Caldwell (1996) PDF

Population Investigation Committee
Demography and Social Science

Author(s): J. C. Caldwell
Source: Population Studies, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Nov., 1996), pp. 305-333
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Population Investigation Committee
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Population Studies, 50 (1996), 305-333
Printed in Great Britain
Demography and Social Science
J. C. CALDWELL*
INTRODUCTION
There are obvious epistemological problems besetting this article. If there were
agreement that demography was a social science, the title would have to read
'Demography and the Other Social Sciences'. If Population Studies' sole concern was the
discipline suggested by its name, then the issue would be the simpler one of its
relationship to the other social sciences. This is not a mere play on words. What
demography is and what demographers should be confined to doing remains a difficult
area in terms not only of the scope of professional interests, but also of the coverage
aimed at in the syllabuses for students and in what is acceptable for journals in the field.
The social sciences, themselves, are not much better defined.
When the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences' began publication in 1930, the senior
editor, Edwin Seligman, introduced it by explaining: 'The phenomena ... related to
group activities are commonly called social phenomena, and the sciences which classify
and interpret such activities are the social sciences. The social sciences may thus be
defined as those mental or cultural sciences which deal with the activities of the
individual as a member of a group.'2 This seems to include demography, depending on
how much emphasis is placed on the word 'individual', and this impression is reinforced
by his first example of sociology and its relation to social action: 'The typical procedure
is an investigation of a concrete situation as, for example, excessive infant mortality in
a given area, followed by recommendations for remedial action...'.' Nevertheless,
Seligman did not include demography in his subsequent listing of either the 'social
sciences' or the 'semi-social sciences'. In spite of this, demography does have its own
entry in the Encyclopaedia, where the author, A. B. Wolfe, appears to explain the
omission: 'The term demography is best established in France and Italy ... it has never
attained to general usage in English-speaking countries '. He went on to discuss the
fundamental role played by censuses and vital registration systems in demography, and
concluded 'Demography may thus be regarded as a kind of bio-social book-keeping, a
continuous inventory and analysis of the human population and its vital processes,
collectively considered'.'
When, nearly 40 years later, its successor, the International Encyclopedia of the Social
Sciences, was published, David Sills, its editor, did not try to define his subject, but
wrote: 'it is apparent from ... [Seligman's list of social science disciplines] that the
question, "What are the social sciences?" is one to which no final answer can be given,
* Health Transition Centre, National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, The Australian
National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.
1 E. R. A. Seligman and A. Johnson (eds.), Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan,
published in instalments between 1930 and 1935).
2 E. R. A. Seligman, 'What are the social sciences?', in E. R. A. Seligman and A. Johnson (eds.),
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1948), p. 3.
3 Ibid., p. 5.
4 A. B. Wolfe, 'Demography', in Seligman and Johnson, op. cit. in fn. 2, p. 85.
5 Ibid., pp. 85-86.
305
306 J. C. CALDWELL
since - like other groupings of scientific and academic fields - the social sciences differ in
their scope from one generation to another'.6 Nevertheless, he listed the major disciplines,
and then, under 'Sociology', he identified that subject's sub-disciplines, adding at the
end 'such special fields as criminology and demography'.7 Clearly, there continued to be
reservations about identifying demography as just another social science, even though
the journal, Population Studies, had since 1947 equated 'population studies' and
'demography' by publishing under the title Population Studies: A Journal of
Demography. The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences did have a major
section entitled 'Population', divided into seven parts: (1) The Field of Demography, (2)
Population Theories, (3) Optimum Population Theory, (4) Population Composition, (5)
Population Distribution, (6) Population Growth, and (7) Population Policies.8 It might
be noted that, except for theory, none of these sections sounds very social-scientific.
There is no suggestion that they might include such matters as the social context or
determinants of fertility or mortality change, or the causes and consequences of
population growth. But 'specific topics directly within the field of demography' are
listed under the headings 'Fertility', 'Migration', 'Mortality' and 'Nuptiality', with
other 'relevant' entries being 'Fertility Control' and 'Demography and Population
Genetics'. In the entry, 'The Field of Demography', Dudley Kirk wrote: 'Demography
is the quantitative study of human populations. Its basic materials are censuses, vital
statistics, and, increasingly, sample surveys. Its central concerns are the measurement
and discovery of uniformities in the basic processes of human birth, death, population
movement, and population growth'.9 But he then noted another definition, 'A broader
and increasingly popular usage of the term " demography " includes studies of
demographic variables in their social as well as their biological contexts'.10 But as late
as 1985, Dahrendorf, when defining 'social science' in another encyclopaedia, and
furthermore defining it in an empirical fashion close to the heart of many demographers
failed to mention demography in his entry.11
Many demographers regard their subject as something which cannot really be equated
with the mainstream social sciences. Stycos called it an 'interdiscipline', inventing the
word for the purpose.12 Graham and Taylor grouped demography with criminology as
special deviance-centred (by equating high fertility with deviance), mission-oriented,
problem-solving and policy-directing sub-disciplines,13 but, as Stokes pointed out, they
did this largely by equating demography's field with fertility and family planning, which
made up a very small proportion of all the topics usually listed as constituting the field.14
Graham and Taylor replied that their survey of Population Studies over recent years
revealed that more than 40 per cent of its articles were concerned with fertility and
fertility control.15
6 D. L. Sills, 'Introduction', in D. L. Sills (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New
York: Macmillan, 1968), vol. 1, p. xxi.
Ibid., p. xxii.
8 Op. cit. in fn. 6, vol. 12, pp. 342ff.
Ibid., p. 342.
0 Ibid., pp. 342-343.
1 R. Dahrendorf, 'Social sciences', in A. Kuper and J. Kuper (eds.), The Social Science Encyclopaedia
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 784-785.
12 J. M. Stycos, 'Demography as an interdiscipline', Sociological Forum, 2 (4), (1987), p. 616.
13 H. Graham and L. Taylor, 'Conceptions and commissions: parallels in the development of demogr
and criminology', Sociological Review, 23 (3), (1975), pp. 629-644.
14 C. S. Stokes, 'Comment on "Conceptions and commissions: parallels in the development of demography
and criminology"', Sociological Review, 25 (1), (1977), pp. 147-152.
15 H. Graham and L. Taylor, 'Typifying demography: reply to C. Shannon Stokes', Sociological Revie
25 (1), (1977), pp. 153-156.
DEMOGRAPHY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 307
Not all demographers accept this peripheral role for their subject; some regard it as
a basic - almost the basic - study. Hauser and Duncan, in introducing their huge volume
which was aimed at institutionalizing the field, wrote in 1959: 'the critical element in the
definition of demography is not the scope of the population characteristics studied, but
rather the concept of "population" itself'.16 Davis had stated in 1949 in Human Society,
a sociology textbook, for which demography provided a kind of framework: 'The
science of population, sometimes called demography, represents a fundamental
approach to the understanding of human society '.17 Moore, arguing that demographic
theory is fundamentally concerned with how populations reproduce themselves,
observed that 'one major concern of sociological theory at the highest level of
generalization is the identification of universals in social systems', and further, that the
'analysis of demographic as well as other social phenomena in terms of requisite
functions invites consideration at the highest level that the empirical data will bear, and
at the same time places population and vital events solidly within the pattern of human
relations'.'8 Broom and Selznick, in their sociology textbook,"9 included, without
apology or explanation, a chapter on population in the division on 'The Elements of
Social Analysis', and placed it between the chapters on ' Collective Behavior' and 'The
Family'. Furthermore, their chapters on the family, education, and law all ended with
a 'population' section which provided a macroscopic way of looking at these matters.
Preston explained such practices as reflecting 'the empiricist orientation of American
sociology, and the fact that two pioneering sociologist-demographers, Kingsley Davis
and Otis Dudley Duncan, were able to demonstrate the value of demographic
approaches in the study of a broad array of social phenomena'. 20
Some scholars, especially in the United States, despair of being able to provide a
disciplinary justification for demography, especially in terms of the social sciences, and
define the field by its institutions, or the area it has succeeded in occupying. Stycos
wrote: 'As a field with its own body of interrelated concepts, techniques, journals, and
professional associations, demography is clearly a discipline '.21 Moore said that it was
best to ' accept current practice and regard demography as a sub-field of sociology as it
usually is structurally in American universities'. 22 Preston argued: 'If we choose an
operational definition of demography that comprises all of the subject matter included
in the journal Demography and the annual meetings of the Population Association of
America, the field extends much beyond its technical core. It includes the collection and
evaluation of demographic data; research of any disciplinary stripe on the causes and
consequences of population change (often grouped under the term population studies);
and primarily descriptive studies of a diverse set of variables such as poverty, living
arrangements, marital status, and occupation (sometimes called social demography) '.23
This division into formal demography, a statistical discipline that contributes to the
social, biological, and health sciences, and population studies, normally accepted as a
16 p. M. Hauser and 0. D. Duncan, 'The nature of demography', in P. M. Hauser and 0. D. Duncan

(eds.), The Study of Population: An Inventory and Appraisal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), pp.
32-33.
17 K. Davis, Human Society (New York: Macmillan, 1948), p. 551.
18 W. E. Moore, 'Sociology and demography', in Hauser and Duncan, op. cit. in fn. 16, pp. 835, 836.
19 L. Broom and P. Selznick, Sociology, 5th edn (New York: Harper and Row, 1955).
20 S. H. Preston, 'The contours of demography: estimates and projections', Demography, 30 (4), (1993),
p. 593.
21 Stycos, loc. cit. in fn. 12, p. 616.
22 Moore, loc. cit. in fn. 18, p. 833.
23 Preston, loc. cit. in fn. 20, pp. 593-594.
308 J. C. CALDWELL
social science, provides the usual way out of the definitional dilemma.24 Preston adds the
warning that the use of demographic techniques, some of which are used in actuarial
science and population biology rather than in the social sciences, remains 'the unique
feature of the field of demography'.25 Keyfitz also cautions: 'one can think of much
more urgent work for demographers than occupies the marginal papers of our
journals',26 but he was referring primarily to the need for more substantive work (in such
fields as AIDS and Third World health), doubtless employing the best available
techniques, that could improve the world's condition. In fact, he concluded, 'most
would agree that techniques are worthwhile only when they permit the drawing of
conclusions not possible without them'. 27
In terms of researchers working within the population field, especially in global terms,
students of migration have always been numerous. Most were geographers, many of
whom would claim to be social scientists, even though geography is rarely included in
lists of the social sciences. Just as the relationship between demography and the social
sciences remains ambiguous, so does that between migration studies and the rest of
demography. Kirk went so far as to state: 'The step-child of demography is migration,
which up to now has defied the application of refined measurements comparable to those
developed in the other two fields (i.e. mortality and fertility ').28
THE CHANGING NATURE OF THE DISCIPLINE
American writers have persistently claimed a special relationship between demography

and sociology. This may be better explained in historical than in disciplinary terms.
Demography in the age of Malthus was related primarily to an interest in resources, food
supply, and nutrition, and in the second half of the nineteenth century, in the time of
William Farr, to mortality and public health. Stycos categorized demographers who
worked on fertility as needing to be sociologists or biologists, those concerned with
morbidity and mortality as epidemiologists and health scientists, those who studied
population growth as human ecologists, and those interested in migration as often being
economists or geographers.29 Some scholars have argued that demography does not
have this range of similarly close partnerships, but that its relationship with sociology
is fundamental; Davis proclaimed that 'society is both a necessary and sufficient cause
of population trends'.30
In the United States the increase of sociology programmes after the Second World
War occurred at a time when data from the Indianapolis Survey were available, and were
assisted by many of the sociology faculty and by graduate students who participated in a
series of American fertility surveys, and later in international fertility surveys. When the
Ford Foundation entered the population field during the beginning of the 1960s their
interest lay in fertility and its control, and most of the Population Centres they funded
were situated in sociology departments."1 This was followed, although not at full volume
until the 1970s, by what Berelson described as a fertility 'review explosion' in the
24 Hauser and Duncan, loc. cit. in fn. 16, p. 34; D. Kirk, 'The field of demography', in Sills, op. cit. in fn.
6, pp. 342-343.
25 Preston, loc. cit. in fn. 20, p. 593.
26 N. Keyfitz, 'Thirty years of demography and Demography', Demography, 30 (4), (1993), pp. 542-543.
27 Ibid., p. 547.
28 Kirk, loc. cit. in fn. 24, p. 348.
30 Davis, op. cit. in fn. 17, pp. 553-554.
31 J. C. Caldwell and P. Caldwell, Limiting Population Growth and the Ford Foundation Contribution
(London: Frances Pinter, 1986), pp. 52-76.
demographic journals.32 These events changed the composition of the body of

