Action and Ethics. A Historical Perspective on the Late Frankfurt School (Apel, Habermas, Wellmer)

I shall delineate what I see as the strength and relevance of transcendental-pragmatics within the intellectual setting in the post-war period. I shall indicate how the discussions within transcendental-pragmatics have revealed inherent challenges, while at the same time the intellectual and institutional surroundings have changed unfavorably during the last few decades. And I shall briefly indicate how these inherent challenges and new constellations could and should be met, to the effect that transcendental-pragmatics could reveal its philosophical importance and practical relevance under changed conditions; the catchword here is gradual (melioristic) reasoning

Transcendental Pragmatics and Hermeneutics

Abstract: In which sense could transcendental pragmatics combined with a hermeneutical approach provide the social sciences with a critical oriented approach? This essay aims at giving an answer to that question by elaborating the critical intent of Apel"s approach to transcendental pragmatics and hermeneutics. Hermeneutics itself is considered to have critical potentials by its explicit focus upon the normative presuppositions of the social sciences. Hermeneutics does not, however, provide the sciences with any clear-cut criterions of critique. Nor does hermeneutics escape from a certain relativistic strain, due to the contextual, i.e.; socio-historically relative basis of the normative presuppositions of any hermeneutic approach. The meta-normative conditions of transcendental pragmatics are counterpoising the relativism as well as lack of normative criterions inherent in hermeneutical thinking. The meta-normative conditions of symmetry and reciprocity are meant to be a meta-normative standard for critique as well as functioning as conditions of a valid consensus within a community of scientists. Thereby, Apel is giving a solution to the validation-problem, as well as a compensation for the lack of criterions of criticism within hermeneutics. I will divide the essay into three main topics, and i) start with explicating the transcendental-pragmatic approach of Apel, ii) continue by dealing with his criticism of as well as positive appropriation of hermeneutical thinking, and iii) work out examples of a critical-hermeneutical approach in the last parts of the essay. The main example used will be from contemporary Norwegian sociology, dealing with the possibility of a unitary critical approach. The closing part (iv) will have clarifying purposes

Fertility trends by social status

This article discusses how fertility relates to social status with the use of a new dataset, several times larger than the ones used so far. The status-fertility relation is investigated over several centuries, across world regions and by the type of status-measure. The study reveals that as fertility declines, there is a general shift from a positive to a negative or neutral status-fertility relation. Those with high income/wealth or high occupation/social class switch from having relatively many to fewer or the same number of children as others. Education, however, depresses fertility for as long as this relation is observed (from early in the 20th century).education, fertility, income, occupation, social class, status, wealth

The end of secularization in Europe? A socio-demographic perspective

Much of the current debate over secularization in Europe focuses only on the direction of religious change, and pays exclusive attention to social causes. Scholars have been less attentive to shifts in the rate of religious decline, and to the role of demography – notably fertility and immigration. This article addresses both phenomena. It uses data from the European Values Surveys and European Social Survey for the period 1981-2008 to establish basic trends in religious attendance and belief across the ten countries that have been consistently surveyed. These show that religious decline is mainly occurring in Catholic European countries and has effectively ceased among post-1945 birth cohorts in six northwestern European societies where secularization began early. It also provides a cohort component projection of religious affiliation for two European countries using fertility, migration, switching and age and sex-structure parameters derived from census and immigration data. These suggest that western Europe may be more religious at the end of our century than at its beginning

Population Ageing Negatively Affects Productivity

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Secularism, fundamentalism or Catholicism: the religious composition of the United States to 2043

We provide a cohort-component projection of the religious composition of the United States, considering differences in fertility, migration, intergenerational religious transmission, and switching among 11 ethnoreligious groups. If fertility and migration trends continue, Hispanic Catholics will experience rapid growth and expand from 10 to 18 percent of the American population between 2003 and 2043. Protestants are projected to decrease from 47 to 39 percent over the same period, while Catholicism emerges as the largest religion among the youngest age cohorts. Liberal Protestants decline relative to other groups due to low fertility and losses from religious switching. Immigration drives growth among Hindus and Muslims, while low fertility and a mature age structure causes Jewish decline. The low fertility of secular Americans and the religiosity of immigrants provide a countervailing force to secularization, causing the nonreligious population share to peak before 2043

American political affiliation, 2003–43: a cohort component projection

The recent rise and stability in American party identification has focused interest on the long-term dynamics of party bases. Liberal commentators cite immigration and youth as forces which will produce a natural Democratic advantage in the future while conservative writers highlight the importance of high Republican fertility in securing Republican growth. These concerns foreground the neglect of demography within political science. This paper addresses this omission by conducting the first ever cohort component projection of American partisan populations to 2043 based on survey and census data. A number of scenarios are modeled, but, on current trends, we predict that American partisanship will shift much less than the nation’s ethnic composition because the parties’ age structures are similar. Still, our projections find that the Democrats gain two to three percentage points from the Republicans by 2043, mainly through immigration, though Republican fertility may redress the balance in the very long term

Background and Summary of the Symposium on "Population Ageing and Economic Productivity", December 2-4, 2004, Vienna Institute of Demography

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The Younger, the Better? Relative Age Effects at University

In this paper we estimate relative age effects in academic performance using a unique database of students at Bocconi University. The identification exploits school entry cut-off ages that generate up to 11 months difference between the youngest and the oldest students within each cohort. Our data allow to control for potential selection issues as well as for differences in cognitive ability, as measured by an attitudinal entry test. Contrary to most of the existing evidence for primary school children, we document that in university the youngest students perform better compared to their oldest peers, particularly in the most technical subjects. To rationalize this result we produce additional evidence on relative age effects in cognitive ability and in social behavior using a combination of data from Bocconi admission tests and from a survey on the social behavior of Italian first-year university students. We find that the youngest students in the cohort perform slightly better in cognitive tests and also appear to have less active social lives: they are less likely to do sports, go to discos and have love relationships. These results suggest that negative relative age effects in university performance might be generated by two mechanisms: (i) a profile of cognitive development that might be decreasing already around age 20; (ii) psychological relative age effects that lead the youngest in a cohort to develop social skills (self-esteem, leadership) at a slower pace. Younger students, thus, have less active social lives and devote more time to studying, as confirmed by additional evidence from the PISA study.education, relative age

Institutions and the transition to adulthood: Implications for fertility tempo in low-fertility settings

The number of countries experiencing very low fertility has been rising in recent years, garnering increasing academic, political and media attention. There is now widespread academic agreement that the postponement of fertility is a major contributing factor in the very low levels of fertility that have occurred, and yet most policy discussions have been devoted to increasing the numbers of children women have. We discuss factors in three institutions--the educational system, the labour market and the housing market--that may inadvertently have led to childbearing postponement. We highlight important components of the timing of childbearing, including its changing place within the transition to adulthood across countries and the significance of the demands of childbearing versus childrearing. Using illustrations from Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, we argue that the following all lead to younger childbearing: 1) an open education system whereby it is relatively easy to return to school after having dropped out for a while; 2) a shorter, smoother, easier school-to-work transition; 3) easier re-entry into the labour market after having taken time out for childrearing or any other reason; 4) greater capability of integrating childrearing into a career; 5) easier ability to obtain a mortgage with a moderately small down payment, moderately low interest rate and a long time period over which to repay the loan; and 6) easier ability to rent a dwelling unit at an affordable price. Conversely, reversing any or all of these factors would lead, other things being equal, to postponement of childbearing.