Sociology 830
Demography I: Theory, Substance, and Techniques
Fall 2007
Philip N. Cohen
Course meeting time: Thursday 12:00-2:50 p.m., Hamilton Hall 151
Office hours: by appointment or drop-in, Hamilton 270
Email: pnc@unc.edu
Course website: http://www.unc.edu/~pnc/pop/
Teaching assistant: Yinchun Ji, ycji@email.unc.edu
Office hours: Thursday, 3:00-4:00 p.m.
This is the first part of a two-course series serving as a graduate-level introduction to the field of demography. This first course covers foundational theories, concepts, measures, and tools used to demographic questions. Specifically, we will address data sources, rates and probabilities, standardization and decomposition, measures of mortality and health, life tables, fertility measures, cohabitation and marriage, and race/ethnicity. While learning demographic techniques for studying these topics, students will also read and discuss theoretical and practical contributions in these fields.
Readings
Requirements
Class participation. Students are expected to participate actively in discussion each day, having completed the reading and other assignments prior to each seminar meeting.
Reading notes. Students are expected to consult the reading notes for each seminar meeting. Some will ask for short computation exercises or short essays; others will pose discussion questions to consider before the meeting and don’t require submitting written notes. Students should have their notes complete prior to class.
Homework Assignments. Assignments designed to expose students to demographic data sources and fundamental calculations will cover the following topics: Rates & Probabilities, Life Tables, and Fertility Estimates. The schedule for the assignments is below.
Final exam. Students will be given a take-home final exam covering the demographic material covered in the course. The exam will be emailed to students on Friday, November 30 and will be due back in Philip’s mailbox (Hamilton Hall or CPC) by December 6 at 4pm. Please report any scheduling conflicts well in advance.
Grading: Final grades will be based on a student’s participation in class, reading notes, homework assignments, and the final exam. Students excelling at all four components of this seminar will receive Hs. Students showing satisfactory mastery on all four levels will receive Ps. Those who consistently perform less than satisfactorily will receive Ls, and those who give unacceptably inadequate effort will receive Fs.
Course schedule
August 23: Introduction
McFalls, Joseph A., Jr. 2003. “Population: A Lively Introduction, 4th Edition.” Population Bulletin 58(4). [Link]
Haub, Carl. 2002. “How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?” Population Today (November/December) [CW]
August 30: Concepts and Sources [Reading note]
Demography, Chapter 1
Coale, Ansley J. 1987. “How a Population Ages or Grows Younger.” Pp. 365-369 in S.W. Menard and E.W. Moen (eds.), Perspectives on Population: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [CW]
Bryan, Thomas. 2004. “Basic Sources of Statistics.” Pp. 9-42 in The Methods and Materials of Demography (2nd Ed.), edited by Jacob S. Siegel and David A. Swanson. Amsterdam: Elsevier Academic Press. [CW]
Prewitt, Kenneth. 2005. “Politics and Science in Census Taking.” Pp. 3-48 in Reynolds Farley and John Haaga, eds., The American People: Census 2000. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. [CW]
September 6: Rates, Probabilities, and Institutions [Reading note]
Demography, Chapter 2
Coale, Ansley J. And Ellen Eliason Kisker. 1986. “Mortality Crossovers: Reality or Bad Data?” Population Studies 40:389 402. [JSTOR]
Hill, Mark E., Samuel H. Preston, Irma T. Elo and Ira Rosenwaike. 1997. “Age-Linked Institutions and Age Reporting among Older African Americans.” Social Forces 75(3):1007-1030. [JSTOR]
Elo, Irma T., Cassio M. Turra, Bert Kestenbaum and B. Reneé Ferguson. 2004. “Mortality among Elderly Hispanics in the United States: Past Evidence and New Results.” Demography 41(1):109-128. [JSTOR]
Assignment: Rates & Probabilities, Due September 13
September 13: Life Tables [Reading note]
Demography, Chapter 3
McFalls, “Population,” pp. 10-14 (Mortality). [Link]
Hayward, Mark and Melonie Heron. 1999. “Racial Inequality in Active Life among Adult Americans.” Demography 36(1): 77-91. [JSTOR]
Bonczar, T.P. 2003. “Prevalence of Imprisonment in the U.S. Population, 1974-2001.” [Link]
Assignment: Life Tables, Due September 20
September 20: Mortality [Reading note]
Janet W. Salaff. 1973. “Mortality Decline in the People’s Republic of China and the United States.” Population Studies 27(3):551-576. [JSTOR]
Cutler, David and Grant Miller. 2005. “The Role of Public Health Improvements in Health Advances: The Twentieth-Century United States.” Demography 41(1):1-22. [Muse]
Caldwell, John C. 1990. “Cultural and Social Factors Influencing Mortality Levels in Developing Countries.” The Annals of the American Academy 510:44‑59. [CW]
Hummer, Robert A., Monique Biegler, Peter B. DeTurk, Douglas Forbes, W. Parker Frisbie, Ying Hong, and Starling G. Pullum. 1999. “Race/ethnicity, Nativity, and Infant Mortality in the United States.” Social Forces 77:1083-1118. [JSTOR]
September 27: Fertility [Reading note]
Demography, Chapter 5
Bongaarts, John. 1975. “Why High Birth Rates Are So Low.” Population and Development Review 1:289‑296. [JSTOR]
Kirk, Dudley. 1996. “Demographic Transition Theory.” Population Studies 50(3):361-387. [JSTOR]
Hirschman, Charles. 2001. “Comment: Globalization and Theories of Fertility Decline.”