professional demographers and meant that most regarded their work as social science,
and approached it from the point of view of social scientists.
The movement to control population growth was not the only post-war event that
changed the nature of demography and moved it towards the social sciences. The
computer became available to most demographers in the 1960s, and this led to a decisive
shift from a concern with aggregate data derived from censuses and vital registration
systems to the analysis of individual-level data, usually from surveys, but also, in some
countries, with data tapes that recorded census samples.33
The move to surveys meant dealing with individuals to a much greater extent than
work on census data. The surveys made it possible to collect information on many more
characteristics of individuals, and analysis could then concentrate on very specific groups
within the society. Furthermore, surveys often contained a range of questions on cause
and effect. They could include very intimate and personal questions, that few
governments would put in national censuses. Some contained questions that called for
qualitative responses which were difficult, or even impossible, to code, which the analyst
could read en masse or even in conjunction with the quantitative answers to a single
questionnaire, thus forming a view of a single person. The analyst sometimes went back
into the field to locate and talk to the actual informants.
The third change, partly related to the first two, that brought demography closer to
becoming just another social science was the return to population and social theory. In
its genesis, demography had been largely theoretical from arguments that justified
mercantilism to Malthus's First Essay. The strong empirical element in modern
demography is to some extent an attempt to test these theories and provide them with
adequate grounding, but it is also a reaction to, and a suspicion of, grand theory. One
can trace this process in the lives of individual population scientists: from Malthus's
First Essay to its final editions; or, more recently, from Carr-Saunders's The Population
Problem published in 1922, to his World Population published in 1936.34
Yet, some theory, perhaps barely articulated, must underlie all analysis, especially in
a discipline so enamoured with the detection and explanation of change. Indeed,
Teachman and his colleagues described demography as a field driven by change, almost
re-inventing itself as it proceeds. Since the Second World War they picture interest
moving from the baby boom to the baby bust, and on to the divorce boom, the
population explosion in the Third World and its deceleration, and to the areas identified
by the rise of women's issues.35 It is precisely this movement with the times that has led
Preston to charge that both focus and conclusions can be influenced by transient
population phenomena.36 Crimmins regards evolving theory as the 'engine pulling the
field of demography' more or less successfully through these new areas,37 and sees
leadership in the field of fertility as having been given by Davis and Blake,38 the
32 B. Berelson, 'Social science research on population: a review', Population and Development Review, 2 (2),
(1976), p. 221.
3 Keyfitz, loc. cit. in fn. 26, p. 534; E. M. Crimmins, 'Demography: the past 30 years, the present and the
future', Demography, 30 (4), (1993), pp. 579-581; J. D. Teachman, K. Paasch and K. P. Carver, 'Thirty years
of Demography', Demography, 30 (4), (1993), p. 524.
3 A. M. Carr-Saunders, The Population Problem: A Study in Human Evolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1922); A. M. Carr-Saunders, World Population: Past Growth and Present Trends (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1936).
3 Teachman et al., loc. cit. in fn. 33, p. 524.
3 Crimmins, loc. cit. in fn. 33, p. 587.
38 K. Davis and J. Blake, 'Social structure and fertility: an analytic framework', Economic Development and
Cultural Change, 4 (4), (1956), pp. 211-235.
310 J. C. CALDWELL
Princeton European Project,39 Becker,40 Bulatao and Lee,4" Caldwell, 42 and Easterlin,
Pollack and Wachter.43 She contrasts the theoretically sound condition of the fertility
field with that of mortality, describing the latter as remaining largely descriptive (a point
which will be taken up later).
Stycos saw the new demography as having been re-invigorated by a return to theory,
which he dated surprisingly late as having occurred in the 1980s, and which he saw as
the catalyst that interested demographers in other fields and which could contribute to
explanation.44 Hauser and Duncan had argued that it was a case of necessity, because
demography needs population theory and that theory could not explain demographic
phenomena with the findings provided by demography.45 Lorimer wrote 'The
demographer is inevitably involved in investigating the biological and social correlates
of demographic processes ,46 and Davis had argued 'What gives his [the demographer's]
subject interest to the social scientist, and social science interest to him, is in the first
place the fact that fertility, mortality, and migration are all to a great extent socially
determined and socially determining... Whenever the demographer pushes his inquiry
to the point of asking why the demographic processes behave as they do, he enters the
social field .
Demography, then, has continued to change. Curiously, the invention of the
computer has, in significant ways, made it less statistical and more social-scientific.
Those demographers who control their own study designs even before data are collected
in the field and who remain with the project to the analysis and interpretation of the
data, can carry out work which is impeccable social science. Pre-computer demography
often seems strangely old-fashioned.
THE UNIQUE CHARACTER OF DEMOGRAPHY
Why, then, do those demographers who are interested in explaining behaviour and
change in population phenomena not just disappear into the neighbouring social
sciences? What gives them such loyalty to demography as a separate discipline, and why
do they see demographers as a distinct breed? The short answer is that experience as a
demographer often leads to impatience with disciplines that seem to build one
unsubstantiated assumption upon another without foundations which can be tied to the
observable world, indeed, without foundations which can in some way be measured or
shown to be real and have ascertainable magnitude. They also demand reality in another
way. They find it hard to be convinced by evidence of a phenomenon unless they know
how that phenomenon relates to the whole. They wish to know what fraction of a certain
defined population behaves in this way, or exhibits that characteristic. They usually
3 A. J. Coale and S. C. Watkins (eds.), The Decline of Fertility in Europe (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1986).
40 G. S. Becker, 'An economic analysis of fertility', in Demographic and Economic Change in Developed
Countries, Universities National Bureau Conference Series No. 11 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1960).
41 R. A. Bulatao and R. D. Lee (eds.), Determinants of Fertility in Developing Countries: A Summary of
Knowledge (New York: Academic Press, 1983).
42 J. C. Caldwell, 'Towards a restatement of demographic transition theory', Population and Development
Review, 2 (3-4), (1976), pp. 321-366.
4 R. A. Easterlin, R. A. Pollack and K. L. Wachter, 'Toward a more general economic model of fertility
determination: endogenous preferences and natural fertility', in R. A. Easterlin (ed.), Population and
Economic Change in Developing Countries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
45 Hauser and Duncan, loc. cit. in fn. 16, p. 36.
46 F. Lorimer, 'The development of demography', in Hauser and Duncan, op. cit. in fn. 16, p. 165.
47 Davis, op. cit. in fn. 17, p. 552.
demand in addition that to deserve attention the phenomenon should be on a significant

scale. They are interested in individual behaviour, but only if sufficient individuals
behave in a way to make the observation worthwhile. They are interested in the central
tendencies of groups.
They are the inheritors of nineteenth-century positivism. 'Positivism, according to
Auguste Comte ... emphasizes the factual position against the speculative, the useful
against the idle, the certain as against the indecisive, the precise against the vague, the
positive as against the negative or critical . Dahrendorf, when defining social science
in 1985, wrote that this was the tradition that produced the great factual surveys of
Charles Booth in Britain, and the Chicago School in the United States, as well as the
work of Emile Durkheim, but that there have been few followers.49 In fact,
demographers, who now number thousands, are in the direct line of descent.
Demographers, more than most social scientists, are interested in having their basic
data as close to accuracy as possible. It is a question of minimizing error, and, unlike
many social scientists, they know that no measurements are ever exact. They are also
suspicious of the viewpoint yielded by measurements, and much of their devotion to
statistical methods is little more than an attempt to make the measurement approximate
reality when witnessed from the position that the analyst intends to take. Their suspicion
of simple measures is no more than a belief that the simplicity may mislead and so yield
a false conclusion. Demographers usually feel that most other social scientists, when
dealing with population matters, are prone to employ simple demographic measures
which cannot possibly sustain their conclusions.
Demography has sometimes been described as 'the servant of other social sciences' in
that 'it evaluates and initially digests the vast reservoirs of social data compiled in
censuses and vital statistics. It provides substantial raw material for the study of social,
political, and economic change . There is, as we will see below, little evidence for this.
Those methodologists who do not complete their own analyses and draw their own
conclusions are likely to find their material either left unused, or employed to draw
conclusions which they would not support. Certainly some of their data and conclusions
are cited by others, but little more frequently than is the case between other social
sciences, and, unless they arrange with a collaborator to build a sociological or economic
analysis upon their refined demographic conclusions, the task is unlikely to be done.
Most demographers prefer to be associated with their production of 'social facts' at
every stage. Many advise census-takers and help to construct the global survey
programmes. Preston believes that this, at least in part, is what has made them 'the most
inductive of social scientists.51 These contrasts with the other social sciences should not
be stretched too far, especially in the computer age. Other social scientists now also
construct their own surveys, while far more demographers use data from the World
Fertility Survey or Demographic and Health Surveys than those who helped to put the
programmes together. Nevertheless, the old tradition persists, and demographers remain
less trusting of their raw data, and more likely to examine them for defects than most
other social scientists. This has resulted in a conviction that analytical methodology lies
at the core of the discipline and even defines it. It may also have led to a greater
resistance to radical changes in the role of the methodology than in the definition of what
social demography may embrace.52
48 Dahrendorf, loc. cit. in fn. 11, p. 784.

49 Ibid.
5 Kirk, loc. cit. in fn. 24, p. 348.
52 Cf. Crimmins, loc. cit. in fn. 33, pp. 582-586.
312 J. C. CALDWELL
Nevertheless, even social demographers mostly remain suspicious of what cannot be

grounded in measurable facts or tested qualitatively. This remains the case in spite of
modern demography's birth in the grand theory of Malthus's First Essay, and, in our
own time, in the spur given to the subject by Notestein's demographic transition theory
with its description of the pre-transitional supports for high fertility; that have largely
eluded attempts at producing statistical justification. Indeed, a good example of these
problems is provided by the first article in the first issue of Population Studies, by
Taeuber and Notestein on 'The changing fertility of the Japanese', where, in spite of the
statistics and graphs, much of the argument cannot be deduced from the numbers.53
Most demographers believe that statistical analysis and short- or medium-range theory
or hypothesis should advance in step with each other. Keyfitz put forward the argument
that nothing else is permissible and 'that the qualitative and empirical groups are at best
missing much in their investigation, and at worst not doing science at all '.5 Despite, or
perhaps because of, their care to improve their data and express them in the most
appropriate measures, demographers' main failing is probably that they then equate
these statistical categories, defined in the first place in order to make measurement
possible, with the underlying social reality.55
One charge made against those demographers funded to study fertility during the last
few decades is that they saw themselves as policy-makers and harbingers of change who
concentrated on those areas which would display the need for change and concluded
more from their studies than the data could support. Hodgson, who sees this as a
vanishing era, wrote: 'To offer advice on how to produce beneficial social change
without doing violence to "facts" as best they are known is a difficult and stressful
task'.56 One might comment that such charges could often be made more tellingly
against economists or urban sociologists, or even against demographers working in the
health field. One might also note that advocates of fertility control often charge
demographers with being over-cautious and unwilling to proceed beyond their data.
Another charge, less often made but possibly more serious, and which probably
applies to all social science, and perhaps all science, is that the much-vaunted
interdisciplinary research, often necessary in the search for explanation and the
construction of theory, carries with it the danger of being non-scientific. Caldwell et al.
carried out an investigation of two important areas of contemporary social theory, both
interwoven from the findings of demographers and anthropologists: the concept of
substantial pre-modern volitional control of fertility, and the partly related concept of
'primitive affluence' . For both concepts the case was found to be very far from proven,
and the authors concluded that the apparent proofs would not have been so readily
accepted if the analyses had all been made within a single discipline. 'Both
anthropologists and demographers have frequently been less rigorous when interpreting
evidence from the other discipline than if they had been drawing on work done in their
own field, presumably because they have greater knowledge of their own area, but
perhaps also because there is less risk of censure from their own colleagues when
uncritically drawing evidence from another field .
5 I. B. Taeuber and F. W. Notestein, 'The changing fertility of the Japanese', Population Studies, 1 (1),
(1947), pp. 2-28.
5 Keyfitz, loc. cit. in fn. 26, p. 547.
5 Cf. Kirk, loc. cit. in fn. 24, p. 348.
56 D. Hodgson, 'Demography as a social science and as a political science', Population and Development
Review, 9 (1), (1983), p. 1.
5 J. C. Caldwell, P. Caldwell and B. Caldwell, 'Anthropology and demography: the mutual reinforcement
of speculation and research', Current Anthropology, 28 (1), (1987), p. 38.
THE INTERFACES BETWEEN DEMOGRAPHY AND THE OTHER SOCIAL SCIENCES
All social sciences are necessarily concerned with society and people, and, therefore, with
population. One can list a range of social sciences - sociology, anthropology, social and
economic history, economics, psychology, criminology, political science, education, law,
geography, human ecology - and find researchers who work on the borders between
demography and each of the other sciences mentioned, and many more demographers
who search in these other fields for information needed to explain their findings, or to
frame their hypotheses. There are similar excursions in the opposite direction.
Furthermore, this list ignores fields that are only partly social-scientific, such as public
health, epidemiology, and genetics, and excludes bio-medicine, agriculture and other
areas relevant to many demographers. Indeed, demography first came to the attention
of many anglophone social scientists because of the International Congress of Hygiene
and Demography.
The reader of interdisciplinary works can usually tell whether the writer's major
discipline is demography or not. The demographer may begin by referring to relevant
theories, but is soon at work searching for appropriate data sets to see, in the first place,
whether there is sufficient quantitative support for the argument to make further
investigations worthwhile. Few demographers will continue to pile up hypotheses or
proceed from one speculative idea to another, unless they can gain some support from
the analysis of quantitative data. This is certainly not the situation in much contemporary
sociology and anthropology.
Demographers and sociologists, together with statisticians, public-health specialists
and biomedical researchers, have constructed a new sub-field, fertility and family-
planning studies, with appropriate scientific journals such as Studies in Family Planning
and International Family Planning Perspectives. Some of their work is special pleading,
but the best is very good in its own right, and sheds light on areas of fundamental interest
to both demographers and sociologists. Much the same is now happening in the newer
field of the behavioural and social context of AIDS, where crisis-driven research into the
largely heterosexually transmitted epidemics of sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, and
Thailand promises to shed important new light on sexuality, the family, and other areas
of fundamental importance to the demographer, sociologist, and anthropologist which
have been insufficiently explored. In developed countries the post-demographic-
transition focus on ageing is a further example.
With the growth of cultural ecology as a branch of anthropology, some
anthropologists have embraced demographic concepts in the postulation of evolutionary
and ecological theories. Much of this work is Malthusian in its concentration on
population pressures, but demographers, with their deep suspicions of theory bounding
ahead with insufficient empirical support, have mostly kept their distance. Similarly,
palaeodemography, the study of pre-historic populations based on human remains,
surviving artefacts, and traces of dwellings, and some information on sources of food,58
has attracted more anthropologists than demographers. One demographer surveyed this
field and charged that the quality of the data and the way they were analysed could not
support the weight of the conclusions drawn.59 At least one anthropological
58 Cf. C. Seymour-Smith (ed.), Macmillan Dictionary of Anthropology (London: Macmilla

