Demographic Theory: A Long View

摘要

DEMOGRAPHIC THEORY HAS been largely transformed over the last half-century from grand theory to short-term theory, often endowed with such immediacy as to so limit our vision of the future that even population policymaking is made difficult. Demographic theorists lost their nerve as the globalization of declines in mortality and fertility proceeded much more rapidly than they had anticipated and as the "baby boom" in a number of developed countries quelled expectations of continuing fertility decline. There is a parallel here to the undermining of Malthusian theory by dramatic increases in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in food production, a phenomenon explained by the Industrial Revolution's effects on agricultural and transport technology.Focusing on the leading countries in the demographic transition, this essay will argue that far too little attention has been paid to the nature of the economic and related social revolutions of our age and that our theoretical perspectives pay too little attention to ultimate constraints on population growth.