Stuart A Gietel-Basten

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

En Thaïlande, alors que le vieillissement de la population soulève des enjeux budgétaires et de dépendance économique, les indicateurs conventionnels du vieillissement risquent d’en donner une représentation trompeuse en négligeant certains changements sociétaux en cours. Compte tenu des améliorations en matière de santé et d’espérance de vie, qui...

While population ageing poses fiscal and dependency challenges for Thailand, conventional measures of population ageing may misrepresent future burdens by overlooking key societal changes under way. Given improvements in health and life expectancy which should slow down the pace of population ageing, this paper argues that the threshold of 'old age...

Iran is aging rapidly and is expected to see negative population growth rates later this century. This change is generating significant concern for policymakers, whose response is to seek ‘demographic solutions’ to these issues: raise the fertility rate, decrease the divorce rate, and promote marriage among young people. Part of these policies has...

This working paper provides a comprehensive overview of the methodology used to calculate a standardized and internationally comparable productivity-weighted labor force (PWLF) measure that takes into account both the education structure of the population and the quality of the educational system. Education-specific weights are calculated with a Mi...

Background There are limited studies focused on examining specific types of evidence, like surveys beyond the US and territories with unicameral legislatures and unique contexts. Aims and objectives To measure the extent of survey research being used as evidence in policymaking in Hong Kong. Methods Through document analysis, this study screened...

Declining fertility is an increasing global trend. In many low fertility contexts, people are having fewer children then they want, and these unfulfilled fertility desires have been associated with wider socio-economic changes in education and labour force participation and conflicting and often contradictory expectations of women at home and at wo...

The term “childless” is highly problematic. Attempts to split it into “voluntary” and “involuntary” may appear to give more detail on context, but the differentiation can be misleading. The condition of “-less” has negative connotations and implies “missing” something; possibly something which is “natural.” The term “childfree” has been employed as...

In recent years, perhaps more than any others, changes in China’s population have been under the spotlight. Issues relating to population aging and stagnation/decline have been presented as a near existential threat to the political, social, and economic future of the country. The responses to these challenges have typically revolved around seeking...

Ideal family sizes remain at or above two in most low-fertility settings, but sub-replacement fertility ideals have been reported for urban China. The presence of restrictive family planning policies has led to a debate as to whether such ideals are genuine. This study exploits the ending of the one-child policy and the beginning of a universal two...

Compared to other settings, COVID-19 infection and death rates in Hong Kong were very low until 2022, due to top-down interventions (e.g. quarantines, ‘mask mandates’) and community activation. However, in addition to these epidemiological circumstances, Hong Kong has also undergone significant social and political change stemming from the social m...

Stuart Gietel-Basten, Anna Rotkirch, and Tomáš Sobotka argue that policies responding to population decline and ageing should enable reproductive choice and maximise the potential of all citizens

Scientists are well aware of the major social, economic and cultural challenges brought about by population decline. However, we can often underestimate the more extreme interpretations of both the causes and the consequences of population decline in the popular discourse. In this commentary, I explore some of these toxic narratives, and speculate...

While the global population continues to rise, many regions are experiencing population decline due to low fertility, outmigration or, most often, a combination of the two trends – and many more are forecast to do so in the future. Economic and demographic theories have so far been unable to offer an unambiguous prediction regarding the consequence...

Accurately counting the human cost of the COVID-19 at both the national and regional level is a policy priority. The Russian Federation currently reports one of the higher COVID-19 mortality rates in the world; but estimates of mortality differ significantly. Using a statistical method accounting for changes in the population age structure, we pres...

Significance China has the world’s largest national population and is rapidly catching up with the United States in terms of having the status as the world's largest economy. In this context, recent reports about unexpectedly low levels of fertility have given rise to speculation that the resulting population stagnation/decline and rapid aging may...

In July 2020 The Lancet published global scenarios of fertility, mortality, migration and population trends from 2017 to 2100 produced by the research team from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) (Vollset et al. 2020). These projections, based on a vast amount of data, complex estimates and models, have gained high visibility, a...

The concept of ‘replacement rate fertility’ [RRF] is widely known and referred to regularly in the popular, policy and academic literature. Sometimes presented as a ‘target’ or an ‘ideal’ fertility rate, it is usually specified as being a period total fertility rate [TFR] of ‘around 2.1’. This paper has two goals—firstly to explore the extent to wh...

By conventional measures, it is often remarked that Central and South America is one of the fastest aging geographic regions in the world. In recent years, however, scholars have sought to problematize the orthodox measures and concepts employed in the aging literature. By not taking dynamic changes in life expectancy into account, measures which h...