pp. 72-73.
5 W. Petersen, 'A demographer's view of prehistoric demography', Current Anthropology, 16 (1975),
pp. 227-245.
314 J. C. CALDWELL
demographer has envisaged demography making a major contribution to the central

interests of anthropology: 'If we knew the schedules for populations in general and
could correlate the schedules with the causes, genetic or environmental, that produce
them, we would know a great deal about the possible range of human social structure. '60
Economists draw on population series and demographic estimates, just as
demographers attempt to relate fertility and mortality trends to economic series.61
Demographers with a background in economics have been major contributors to
population theory. McNicoll, in his effort to produce an institutional analysis of fertilit
has drawn on institutional theory, largely produced by economists, but to which
historians and sociologists have also contributed.62
THE ROLE OF POPULATION STUDIES: ITS OVERTURES TO THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
We have already noted that some demographers argue that demography is a discipline
because it has, amongst other institutions, its own journals. Keyfitz goes further: 'in the
criteria a journal uses for determining what is "best" it can be a powerful means for
shaping the discipline. Influence on the direction that a profession takes need not be
conscious on the part of the editor or the readers but it is inevitably present '.63
If this is the general position, it is much more the case with regard to Population
Studies. Before the Second World War there had been prototypes for demographic
journals, Population published by the International Population Union (reconstituted as
the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population) and Population
Literature (now Population Index) produced by Princeton's Office of Population
Research. Nevertheless, when Population Studies first appeared in 1947, it virtually had
the field to itself, and this continued to be the case for 16 critical years that moulded the
nature of modern demography, until Demography joined it in 1963, and for another
eleven years until Population and Development Review started publication in 1974.
Furthermore, for decades it continued with the same two editors, David Glass and
E. Grebenik. What they believed constituted the field came, to a very considerable degree,
to be the field. Our purpose here is to examine the extent to which they saw the field as
embracing the social sciences. Because demography tends to meld with other social
sciences, it has different borders for different observers and different journals. A
sufficient, and appropriate, definition for our purposes is what has been acceptable to
Population Studies.
The unsigned note leading the first issue indicated which papers were acceptable,
although it was so general that it would take some time before many social scientists
would find whether their interests were or were not included. 'These contributions will
be primarily concerned with demographic research, but papers which summarize or
discuss the state of knowledge in various aspects of this field will be welcome, as also will
be contributions dealing with technique. Population Studies is sponsored by the
Population Investigation Committee, which was set up in 1936 to promote and
undertake research into quantitative and qualitative aspects of population questions '.64
60 N. Howell, 'Demographic anthropology', Annual Review of Anthropology, 15 (1986), p. 219.

61 Cf. E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541-1871 (London: Edward
Arnold, 1981).
62 G. McNicoll, 'Institutional analysis of fertility', Lecture in the series on Population, Environment and
Development, The Beier Institute, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, 14 October 1993 (revised).
63 Keyfitz, loc. cit. in fn. 26, p. 539.
64 Population Studies, 1(1), (1947), p. 1.
Between 1947 and the end of 1993 well over 1,000 articles were published in the
journal (1,118 by my count). What were the fortunes, then, of social-scientific papers, or
those which contained social observations, findings, explanations and possibly policy or
theory?65 By this definition, and my application of it, the journal started cautiously with
only 41 per cent of the articles being in the social-science area in the late 1940s, 55 per
cent during the 1950s, and a little over 60 per cent thereafter, although around 76 per
cent so far for the 1990s. By decennial groups of volumes, the proportions for each ten
volumes were 46, 60, 66, 60 and 66 per cent. The number of social-science articles
increased faster than this as the journal grew in size. The conclusion is that Population
Studies is, to a very considerable extent, a social science journal, albeit one that leaves
its own imprint on the social scientists who write for it in compelling them to take a
rather empirical and population-based approach to their subject. What, then, have been
its social-science foci?
The Early Years and the Ghosts of the Past
Four themes dominated the social-scientific content of the first four years of the journal.
They reflected British, and, to a lesser degree, European, interests of that time66 and
especially the issues generated by the Royal Commission on Population. Indeed, the first
issue was dominated by a lengthy report on childbearing which was linked to that
enquiry.67 The first four themes were the cost of children: socio-economic differentials
in fertility; the genetic consequences of fertility differentials; and population policies.
Together, they amounted to 64 per cent of the social-scientific papers published in the
first four volumes, compared with two per cent in the 1980s and 1990s. Clearly, an
important task for the more statistical demographers was to produce ever more refined
measures of fertility differentials.
The publication of articles on fertility differentials was to persist for 15 years. They
were written within a fertility-transition framework and drew attention to socio-
economic class differentials. They began in the second and third issues with a two-part
study of England and Wales, necessarily based on father's occupation because of the
nature of British official statistics.68 Sweden appeared in 1950,69 and the long run of
American survey data commenced appropriately with a report on the Indianapolis
Study in 1953,70 followed by papers from the University of Michigan on a Detroit
study.71 The first study to deal with the Third World, on Peru, did not appear until
1964.72
6 i.e. excluding the papers on technique, time series of demographic measures even if they were of interest
to social scientists, and those papers that reached out exclusively to the biological or medical sciences.
66 American authorship of social-scientific papcrs was not to be particularly significant until the 1960s when
the Population Centres were established.
67 Joint Committee of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Population
Investigation Committee, 'A survey of childbearing in Britain', Population Studies, 1 (1), (1947), pp. 99-136.
68 W. A. B. Hopkin and J. Hajnal, 'Analysis of the births in England and Wales, 1939, by father's
occupation', Parts 1 and 2, Population Studies (1947), pp. 187-203, 275-300.
69 S. Moberg, 'Marital status and family size among matriculated persons in Sweden', Population Studies,
4 (1), (1950), pp. 115-127.
7 C. V. Kiser and P. K. Whelpton, 'Resume of the Indianapolis study of social and psychological factors
affecting fertility', Population Studies, 7 (2), (1953), pp. 95-110.
71 R. Freedman and H. Sharp, 'Correlates of values about ideal family size in the Detroit Metropolitan
Area', Population Studies, 8 (1), (1954), pp. 35-45; A. Mayer and C. Klapprodt, 'Fertility differentials in
Detroit: 1920-1950', Population Studies, 9 (2), (1955), pp. 148-158.
72 D. M. Heer, 'Fertility differences between Indian and Spanish-speaking parts of Andean countries',
Population Studies, 18 (1), (1964), pp. 71-84.
316 J. C. CALDWELL
The European studies of family size, unlike the American ones, were focused on the
welfare of the poor, and were solidly in the tradition of Booth and Rowntree. This began
with the Joint Committee's report,73 which singled out the higher proportion of their
incomes the poor had to spend on births, and was followed by a debate that raged from
194974 to 195375 through seven articles on the burden of the cost of children and the
extent to which this was offset by social service provisions. The first description of a
Third World study, on Ghana, was published in 1965,76 but the later controversies on
the costs of children, and also the returns from them, mostly appeared in the pages of
Population and Development Review.
In other ways the early period of Population Studies was the end of an era, as well as
the beginning of a new one. This was nowhere shown more clearly than in the early
interest in the genetic consequences, especially the decline over generations in a society's
intelligence, of a higher birth rate among the poor than the better-off. Population Studies
was not alone, for in 1954 the Population Council intended to make 'population
quality' one of its concerns.77 The eugenics movement had been brought into existence
by the demonstration that the Western fertility transition was accompanied by socio-
economic fertility differentials, and much of the inter-war interest in demography had
been led by people associated with that movement, such as Lionel Penrose and C. P.
Blacker in England, and Frederick Osborn, Robert Cook, and Raymond Pearl in the
United States. The debate about the decline in intelligence began in the second issue of
Population Studies, with a sceptical article by Blackburn and a rejoinder by Burt,78 and
continued through seven further papers until 195879 when it disappeared; except for two
much later papers, one on an aspect of the history of the movement and the other, in
a policy supplement, presented a flicker of past interests.80 The papers ranged over
England, Scotland, New Zealand, Greece, and Sweden. Most implied some genetic
deterioration, although later papers were fairly cautious, and studies of twins featured
frequently. By the time the issue had died, it was clear that these fertility differentials
might narrow and even disappear, and papers in Population Studies on contemporary
fertility differentials had by that time moved from socio-economic differentials to
religious and rural-urban ones.
Population policies enjoyed two bursts of popularity in the journal. The first started
with the Joint Committee's report on Britain in the first issue81 and lasted until 1954. The
second paper in this early series was by Gille on Sweden, and the last also by him on
Denmark.82 Much was connected with matters that David Glass had been concerned
7 Joint Committee, loc. cit. in fn. 67.

74 A. Henderson, 'The cost of children. Part 1', Population Studies, 3 (2), (1949), pp. 130-150; J. W. B.
Douglas and G. Rowntree, 'Supplementary maternal and child health services. Part I. Post-natal care. Part II.
Nurseries', Population Studies, 3 (2), (1949), pp. 205-226.
7' A. M. Cartter, 'Income-tax allowances and the family in Great Britain', Population Studies, 6 (3), (1953)
pp. 218-232.
76 J. C. Caldwell, 'Extended family obligations and education: a study of an aspect of demographic
transition amongst Ghanaian university students', Population Studies, 19 (2), (1965), pp. 183-199.
77 Caldwell and Caldwell, op. cit. in fn. 31, p. 34.
78 J. Blackburn, 'Family size, intelligence score and social class', Population Studies, 1 (2), (1947), pp.
165-176; C. Burt, 'Family size, intelligence and social class', ibid., pp. 177-186.
"7 C. T. E. Quensel, 'The interrelations of marital status, fertility, family size and intelligence test scores',
80 J. Paul, 'Population "quality" and "fitness for parenthood" in the light of state eugenic sterilization
experiences', Population Studies, 21 (3), (1967), pp. 295-299; J. M. Thoday, G. A. Harrison, W. Brass, J. A.
Fraser Roberts, D. V. Glass, J. Maynard Smith, J. E. Meade and E. A. Wrigley, 'The interrelation between
genetics and the social sciences', Population Studies, 24 (Supplement, 1970), pp. 49-54.
81 Joint Committee, op. cit. in fn. 67.
82 H. Gille, 'Recent developments in Swedish population policy', Population Studies, 2 (1), (1948), pp. 3-70;
H. Gille, 'Family welfare measures in Denmark', Population Studies, 6 (2), (1952), pp. 172-210.
with in his book on European population movements and policies which was published
in 1940.83 All papers dealt with developed countries, and all but one with Europe. They
were written in the context of the setting up of welfare states after the Second World
War, and the United States did not feature in the discussions. The main focus was on
relieving the poor of the joint and related burdens of poverty and high fertility.
The second period was focused mainly on the Third World, beginning with Sarkar's
article on Sri Lanka in 1956,84 and Balfour's on family planning policies in Asia,85
although Eastern Europe was also given attention. During the 1970s twelve papers were
published on this topic starting with Berelson's global view in 197186 and ending with Yu
on China in 1979.87 Thereafter, apart from one paper on First World policies in 199088
and a debate, initiated by Thomas in 1991 on policies toward the Third World,89 the
subject vanished. The reasons for the change were probably twofold: interest shifted
from policies to actual fertility declines; and policy papers moved to Population and
Development Review. The policy papers in both periods were largely informative and
descriptive, and were not very critical of the policies, except for a few such as those by
Aird90 on China, Ambirajan9" on the Malthusian basis of British nineteenth-century
Indian famine policy, and Thomas92 on the pro-natalist impact of non-democratic
regimes.
The Themes of the 1950s Emerge
Four new major themes emerged in the 1950s: social and quantitative aspects of
migration; occupational (and social) mobility; marriage; and population theory. Only
two papers on these topics were published before July 1951,93 while during the rest of
the decade there were 30.
The end of the Second World War, and subsequently decades of economic prosperity
in the traditional receiving countries, brought into being not only continuing migration
streams, but researchers, most commonly sociological demographers, who were to
devote their professional lives to the study of these streams and their assimilation in the
receiving countries. Some of the early work was on the wartime and post-war refugees
in Israel, Australia, and Britain.94 But soon the main interest turned to economic
83 D. V. Glass, Population Policies and Movements in Europe (Oxford: Clarendon, 1940).

