POPULATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT: POLLS, POLICIES, AND PUBLIC OPINION

Although recent academic and popular attention has argued for a wedding between population and environmental problems and policies, the scientific knowledge base for these topics has grown separately and at different rates. Environmental research has grown faster than population research, while the joint treatment of these topics remains in its infancy. International polls that have included many questions concerning environmental attitudes have included far fewer on population. The few surveys on population attitudes have ignored the environment. The World Fertility Survey and the Demographic and Health Survey are fertility, rather than population, surveys. They have been useful in precipitating national policies on family planning but are poor models for needed attitudinal and cognitive research on population and the environment. Some contemporary polls, such as the United Nations-sponsored poll conducted by the Louis Harris Agency, have serious methodological defects. Others, such as the 1992 Gallup poll, contain valuable data from which future surveys could profit. The conclusion outlines the need for a new multi-national survey of Population/Environment Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice (PEKAP).Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

POPULATION, PROJECTIONS, AND POLICY: A CAUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE

Population projections depend on censuses, vital statistics, and sample surveys, all of which have deficiencies that are most marked in developing countries. Long-range projections by international agencies have recently undergone major revisions, and forecasts of the United States (U.S.) population have changed drastically over the past four years. The United Nations (UN) typically prepares high, medium, and low projections. Even the high projection contains optimistic assumptions about fertility decline, while assumptions of constant or increasing fertility receive no serious attention. This paper suggests that high and constant fertility projections should receive more attention from policymakers. They should treat medium estimates as targets achievable only through considerable programmatic effort. At the same time, they should plan economic and environmental efforts to deal with the population sizes implied by the high projections.Labor and Human Capital,

PARKS, POPULATION, AND RESETTLEMENT IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

A survey of 139 men and 123 women in four communities bordering Los Haitises National Park in the Dominican Republic took place in late 1992. The survey followed a presidential decree ordering the army to clear the forest of people and cattle and to resettle a number of villages. The survey found that people admitted using the forest for firewood and cash crop cultivation. However, they were aware of the need to conserve the forest and expressed willingness to compromise on its use. They were less aware of park boundaries and did not understand the concept of a national park. Villagers welcomed rapid population growth, and women favor (and have) large families despite high rates of sterilization. Nearly everyone opposed resettlement and favored community participation in programs to reduce pressures on the park. In addition to providing housing and services, a resettlement program will have to find adequate substitutes for current park activities that provide cash income. Of a battery of social indicators such as gender, age, or socio-economic status, few showed much relationship to park use or attitudes toward conservation, the exception being community and religion.Attitudes, Behavior, Gender, Knowledge, Park, Population, Resettlement, Survey, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Do husbands and wives agree? Fertility attitudes and later behavior

Analysis of the extent to which husbands and wives agree in their attitudes toward a number of key issues that may affect fertility behavior shows that although aggregate views of men and women are remarkably similar, marital couples are frequently in disagreement, particularly if measures discounting for chance agreement of responses are employed. In other words, we cannot accept either the husband or the wife as a surrogate respondent. These conclusions are based on data from cross-sectional surveys in a developing society, Taiwan, of 2000 couples in which the wife was of childbearing age. The impact on fertility of such marital disagreement varies with the attitude in question. Followup birth data over a four-year period indicate that, when there is disagreement, it is the wife's attitude that has more influence on fertility, particularly if she has the stronger belief about the future security and status to be derived from a large family and from sons.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43512/1/11111_2005_Article_BF01255801.pd

Fertility Regulation

In the past two centuries the proportion of couples using some form of conscious pregnancy-prevention has risen from close to zero to about two-thirds. In European populations this radical change in behaviour occurred largely between 1870 and 1930 without the benefit of highly effective methods. In Asia, Africa and Latin America, the change took place after 1950 since when the global fertility rate has halved from 5.0 births to 2.5 births per woman. In this chapter we describe the controversies surrounding the idea of birth control and the role of early pioneers such as Margaret Sanger; the advances in contraceptive and abortion technologies; the ways in which family planning has been promoted by many governments, particularly in Asia; trends in use of specific methods; the problems of discontinuation of use; and the incidence of unintended pregnancies and abortions

LA EDUCACION SEXUAL: ¿QUE OPINAN LOS ESTUDIANTES, LOS PROFESORES Y LOS PADRES DE FAMILIA ?

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Sick ‘scapes : boutique and corporate food geographies and Mexico’s public health crisis

Mexico is sick, and it is getting sicker. Since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, Mexico has become one of the most obese and most undernourished and diabetes-ridden countries in the world. Its food landscape has been completely transformed. An examination of the current panorama reveals a neoliberal foodscape arranged to reinforce and deepen pre-existing health, gender, race, and class inequalities. Throughout the country there is an emerging elite boutique food movement heralded by public health officials and food activists as healthy and sustainable, yet, paradoxically, the country is also witnessing a massive expansion of corporate food sources, largely left unchecked and understudied. These sites of neoliberal “ruination” are emblematic of the NAFTA-created industrialized food system impacting the livelihoods, diets, and ultimately health of Mexico’s most vulnerable residents. As a result, the Mexican foodscape reflects the violence present of global food geopolitics, which is dominated by multinational companies with an enormous power to dictate not only what people eat but what food is produced, how, and by whom. The resulting globalization of the Mexican diet is physically manipulating and exerting control over the bodies of residents, ultimately maintaining existing power structures. A “food geography” analysis of the corporate takeover of the Mexican food system is necessary to understanding the post-NAFTA neoliberal public health crisis that the country is facingLatin American StudiesCommunity and Regional Plannin