This paper investigates the profile of COVID-19 cases in Hong Kong, highlighting the unique age structure of confirmed cases compared to other territories. While the majority of cases in most territories around the world have fitted an older age profile, our analysis shows that positive cases in Hong Kong have been concentrated among younger age gr...

Reaching older age and longevity in later life is determined by health and mortality across the life course. In the case of Russia, the history of high male mortality skews the interaction between population aging and gender. These differentials can be viewed through a spatial lens in order to both understand their causes, and to better determine p...

Very low fertility rates can be found in many high-income Pacific Asian societies, such as Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan. Governments in these territories have already taken pronatalist policies but with only modest effects, especially when measured by overall total fertility rate. Mistargeting has been cited as a potential e...

This paper investigates the profile of COVID-19 cases in Hong Kong, highlighting the unique age structure of confirmed cases compared to other states. Whilst the majority of cases in most states around the world have fitted an older age profile, our analysis shows that positive cases in Hong Kong have been concentrated amongst younger age groups, w...

Despite being one of the most common measures of development, the Human Development Index [HDI] has been much criticized for its consistency, data requirements, difficulty of interpretation and trade-offs between indicators. The ‘Human Life Indicator’ [HLI] has been proposed as a ‘simple effective means’ of measuring development and, more specifica...

Russia, in common with most industrial and post-industrial countries, is currently grappling with the challenge of population ageing. While there have been many studies of ageing at the national level, the regional differentials and consequences of such population change have been largely ignored for Russia, as indeed for elsewhere. In this study,...

A perennial activity of demographers is to estimate the percentage of the world’s population which is above or below the ‘replacement rate of fertility’ [RRF]. However, most attempts to do so have been based upon, at best, oversimplified, or at worst, simply incorrect assumptions about what RRF actually is. The objective of this paper is to calcula...

There is great debate surrounding the demographic impact of China’s population control policies, especially the one-birth restrictions, which ended only recently. We apply an objective, data-driven method to construct the total fertility rates and population size of a ‘synthetic China’, which is assumed to be not subjected to the two major populati...

Drug abuse is a critical issue impairing social welfare, including health, family relations and social security in many societies. This study explores the demographic characteristics of drug abuse among sub-populations in Hong Kong as a developed and ageing society with large socioeconomic disparities. Significant changes in both the number and rat...

It is well known that populations around the world - and in Pacific Asia in particular - are ageing, and ageing rapidly. China is no exception to this. While it has been widely agreed that gender is an important lens through which to define and develop appropriate policies for both adaptation and mitigation of the challenges of ageing, gender is ra...

Objective: The aim of the study was to improve the measurement of ageing in Oceania taking into account characteristics of populations and, in particular, changes in life expectancy. Method: Using past and projected life tables, we calculated prospective old age dependency ratios (POADRs) to 2060, placing the boundary to old age at a moving poin...

Hong Kong is characterized by very low fertility. However, over a period from 2000 to 2015, both the total number of births and the sex ratio at birth (SRB) increased and then declined dramatically. We analysed the increases in a 2013 paper in this journal, where we largely ascribed them to a rapid growth in the number of ‘transient’ mothers from M...

Currently, very little is known about regional patterns of infant mortality rates [IMR] – or mortality more generally – in the Russian Empire during, and before, the mid-nineteenth century. In particular, what studies have been performed generally rely on the reproduction of aggregate statistics, rather than being based on individual-level data. Th...

As the world’s largest population, the total fertility rate (TFR) of China is of global significance. Furthermore, the introduction of recent reforms designed to lessen restrictions on childbearing have received wide attention. As well as outlining the fertility rate in China as derived from the 2015 1% sample census, in this short paper we seek to...

Births outside marriage (BoM) account for around 15% of all births globally. However, the distribution around the world is very uneven, as are cultural and political attitudes towards them. Studies from East Asia have shown that the percentage of such births is very low, with only modest increases in recent years. The orthodox demographic view hold...

Taiwan has one of the lowest fertility rates in Asia. High direct and indirect costs of childbearing have been identified as key drivers behind this at the macro-level, but little is known about the mechanism of these influences at the individual-level. In 32 qualitative interviews with parents in Taipei, we sought to explore the salient factors fo...

Objectives: To document the association between economic development, income inequality, and health-related public infrastructure, and health outcomes among Chinese adults in midlife and older age. Methods: We use a series of multi-level regression models with individual-level baseline data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Surve...

Variously defined, the 'emerging markets' [EMs] are frequently held up as the countries that will shape global economic development in the 21st century. However, it is also often said that population ageing could limit growth in many EMs. In this paper, we explore the conventional measurements employed to demonstrate population ageing in EMs, and t...

