Kinship systems in China, the Republic of Korea, and North India have similar features that generate discrimination against girls, and these countries have some of the highest proportions of girls"missing"in the world. The authors document how the excess mortality of girls was increased by war,...

The apparently inexorable rise in the proportion of"missing girls"in much of East and South Asia has attracted much attention amongst researchers and policy-makers. An encouraging trend was suggested by the case of South Korea, where child sex ratios were the highest in Asia but peaked in the...

The apparently inexorable rise in the proportion of "missing girls" in much of East and South Asia has attracted much attention among researchers and policymakers. An encouraging trend was suggested by the case of South Korea, where child sex ratios (males to females under age 5) were the...

In China, marriage is still a highly valued social norm, and until the 1990s, practically everyone was able to marry. The situation has changed, however, and a rising proportion of men, in rural areas especially, will experience prolonged and even permanent singlehood due to the growing shortage...

What can other developing countries learn from Sri Lanka on achieving good health at low cost? While its well-organized medical and maternal-child health services have been documented elsewhere, this paper fills a gap in documenting how it organizes services to reduce the population's exposure...

The literature is reviewed on the relationships between population, poverty, and climate change. While developed countries are largely responsible for global warming, the brunt of the fallout will be borne by the developing world, in lower agricultural output, poorer health, and more frequent...

Violent conflict, a pervasive feature of the recent global landscape, has lasting impacts on human capital, and these impacts are seldom gender neutral. Death and destruction alter the structure and dynamics of households, including their demographic profiles and traditional gender roles. To...

China has a large deficit of females, and public policies have sought to reduce the son preference that is widely believed to cause this. Recently a study has suggested that up to 75 percent of this deficit is attributable to hepatitis B infection, indicating that immunization programs should...

Aid to developing countries has largely neglected the population-wide health services that are core to communicable disease control in the developed world. These mostly non-clinical services generate"pure public goods"by reducing everyone's exposure to disease through measures such as...