84 N. K. Sarkar, 'Population trends and population policy in Ceylon: a summary of findings', Population
Studies, 9 (3), (1956), pp. 195-216.
85 M. C. Balfour, 'Family planning in Asia', Population Studies, 15 (2), (1961), pp. 102-109.
86 B. Berelson, 'Population policy: personal notes', Population Studies, 25 (2), (1971), pp. 173-182.
87 Y. C. Yu, 'The population policy of China', Population Studies, 33 (1), (1979), pp. 125-142.
88 P. J. Donaldson, 'On the origins of the United States government's international population polic
89 N. Thomas, 'Land, fertility and the population establishment', Population Studies, 45 (3), (19
pp. 379-398; J. Cleland, 'Equity, security and fertility: a reaction to Thomas', Population Studies, 47 (2), (1993).
pp. 345-352; N. Thomas, 'Economic security, culture and fertility: a reply to Cleland', ibid., pp. 353-359.
88 J. S. Aird, 'Population policy in Mainland China', Population Studies, 16 (1), (1962), pp. 38-57.
81 S. Ambirajan, 'Malthusian population theory and Indian famine policy in the nineteenth century',
82 Thomas, loc. cit. in fn. 89.
83 M. Gottlieb, 'Optimum population, foreign trade and world economy', Population Studies, 3 (2), (1949),
pp. 151-170; C. Erickson, 'The encouragement of emigration by British trade unions, 1850-1900', Population
Studies, 3 (3), (1949), pp. 248-273.
94 H. B. M. Murphy, 'The resettlement of Jewish refugees in Israel, with special reference to those known
as Displaced Persons', Population Studies, 5 (2), (1951), pp. 153-174; H. B. M. Murphy, 'The assimilation of
refugee immigrants in Australia', Population Studies, 5 (3), (1952), pp. 179-206; E. Stadulis, 'The resettlement
of displaced persons in the United Kingdom', Population Studies, 5 (3), (1952), pp. 207-237; M. Bulbring,
'Postwar refugees in Great Britain', Population Studies, 8 (2), (1954), pp. 99-112.
318 J. C. CALDWELL
migrants who sought permanent settlement and who were to make such an impact on
countries of overseas European settlement, especially anglophone ones, during the
next generation. Curiously, some of these researchers first cleared the ground by
emphasizing the continuity of the process, and publishing accounts of nineteenth-
century migration.95
But apart from an early paper on West Indian migration to Britain,96 and a later one
on Indian migration to Guiana,97 the concentration was on Australia, Canada, and New
Zealand, with one paper on Brazil.98 Researchers on these topics in the United States
had spent their energy on such studies during the early part of the century, and studies
of international migration have not since been an important component of demographic
research there. By the early 1960s this phase of publication was drawing to an end,
possibly because the phenomenon was no longer new, and because papers on migration
were being more frequently published by specialist journals, but largely because the
studies were turning towards assimilation, a topic better suited to sociological journals.
Later papers concentrated on special fields, especially on the fertility of migrants, which
yielded very mixed findings.99 By 1994, Population Studies was not yet reflecting the
controversies of the 1990s about migration levels in settlement countries, or European
refugee streams within the continent.
Later specific migration studies dealt mainly with internal migration, focused, apart
from some historical studies of Britain,'00 on such Third World countries as Indonesia,
Ghana, and the Philippines.101 In addition, global studies, or local studies with a move
toward theoretical generalization, were beginning to appear by the 1980s.102
9 J. Zubrzycki, 'Emigration from Poland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries', Population Studies, 6
(3), (1953), pp. 248-272; G. W. Roberts, 'Immigration of Africans into the British Caribbean', Population
Studies, 7 (3), (1954), pp. 235-262; R. V. Clements, 'Trade unions and emigration, 1840-80', Population
Studies, 9 (1), (1955), pp. 167-180.
96 M. Banton, 'Recent migration from West Africa and the West Indies to the United Kingdom',
9 R. T. Smith, 'Some social characteristics of Indian immigrants in British Guiana', Population Studies, 13
(1), (1959), pp. 34-39.
98 L. B. Brown, 'Applicants for assisted migration from the United Kingdom to New Zealand', Population
Studies, 11 (1), (1957), pp. 86-91; J. Zubrzycki, 'The r6le of the foreign-language press in migrant integration',
Population Studies, 12 (1), (1958), pp. 73-82; B. Hutchison, 'Structural and exchange mobility in the
assimilation of immigrants to Brazil', Population Studies, 12 (2), (1958), pp. 111-120; R. T. Appleyard, 'The
return movement of United Kingdom migrants from Australia', Population Studies, 15 (3), (1962),
pp. 214-225; C. A. Price and J. Zubrzycki, 'Immigrant marriage patterns in Australia', Population Studies, 16
(2), (1962), pp. 123-133.
9 P. N. Ritchey, 'The fertility of Negroes without Southern rural experience: a re-examination of the 1960
GAF Study findings with 1967 SEO data', Population Studies, 27 (1), (1973), pp. 127-134; S. Goldstein and
A. Goldstein, 'The impact of migration on fertility: an "own children" analysis for Thailand', Population
Studies, 35 (2), (1981), pp. 265-284; A. Muthiah and G. W. Jones, 'Fertility trends among overseas Indian
populations', Population Studies, 37 (2), (1983), pp. 273-300; B. S. Lee and S. C. Farber, 'Fertility adaptation
by rural-urban migrants in developing countries: the case of Korea', Population Studies, 38 (1), (1984),
pp. 141-156; C. M. Young, 'Changes in the demographic behaviour of migrants in Australia and the transition
between generations', Population Studies, 45 (1), (1991), pp. 67-90.
100 D. Friedlander and R. J. Roshier, 'A study of internal migration in England and Wales. Part II. Recent
internal migrants - their movements and characteristics', Population Studies, 20 (1), (1966), pp. 45-60;
D. Friedlander, 'The spread of urbanization in England and Wales, 1851-1951', Population Studies, 24 (3),
(1970), pp. 423-443.
101 W. F. Wertheim, 'Sociological aspects of inter-island migration in Indonesia', Population Studies, 12
(3), (1959), pp. 184-201; J. C. Caldwell, 'Determinants of rural-urban migration in Ghana', Population
Studies, 22 (3), (1968), pp. 361-378; J. Lauby and 0. Stark, 'Individual migration as a family strategy: young
women in the Philippines', Population Studies, 42 (3), (1988), pp. 473-486.
102 J. A. Fortney, 'International migration of professionals', Population Studies, 24 (2), (1970),
pp. 217-234; L. Long, 'Changing residence: comparative perspectives on its relationship to age, sex, and marital
status', Population Studies, 46 (1), (1992), pp. 141-158; M. Wintle, 'Push-factors in emigration: the case of the
province of Zeeland in the nineteenth century', Population Studies, 46 (3), (1992), pp. 523-540.
The second theme of the 1950s, intergenerational social or occupational mobility, was
probably associated with Population Studies only because one of the editors, David
Glass, had organized a research programme and edited a book on the subject,'03 and
because his approach was particularly demographic. The issue of Population Studies
dated July 1955 included one theoretical paper'04 on the topic, as well as three
methodological articles on measuring such mobility. The emphasis was on occupational
mobility because of the nature of British official data, and probably also because of a
doubt whether rising income and occupational levels on their own constituted social
mobility in Britain. During the next nine years six more articles on the theme followed,
half of them on Britain, one on Canada, one on Israel, and one on Asia,'05 but after 1964
there were no more. This is curious, because the topic ceased to attract attention just as
the computer age and its surveys made possible the necessary detailed and sophisticated
investigations of this complex subject. The explanation is almost certainly that the more
complex studies were, almost by definition, more sociological, and better suited for
publication in that discipline's journals. This is a nice illustration of the fact that
demographers are in their element when there are massive but limited data which must
be used skilfully to throw light on a matter which really needs much more information
to explain it fully.
The marriage theme throws light on both Population Studies and demography. The
first paper on marriage did not appear until 1955, and the real density of papers, with
issues more commonly containing a paper on aspects of marriage than not, starts in
1971. By 1993, 62 papers on the subject had appeared. It seems hard to imagine that no
papers on marriage were submitted during the first seven years of the journal's existence,
and more plausible that there was some doubt at first whether demography embraced
nuptiality, until it became clear that the 'baby boom' was largely a marriage boom, and
from 1965 when Coale showed that the Princeton European Fertility Project would
regard nuptiality as a major determinant of fertility.'06 The latter event, together with
rising divorce rates, explains the boom in articles on marriage, which started in the early
1970s and continues unabated.
The suggestion that Population Studies hesitated to embrace nuptiality and its trends
in the contemporary West, perhaps leaving such papers to the Journal of Marriage and
the Family and Demography, receives confirmation from the fact that it has hardly ever
published an article on this area that would be regarded as treating nuptiality as a core
demographic variable in the contemporary West. Nearly all papers dealt with historical
Europe or the contemporary Third World; polygyny, ethnic cross-marriage (which
could be categorized as migrant assimilation), marriage and fertility, and non-standard
marriage types in both the First and Third Worlds, and especially with their impact on
fertility. Polygyny and other forms of African or Caribbean unions are the topic of
103 D. V. Glass (ed.), Social Mobility in Britain (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954).
104 S. J. Prais, 'The formal theory of social mobility', Population Studies, 9 (1), (1955), pp. 72-78.
105 B. F. Hoselitz, 'Population pressure, industrialization and social mobility', Population Studies, 11 (2),
(1957), pp. 123-135; B. Benjamin, 'Inter-generation differences in occupation', Population Studies, 11 (3),
(1958), pp. 262-268; C. Gordon, A. R. Emerson and D. S. Pugh, 'The age distribution of an industrial group
(Scottish railwaymen)', Population Studies, 12 (3), (1959), pp. 223-239; S. J. Kilpatrick, 'Occupational
mortality indices', Population Studies, 16 (2), (1962), pp. 175-187; J. Matras, 'Some data on intergenerational
occupational mobility in Israel', Population Studies, 17 (2), (1963), pp. 167-186; A. M. Farrag, 'The
occupational structure of the labour force: patterns and trends in selected countries', Population Studies, 18
(1), (1964), pp. 17-36.
106 A. J. Coale, 'Factors associated with the development of low fertility: an historic summary', in World
Population Conference 1965, Vol. 2 (New York: United Nations, 1967), pp. 205-209.
320 J. C. CALDWELL
almost one-quarter of all papers on nuptiality, and the relationship between polygyny
and fertility constitutes half of those. This is a sub-theme which Population Studies has
largely made its own, spanning almost a quarter of a century from the classic paper by
Muhsam'07 to perhaps a definitive statement by Garenne and van de Walle on sub-
Saharan Africa.'08 Divorce, broken homes, and remarriage make up almost one-fifth of
the papers, and, although their number increased, as did divorce rates during the 1970s
and 1980s, the first published paper on nuptiality in 1955 was of this type.'09 Some
changes in topic have occurred because behaviour changed: cohabitation features from
1990. Others owe much to both changes in behaviour and the growth of explanatory
theory: there has been only one paper on married women and employment"0 and only
one on the economics of marriage"' (although both are treated in some of the articles
on economic theory of fertility). Others still, like the papers on historical nuptiality
which are frequent from 1976, are a reflection of interest aroused by new projects such
as the very different demographic history projects which were under way by that time
at Princeton and Cambridge.
Population theory has never been outside the scope of Population Studies, thus
supporting the claim of demography to be a social science, but the number of
publications increased steeply from the late 1960s, showing an earlier return to a major
interest in theory than Stycos had suggested."2
The early years were dominated by a continuation of pre-war interests. Half the
theory papers in the first decade took the form of histories of theory, such as Glass's
study of the eighteenth-century population controversy, and Spengler's two papers
devoted to Alfred Marshall and population."3 Optimum population theory made its
first and last appearance in the journal."4 Malthus was prominent both in the
contemporary world, and in terms of historical parallels and his impact on thought."5
Not surprisingly, given the timing of successive waves of challenge to demographers, the
first real addition to the theory needed to guide contemporary research was in the
migration field with Eisenstadt's paper on migration theory published in 1953.116
Of the 78 papers Population Studies published on theory, just over two-thirds took an
economic approach, and were written by economic demographers or economists, with
107 H. V. Muhsam, 'Fertility of polygynous marriages', Population Studies, 10 (2), (1956), pp. 3-16.
108 M. Garenne and E. van de Walle, 'Polygyny and fertility among the Sereer of Senegal', Population
Studies, 43 (2), (1989), pp. 267-284.
109 G. Rowntree, 'Early childhood in broken families', Population Studies, 8 (3), (1955), pp. 247-263.
110 R. K. Kelsall and S. Mitchell, 'Married women and employment in England and Wales', Populatio
Studies, 13 (1), (1959), pp. 19-33.
111 J. F. Ermisch, 'Economic opportunities, marriage squeezes and the propensity to marry: an economic
analysis of period marriage rates in England and Wales', Population Studies, 35 (3), (1981), pp. 347-356.
112 Stycos, loc. cit. in fn. 12.
113 D. V. Glass, 'The population controversy in eighteenth-century England', Population Studies, 6 (1),
(1952), pp. 61-94; J. J. Spengler, 'Marshall on the population question. I', Population Studies, 8 (3), (1955),
pp. 264-287; Part II', Population Studies, 9 (1), (1955), pp. 56-66.
114 M. Gottlieb, 'Optimum population, foreign trade and world economy', Population Studies, 3 (2), (1949),
pp. 151-170; W. Peterson, 'John Maynard Keynes's theories of population and the concept of "optimum"',
115 K. Smith, 'Some observations on modern Malthusianism', Population Studies, 6 (1), (1952), pp. 92-105;
L. Silberman, 'Hung Liang-Chi: a Chinese Malthus', Population Studies, 13 (3), (1960), pp. 257-265;
M. Drake, 'Malthus on Norway', Population Studies, 20 (2), (1966), pp. 176-196; E. Cocks, 'The Malthusian
theory in pre-Civil War America: an original relation to the universe', Population Studies, 20 (3), (1967),
pp. 343-363.
116 S. N. Eisenstadt, 'Analysis of patterns of immigration and absorption of immigrants', Population
Studies, 7 (2), (1953), pp. 167-180.
at least some economic theory as content. This is quite a different proportion from that
which has appeared in Population and Development Review. It seems likely that the
economic approach appealed to Population Studies because of its 'hardness': it involved
formulae, quantification and testable propositions.
The modern age dawned, in the sense of medium-range theory derived from and
applicable to population growth and fertility studies, with Volume 23 in 1969 when each
issue contained a discussion of the value of avoided births or the effect of income on
fertility.117 Evidence that demographic interests and theory are driven by events is
provided by the fact that the first paper in which the connection between women's
employment and declining fertility was discussed did not appear until July 1981,118 but
there have been seven more since then on the United States, Britain, Sweden, and
Canada.
Most of the remaining theory papers dealt with either social structure or social change
and fertility change, starting with Stokes's paper in 1973 on family structure and fertility
differentials."9 What is perhaps, of greatest interest is what is not there. There were only
three papers on the theory of migration, one on mortality and health, and none on
nuptiality. Unless this pattern arises from extraordinary selectivity on the part of the
journal, it provides strong supporting evidence for the view that only one sub-field of
demography, the study of fertility, has any real claim to be called a social science. There
has been a belated attempt to develop theories of mortality transition, but these
movements are as yet far from secure and the resulting publications have appeared
elsewhere, often outside demographic journals.
Continuing Themes with New Leases of Life
The eternal theme in demography is demographic transition. This is a field in which