On June 23, 2016, the UK narrowly voted to exit the European Union. Population issues-especially relating to the effect of population growth on infrastructure and public services and the need to " take back control" over immigration-played a central role in the campaigns (" Leave" and " Remain") leading up to the vote. I argue that the Leave campai...

This paper examines fertility and family policies in 15 Central and East European (CEE) countries to establish firstly, likely directions of cohort fertility trends for the coming decade; and secondly, to provide an overview and analysis of family policies in CEE countries, and to assess their impact on cohort fertility trends. Demographic analysis...

p>This paper examines fertility and family policies in 15 Central and East European (CEE) countries to establish firstly, likely directions of cohort fertility trends for the coming decade; and secondly, to provide an overview and analysis of family policies in CEE countries, and to assess their impact on cohort fertility trends. Demographic analys...

Son preference, leading to skewed sex ratios at birth, is an important feature of contemporary Chinese demography, as well as being a critical policy issue. Using a 2006 representative survey, this article explores preferences for boys and girls among childless young adults in a district of Beijing who have a stated one child as their ideal number...

Aim: The aim of the study is to improve the measurement of ageing taking into account characteristics of populations and in particular changes in life expectancy. Method: Using projected life tables, we calculate prospective old age dependency ratios (POADRs) to 2060, placing the boundary to old age at a moving point with a fixed remaining life...

Taiwan currently has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, leading to projections of rapid population ageing and decline. In common with other territories in Pacific Asia, policies designed to support childbearing have recently been introduced. Some optimism for the future success of these policies has been drawn from the fact that the 'i...

There are currently around a million Chinese households where the only child has died and the mother is beyond reproductive age. The number of such bereaved parents, known as shidu fumu, is forecast to increase to over 11 million by 2050. Using a sample survey conducted in 2013 in Shaanxi Province, the paper explores the vulnerability of shidu fumu...

It is a commonly held view that Southeast Asian societies are ageing rapidly. This has led to a high level of policy concern about the future capacity of states to cope with increased levels of ‘old-age dependency’ which, at first glance, often appear almost unmanageable. We suggest that the rates employed to demonstrate the present/future scale of...

Much has been written about the 'Death of the West', a demise threatened by the low level of reproduction in Western countries. That fate is contrasted unfavourably with the rapid growth of the populations and economies of less developed countries, and the prospect of the numerical and political marginalization of the formerly dominant developed wo...

As one of the world's two population 'billionaires', the future of China's population is truly of global significance. With its very low fertility and a rapidly ageing population, it might appear that the country's famous (or notorious) family planning restrictions are somewhat anachronistic. Here, we explore the process of reform seen over the pas...

China currently has the world’s most skewed national sex ratio at birth. In this paper, we use data from China’s 2001 National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Survey and employ hierarchical logistic models to study how macro factors (mainly fertility policy and economic indicators, as represented by per capita GDP of the village units sampl...

In November 2013, China announced reforms to its family planning policies whereby couples would be allowed to have a second child if either parent is an only child. The announcement garnered worldwide media coverage, and stimulated academic and popular discussion. We explore the context of the 2013 reforms, including the economic, demographic, and...

This open-access work is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 2.0 Germany, which permits use, reproduction & distribution in any medium for non-commercial purposes, provided the original author(s) and source are given credit. See http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/de/

Chapter 3 is the first of six that present a comprehensive science-based assessment of what we know today about the drivers of future fertility, mortality, migration, and education. This chapter concerns countries with currently low fertility. It presents and justifies assumptions for future fertility trajectories based on an overview of recent fer...

The distribution of educated populations across age groups and the relative shares of population with different levels of attainment appears to be an important factor when it comes to explaining and predicting economic growth patterns both across developing countries and over time. A series of studies unveil the key role that complementing primary...

With an accelerated and sustained decline in fertility and an increase in life expectancy, Thailand has entered its aging phase at a rapid pace. This raises an important question of who should care for the increasing elderly population. Using a survey of adults aged 16–64 years (n = 742) in two provinces in the north-east (Kalasin) and south (Phang...

In her book, Vobecká covers the demographic experience of the Jewish population of Bohemia for around two-hundred years from roughly the mid-eighteenth century. As the intriguing title suggests, the book utilises what the author considers to be something of a novel concept within demography—namely the notion of an avant-garde. This is set up in the...

Background: Consanguinity - or marriage between close blood relatives, in particular first cousins - is widely practised and even socially encouraged in many countries. However, in the face of fertility transition where the number of cousins eligible to marry declines, how might such constraints on consanguinity develop in the future?. Objective: N...

The United Nations' (UN) World Population Prospects are perhaps the most widely used population projections in both academic and policy discourses. In this short research note, we examine six advanced Asian economies, and compare the fertility assumptions used by the UN with those derived from local statistical offices (LSOs). We identify a signifi...

