Population Institute. Papers

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Presents findings and policy implications from research on population issues in Asia, the Pacific, and the United States. The series reflects diverse disciplinary and cultural perspectives on population issues. Since its publication in 1970, the series has changed several times. Titles may be found under the following series: Papers of the East-West Population Institute, Papers of the Program on Population, EWC Occasional Papers, Population Series, Population and Health Series.

The East-West Center ScholarSpace community contains digital versions of just some of the several thousand books, periodicals, and unpublished papers generated by the Center over the past 50 years. Find a complete list of recent East-West Center publications and learn how to obtain them at EastWestCenter.org/publications . Search for recent and older works from 1960 - present using the Center's library catalog at EastWestCenter.org/riscatalog.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 100
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    The demographic situation in the Republic of Korea
    (Honolulu, HI : East-West Population Institute, East-West Center, 1973-12) Cho, Lee-Jay ; East-West Population Institute
    Recent demographic developments in the Republic of Korea—including changes in the population growth rate, mortality, fertility, and distribution—are documented by means of Census and survey data. A sharp decline in mortality since the end of the Korean War and a dramatic decline in fertility in the 1960s have produced an unusually rapid demographic transition accompanied by important socioeconomic changes. Causes and consequences of the transition are examined, in particular the phenomenon of rural-to-urban migration, and a projection of population size and distribution is made for the year 2000
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    The demographic situation in Indonesia
    (Honolulu, HI : East-West Population Institute, East-West Center, 1973-12) McNicoll, Geoffrey ; Mamas, Si Gde Made ; East-West Population Institute
    Current fertility, mortality, and migration patterns in Indonesia are described, together with some background material necessary for context. Preliminary estimates of fertility based on the Cho-Grabill "own-children" method applied to the 1971 Census results are presented, indicating an average total fertility rate for Indonesia of about 5.5. Birth rates are substantially lower in Java than in the other major islands, despite Java's younger age at marriage. Mortality appears to be generally high relative to neighboring countries, and there is evidence of lesser infant and greater adult mortality than is found in Coale-Demeny model patterns. Serious age reporting errors and possibilities of underenumeration prevent its accurate measurement, however. Rural-urban migration has been notably slow in the 1961s, with the exception of Jakarta and a few provincial cities servicing extractive industries.

    Factors likely to influence trends in vital rates over the next decade include a rising mean age at marriage, continued large cohorts entering peak ages of reproduction and mobility, improved economic conditions in urban areas, and a vigorous clinic-based family planning program in Java and Bali. Serious problems of ecological degradation already evident in rural Java and significant shifts in economic arrangements affecting access to the harvest are also likely to have demographic repercussions.
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    Representation of national and regional political units in a computerized world future model
    (Honolulu, HI : East-West Population Institute, East-West Center, 1972-10) Maggs, Peter B. ; East-West Population Institute
    Recent, highly-publicized computerized world future models developed by Jay W. Forrester and by Donella H. Meadows and others have formed the basis for suggested policies that would require major changes in international and national legal rules. These models make no attempt, however, to incorporate the existing world legal structure.

    The author has rewritten one of these models, that by Forrester, to incorporate variables representing legal controls of international movement of population, natural resources, food, and pollution. Results from computer runs with this revised model suggest that a wide range of national policies on such questions as population growth, economic growth, and national resource usage may be compatible with world equilibrium.

    Appendices to the paper present FORTRAN computer programs for both the original model and the author's extended model.
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    Spatial patterns of socio-economic structure and change in the Philippines, 1939-60
    (Honolulu, HI : East-West Population Institute, East-West Center, 1972-08) Fuchs, Roland J. ; Luna, Telesforo W. ; East-West Population Institute
    The present study examines aspects of the uneven spatial distribution of modernization and development within the Philippines over the period 1939-60. Factor analysis is applied to comparable provincial data from the 1939 and 1960 censuses to study variations in the relationships among demographic, socio-cultural, and economic characteristics. More specifically the objectives of the study are (1) to uncover the patterns of association, that is, the underlying factors or dimensions, among selected socio-economic characteristics of Philippine provinces in 1939 and again in 1960; (2) to examine the stability or instability of the dimensions extracted from 1939 data compared with those extracted from the 1960 data; (3) to discover existing patterns of interdependency among the changes in socioeconomic characteristics of provinces from 1939 to 1960; (4) to reveal areal associations and patterns of development and change in 1939, 1960, and for the period 1939-60.

    The paper then is essentially empirical and inductive. However, while the study has not been specifically designed to deductively examine existing spatial development models, some of its findings obviously bear on regional inequality models and such related concepts as economic dualism, growth poles and modernization. The inclusion in the analysis of various population characteristics permits us to examine to some extent how changes in these characteristics are associated with other changes in the Philippine development process.
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    Legal regulation of population movement to, from, and within the United States : a survey of current law and constitutional limitations
    (Honolulu, HI : East-West Population Institute, East-West Center, 1972-06) Maggs, Peter B. ; East-West Population Institute
    A wide variety of federal and state laws affect population movement both directly and indirectly. However the powers of both the federal and state governments to regulate population movement have been severely restricted by a series of Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Constitution.

