الزراعة والتنمية الريفية والغابات

Sample surveys carried out during the last four decades have proven the existence of “unmet need”, a term coined to describe a significant gap between a woman’s sexual and contraceptive behaviour and her stated fertility preference. According to the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) definition, a woman has an unmet need for contraception if she is fecund, sexually active and not using any contraceptive method, and yet does not want a child for at least two years. If a woman is pregnant or amenorrhoeic after giving birth, she is also considered to have had an unmet need if she had not wanted the pregnancy or birth either when it occurred or ever (Ross and Winfrey, 2002).

The paradigm shift in population and development that occurred at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, in 1994, from reduction in population growth for socio-economic progress to ensuring sexual and reproductive health and rights as a fundamental human right and as a means for improving the quality of life, has also become apparent in the Pacific. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) provide the current global framework for development efforts and were formally endorsed in 2000 by 189 countries, including Pacific island countries. The importance of sexual and reproductive health was not fully articulated during the formulation of the MDGs as an explicit goal. However, during the World Summit convened in 2005, world leaders endorsed the fundamental human right of “universal access to sexual and reproductive health services” - an additional target to the MDG 5, as a result of intense lobbying by sexual and reproductive health advocates, including the Prime Minister of Tuvalu. The full integration of the MDGs into national sustainable development strategies and plans outlining an allocation of a certain percentage of the national budgets to poverty reduction is requiring a lengthy internalization and implementation process for many Pacific island countries. Part of the challenge for many of those countries has been the relevance of the poverty definition and the prevailing perception by some country leaders that “poverty of opportunity” is the more fundamental issue.

Since the late 1970s, China has been making strong efforts to accelerate the pace of modernization. Because the Chinese Government considers poor economic development and rapid population growth to be the main obstacles to modernization, it has emphasised both of those aspects.

Women are not accorded equal status with men in practically all countries of the world. Compared with men, women have very limited opportunities in most spheres of economic and social activities (Sadik, 1986; Curtin, 1982). However, there is a close association between various aspects of women’s status or position in society and demographic patterns of fertility, mortality and migration. This association is shown to be more pronounced with regard to fertility and the social processes associated with it (United Nations, 1975).

The article contains an outline of migration and taxation in the Russian Federation. The characteristics of migration, the legal and regulatory situation of migrant workers with regard to taxation, actual practices in this regard and the steps required to bridge the gap between potential tax payments from migrants and actual taxation practices are considered. Attention is paid to the reasons for irregular migration and informal employment from the points of view of both employers and migrant workers. Finally, overall conclusions and policy recommendations are provided for improving the situation and decreasing irregular migration and tax underpayment.

The article addresses the impacts of remittances in recipient countries in North and Central Asia, noting the high level of dependence of many countries of the subregion on remittances. While remittances are found to produce positive short-term benefits related to the reduction of transitory poverty, they also can contribute to negative impacts such as “Dutch Disease”, dollarization, public and private moral hazard. Few recipients make use of formal means of saving remittances, due to the lack of dedicated remittance-backed products, low levels of development of and trust in the financial sector, and lack of financial literacy among recipients of remittances. Measures to address this situation are proposed and assessed for their relevance to countries of the subregion.

One of the potential benefits of family planning programmes in developing countries is that limiting family size can increase women’s ability to participate in productive activities, which in turn can contribute to the economic wellbeing of the family. This argument is based on the assumption that reproductive and productive activities compete for a woman’s limited time and hence women with a small number of children to rear are able to engage more in economic activities than those with larger numbers of children. Thus, the prevalence of small families should be desirable to both the families and the Government. Despite this, however, little is known about the impact of reduced family size on women’s participation in the labour force.

Recently, considerable importance is being given to the study of breastfeeding practices in different settings in developing and developed countries. Breast-feeding is important, particularly in developing countries, because of its relationship with child health and birth spacing. It is well documented that mother’s milk is the best food for the newborn child and it has a significant impact on reducing mortality in infants. Apart from these benefits, breast-feeding also plays an equally important role in controlling fertility in developing countries.

The ecological zones in Nepal known as hills and mountains, which comprise three fourths of the country’s territory and contain 56 per cent of its population, are suffering from increasing environmental hazards, notably deforestation, soil erosion, landslides, flash-floods and desertification (NPC, 1985, p. 200).

Because humankind is on the threshold of the twenty-first century, there is considerable speculation about what the future will look like. It is evident that not only will the population continue to grow rapidly in the future, but technological innovations and inventions will also multiply rapidly. Indeed, it appears as if population and technology rely on one another for their sustenance and growth.

The link between population and sustainable development was the focus of an address by Mr. Tatsuro Kunugi, Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), to the Academy of Social Sciences and Management at Sofia, Bulgaria on 17 March 1989.