East Asian societies are currently some of the most rapidly aging in the world. Projections of the traditional old-age dependency ratios (OADR) present a daunting future of the size of the aged population both in absolute terms and, in the context of low fertility, relative to the future workforce. Recently scholars, especially Sanderson and Scherb...

Hong Kong SAR has among both the lowest fertility rates and highest life expectancy in the world. Under the current calculation of the Old Age Dependency Ratio (OADR), Hong Kong is, understandably, ageing extremely rapidly. This is a cause of significant concern among policy makers. However, OADR assumes that the entire population aged above 65 is...

The sex ratio at birth (SRB) in Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region) has recently increased dramatically. Using a data set (N = 850,331) of all recorded births in Hong Kong between 1995 and 2009, we calculated SRBs by parity and immigrant status. The findings indicate a strong son preference among Mainland Chinese who have travelled to Hon...

Summary Identification of modifiable factors and mediators linked to low and heavy birth weight is crucial in reducing infant mortality and health care expenditure. The present paper explores the associations of socio-demographic factors and immigrant status of parents with adverse pregnancy outcomes in Hong Kong. The analysis compares very low bir...

Background: Depending on whether the global level of fertility is assumed to converge to the current European TFR (~1.5) or that of Southeast Asia or Central America (~2.5), global population will either decline to 2.3-2.9 billion by 2200 or increase to 33-37 billion, if mortality continues to decline. Furthermore, sizeable human populations exist...

Pacific Asia is currently home to some of the lowest fertility rates – and hence the fastest aging populations – in the world. This Barnett Paper presents a systematic overview of both the reasons for this low fertility, and why it is unlikely to increase markedly in the near future. As well as a comprehensive review of scholarly opinion, the paper...

Television and celebrity are ubiquitous in the industrial world and, increasingly, in the developing world. Making the connection between television and childbearing preferences may seem a leap of faith, but recent studies are increasingly finding links (Basten 2010). This chapter briefly outlines the relationship between television and fertility i...

Using data from several censuses in China, including the newly released 2010 data, this study constructs net nuptiality tables as an analytical instrument to descriptively analyse the shape of China’s first marriage pattern from 1982 to 2010, including the age-specific probabilities of first marriage, the percentage of remaining single by age, and...

In 2005, it was estimated that China had the most skewed sex ratio at birth [SRB] of any country in the world at 119 males per 100 females, with provincial SRBs ranging from 102 to 134. Such highly skewed SRB indicate widespread prenatal sex selective abortion in contravention of Chinese legislation. Using the latest data release from the 2010 Chin...

Sub-national trends in fertility are of great importance for policy makers and regional planners. This paper aims to provide a theoretical and empirical framework for policy makers, taking into account past and present trends in fertility, as well as their theoretical underpinnings. These will, we argue, be crucial in determining future trajectorie...

Sub-national trends in fertility are of great importance for policy makers and regional planners. This paper aims to provide a theoretical and empirical framework for policy makers, taking into account past and present trends in fertility, as well as their theoretical underpinnings. These will, we argue, be crucial in determining future trajectorie...

The religious composition of the Chinese Diaspora varies by countries with the highest Christian share in the Philippines (86 percent) and the highest Buddhist share (84.3 percent) in Cambodia. The religiously unaffiliated are more likely found in Vietnam (74.7 percent), Canada (70.1 percent), and Austria (63 percent) and less likely found in the P...

Childbearing in low-fertility societies some times results from a strong desire to have a(nother) child. Since women tend to dominate discussions on ‘baby longing’ or ‘baby fever’, it is not clear whether men also feel the powerful urge to have a child. Moreover, the demographic importance of baby longing has yet to be assessed. Using cross-section...

Räumliche Unterschiede in der subnationalen Fertilitätsentwicklung sind für Politiker und Raumplaner von hoher Relevanz. Ziel dieses Artikels ist es, politischen Entscheidungsträgern ein theoretisches und empirisches Bezugssystem zu vermitteln. Dabei berücksichtigen wir sowohl historische und aktuelle Fertilitätstrends als auch theoretische Erkläru...

Stimulated by the recent debate on gender roles and men’s fertility behaviour (Puur et al. 2008; Westoff and Higgins 2009; Goldscheider, Oláh and Puur 2010), we present evidence from Finland as a country well into the second phase of the so-called gender revolution. We examine how gender role attitudes relate to childbearing intentions at the onset...

Childbearing in low-fertility societies sometimes results from a strong desire to have a(nother) child. Since women tend to dominate discussions on 'baby longing' or 'baby fever', it is not clear whether men also feel the powerful urge to have a child. Moreover, the demographic importance of baby longing has yet to be assessed. Using cross-sectiona...