historical findings so interweave with explicit, implicit, and apparently assumed theory
that the papers are often difficult to categorize, but nearly all have a claim to be social
science or social history. Population Studies clearly expected it to be a major interest,
publishing Taeuber and Notestein's paper on Japan as the first article.'20 But then, apart
from another paper by Taeuber in which she re-assessed the conclusions in the original
article'2' and a paper by Ohlin on pre-industrial England,'22 demographic transition
disappeared for almost 20 years until Carlsson's paper raised the issues of innovation or
adjustment in the Swedish fertility decline, and heralded a new era.'23
Two-fifths of the 83 papers on demographic transition dealt with contemporary Asia,
Africa, and Latin America, and another two-fifths with historical Europe and North
America. Contemporary Europe and North America, together with historic Asia
117 J. L. Simon, 'The value of avoided births to underdeveloped countries', Population Studies, 23
(1969), pp. 61-68; H. Leibenstein, 'Pitfalls in benefit-cost analysis of birth prevention', Population Studies, 23
(2), (1969), pp. 161-170; J. L. Simon, 'The effect of income on fertility', Population Studies, 23 (3), (1969),
pp. 327-342.
118 E. F. Jones, 'The impact of women's employment on marital fertility in the U.S., 1970-75', Population
Studies, 35 (2), (1981), pp. 161-174.
119 C. S. Stokes, 'Family structure and socio-economic differentials in fertility', Population Studies, 27 (2),
(1973), pp. 295-304.
120 Taeuber and Notestein, loc. cit. in fn. 53.
121 I. B. Taeuber, 'Japan's demographic transition re-examined', Population Studies, 14 (1), (196
pp. 28-39.
122 C. Ohlin, 'Mortality, marriage and growth in pre-industrial populations', Population Studies, 14 (3),
(1961), pp. 190-197.
123 G. Carlsson, 'The decline of fertility: innovation or adjustment process', Population Studies, 20
(1966), pp. 149-174.
322 J. C. CALDWELL
(mostly Japan), make up only one-sixth. These papers are overwhelmingly focused on
fertility, although mortality sometimes appears as a factor which might merit being
taken into account. The most important exception was the debate on the causes of the
post-World War II Sri Lankan mortality decline.'24 The timing of the articles on the
contemporary Third World is no mystery. Fertility decline was apparent in Asia's city
states, Singapore and Hong Kong, from the late 1950s, and in South Korea, Taiwan,
and considerable parts of Latin America from about 1965. This was first recorded in
Population Studies in 1968 in a paper on the decline of fertility in Hong Kong.125
The effort to achieve fertility decline in the Third World spurred interest in how the
Western decline, especially that in Europe, came about, and also made funding available
to see what could be learnt from the earlier transition. Thus, the Princeton European
Demographic History Project was started in about 1965. The first papers based on that
project to appear in Population Studies were published in 1967 and 1968 on Germany
and Spain,126 and several more followed until Knodel compared the European and
Asian experience in 1977, and found parallels in the steeper decline of age-specific
fertility rates at older ages.127 Two observations may be made. The first is that the
Princeton Project papers formed only a small part of the papers on the Western
demographic transition that followed, although they, together with the contemporary
transition in the Third World, spurred many of the others, and some used their method.
The second is that the Princeton European Demographic History Project yielded a
continuing flow of substantive papers, while the earlier project on Tropical Africa mostly
yielded methodological articles.
There have always been papers on population history in Population Studies, in which
some demographic techniques were used: starting with Russell's paper in the first
volume with its generational life table of English males born 1426-1450.128 Gille, Glass,
and Hollingsworth followed. A major new initiative was heralded by Eversley's paper in
1957 on the use of parish records in Worcestershire, but it was not until 1968 that
Henry's paper on methodology in demographic history appeared, followed by Razzell
on baptism as a record of births in eighteenth and nineteenth-century England; it was
1975 before Wrigley published his account of baptism coverage in early nineteenth-
century England, and 1983 before Wrigley and Schofield's summary of English
demographic history, 1600-1800, appeared.'29 This paper and their book produced an
124 S. A. Meegama, 'Malaria eradication and its effect on mortality levels', Population Studies, 21 (3),
(1967), pp. 207-237; P. Newman and S. A. Meegama, 'Malaria eradication and its effect on mortality decline:
a discussion', Population Studies, 23 (2), (1969), pp. 285-306; H. Frederiksen, 'Malaria eradication and its
effect on mortality decline: a note', Population Studies, 24 (1), (1970), pp. 111-113; R. H. Gray, 'The decline
of mortality in Ceylon and the demographic effects of malaria control', Population Studies, 28 (2), (1974),
pp. 205-229; A. Palloni, 'Comments on R. H. Gray's "The decline of mortality in Ceylon and the demographic
effects of malaria control"', Population Studies, 29 (3), (1975), pp. 497-499; R. H. Gray, 'A reply to Mr
Palloni's comments', ibid., pp. 499-501.
125 R. Freedman and A. L. Adlakha, 'Recent fertility declines in Hong Kong: the role of the changing age
structure', Population Studies, 22 (2), (1968), pp. 181-198.
126 J. Knodel, 'Law, marriage and illegitimacy in nineteenth-century Germany', Population Studies, 20 (3),
(1967), pp. 279-294; J. Knodel and E. van de Walle, 'Breast feeding, fertility and infant mortality: an analysis
of some early German data', Population Studies, 21 (2), (1967), pp. 109-131; M. Livi-Bacci, 'Fertility and
nuptiality changes in Spain from the late 18th to the early 20th century', Population Studies, 22 (1), (1968),
pp. 83-102.
127 J. Knodel, 'Family limitation and the fertility transition: evidence from the age patterns of fertility in
Europe and Asia', Population Studies, 31 (2), (1977), pp. 219-250.
128 J. C. Russell, 'Demographic pattern in history', Population Studies, 1 (4), (1948), pp. 388-404.
129 H. Gille, 'The demographic history of the Northern European countries in the eighteenth century',
Population Studies, 3 (1), (1949), pp. 3-65; D. V. Glass, 'Gregory King's estimate of the population of England
and Wales, 1695', Population Studies, 3 (4), (1950), pp. 338-374; T. H. Hollingsworth, 'A demographic study
of the British ducal families', Population Studies, 11 (1), (1957), pp. 4-26; T. H. Hollingsworth, 'The
demography of the British peerage', Population Studies, 18 (2), (Supplement, 1964); D. E. C. Eversley, 'A
interesting reappraisal of the nature of the impact