Recent studies have emphasized the policy and programmatic importance of understanding the choice of contraceptive method use and the factors affecting contraceptive choice (Bulatao, Palmore and Ward, 1989; Tsuiand Herbertson, 1989). The purpose of this article is to analyze the sociocultural and demographic determinants of contraceptive method choice in Sri Lanka. The study is an update of a previous study on this topic by Kahn, Thapa and Gaminiratne (1989). The previous study analyzed the determinants of contraceptive choice at two time periods, 1975 and 1982. It considered four current contraceptive choices: no use, use of a traditional method, use of a modern temporary method and use of sterilization. The analysis showed that, both in 1975 and 1982, socio-demographic factors had a strong influence on whether any method was used. However, in both the time periods, the type of method chosen was primarily a function of demographic factors related to the couple’s family-building stages rather than socio-economic factors, implying that in Sri Lanka there are few socioeconomic barriers to accessibility and choice of contraceptive methods.

Increasing attention is being paid to the rapid change of population age structures in developing countries, even though population growth has long been considered as the main issue in those countries. As a result of the consistent decline in fertility over the last two to three decades, the working age population currently claims a large proportion of the total age structure. Soon, however, rapid growth of the elderly population will be one of the most conspicuous characteristics of population change in the developing countries. It is estimated that currently the total world population increases 1.7 per cent annually, whereas the portions of the population aged 55+ years and 65+ years increase 2.2 per cent and 2.8 per cent, respectively. Eighty per cent of the increase in the 55-t population occurs in the developing countries. In the next three decades, the population aged 65 and over in the developing countries will be twice as great as in the developed countries (Kinsella, 1988).

The Nepal Fertility and Family Planning Survey (NFFS) 1986 is the most recent nationally representative demographic sample survey of Nepal. It collected information on all births and pregnancies; demographic and socio-economic background characteristics of respondents and their spouses; knowledge, availability, accessibility and use of contraceptives; and fertility motivation and breast-feeding. The NFFS was conducted for assessing the current status of the family planning programme and to monitor changes since the 1976 Nepal Fertility Survey (NFS) and the 1981 Nepal Contraceptive Prevalence Survey (NCPS).

In Myanmar, the vital registration system was first introduced into some parts of Lower Myanmar in the late nineteenth century and gradually expanded to other parts of the country. It was introduced into the towns of Upper Myamnar in 1906 and the villages of Upper Myanmar in 1907 (Kyin, 1959, p. 6). By 1931, about 82.5 per cent of the population was covered by the registration system (United Nations, 1959, p. 47). In those days, vital statistics were collected by municipal health offices in urban areas and by village headmen in the rural areas. The reports were published by the Department of Public Health (Sundrum, 1957, p. 7).

Fertility and family planning surveys conducted in developing countries around the world have consistently reported an inverse relationship between fertility preferences and the practice of contraception. These surveys have also shown, however, that substantial proportions of women stating that they do not want any more children are not practising contraception. These proportions generally range from 25 to 50 per cent, and reach even higher levels in Africa. This discrepancy between women’s stated preference to have no more children and their non-use of contraception is euphemistically referred to as the “KAP-Gap”.

Ageing of the population is a demographic phenomenon normally associated with developed countries. This particular trend is currently of concern to Singapore. In 1957, 43 per cent of the population was below 15 years of age, and the elderly aged 60 and over never exceeded 4 per cent of the total population. The median age of the population was at that time 18.8 years (Chen and Cheung, 1988). In 1989, persons aged 60 years and older comprised 8.6 per cent of the total population. In absolute numbers, this constituted 229,700 people (Department of Statistics, 1989). By 1987, the median age had matured to 28.4 years (Chen and Cheung, 1988). It has been projected that one in every four persons will be 60 years or older by the year 2030 (Ministry of Home Affairs, 1989). Data compiled from the U.S. Bureau of Census projected that, in Singapore, the increase in the number of elderly between 1985 and 2025 will be approximately 348 per cent, the second highest of 31 countries surveyed (Straits Times, 7 November 1988).

Famine is defined as widespread food shortage leading to a significant rise in regional mortality (Blix, 1971). Historically, major causes of famine have been natural calamities. However, in modern times, when a natural disaster causes insufficient production of food, political and social factors play an important role in determining whether famine becomes widespread and who is affected (Alamgir, 1980; Langsten, 1985; Sen, 1980).

Until recently, it was believed that fertility in Nepal has persisted at a very high level with a total fertility rate (TFR) of around six children per woman. In a recent article, Tuladhar (1989, pp. 15-30), using the birth history data from the 1986 Fertility and Family Planning Survey, obtained a TFR of 5.61 children per woman for the period 1980-1985. This rate was obtained without any adjustment to the raw data. He cautiously concluded that Nepal may be on the verge of the onset of fertility decline. Except for this publication, the author knows of no other studies so far which address the issue of fertility decline in Nepal. Therefore, the aim of this note is to use village-level data to contribute to the on-going debate about the onset of fertility decline in Nepal in general and the study population in particular.

While the dramatic decline in fertility in China in the 1970s has been acknowledged worldwide and is very well documented in the demographic literature both at home and abroad (China Population Information Center, 1984; Coale, 1984, among others), China’s fertility and related population trends in the 1980s have evoked much concern and discussion in recent years (Hardee-Cleveland and Banister, 1988; Zeng, 1989; Kaufman et al., 1989; Greenhalgh, 1989, 1990; Tien, 1990a; Aird, 1990; Poston, 1991, among others).