The authors examine the striking decline in Japan's birthrate in light of the rapid urbanization, industrialization, and socioeconomic development experienced by the nation since World War II.

For most of human history a "natural fertility" regime has prevailed throughout the world: there has been almost no conscious limitation of family size within marriage, and women have spent their reproductive lives tied to the "wheel of childbearing." Only recently in developed countries has fertility been brought under conscious control by individual couples and childbearing fallen to an average of two births per woman. The explanation of this "fertility revolution" is the main concern of this book.

Richard A. Easterlin and Eileen M. Crimmins present and test a fertility theory that has gained increasing attention over the last decade, a "supply-demand theory" that integrates economic and sociological approaches to fertility determination. The results of the tests, which draw on data from four developing countries—Colombia, India, Sri Lanka, and Taiwan—are highly consistent, though a number of the conclusions are likely to arouse controversy. For example, couples' motivation for fertility control appears to be the prime mover in the fertility revolution, rather than access to family planning services or unfavorable attitudes toward such services.

The interdisciplinary approach and nontechnical exposition of this study will attract a wide readership among economists, sociologists, demographers, anthropologists, statisticians, biologists, and others.

Shangri-La, the Bermuda Triangle, Transylvania, the Golden Triangle—far-flung in popular conception, these anomalous places nonetheless occupy the same mysterious zone, a mythography of unruly cartographic practices. And because this mythography becomes associated with a particular area of the earth’s surface, it may well suggest an alternative means of mapping the world, dissociated from the dominant geographical paradigms of nation-state, economic region, and the global/local marketing nexus. Large-scale nonnational geographical spaces that find their genesis in popular feeling, mystery, and belief, these four sites provide Brett Neilson with the basis not only for rethinking the current global reorganization of space and time but also for questioning the dominant narrative by which globalization marks the victory of capitalism. Free Trade in the Bermuda Triangle moves between analysis of popular fantasies and engagement with on-the-ground realities, weaving together topics as diverse as airplane disasters off the U.S. Atlantic coast, the global drug trade, vampire culture in postsocialist Europe, and the search for utopia in Chinese-occupied Tibet. The study of globalization is largely a solemn affair, occupied with increasing economic polarities, environmental degradation, and global insecurity. Free Trade in the Bermuda Triangle maintains a critical focus on these sobering issues but at the same time asks how popular pleasure and enjoyment can create viable alternatives to the current global order. Neilson takes seriously the proposition that capitalism must be contested at its own level of generality, finding provisional grounds for resistance in nonlocal transnational spaces that embody quotidian hopes, desires, and anxieties. By studying the real and imagined dimensions of these popular geographies, his book seeks resources for social betterment in the fallen mythologies of the contemporary postutopian world.Brett Neilson is senior lecturer in the School of Humanities at the University of Western Sydney, where he is also a member of the Centre for Cultural Research.

The 1980 Census introduced a radical change in the measurement of ethnicity by gathering information on ancestry for all respondents, regardless of how long ago their forebears migrated to America, and by allowing respondents of mixed background to list more than one ancestry. The result, presented for the first time in this important study, is a unique and sometimes startling picture of the nation's ethnic makeup. From Many Strands focuses on each of the sixteen principal European ethnic groups, as well as on major non-European groups such as blacks and Hispanics. The authors describe differences and similarities across a range of dimensions, including regional distribution, income, marriage patterns, and education. While some findings lend support to the "melting pot" theory of assimilation (levels of educational attainment have become more comparable and ingroup marriage is declining), other findings suggest the persistence of pluralism (settlement patterns resist change and some current occupational patterns date from the turn of the century). In these contradictions, and in the striking number of respondents who report no ethnic background or report it incorrectly, Lieberson and Waters find evidence of considerable ethnic flux and uncover the growing presence of a new, "unhyphenated American" ethnic strand in the fabric of national life. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Census Series

High rates of divorce, single-parenthood, and nonmarital cohabitation are forcing Americans to reexamine their definition of family. This evolving social reality requires public policy to evolve as well. The Future of the Family brings together the top scholars of family policy—headlined by editors Lee Rainwater, Tim Smeeding, and, in his last published work, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan—to take stock of the state of the family in the United States today and address the ways in which public policy affects the family and vice versa. The volume opens with an assessment of new forms of family, discussing how reduced family income and lower parental involvement can disadvantage children who grow up outside of two-parent households. The book then presents three vastly dissimilar recommendations—each representing a different segment of the political spectrum—for how family policy should adapt to these changes. Child psychologist Wade Horn argues the case of political conservatives that healthy two-parent families are the best way to raise children and therefore should be actively promoted by government initiatives. Conversely, economist Nancy Folbre argues that government's role lies not in prescribing family arrangements but rather in recognizing and fostering the importance of caregivers within all families, conventional or otherwise. Will Marshall and Isabel Sawhill borrow policy prescriptions from the left and the right, arguing for more initiatives that demand personal responsibility from parents, as well as for an increase in workplace flexibility and the establishment of universal preschool programs. The book follows with commentary by leading policy analysts Samuel Preston, Frank Furstenberg Jr., and Irwin Garfinkel on the merits of the conservative and liberal arguments. Each suggests that marriage promotion alone is not enough to ensure a happy, healthy, and prosperous future for American children who are caught up in the vortex of family change. They agree that government investments in children, however, can promote superior developmental outcomes and even potentially encourage traditional families by enlarging the pool of "marriageable" individuals for the next generation. No government action can reverse trends in family formation or return America to the historic nuclear family model. But understanding social change is an essential step in fashioning effective policy for today's families. With authoritative insight, The Future of the Family broadens and updates our knowledge of how public policy and demography shape one another.