Dudley L. Poston - Böcker

The expression “the New South” was introduced by Henry Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, to a New York audience in 1886; every generation of writers since has used the term. The southern population, unique in its socioeconomic and cultural characteristics, has always been a topic of major interest with U.S. demographers. The articles in this book, the majority of which were originally presented at the Southern Regional Demographic Group meeting in 1976, deal with fertility, mortality, migration, and the factors that influence these components. A number of the contributors trace patterns of demographic change in the South showing convergence with the rest of the United States. Questions are raised about whether the convergence represents a permanent trend-possibly due to increased communication-or whether further divergence may be expected in the future. The contributors include Dudley L. Poston, Jr., William J. Serow, Robert H. Weller, Ronald R. Rindfuss, Harry M. Rosenberg, Drusilla Burnham, David F. Sly, Omer R. Galle, Robert N. Stern, Joachim Singelmann, Susan E. Clarke, and George C. Myers.

The completion of this volume would not have been possible without the generous and dedicated help of numerous people. The book had its genesis in a conference held at Cornell University in the fall of 1990 that was organized by Dudley Poston, Paul Eberts, and Michael Hannan, all professors at the time at Cornell. With the very generous financial assistance of David Call, then the dean of Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Poston, Eberts, and Hannan put together a two-day conference oflectures and papers by human ecologists from Cornell University and elsewhere. The conference focused on sociological human ecology and celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Amos Hawley's Human Ecology (Ronald Press 1950). Professor Hawley was the keynote speaker at the conference. Many of the authors of the chapters in this volume presented earlier versions at the Cornell conference in 1990. Cornell's Departments of Rural Sociology and Sociology also contrib­ uted financial assistance; however, without Dean Call's very generous support, the conference would not have been possible. A few months after the conference, Poston and Michael Micklin discussed the possibility of asking the various authors of the Cornell conference papers to revise them for publication in a volume on sociological human ecology. Many opted to do so, but others did not because of time and other kinds of commitments and constraints.

Completion of this Handbook would not have been possible without the generous and dedicated assistance of numerous people. Several years ago Howard Kaplan, Editor of the Kluwer/Plenum Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research, asked Dudley Poston to edit a Handbook of Population. Poston then asked his long-time collaborator and fellow demographer, Michael Micklin, to join him as co-editor. Poston and Micklin next assembled a list of chapter topics and possible authors. We endeavored to shape the contributions to the Handbook in two ways: We wished to parallel in many ways the outline of The Study of Population, edited by Philip M. Hauser and Otis Dudley Duncan, and published in 1959. The Hauser and Duncan volume was the key comp- dium and inventory of the state of demography; one had not been published since. In shaping this Handbook we also took into account the increased scope of demography, its development in other social science areas, and its application outside the academy. In the subsequent development of this Handbook, we worked closely with Teresa Kraus, our editor at Springer, and also received advice from Howard Kaplan. Poston and Micklin read and edited each of the Handbook chapters and then sent them back to the authors for their revisions. We appreciate their timely responses to our requests for revisions. All the chapters were then copy edited at Texas A&M University by Amanda K. Baumle, who then discussed and reviewed the final changes and edits with Poston.

China's one-child population policy, first initiated in 1979, has had an enormous effect on the country’s development. By reducing its fertility in the past two decades to less than two children per woman, and developing a family planning program focused heavily on sterilization and abortion, China has undergone a significant transition in status to a demographically developed country. Bringing together contributions from leading academics, this book looks at the impact of the government's strict control over planning and population growth on the family, the wider society and the country's demography. The contributors examine developments such as family planning policy and contraceptive use, biological and social determinants of fertility, patterns of family and marriage and China's future population trends. As such it will be essential reading for academics, researchers, policy makers and government officials with an interest in China’s population policy.

China's one-child population policy, first initiated in 1979, has had an enormous effect on the country’s development. By reducing its fertility in the past two decades to less than two children per woman, and developing a family planning program focused heavily on sterilization and abortion, China has undergone a significant transition in status to a demographically developed country. Bringing together contributions from leading academics, this book looks at the impact of the government's strict control over planning and population growth on the family, the wider society and the country's demography. The contributors examine developments such as family planning policy and contraceptive use, biological and social determinants of fertility, patterns of family and marriage and China's future population trends. As such it will be essential reading for academics, researchers, policy makers and government officials with an interest in China’s population policy.

China has the largest number of elderly persons worldwide. For this book, scholars use the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey datasets to answer numerous questions about aging so as to find clues to how we can all live longer, healthier lives.

China is aging at an extraordinary speed and has the largest quantity of elderly persons in the world. Scholars utilize this unprecedented living experience of human being and the unique Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) datasets with the aim to answer in this volume the following questions critical to the aging population world wide. Is the period of disability compressing or expanding with increasing life expectancy and what factors are associated with these trends in the recent decades? Is it possible to realize morbidity compression with a prolongation of the life span in the future? The first section of the book presents the CLHLS project's study design, sample distribution, contents of data collected, and assessments of age reporting and data quality. The remaining chapters are grouped into sections dealing with the demographic, social, economic, familial and psychological dimensions of healthy longevity. This volume contributes to the development of scientific knowledge related to the "slowing down" of the pace of progression of morbidity with mortality declines at older ages.Research findings reported in this book are instrumental in the ultimate realization of the long-term dream of healthy longevity, that is, not only living longer, but living a healthier life.