between hard economic times and nuptiality change treated by Goldstone in 1986.130 By
the 1970s, family reconstitution, with the use of parish records, was not only revitalizing
the field of historical demography but, in its impact on social history, was probably the
major contribution by demography to other disciplines. Whether or not history is a
social science is debatable, but history as derived by demographic techniques is
inevitably social history, and as such, a kind of social science.
Papers on mortality with any significant social-science component have not been as
numerous as those on fertility, but many have been important. Population Studies
provided the venue for the series of papers by McKeown and his colleagues, which
examined mortality decline from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and found that
advances in medicine did not add much in terms of explanation, but pointed to rising
standards of living (but not behavioural change) as the causal mechanism.131 It also
published two path-breaking papers on mortality trends and causes in the Third World,
by Stolnitz in 1965 and by Preston in 1975.132
Yet apart from these papers, and the issue of March 1964, which contained five papers
on Britain and two on the Third World, the pages of Population Studies before 1973
support the proposition that demographers who worked in the health area had their
closest ties with the health sciences, and could hardly be said to be working within the
social sciences, and showed little concern with a social theory of mortality transition.
From about 1973 that situation changed markedly, and many of the important debates
began in Population Studies. These included the causes of Sri Lanka's steep mortality
decline in the late 1940s,133 and a series of papers that questioned aspects of McKeown's
thesis, both in the West and in less developed countries.'34 Three other themes were
important. The first, at the heart of the social sciences, was the social component of
mortality decline, parental education as it affected child survival.135 The second was the
survey of population in an area of Worcestershire from 1660-1850 on the basis of parish records', Population
Studies, 10 (3), (1957), pp. 253-279; L. Henry, 'The verification of data in historical demography', Population
Studies, 22 (1), (1968), pp. 61-81; P. E. Razzell, 'The evaluation of baptism as a form of birth registration
through cross-matching census and parish register data: a study in methodology', Population Studies, 26 (1),
(1972), pp. 121-146; E. A. Wrigley, 'Baptism coverage in early nineteenth-century England: the Colyton area',
Population Studies, 29 (2), (1975), pp. 299-316; E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, 'English population history
from family reconstitution: summary results 1600-1799', Population Studies, 37 (2), (1983), pp. 157-184.
130 J. A. Goldstone, 'The demographic revolution in England: a re-examination', Population Studies, 40
(1), (1986), pp. 5-34.
131 T. McKeown and R. G. Brown, 'Medical evidence related to English population changes in the
eighteenth century', Population Studies, 9 (2), (1955), pp. 119-141; T. McKeown and R. G. Record, 'Reasons
for the decline of mortality in England and Wales during the nineteenth century', Population Studies, 16 (2),
(1962), pp. 94-122; T. McKeown, 'The next forty years in public health', Population Studies, 17 (3), (1964),
pp. 269-292; T. McKeown, R. G. Brown, and R. G. Record, 'An interpretation of the modern rise of
population in Europe', Population Studies, 26 (3), (1972), pp. 345-382; T. McKeown, R. G. Record and
R. D. Turner, 'An interpretation of the decline of mortality in England and Wales during the twentieth century
Population Studies, 29 (3), (1975), pp. 391-422; T. McKeown, 'Fertility, mortality and causes of death: an
examination of issues related to the modern rise of population', Population Studies, 32 (3), (1978), pp. 535-542.
132 G. J. Stolnitz, 'Recent mortality trends in Latin America, Asia and Africa: review and reinterpretation',
Population Studies, 19 (2), (1965), pp. 117-138; S. H. Preston, 'The changing relation between mortality and
level of economic development', Population Studies, 29 (2), (1975), pp. 231-248.
133 Gray, loc. cit. in fn. 124; Palloni and Gray, ibid.
134 P. E. Razzell, "'An interpretation of the modern rise of population in Europe" - a critique', Population
Studies, 28 (1), (1974), pp. 5-18; I. 0. Orubuloye and J. C. Caldwell, 'The impact of public health services on
mortality: a study of mortality differentials in a rural area of Nigeria', Population Studies, 29 (2), (1975),
pp. 259-272; S. H. Preston and E. van de Walle, 'Urban French mortality in the nineteenth century', Population
Studies, 32 (2), (1978), pp. 275-298.
133 J. C. Caldwell, 'Education as a factor in mortality decline: an examination of Nigerian data', Population
Studies, 33 (3), (1979), pp. 395-413; A. T. Flegg, 'Inequality of income, illiteracy and medical care as
determinants of mortality in underdeveloped countries', Population Studies, 36 (3), (1982), pp. 441-458;
J. C. Caldwell, P. H. Reddy and P. Caldwell, 'The social component of mortality decline: an investigation in
324 J. C. CALDWELL
demography of crises, especially famines,'36 and the third was the retardation of the
mortality decline in Eastern Europe.'37
It is tempting to ascribe this increased interest in the nature and theory of mortality
change to the availability of survey data, especially international surveys. Yet in only 27
per cent of the 44 papers on mortality with a social-science dimension after 1972 were
survey data used, in contrast to 59 per cent which used registration and censuses as
sources (and most of the balance employed the demographic surveillance system at
Matlab, Bangladesh). The truth seems to be that many demographers felt that the
advances in the study of causation with regard to fertility could be, and needed to be,
duplicated with regard to mortality.
It is undoubtedly true, as Graham and Taylor argued,138 that fertility, its trends and
causes, and its control have become the major theme in Population Studies, constituting
over half a century, even by the most restricted definition, about one-quarter of the
social-scientific papers. They formed a very small proportion of all articles until the early
1960s, reached their peak in the 1970s, and have been declining in number since. During
the whole period the majority have included at least some data on contraception, and
many were dominated by it. This was clearly a reaction to the needs of the time, and also to
the area where most funding for research was to be found, and was partly a testimony
to the productivity of the post-1960 population centres in the United States. The study
of family planning was inevitably at least partly behavioural and social-scientific. It also
demonstrated that, if a great deal of effort is concentrated on a very small area of
behaviour, a surprisingly high degree of expertise and a satisfying level of objective
social-science research can be reached.
Apart from an historical study of the Bradlaugh-Besant trial,139 the first paper on
family planning was Sinha's study of Uttar Pradesh in 1957,140 followed in 1959 by a
South India employing alternative methodologies', Population Studies, 37 (2), (1983), pp. 185-205; J. N.
Hobcraft, J. W. McDonald and S. 0. Rutstein, 'Socio-economic factors in infant and child mortality: a cross-
national comparison', Population Studies, 38 (2), (1984), pp. 193-224; R. I. Woods, P. A. Watterson and
J. H. Woodward, 'The causes of rapid infant mortality decline in England and Wales, 1861-1921. Part I',
Population Studies, 42 (3), (1988), pp. 343-366; Part II', Population Studies, 43 (1), (1989), pp. 113-132; M.
Das Gupta, 'Death clustering, mothers' education and the determinants of child mortality in rural Punjab,
India', Population Studies, 44 (3), (1990), pp. 489-505; K. L. Bourne and G. M. Walker, Jr, 'The differential
effect of mothers' education on mortality of boys and girls in India', Population Studies, 45 (2), (1991), pp.
203-220; A. Bhuiya and K. Streatfield, 'Mothers' education and survival of female children in a rural area of
Bangladesh', ibid., pp. 253-264.
136 R. F. Faulkingham and P. F. Thorbahn, 'Population dynamics and drought: a village in Niger',
Population Studies, 29 (3), (1975), pp. 463-478; G. T. Curlin, L. C. Chen, and S. B. Hussain, 'Demographic
crisis: the impact of the Bangladesh Civil War (1971) on births and deaths in a rural area of Bangladesh',
Population Studies, 30 (1), (1976), pp. 87-106; J. M. Winter, 'Some aspects of the demographic consequences
of the First World War in Britain', Population Studies, 30 (3), (1976), pp. 539-552; A. Razzaque, N. Alam,
L. Wai and A. Foster, 'Sustained effects of the 1974-5 famine on infant and child mortality in a rural area of
Bangladesh', Population Studies, 44 (1), (1990), pp. 145-154; T. Dyson, 'On the demography of South Asian
famines', Population Studies, 45 (1991), pp. 5-26, 279-298; N. Hart, 'Famine, maternal nutrition and infant
mortality: a re-examination of the Dutch Hunger Winter', Population Studies, 47 (1), (1993), pp. 27-46.
137 P. A. Compton, 'Rising mortality in Hungary', Population Studies, 39 (1), (1985), pp. 71-86;
R. H. Dinkel, 'The seeming paradox of increasing mortality in a highly industrialized nation: the example of
the Soviet Union', ibid., pp. 87-98; B. A. Anderson and B. D. Silver, 'Sex differentials in mortality in the
Soviet Union: regional differences in length of working life in comparative perspective', Population Studies,
40 (2), (1986), pp. 191-214; J. Krumins and P. Zvidrins, 'Recent mortality trends in the three Baltic republics',
138 Graham and Taylor, loc. cit. in fn. 15.
139 J. A. Banks and 0. Banks, 'The Bradlaugh-Besant trial and the English newspapers', Population
Studies, 8 (1), (1954), pp. 22-34.
140 J. N. Sinha, 'Differential fertility and family limitation in an urban community of Uttar Pradesh
report on expected family size in West Germany14" and one on family planning among
Japanese coal miners.142 Papers often became extraordinarily specialized, focused, for
instance, on the manufacture and sale of contraceptives in England,143 the impact of the
IUD programme in Taiwan,'44 the use of oral contraceptives in Canada,'45 and
Buddhism and family planning acceptance.'46 Some special areas of expertise were
created, such as the cost-effectiveness of family planning programmes.147 Other authors
looked at the general question of the role that such programmes had played in fertility
declines.'48
The papers on fertility largely report on specific projects, although there is some
parallel with the continuing debates about mortality, as, for instance, in the work on the
cost-effectiveness of family planning programmes referred to above, on the relationship
between fertility and altitude in the Andes149 or whether babies are consumer
durables."0 Third World fertility and family planning dominated the discussion, and
accounted for about 60 per cent of the papers during the 1960s and 1970s, and 80 per
cent more recently. Papers confined to fertility and its trends drew equally on the
traditional sources, censuses and registration systems, and on surveys, especially the
former when they had an historical dimension. But because the relevant questions are
usually not asked in censuses, papers on family planning drew overwhelmingly on
surveys or family planning programme service statistics for their data.
Newer Themes
Six newer themes have emerged in recent years and may well take up more of
demographers' time in the future: women's issues; ageing; family structure; social and
behavioural determinants of health; anthropological demography; and AIDS.
141 R. Freedman, G. Baumert and M. Bolte, 'Expected family size and family size values in West
Germany', Population Studies, 13 (2), (1959), pp. 136-150.
142 Y. Koya, 'Five-year experiment in family planning among coal miners in Joban, Japan', ibid.,
157-163.
143 J. Peel, 'The manufacture and retailing of contraceptives in England', Population Studies, 17 (2), (1963),
pp. 113-125.
144 L. P. Chow, 'A study on the demographic impact of an IUD programme', Population Studies, 22 (3),
(1968), pp. 347-360.
145 J. D. Allingham, T. R. Balakrishnan and J. F. Kantner, 'Time series of growth in use of oral
contraception and the differential diffusion of oral anovulants', Population Studies, 23 (1), (1969), pp. 43-52.
146 T. 0. Ling, 'Buddhist factors in population growth and control: a survey based on Thailand and
Ceylon', ibid., pp. 53-60.
147 T. R. Balakrishnan, 'A cost benefit analysis of the Barbados family planning programme', Population
Studies, 27 (2), (1973), pp. 353-364; T. J. Trussell, 'Cost versus effectiveness of different birth control
methods', Population Studies, 28 (1), (1974), pp. 85-106; H. V. Muhsam, 'Some principles of cost-benefit
analysis of family planning services in developing countries', Population Studies, 29 (3), (1975), pp. 439-446;
B. Berelson and R. H. Haveman, 'On allocating resources for fertility reduction in developing countries',
148 D. L. Nortman, 'Status of national family planning programmes in developing countries in relation to
demographic targets', Population Studies, 26 (1), (1972), pp. 5-18; J. A. Cavanaugh, 'Is fertility declining in
less developed countries? An evaluation analysis of data sources and population programme assistance',
149 Heer, loc. cit. in fn. 72; D. M. Heer and E. S. Turner, 'Areal differences in Latin American fertility',
Population Studies, 18 (3), (1965), pp. 279-292; W. H. James, 'The effect of altitude on fertility in Andean
countries', Population Studies, 20 (1), (1966), pp. 97-102; D. M. Heer, 'Fertility differences in Andean
countries: a reply to W. H. James', Population Studies, 21 (1), (1967), pp. 71-73; L. Whitehead, 'Altitude,
fertility and mortality in Andean countries', Population Studies, 22 (3), (1968), pp. 335-346; B. S. Bradshaw,
'Fertility differences in Peru: a reconsideration', Population Studies, 23 (1), (1969), pp. 5-20.
150 J. Blake, 'Are babies consumer durables? A critique of the economic theory of reproductive motivation',
326 J. C. CALDWELL
Women have long been central to de

be more accurately assigned to mothers than to fathers. This focus has intensified.
Brass's methods of analysis placed responsibility on women for reporting not only the
births of their children, but also their deaths. Because most modern contraceptives are
used by women, and because researchers wished to relate contraception to women's
fertility, women are the usual respondents in fertility and family planning surveys.
'Gender' issues have not so far been particularly conspicuous in Population Studies.
They arise in some of the studies of child mortality differentials, especially in South
Asia,151 and are the focus of some of the studies of marriage152 or family structure.153
They are most prominent, at least by implication, in the papers on economic-
demographic theory, especially those written by the new household economists, who
studied the value of women's time.154
Although ageing with its social consequences is categorized here as a recent theme, the
first paper published by Population Studies on the subject was by Sauvy just a year after
the journal began, and before the baby boom had gone far in reducing the proportion
of the aged.155 After that, the topic disappeared until the mid-1980s, but reappeared
occasionally though not as a major interest of the journal.156 Presumably demographers
working in the area published in specialist journals.
Family structure can be analysed in relatively simple terms with census data, but
usually only by individual researchers if a sample data set is made available.
Comprehensive analysis awaited the computer age, and surveys with specialized
questions. The study's main interest may simply be in the family, its residential form an
151 A. M. Basu, 'Is discrimination in food really necessary for explaining sex differentials in childhood
mortality?', Population Studies, 43 (2), (1989), pp. 193-210; K. L. Bourne and G. M. Walker, 'The differential
effect of mothers' education on mortality of boys and girls in India', Population Studies, 45 (2), (1991), pp.
203-220.
152 J. W. Salaff, 'The status of unmarried Hong Kong women and the social factors contributing to their
delayed marriage', Population Studies, 30 (3), (1976), pp. 391-412; J. M. Stycos, 'The timing of Spanish
marriages: a socio-statistical study', Population Studies, 37 (2), (1983), pp. 227-238; J. Casterline, L. Williams
and P. McDonald, 'The age difference between spouses: variations among developing countries', Population
Studies, 40 (3), (1986), pp. 353-374.
153 Zeng Yi, 'Changing demographic characteristics and the family status of Chinese women', Population
Studies, 42 (2), (1988), pp. 183-204; C. B. Lloyd and A. J. Gage-Brandon, 'Women's role in maintaining
households: family welfare and sexual inequality in Ghana', Population Studies, 47 (1), (1993), pp. 115-132.
154 N. K. Namboodiri, 'Some observations on the economic framework for fertility analysis', Population
Studies, 26 (2), (1972), pp. 185-206; J. Ermisch, 'The relevance of the "Easterlin hypothesis" and the "new
home economics" to fertility movements in Great Britain', Population Studies, 33 (1), (1979), pp. 39-58;
E. H. Denton, 'Economic determinants of fertility in Jamaica', Population Studies, 33 (2), (1979), pp. 295-305;
N. Kyriazis and J. Henripin, 'Women's employment and fertility in Quebec', Population Studies, 36 (3),
(1982), pp. 431-440; F. L. Mott and D. Schapiro, 'Complementarity of work and fertility among young
American mothers', Population Studies, 37 (2), (1983), pp. 239-252; S. K. Happel, J. K. Hill and S. A. Low,
'An economic analysis of the timing of childbirth', Population Studies, 38 (2), (1984), pp. 299-312;
E. de Cooman, J. Ermisch and H. Joshi, 'The next birth and the labour market: a dynamic model of births in
England and Wales', Population Studies, 41 (2), (1987), pp. 237-268; B. Hoem and J. M. Hoem, 'The impact
of women's employment on second and third births in modern Sweden', Population Studies, 43 (1), (1989), pp.
47-68; H. Joshi, 'The cash opportunity costs of childbearing: an approach to estimation using British data',
Population Studies, 44 (1), (1990), pp. 41-60; M. Murphy, 'The contraceptive pill and women's employment
as factors in fertility change in Britain 1963-1980: a challenge to the conventional view', Population Studies,
47 (2), (1993), pp. 221-244; B. Ram and A. Rahim, 'Enduring effects of women's early employment
experiences on child-spacing: the Canadian evidence'. ibid., pp. 307-318.
155 A. Sauvy, 'Social and economic consequences of the ageing of Western European populations',
156 D. T. Rowland, 'Old age and the demographic transition', Population Studies, 38 (1), (1984), pp. 73-88;
M. Cain, 'The consequences of reproductive failure: dependence, mobility and mortality among the elderly of
rural South Asia', Population Studies, 40 (3), (1986), pp. 375-388; E. M. D. Grundy, 'Socio-demographic
variations in rates of movement into institutions among elderly people in England and Wales: an analysis of
linked census and mortality data 1971-1985', Population Studies, 46 (1), (1992), pp. 65-84.
its power structure,157 or in changing structure

