. But these adjustments had limits because encroachment ceased by the 1950s, agricultural intensification was limited to only a part of the region, and permanent migration to Bangkok was difficult for poorly educated rural people who could only find unskilled laboring jobs in Bangkok as temporary migrants. At the same time, the gradual penetration of the market economy to rural regions in the Northeast and the spread of primary education tended to create cash economy for living and production for rural people. As a result, the cost of bringing up of children rose more and more. This was the beginning of the population transition regime in the rural region. In Thailand, at least after the 1960s both regimes worked in the poor rural regions of the Northeast, though population adjustment processes were stronger. This gave the incentive to control marital fertility. At exactly that time national family planning programs were introduced, and thus people easily accepted the programs and a rapid decline in fertility occurred. After that the spread of a market economy and the increase in use of electricity and machines accelerated, which made the transition process more important than the adjustment process.
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