Low Fertility Regimes and Demographic and Societal Change

241 Pages·2018·5.327 MB·English

by  Dudley L. Poston, Jr. (eds.)

Dudley L. Poston, Jr. Editor
Samsik Lee
Han Gon Kim Co-Editors
Low Fertility
Regimes and
Demographic
and Societal
Change
Low Fertility Regimes and Demographic
and Societal Change
Dudley L. Poston, Jr.
Editor
Samsik Lee • Han Gon Kim
Co-Editors
Low Fertility Regimes and
Demographic and Societal
Change
Editor
Dudley L. Poston, Jr.
Department of Sociology
Texas A & M University
College Station, TX, USA
Co-Editors
Samsik Lee Han Gon Kim
Department of Policy Science and Institute Yeungnam University
for Population and Aged Society Gyeongbuk, South Korea
Hanyang University
Seoul, South Korea
ISBN 978-3-319-64059-4 ISBN 978-3-319-64061-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-64061-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017951734
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Preface
The global community is undergoing rapid demographic and societal change. It is
within this context that the 27th International Union for the Scientific Study of
Population (IUSSP) International Population Conference, entitled “The Future of
the World,” was held in Busan, South Korea, on August 26–31, 2013. More than
2,500 demographers and population professionals from all over the world attended
and participated in this very successful conference. Later, in May 2014, the Korean
National Organizing Committee for the 27th IUSSP International Population
Conference met in Seoul to celebrate the success of the said conference. At the
meeting, Byung Ho Choe, the president of the Korea Institute of Health and Social
Affairs (KIHASA), and Han Gon Kim, the president of the Population Association
of Korea (PAK), agreed to hold an international symposium building on some of the
issues of the IUSSP Conference, especially those pertaining to demographic dynam-
ics in low-fertility societies. They also discussed the possibility of publishing a book
based on the presentations made at the symposium.
At a later meeting convened to prepare the international symposium, President
Choe and Dr. Kim made a decision that KIHASA would provide the funds for the
international symposium and that Dr. Kim would be in charge of organizing it.
Later, KIHASA and PAK invited Dr. Dudley L. Poston, Jr., to chair the organizing
committee for the symposium and to serve as the principal editor of the proposed
book. Dr. Kim and Dr. Youngtae Cho then traveled to Yokohama, Japan, on July
17–18 to meet with Dr. Poston (who was attending an international conference in
Yokohama) to further discuss and begin to plan the international symposium. At the
Yokohama meeting, Drs. Poston, Kim, and Cho prepared an outline for the sympo-
sium and the resulting book. Dr. Poston agreed that he would be in charge of con-
tacting demographers to present papers at the symposium who would later write
chapters for the book. Dr. Poston then prepared a book proposal and submitted it to
Ms. Evelien Bakker at Springer Publishing, who then issued Dr. Poston and his col-
leagues a contract for a book to be entitled Low Fertility Regimes and Demographic
and Societal Change.
v
vi Preface
The international symposium was held at the Seoul Plaza Hotel, South Korea, on
December 16, 2014. Ten demographers traveled to Seoul to make their p resentations,
and three demographers unable to attend the symposium sent outlines. All planned
to submit the first drafts of their chapters by August 2015. Most chapters were sub-
mitted on that month, and Dr. Poston then began to edit and revise the chapters for
publication. Dr. Poston had an editorial meeting with Dr. Kim, Dr. Cho, and Dr.
Samsik Lee in Seoul in September 13–15, 2015.
This book considers a variety of issues related to demographic dynamics and
societal change in the twenty-first century. It begins with an introductory chapter by
Dudley Poston that provides some context for low-fertility regimes and demo-
graphic and societal change. Four chapters follow dealing with demographic
dynamics, namely, Chap. 2 on fertility by Francesco Billari; Chap. 3 on natural
decrease by Nayoung Heo and Dudley Poston; Chap. 4 on mortality by Richard
Rogers, Elizabeth Lawrence, and Robert Hummer; and Chap. 5 on international
migration by Susan Brown, Frank Bean, and James Bachmeier. The next four chap-
ters deal with changes in social structure, namely, Chap. 6 on aging and age depen-
dency by Samsik Lee; Chap. 7 on issues of motherhood and gender by Nancy Riley;
Chap. 8 on marital relationships by Linda Waite and Juyeon Kim; and Chap. 9 on
marriage and cohabitation by Gavin Jones. The last three chapters focus on institu-
tions and demographic change, namely, Chap. 10 on family by Daniel Lichter and
Zhenchao Qian; Chap. 11 on political effects by Michael Teitelbaum; and Chap. 12
on religion by Christopher Ellison, Xiaohe Xu, and Andrea Ruiz.
We express our sincere gratitude to Dr. Bung Ho Choe, the former president of
KIHASA, and to Dr. SangHo Kim, the current president of KIHASA. This book
would not have been published without their financial and administrative support.
We also thank Dr. Samsik Lee of KIHASA, Dr. Youngtae Cho of Seoul National
University, and Dr. Joongbaek Kim, the secretary general of PAK, for their advice
and support.
Finally, and most importantly, we acknowledge Dr. Dudley Poston for his exten-
sive editorial work, his inspiration, and his dedication. This book would not have
been published without his enthusiasm and sacrifice.
Gyeongbuk, South Korea Han Gon Kim
Contents
1 The Context of Low Fertility Regimes and Demographic
and Societal Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Dudley L. Poston, Jr.
Part I Demographic Dynamics and Change
2 A “Great Divergence” in Fertility? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Francesco C. Billari
3 Natural Decrease in the Context of Lowest-low Fertility:
South Korea, 2005–2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Nayoung Heo and Dudley L. Poston, Jr.
4 A Twenty-First Century Demographic Challenge: Comparatively
Low Life Expectancy in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Richard G. Rogers, Elizabeth M. Lawrence, and Robert A. Hummer
5 The Implications of Native-Born Fertility and Other
Socio-Demographic Changes for Less-Skilled U.S. Immigration . . . . . 73
Susan K. Brown, Frank D. Bean, and James D. Bachmeier
Part II Structural Change
6 Issues of Aging and Age Dependency in Post- industrial
Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Samsik Lee
7 Good Mothering in China: Effects of Migration, Low Fertility,
and Birth Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Nancy E. Riley
8 Couple Relationships in Low-Fertility Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Linda J. Waite and Juyeon Kim
vii
viii Contents
9 What Is Driving Marriage and Cohabitation in Low
Fertility Countries? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Gavin Jones
Part III Institutional Change
1 0 Children at Risk: Diversity, Inequality, and the Third
Demographic Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Daniel T. Lichter and Zhenchao Qian
11 Political Effects – Real and Imagined – In Low
Fertility Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Michael S. Teitelbaum
12 Exploring the Effects of Fertility Change on Religiosity
in the Twenty- First Century: A Cross-National Analysis . . . . . . . . . . 213
Christopher G. Ellison, Xiaohe Xu, and Andrea L. Ruiz
About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Chapter 1
The Context of Low Fertility Regimes
and Demographic and Societal Change
Dudley L. Poston, Jr.
Introduction
This volume focuses on demographic and societal changes in societies experiencing
low and very low fertility. In this introductory chapter I provide some demographic
context for evaluating and understanding these changes. I discuss in some detail the
two major theories and perspectives that best inform the demographic and social
dynamics currently underway in low fertility populations. These are the classic the-
ory of demographic transition and the theory of the second demographic transition.
The book that follows this introductory chapter contains 11 chapters; four chapters
deal with demographic dynamics of fertility, natural decrease, mortality, and inter-
national migration. The next four chapters deal with structural changes in societies
pertaining to aging, mothering and gender, marital relationships, and marriage and
cohabitation. The last three chapters deal with changing social institutions, namely,
the family, the political arena, and religion. In all these chapters attention is directed
to low fertility societies, and in many of them a major focus is given to the Republic
of Korea. Later in this chapter I summarize briefly each of the chapters.
I turn now to a discussion and review of the classic model of demographic
transition.
The Classical Theory of Demographic Transition
The most prominent explanation for the growth of human populations is the theory
of demographic transition. Changes in the size of a society’s population over a
period of time are due entirely to changes during the same time period in fertility,
D.L. Poston, Jr. (*)
Dept. Sociology College Station, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 1
D.L. Poston, Jr. (ed.), Low Fertility Regimes and Demographic
and Societal Change, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-64061-7_1
2 D.L. Poston, Jr.
mortality and migration. Although there are a few exceptions (e.g., the United
States, Canada, Australia and Israel), for most societies, particularly a society such
as South Korea, fertility and mortality are the major agents in the changing size of
the population. Over time, South Korea and most other societies have changed their
size by adding persons born during the period and subtracting persons dying.
Demographic transition theory was first developed by Thompson (1929) and
Notestein (1945) and later extended by Davis (1963). The theory proposes four
stages of mortality and fertility change that occur in the process of societal modern-
ization. The first stage is the pretransitional or preindustrialization stage. It lasted
for thousands of years when societies were characterized by high birth rates and
high death rates and stable population growth. This first stage is typically one of
fluctuating mortality and high fertility. The relative instability of the mortality rates
means that during this stage there were some periods of natural increase (more
births than deaths) and some of natural decrease (more deaths than births), but that
over the long period, there was very little change in population size (Poston and Heo
2017).
The pretransitional stage is followed by a transition to a second stage. For rea-
sons discussed below, first mortality began to decline in many countries of the
world. With the onset of industrialization and modernization, many societies transi-
tioned to lower death rates, mainly due to lower rates of infant mortality and mater-
nal mortality, but maintained fairly high birth rates. Rapid population growth was
the result. It would take another generation or so before fertility would begin to fall.
During Stage 2, population growth was intense.
The transition from Stage 1 to State 2 occurred first in several European coun-
tries in the context of the industrial revolution. In short, the Industrial Revolution
eventually created a healthier society, resulting in several European countries mov-
ing from the first stage to the second stage. With better transportation, food supplies
were improved and famines occurred less frequently. New foods were introduced
from the colonies in the Americas and elsewhere. Also, better housing was con-
structed, and better clothing became available as cotton became more plentiful. In
the nineteenth century, sanitary behavior began to be practiced by the population,
and public-health movements were appearing. Medical improvements did not really
contribute too much to declining mortality until the twentieth century. But birth
rates remained high.
The rapid population growth occurring in Stage 2 was pretty much limited to
Western Europe. Death rates remained high for the most part outside Europe. It was
not until after World War II that there were significant improvements there in lon-
gevity. Then, death rates started falling in many non-European countries, and they
fell rapidly. These areas benefited from the knowledge learned in the more advanced
nations a decade or two earlier. By then, too, medical knowledge had increased, and
the residents were the benefactors of this new information.
The decline in mortality in the European nations, i.e., Stage 2, was later followed
by a decline in fertility, i.e., Stage 3. By the 1930s in many European countries,
overall population growth rates were coming down. Whereas throughout most of
history, up until the eighteenth century, population growth was very slow because of