of those factors for fertilityl59 or mortality. The latter are clearly theory-driven, and all
the papers on family structure are indistinguishable from those written by quantitative
sociologists, except perhaps for a greater interest in just how the quantitative data lead
to these conclusions, and a more limited interest in how these results modify family
theory.
In terms of the cultural, social, and behavioural determinants of health, or 'health
transition', Population Studies has, as we have seen, published a series of papers on
parental education and child survival.160 There are scattered other studies on social
determinants, 161 but nothing else as systematic, probably not because there are no other
major social determinants of mortality, but because they are not easily quantified.
Anthropological demography, in the sense of the study of the population of small
areas162 or, more rarely, of specific ethnic groups,163 has appeared in Population Studies
since its earliest days. But in the sense that it is coming increasingly to mean, the use of
anthropological approaches and concepts to study the nature and causes of demographic
behaviour, the sub-field is only just emerging.164
It is inevitable that the journal will begin to publish articles on the demography of
AIDS, but so far only one has appeared, focused on sexual networking and the social
context of the disease with very little in the way of quantified data.165
157 J. van der Tak and M. Gendell, 'The size and structure of residential families, Guatemala City, 1964',
Population Studies, 27 (2), (1973), pp. 305-322; R. Freedman, B. Moots, T.-H. Sun and M. B. Weinberger,
'Household composition and extended kinship in Taiwan', Population Studies, 32 (1), (1978), pp. 65-80;
S. de Vos, 'Latin American households in comparative perspective', Population Studies, 41 (3), (1987),
pp. 189-202; L. G. Martin and N. 0. Tsuya, 'Interactions of middle-aged Japanese with their parents', ibid.,
pp. 299-312.
158 C. M. Young, 'Factors associated with the timing and duration of the leaving-home stage of the family
life cycle', Population Studies, 29 (1), (1975), pp. 61-64; R. Wall, 'Leaving home and living alone: an historical
perspective', Population Studies, 43 (3), (1989), pp. 369-390; J. DaVanzo and F. K. Goldscheider, 'Coming
home again: returns to the parental home of young adults', Population Studies, 44 (2), (1990), pp. 241-255;
A. D. Foster, 'Household partition in rural Bangladesh', Population Studies, 47 (1), (1993), pp. 97-114.
159 R. E. Lightbourne and S. Singh, 'Fertility, union status and partners in the WFS Guyana and Jamaica
surveys', Population Studies, 36 (2), (1982), pp. 201-226; R. Freedman, M.-C. Chang and T.-H. Sun,
'Household composition, extended kinship and reproduction in Taiwan: 1973-1980', Population Studies, 36
(3), (1982), pp 393-412; S. P. Morgan and R. R. Rindfuss, 'Household structure and the tempo of family
formation in comparative perspective', Population Studies, 38 (1), (1984), pp. 129-140; M. Weinstein,
T.-H. Sun, M.-C. Chang and R. Freedman, 'Household composition, extended kinship, and reproduction in
Taiwan: 1965-1985', Population Studies, 44 (2), (1990), pp. 217-240; H. Leridon, 'Extra-marital cohabitation
and fertility', Population Studies, 44 (3), (1990), pp. 469-480.
160 Cf. fn. 135.
161 R. Retherford, 'Cigarette smoking and widowhood in the United States', Population Studies, 27 (2),
(1973), pp. 193-206; J. Stern, 'The relationship between unemployment, morbidity and mortality in Britain',
Population Studies, 37 (1), (1983), pp. 61-74; Caldwell, Reddy and Caldwell, loc. cit. in fn. 135; J. DaVanzo,
W. P. Butz and J.-P. Habicht, 'How biological and behavioural influences on mortality in Malaysia vary
during the first year of life', Population Studies, 37 (3), (1983), pp. 381-402.
162 J. R. H. Shaul and C. A. L. Myburgh, 'A sample survey of the African population of Southern
Rhodesia', Population Studies, 2 (3), (1948), pp. 339-353; G. W. Skinner, 'A study in miniature of Chinese
population', Population Studies, 5 (2), (1951), pp. 91-103; W. D. Borrie, R. Firth, and J. Spillius, 'The
population of Tikopia, 1929 and 1952', Population Studies, 10 (3), (1957), pp. 229-252; T. E. Smith, 'The
Cocos-Keeling Islands: a demographic laboratory', Population Studies, 14 (2), (1960), pp. 94-130.
163 p. J. Koblenzer and N. H. Carrier, 'The fertility, mortality and nuptiality of the Rungus Dusun',
164 A. H. Galt and L. J. Smith, 'Anthropological and economic perspectives on small family size on the
island of Pantelleria, Sicily', Population Studies, 33 (2), (1979); M. Vlassoff and C. Vlassoff, 'Old age security
and the utility of children in rural India', Population Studies, 34 (3), (1980), pp. 487-499; G. R. Bentley, T.
Goldberg and G. Jasienska, 'The fertility of agricultural and non-agricultural traditional societies', Population
Studies, 47 (2), (1993), pp. 269-282.
165 J. C. Caldwell, P. Caldwell and I. 0. Orubuloye, 'The family and sexual networking in sub-Saharan
Africa: historic regional differences and present day implications', Population Studies, 46 (3), (1992), pp.
385-410.
328 J. C. CALDWELL
AN OVERVIEW
The survey of demography or population studies, as defined by Population Studies, and

its relation with the (other) social sciences, underscores various points, many brought
out in the earlier discussion in this article. What comes out most clearly is that it is easier
to define a demographer, or even a demographic journal, than the field of demography,
at least as it merges with the social sciences. It is the approach that defines the
demographer: a belief that the world can largely be defined in empirical terms, and that
edifices of theory which are not quantitatively testable are likely to, or indeed often
should, collapse. Demography is also about people, and people either in sufficient
numbers or demonstrably representative of much larger groups. The main emphasis on
fertility and mortality remains, but, with demographers working on themes as far
removed from these topics as socio-economic mobility and the ethnic composition of
neighbourhoods, there is little in American quantitative sociology that they do not touch
upon. But they almost always do it macroscopically without singling out individuals or
families as examples. Demographers are convinced that raw data, and especially
comparisons of raw data, can be misleading unless they are treated with techniques that
will remove the distortions. Hence, demography has an essential methodological
component. No single technique is necessarily guaranteed perpetual survival in this
armoury, but there must be a core of methods which make it possible to rearrange raw
data, so that truths become visible.
Not all demographers devote themselves to analytical techniques, but all either use the
refined data, or believe that it is proper to employ such approaches to test their
conclusions. Methods of analysis, and even the type of people change as the source of
data does. Before the 1960s most demographers dealt with official statistics and had to
know not only how to handle the huge masses of data represented by censuses and
registration systems, but also how to get access to them. These data were vast in volume:
but very limited in the number of things they measured. It was this limitation that made
it difficult for demographers to claim to be social scientists, or indeed health scientists.
Surveys and computers have reduced those limitations, and much of demography is
today indistinguishable from other social sciences. The copious data call for explanation
and theory, and this has made it more difficult for social demographers to work without
some grounding in other social sciences, and has made stand-alone demography degree
programmes harder to justify.
Because demographers are defined by their attitude, and, to a lesser degree, their
methods, they accept change and new goals easily. The successive volumes of Population
Studies provide evidence of this. In successive waves it accepted - and this presumably
is an approximate measure of the inflow of papers - articles on post-war refugee streams,
post-war European migration flows to the countries of overseas European settlement,
the baby boom, the marriage boom, rapid population growth in the Third World, family
planning programmes, famine, the baby bust, the divorce boom, the aged, the Alma Ata
declaration and a consequent stimulation of concern for global health, a greater
emphasis on social causation, and AIDS. Among those studies to which a location could
be ascribed, 85 per cent were on Europe, North America, and Australasia during the first
ten years of the journal's half-century, but the proportion fell below half over the next
three decades and stood at 50 per cent in the final decade.166 No other social-science
discipline had turned so far toward Third World studies. In one way the attraction for
the concrete rather than theories and plans had hardened: at the beginning of the half-
166 Demography's proportion stood at 70 per cent in this final period: cf. Teachman et al., loc. cit. in fn. 33,
p. 526.
century, partly because of Glass's interests, European population policies had been a
major concern of the journal, even though many of them were only partly formulated,
yet, at the end of the period, when the United Nations Population Division annually
surveyed the policies of over 150 countries, and when many countries had formal
population policies, such papers were no longer published.
Events drove ideas, but subsequently ideas drove analysis. The interest in the aged
derived from the low-fertility industrialized countries, but soon papers were appearing
on similar issues in countries with high rates of population growth. The interest in
achieving demographic transition in the less developed world stimulated an equally great
enquiry into how the demographic transition had occurred in Europe and North
America. Wolfe's description of demography as 'social book-keeping'167 was
increasingly further from the mark as a hankering for causal explanation and theory
developed. By the 1980s a determined search was on for adequate theories of mortality
and morbidity transitions. Demographers employed concepts like 'Malthusian
pressures' and 'Malthusian limits' but fought shy of the grander theory, and usually
kept out of such battlegrounds as were offered by sociobiology, denying the element of
eugenics in their past, and demanding ideas that promised the possibility of quantitative
justification.
Demographers were quick to seize new ideas or concepts, but, and in contrast to such
social sciences as anthropology, their chief concerns were usually to use them rather than
to debate exactly what they meant and implied. Here are a few examples of concepts
which are often more complex than they seem at first sight (not only from the
methodological viewpoint but in terms of social implications), but which have not been
much debated: the generalized equation used throughout the Princeton European
Fertility Study; Henry's definition of natural fertility; intermediate variables and the
ultimate determinants of fertility; and Hajnal's singulate mean age at marriage. There
is a need to examine the nature of proof. Statistical significance does not denote proof
if the measured quantities are imperfectly measured or if they are not real measures of
the concepts claimed. Much of the argument, even in the more statistical papers, and
much more in anthropological or historical demography, depends not on disproving a
null hypothesis, but (as in the study of history or anthropology) on accumulating
sufficient experience or examples to make a provisional postulate appear very likely to
be true.
An obvious question is the extent to which this survey has been biased by examining
only a single demographic journal. A quick answer would be that Population Studies's
definition of the field is as good as anything we are likely to get. Population and
Development Review implies, by its title, that it also reaches towards development
studies, Social Science and Medicine that it embraces much of the medical field
(although, in fact, because of the weaker stress on method, it publishes a higher
proportion of social-scientific papers than Population Studies), and Demography that it
perhaps defines a narrower field. Certainly Demography is far less interested in
population history than Population Studies. Part of the explanation may be that the
latter, in which about one-third of the articles have a considerable time dimension, is
published in Europe, with its long and varied history; but part of the explanation must
also be Demography's close tie to quantitative American sociology with its minimal
interest in historical change. Population Studies is much less given than Population and
Development Review to publishing speculative theoretical papers which invite others to
devise empirical tests. What is clear from all these journals is that the same waves of new
167 Wolfe, loc. cit. in fn. 4, pp. 85-86.
330 J. C. CALDWELL
demographic interests which have determined the nature of the field reported by
Population Studies have also surged through them at much the same time. Thus the
journals do not ultimately determine how demography re-invents or reproduces itself.
Another reasonable question is whether much of the social-scientific side of
demography is published in counterpart social-science journals, and the readers of
demographic journals see only half of it. Again, the short answer is that this is not the
case. They publish very little demography and provide ample proof that there is little in
the theory which holds that demographers refine great masses of raw population data
for other social scientists to use. A brief review of a dozen prominent English-language
sociological and anthropological journals over the late 1980s and early 1990s reveals
around 35 articles that might have appeared in demographic journals (12 in a single
journal, Sociological Forum, which will publish standard demographic articles provided
that they are presented mostly verbally); the majority were written by persons who
would probably consider themselves primarily demographers.168 This amounts to no
more than five per cent of the papers that the five leading population journals published
during those years. The sociological journals are almost exclusively focused on
developed countries, usually their own, and the anthropological journals very largely on
less developed countries.
The sociological journals are attracted by the demographers' ability to present
differentials by sex, class, ethnicity, or age found in family structure, residence, income,
occupation, sexual intercourse, crime, and the like. They can be interested in papers with
broad generalizations, especially if they have some theoretical content.169 The
publication of demographic papers is even less common in anthropological than in
sociological journals. There is some interest in the determinants of fertility'70 and
marriage,"7' the status of women,172 or the rise and fall of ethnic or other small groups.'73
Some papers are of a type which would have been accepted by Population and
Development Review but probably not by Population Studies. They also publish papers
on demographic themes with a level of non-empirical argument that would worry most
demographers and probably rule out publication in a demographic journal.174
Finally, it might be noted that all six 'newer themes' in Population Studies, listed
above, tie demography more tightly to other social sciences, although demographers are
likely to approach each in their own way. The demand for anthropological demography
arose both because demographers were impatient that anthropologists were not
studying the cultural and social determinants of fertility, morbidity, or mortality and
because they were worried that there was no other way of generating the most culturally
168 British Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Annual
Review of Sociology, Current Sociology, Sociological Review, Sociological Forum, Human Organization,
American Anthropologist, Ethnology, Current Anthropology, Annual Review of Anthropology.
169 e.g. S. C. Watkins, J. A. Menken and J. Bongaarts, 'Demographic foundations of family change',
American Sociological Review, 52 (1987), pp. 346-358; A. H. Richmond, 'Sociological theories of international
migration: the case of refugees', Current Sociology, 36 (2), (1988), pp. 7-25; W. Seccombe, 'Fertility
revolutions and social change', Sociological Forum, 1 (4), (1986), pp. 725-733.
170 'Wealth, status and reproductive success among the Mukogodo of Kenya', American Anthropologist, 93
(2), (1991), pp. 345-360.
171 A. L. Epstein, 'Changing patterns of Tolai residence and marital choice', Ethnology, 30 (1), (1991), pp.
49-64.
172 M. Hollos, 'Migration, education and the status of women in southern Nigeria', American
Anthropologist, 93 (4), (1991), pp. 852-870.
173 C. L. Olsen, 'The demography of colony fission from 1878-1970 among the Hutterites of North
America', American Anthropologist, 89 (4), (1987), pp. 823-837; R. Thornton, T. Miller and J. Warren,
'American Indian population recovery following smallpox epidemics', American Anthropologist, 93 (1), (1991),
pp. 28-45.
174 e.g. D. R. White and M. L. Burton, 'Causes of polygyny: ecology, economy, kinship, and warfare',
American Anthropologist, 90 (4), (1988), pp. 871-887.
appropriate questions in surveys for specific communities. Some demographers also