    The federal government has and exercises extensive powers for the regulation of international immigration. State governments, however, may only regulate immigration to the extent powers are delegated by the federal government.

    An increasingly strong constitutional doctrine of a right to travel is emerging. This doctrine greatly limits both federal and state power to directly limit population movement. Existing state legislation penalizing population movement by discriminating against new residents cannot stand constitutional scrutiny.

    Considerable scope does exist within constitutional limits for both federal and state regulation movement. However such regulation must avoid both direct restriction upon the right to travel and discrimination in favor of long-term state residents.
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    Optimal population policy
    (Honolulu, HI : East-West Population Institute, East-West Center, 1972-05) Arthur, W. Brian ; McNicoll, Geoffrey ; East-West Population Institute
    This paper investigates the notion of optimality in population policy through the use of simple analytical and numerical examples. A control theoretic framework is adopted which does not restrict the analysis to a particular criterion of welfare nor to particular assumptions about the economy or population. Given an arbitrarily specified index of societal welfare and a set of assumptions on underlying economic and population dynamics, the corresponding policies can be deduced that maximize over time this measure of welfare. The necessary conditions for the solution of the problem provide insights into the tradeoffs inherent in maintaining optimality. In addition, the analysis allows the isolation of the factors and parameters to which the optimal policy in a given situation is most sensitive.

    The very simple models discussed in the paper serve to stress the importance of the ethical assumptions of population policy. They suggest that whether a society has a high or a low aversion, to crowding or environmental degradation has relatively little impact on its optimal population policy compared to its valuation on the welfare of future generations and of potential entrants to the society.
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    A model for the age distribution of first marriage
    (Honolulu, HI : East-West Population Institute, East-West Center, 1972-04) Feeney, Griffith ; East-West Population Institute
    A model is developed in which a woman's age at first marriage is regarded as the sum of two components, the interval between birth and entry to a hypothetical marriage pool, and the interval between entry to this marriage pool and marriage. The model is fitted to observed age patterns of first marriage in fifteen cohorts of United States white females who reached age 20 between 1902 and 1944. The observed age patterns are estimated from retrospective data in the 1960 census. An analysis of biases due to differential mortality by marital status is given.
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    Population policy under an arbitrary welfare criterion : theory and issues
    (Honolulu, HI : East-West Population Institute, East-West Center, 1972-03) Arthur, W. Brian ; East-West Population Institute
    Many well-defined policy problems can be formally described as follows: Let x(t) be an n-dimensional vector describing the state of a system at time t , and y(t) be an m-dimensional vector of policy instrument variables at time t. Let U = U[x(t),y(t),t] be a measure of the condition or "welfare" of a system in state x and adopting policies y at time t. Then it is possible to evaluate any specified policy {y(t), 0≤t≤T} by its impact on J =∫T0 U dt . In particular, an optimal policy is one that maximizes J subject to whatever constraints on x and y are applicable.

    Analyzing this formulation by means of the calculus of variations enables one to relate a variation δy(t) in policy to the variation δJ in J that it induces. This relation involves also a set of multiplier functions (analogous to Lagrange multipliers) that can be interpreted as the "shadow prices" of the state variables.

    In this paper, population policy is analyzed in the above format, with stress on the demographic insights that follow from the variational approach. Particular problems investigated in terms of simple but fairly general models are: the value of a marginal birth (the shadow price of the state variable, population); the conditions under which δy is a policy improvement, i.e., δJ is positive (enabling, inter alia, a rigorous definition of "overpopulation"); and the characteristics of an optimal policy.
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    Multivariate analysis of areal fertility in Honolulu
    (Honolulu, HI : East-West Population Institute, East-West Center, 1972-03) Park, Chai Bin ; East-West Population Institute
    In this paper, efforts have been made to uncover possible relationships between areal fertility and a large number of socioeconomic indicators within a well-defined urban community, using recent data. Both regression and factor analyses have been employed in order to measure the dependency of fertility on indicators and the interdependency among all the variables involved. The data studied here are for the 1960 census tracts of Honolulu, Hawaii. The data have been examined separately by level of urban gradation and type of fertility measurement.
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    What mathematical demography tells that we would not know without it
    (Honolulu, HI : East-West Population Institute, East-West Center, 1972-03) Keyfitz, Nathan ; East-West Population Institute
    The purpose of the mathematics of population is to answer common sense questions, for instance about the effects of changing births on the proportion of old people, or the effect of abortions on the birth rate. Very often the answers it gives are the opposite of those given by common sense, and in such cases we have to adjust our common sense to accord with what the mathematics show to be true. In other instances the direction of an effect is obvious, but we need a technical analysis to estimate its amount.

    This paper takes up 20 problems, compels each to submit to mathematical analysis, and extracts from the mathematics a result that is of use in its own right. Such results can guide people who are working at some practical issue concerned with population, and they can enable the citizen to have clearer understanding of what is going on in a field that citizens can no longer neglect.
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