Almost 30 years have passed since I introduced the concept of "net intergenerational wealth flows" in a "PDR" essay, "Toward a restatement of demographic transition theory." A great deal of research has been published since then, and accordingly an update is needed. That research suggests the...

Fertility decline began in English-speaking countries 80 years later than in France even though per capita incomes in the former were higher and children were probably a net economic burden, at least for the middle classes. Explanations have included ignorance of contraception and the desire to...

This essay argues that demographic theory over the last half-century has substituted short-term explanations, often focusing on single demographic events, for long-term theory. This means not only that the explanations cannot be employed to forecast the situation in the more distant future, but...

The claim has been made, notably in a 1994 World Bank report, that the Bangladesh fertility decline shows that efficient national family planning programs can achieve major fertility declines even in countries that are very poor, and even if females have a low status and significant...

Half the AIDS victims in the world are in East and Southern Africa, where adult HIV sero-prevalence was 11.4 percent by the end of 1997 and over 25 percent in two countries of Southern Africa. HIV/AIDS infection is not the result of ignorance, as nearly everyone has sufficient knowledge about...

The mid-twentieth century witnessed the emergence of a remarkable consensus on quantitative estimates of world population growth after 1650. This was the achievement of Walter Willcox, supported and modified by Alexander Carr-Saunders and John Durand, and was endorsed by United Nations...