Population and Development Review 27(Supplement):116-125. [JSTOR]
Assignment: Fertility Estimates, Due October 4
October 4: Fertility [Reading note]
Axinn, William G. and Scott T. Yabiku. 2001. “Social Change, the Social Organization of Families, and Fertility Limitation.” American Journal of Sociology 106(5):1219-1261. [Link]
Kohler, Hans Peter, Francesco C. Billari, and Jose A. Ortega. 2002. “The Emergence of Lowest Low Fertility in Europe During the 1990s.” Population and Development Review 28:641-804. [JSTOR]
Kravdal, Øystein and Ronald R. Rindfuss. 2007. “Changing relationships between education and fertility – a study of women and men born 1940-64.” Unpublished manuscript. [CW]
October 11: Chinese Fertility and Mortality [Reading note]
Wang Feng and James Lee. 1999. “Malthusian Models and Chinese Realities: The Chinese Demographic System 1700-2000.” Population and Development Review 25(1):33-65. [JSTOR]
Attane, Isabelle. 2002. “China’s Family Planning Policy: An Overview of Its Past and Future.” Studies in Family Planning 33(1):103-113. [JSTOR]
Coale, Ansley J. and Judith Banister. 1994. “Five Decades of Missing Females in China.” Demography 31(3):459-479. [JSTOR]
Greenhalgh, Susan and Jiali Li. 1995. “Engendering Reproductive Policy and Practice in Peasant China: For a Feminist Demography of Reproduction.” Signs 20(3):601-641. [JSTOR]
Optional China background debate:
Joseph Ball. 2006. “Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?” Monthly Review (September). [Link]
Basil Ashton; Kenneth Hill; Alan Piazza; Robin Zeitz. 1984. “Famine in China, 1958-61.” Population and Development Review 10(4):613-645. [JSTOR]
October 18: Fall break
October 25: Marriage and Cohabitation in the USA [Reading note]
Teachman, Jay D., Lucky M. Tedrow, and Kyle D. Crowder. 2000. “The Changing Demography of America’s Families.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62:1234-1246. [CW]
Carlson M, Sara McLanahan and Paula England. 2004. “Union Formation in Fragile Families.” Demography 41(2):237-261. [Muse]
Goldstein, Joshua R. and Catherine T. Kenney. 2001. “Marriage Delayed or Marriage Forgone? New Cohort Forecasts of First Marriage for U.S. Women.” American Sociological Review 66(4):506-519. [JSTOR]
Optional background on cohabitation:
Casper, Lynne M., and Philip N. Cohen. 2000. “How Does POSSLQ Measure Up? Historical Estimates of Cohabitation.” Demography 37(2):237-45. [CW]
Manning, Wendy D. and Pamela J. Smock. 2005. “Measuring and Modeling Cohabitation: New Perspectives from Qualitative Data.” Journal of Marriage and Family 67(4):989-1002. [Add link]
Raley, R. K. 2001. “Increasing Fertility in Cohabiting Unions: Evidence for the Second Demographic Transition in the United States?” Demography 38(1):59-66. [JSTOR]
November 1: Race and Segregation [Reading notes]
Snipp, CM. 2003. “Racial Measurement in the American Census: Past Practices and Implications for the Future.” Annual Review of Sociology 29:563-588. [ARS]
Hirschman, Charles. 2004. “The Origins and Demise of the Concept of Race.” Population and Development Review 30 (3):385+. [CW]
Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in the United States: 1980-2000. U.S. Census Bureau, 2002. Chapters 1, 2, and Appendix B [Link]
Jackson SA, Anderson RT, Johnson NJ, et al. 2000. “The Relation of Residential Segregation to All-Cause Mortality: A Study in Black and White.” American Journal of Public Health 90(4):615-617. [CW]
Downey, Liam. 2005. “The Unintended Significance of Race: Environmental Racial Inequality in Detroit.” Social Forces March 2005, 83(3):971-1008. [CW]
November 8 - TBA
November 15: War and Genocide [Reading notes]
Roberts L, Lafta R, Garfield R, et al. 2004. “Mortality Before and After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: Cluster Sample Survey.” Lancet 364(9448):1857-1864. [CW]
Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, Les Roberts, “Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: a Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey.” Lancet Oct 11, 2006. [CW]
Daponte BO, Garfield R. 2000. “The effect of economic sanctions on the mortality of Iraqi children prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf War.” American Journal of Public Health 90 (4): 546-552. [CW]
Seltzer, William and Margo Anderson. 2001. “The Dark Side of Numbers: The Role of Population Data Systems in Human Rights Abuses. Social Research 68(2):482-513. [CW]
Seltzer, William. 1998. “Population statistics, the Holocaust, and the Nuremberg trials.” Population and Development Review 24 (3):511-. [Link]
November 22 Thanksgiving
November 29: Demography on Itself
Van Dalen, Hendrik P. and Kene Henkens. 1999. “How Influential Are Demography Journals?” Population and Development Review 25(2):229-251. [JSTOR]
Ramsden E. 2003. “Social Demography and Eugenics in the Interwar United States.”
Population and Development Review 29(4):547-. [JSTOR]
Keyfitz, Nathan. 1993. “Thirty Years of Demography and Demography.” Demography 30(4):533-549. [JSTOR]
Liu Z and CZ Wang. 2005. “Mapping Interdisciplinarity in Demography: a Journal Network Analysis.” Journal of Information Science 31(4):308-316. [CW]