wished to add a human and explanatory dimension to their more quantitative research.
This interdisciplinary field will undoubtedly grow, but it is already clear that
demographers will create 'anthropological demography' while anthropologists will
produce 'demographic anthropology'. Demographers are mainly interested in acquiring
expertise in anthropologists' field methods and in mastering their published material to
extract findings that throw light on demographic processes. In contrast, many
anthropologists are interested in the broad human patterns of behaviour discerned by
demographers as building blocks for understanding society.
The success achieved by demographers in examining the relationship between parental
education and child survival must be placed in the larger context of the nature of the
society and the family, especially the autonomy of women, and the survival of persons
of all ages and each sex. The basic problem is that which has always been the greatest
challenge to demographers, to define and find appropriate measures of aspects of society
which pose greater difficulties than the duration of education, or the position of women.
Unfortunately, demographers are prone to conclude that a phenomenon does not exist
if they can find no satisfactory way to measure it. The identification of a social
dimension, as well as medical and economic ones, to mortality transition, means that
health demographers are no longer working mainly with the medical and biological
sciences, but that they too will enhance the social-science aspect of demography.
Closely related to both the new anthropological and health frontiers of demography
is the work on family structure. Not all of this is based on surveys, but large surveys, and
demographic surveillance systems, especially that at Matlab in Bangladesh, are being
used with great skill to analyse the nature of the family and family change. This work
originated largely in an attempt to explain fertility change, but it may have even greater
value for identifying the mechanisms of mortality decline.
Demographers are beginning to grapple with the demography of AIDS, a topic that
will doubtless be frequently represented in Population Studies during the next decade. In
the past demographers have probably been too cautious about venturing into the
epidemiology of epidemics. AIDS will inevitably be different. There is need for new
methods of data collection and verification. Research on the demographic impact of the
major Third World AIDS epidemics has hardly begun. We rely at present almost solely
on statistical models fed with inadequate scraps of demographic measures. We need to
improve the inputs into the models, but, in the central tradition of empirical
demography, we will not be content until we have directly measured the demographic
impact. AIDS research brings demographers further into the area of measuring sexual
activity, a field first entered, but inadequately, in research on family planning, and one
related to the new work on family demography.
This paper has served as a guide to the recent relationship between demography and
the social sciences. I have not tried to set out the additions to knowledge thereby
established. If there were space, it could be attempted. In each case one would have to
add that the truth of this or that finding is highly probable, but usually only under
certain conditions, and the specification of these limits is as important in demography
or the social sciences in general, as the 'truth' itself. As noted above, parental education
is directly associated with child survival throughout almost the whole contemporary
Third World. But, at other times, this relationship may not always have been true in
poor societies,175 and there may be reasons for this apparent anomaly.176 In historical
175 S. H. Preston and M. R. Haines, Fatal Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
176 J. C. Caldwell, 'Major new evidence on health transition and its interpretation', Health Transition
Review, 1 (2), (1991), pp. 221-229.
332 J. C. CALDWELL
fertility transitions, fertility at first

the sub-Saharan African transition may demonstrate that this need not necessarily be
the case everywhere.'78 Deferred or forgone marriage for women played an important
role in determining fertility levels in pre-transition England,'79 but the latter was
probably more important than the former,180 and marriage plays a much more limited
role in determining fertility in countries like Botswana. National family planning
programmes can hasten fertility decline,'8' but societal factors, earlier not recognized,
may have catalysed this process in Asia;182 that situation may not be replicated in sub-
Saharan Africa. This short summary of new knowledge in a few areas of social-scientific
demography does not mean that all knowledge of this type is suspect. On the contrary,
these are valuable, and largely provable, aspects of the human condition - an all-
important but supremely difficult area of research - but the qualifications must be
discovered and stated.
Finally, it is appropriate to return to theory, because the ability to construct theory
from empirical data, and then to test its potential for correctly predicting future or past
but unexamined events, is the hallmark of both social and other sciences. As noted above,
the papers on theory published by Population Studies have been written by economists
to a greater extent than is true of the whole corpus of publications on demographic
theory. This requires some explanation. Part of that explanation was probably supplied
in the pages of this journal by Geoffrey McNicoll when he argued that Malthus, as the
prototypical economic demographer, set the pattern in his First Essay, a simple
economic demographic model, which cried out for numbers.'83 He argued that numbers
have dominated modern demographic theory, and certainly the quantitative side of the
theory has appealed to Population Studies.
The core of Frank Notestein's demographic transition theory which has influenced
most modern theorists was the demand for children, and economists have regarded
demand theory as their particular province. Where there were data, particularly in
statistically advanced countries and especially time-series on the changing situation of
parents or children - work or education of mothers, relative wages of men and women
or of one generation compared with the previous one, years of education of children and
other costs imposed by them, the mitigating effects of social welfare transfer payments
etc. - the economists were well placed to test theories and create new ones.
But Notestein had insisted that attitudes to children were conditioned by the kind of
society potential parents lived in, and historical and anthropological demographic
research has supported this view. Much of the economic demand theory for children was
essentially short-period theory which posited that cultures or societies remained
unchanged. Such papers published in Population Studies were essentially of that type,
and were of little use in explaining the major historical changes in direction of fertility
(or even nuptiality). Some of the economic-demographic theory, especially that of Gary
177 E. van de Walle and J. Knodel, 'Europe's fertility transition: new evidence and lessons for today's
developing world', Population Bulletin, 34 (1980).
178 J. C. Caldwell, I. 0. Orubuloye and P. Caldwell, 'Fertility decline in Africa: a new type of transition?',
Population and Development Review, 18 (2), (1992), pp. 211-242; W. Brass and C. L. Jolly (eds.), Population
Dynamics of Kenya (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1993).
179 Wrigley and Schofield, op. cit. in fn. 61.
180 Goldstone, loc. cit. in fn. 130.
181 W. P. Mauldin and B. Berelson, 'Conditions of fertility decline in developing countries, 1965-197
Studies in Family Planning, 9 (5), (1978), pp. 89-147.
182 R. Leete and I. Alam (eds.), The Revolution in Asian Fertility: Dimensions, Causes and Implications
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).
183 G. McNicoll, 'Review of The State of Population Theory: Forward from Malthus, edited by David
Coleman and Roger Schofield', Population Studies, 42 (1), (1988), p. 145.
Becker,184 is a kind of intellectual game, which shows how much the economic analysis
could contribute if only social change were frozen.
Yet even Becker's earliest exploration of the field concedes that the height of the
fertility curve is influenced by the taste or relative preference for children which cannot
be determined by economic analysis.185 Richard Easterlin, in a very influential paper,
published somewhat surprisingly in Studies in Family Planning, argued that a satisfactory
theory must also explain the determinants of that taste and hence draw on other social
sciences as well.186 This situation was spelt out further in a subsequent work he wrote
with Eileen Crimmins, which, although it treated the demand for children as being
largely determined at any given time by economic forces, also brought in supply and cost,
factors largely socially, culturally and historically determined.187 This work achieved
additional importance in that its thesis, in a pre-publication manuscript, largely
provided the framework for the National Academy of Sciences two-volume study of the
Determinants of Fertility in Developing Countries published in 1983.188
This study was the product of the work of 40 researchers, written within what was
predominantly an economic framework, but only eight of them were economists or
economic demographers by training. Curiously, just fewer than half the theorists even
in the special 'Demand for Children' section were economists. This move towards
greater emphasis on social and historical explanations for the demand for children is
now dominant in the population literature, overwhelmingly in Population and
Development Review. But such papers are apparently sent less often to Population
Studies, which is seen as a journal interested in quantified theories and social history but
less in social theory and anthropological findings.
Demography, as defined by the publication record of Population Studies over half a
century, and as evidenced also by the other demographic journals, is largely a social
science and is becoming more so. It is certainly also concerned with a specific type of
method, but almost every discipline, social-scientific and beyond, has developed its own
methods. Demography will remain a distinct discipline because of its approach: its
demand that conclusions be in keeping with observable and testable data in the real world,
that these data be used as shrewdly as possible to elicit their real meanings, and that the
study should be representative of sizeable or significant and definable populations.
184 Cf. G. S. Becker, A Treatise on the Family (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981).
185 G. S. Becker, 'An economic analysis of fertility', in National Bureau of Economic Research,
Demographic and Economic Change in Developed Countries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), pp.
209-210.
186 R. A. Easterlin, 'An economic framework for fertility analysis', Studies in Family Planning, 6 (3), (1975),
pp. 54-63.
187 R. A. Easterlin and E. M. Crimmins, The Fertility Revolution: A Supply-Demand Analysis (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1985).
188 R. A. Bulatao and R. D. Lee (eds.), Determinants of Fertility in Developing Countries, 2 vols. (New
York: Academic Press, 1983).

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Population Investigation Committee

Demography and Social Science

Printed in Great Britain

Demography and Social Science

16 p. M. Hauser and 0. D. Duncan, 'The nature of demography', in P. M. Hauser and 0. D. Duncan

THE CHANGING NATURE OF THE DISCIPLINE

American writers have persistently claimed a special relationship between demography

demographic journals.32 These events changed the composition of the body of

THE UNIQUE CHARACTER OF DEMOGRAPHY

demand in addition that to deserve attention the phenomenon should be on a significant

48 Dahrendorf, loc. cit. in fn. 11, p. 784.

Nevertheless, even social demographers mostly remain suspicious of what cannot be

THE INTERFACES BETWEEN DEMOGRAPHY AND THE OTHER SOCIAL SCIENCES

58 Cf. C. Seymour-Smith (ed.), Macmillan Dictionary of Anthropology (London: Macmilla

demographer has envisaged demography making a major contribution to the central

THE ROLE OF POPULATION STUDIES: ITS OVERTURES TO THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

60 N. Howell, 'Demographic anthropology', Annual Review of Anthropology, 15 (1986), p. 219.

The Early Years and the Ghosts of the Past

7 Joint Committee, loc. cit. in fn. 67.

The Themes of the 1950s Emerge

83 D. V. Glass, Population Policies and Movements in Europe (Oxford: Clarendon, 1940).

Continuing Themes with New Leases of Life

The eternal theme in demography is demographic transition. This is a field in which

interesting reappraisal of the nature of the impact

Women have long been central to de

its power structure,157 or in changing structure

The survey of demography or population studies, as defined by Population Studies, and

167 Wolfe, loc. cit. in fn. 4, pp. 85-86.

appropriate questions in surveys for specific communities. Some demographers also

fertility transitions, fertility at first

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