The study of fertility dynamics has long sought to disentangle the drivers of changes in birth rates across time and space. One of the most significant advances in this area has been the identification of the so-called tempo effect of fertility, which highlights the role of changes in the timing of births in shaping observed fertility measures. First introduced systematically by demographer John Bongaarts in the late 1990s, the concept has reshaped how scholars interpret fluctuations in fertility rates, particularly in contexts of rapid demographic transition.
Read MoreMy second audio essay is now up. You can listen and download the file directly here, or alternatively subscribe to ‘Alpha Source Audio Essay’ Apple Podcast channel where my future audio essays will also be published. The link to the episode on Apple podcasts is here.
You can find and download all my economics and demographics essays in written form here , as PDFs. You can find links to all references on the landing page for my demographics work here. I plan on doing once a month of these audio essays, time permitting, on demographics, economics, finance and everything in between.
Read MoreI had the opportunity earlier this week to sit down with the IIEA and Dan O’Brien to discuss the decline in global birth rates, population ageing and what it all means. Thanks to the IIEA for hosting me.
Read MoreThis is the landing page for my most ambitious non-fiction project to date. My writings on demographics are scattered all over this blog—though my master’s thesis is a baseline for a lot of my thoughts—and so, incidentally, is the work of my late friend Edward Hugh on the same matter. Randy McDonald has been stalwartly keeping the old Demography.Matters blog up to date, an effort which is badly in need of a new more modern and well-publicised platform.
I have been thinking about and studying demographics and population dynamics for well over 10 years, and this is my attempt to synthesise my thoughts. I will warm up with a simple account of the demographic transition, posted below, before moving on to the principal components of this process; mortality and fertility. I will then, eventually, examine how demographics drive economic processes, principally via the effect of ageing on growth and capital flows, expanding on the work that I have already done. I will post this work in piecemeal fashion inviting comments as I go along before combining everything into a coherent volume. When Google first introduced its Blogger platform it did so, I believe, under the banner of perpetual beta, a spirit that I agree with. I will post a final, and fully edited, volume eventually, but I also want to draw back the curtain slowly and gradually, if only to keep up the publishing cadence on this site. The meaning of “landing page” in this context is no more than a repository for the list of references and the individual chapters, both of which will be updated here as I go along. Each chapter, however, will have its own independent permalink too.
Read More