‘Demography came of age’ announce the authors of this book (p.62) ‘… during the mid-twentieth century’. This is an odd statement, when the greatest of all demographers died in 1834. But in this 199-page book on demography, there is brief mention of Malthus on only one page, referred to by his first name Thomas – this name was never used, he was always known by his second name, Robert (James, 1966; Petersen, 1999). Most of the book is taken up with arguments between modern social scientists strongly reminiscent of scholastic disputes on the number of angels that could be crowded on to the head of a pin.

The very title of the book contains the words ‘the Age of the Postmodern’. If this phrase means anything at all (other than a contradiction in terms) it is cumbrous jargon for the future, but the authors seem to think it means the present. They spend most of the book discussing a movement with the ridiculous name ‘Postmodernism’. From their account, it is clear that this is a mixture of platitudes and nonsense. It denies the possibility of simple general propositions about social matters. As Andreski has observed about earlier authors taking this view (1972, p.234), ‘the authors rashly generalize from their ignorance; as in fact hundreds of valid general propositions have been stated about social phenomena: no known case, for instance, refutes … Engels’ assertion that in all societies recorded by history larger than a tribe, a conflict between the rich and the poor was going on in some form’. In demography we have the great discoveries of Malthus that if the crude birth rate exceeds the crude death rate, a population grows ‘by compound interest, because the more people there are the more they can breed’; that if a population continues to grow even at a very modest rate, ‘sooner or later one of two things must happen – either the birth rate comes down’ (the preventive check) ‘or the death rate goes up’ (the positive check) and that ‘unlike animals we can choose which’ (Russell and Russell, 1999, pp. 91-2). Nobody can ever refute this, for it is a mathematical fact of life.

The present authors make it quite clear that ‘Postmodernism’ is a deliberate retreat from all aspects of the rational approach to societies gradually built up in the last few centuries by great scientists such as Vico, Malthus, Spencer and Weber, with a little help from Aristotle and Ibn Khaldun. It is this irrationality the authors seek to apply to demography.

Galton fares no better than Malthus at their hands. They calmly announce (p.65) that eugenics is ‘a field no longer defendable’. ‘Postmodernism’ is a case in point for Andreski’s despairing comment about modern social sciences (l972, p.11): ‘the old and valuable insights which we have inherited from our illustrious ancestors are being drowned in a torrent of meaningless verbiage and useless technicalities’.

It is only fair to add that when they are not fantasising about ‘Postmodernism’, the authors make some interesting points. They rightly criticise the concept of the ‘demographic transition’ – the notion that industrialisation leads to a reduction in the birth rate, and its corollary that development is the best contraceptive. They cite evidence that in Europe industrialisation was not related to fertility change, and that in Thailand increased contraceptive use led to ‘rapid and extensive fertility decline’ (p.53).

In the Netherlands the rate of population growth rose for many decades after industrialisation began, and only fell substantially after the development of oral contraceptives in the 1960s (Parsons, 1977; Russell and Russell, 1999). ‘Obviously contraception is the best contraceptive’ (Russell and Russell, 1999, p.80). Greater efficiency and availability of contraceptives no doubt also accounts for the cheering news mentioned by the authors that ‘by 1995, 15% of the world’s population, including nearly all those in Europe, live in a society with fertility well below replacement level, that is with a total fertility rate below 1.8’ (p.134). This trend, if promoted and even improved, may eventually lead to the highly desirable end of reducing the grossly swollen population of Europe to about a quarter of its present level.

The authors report the interesting fact that ‘in Japan much of the very low fertility can be attributed to late and low rates of marriage for women’ (p.110) – exactly what Malthus discovered in ‘the more improved countries’ of 18^th-century Europe. In Japan this has an interesting cause – the reluctance of women ‘to play expected (and subordinate) roles in post-marriage family life’ (p.110). The authors make the excellent point that family planning campaigns should be directed to men as well as women, especially in the more male-dominated societies.

They give a good account of the three Population Conferences of Bucharest, Mexico City and Cairo (1974, 1984 and 1994, respectively). None of them, alas, achieved an internationally agreed world family planning campaign, but the authors make the cheering point that by 1984 many of the poorer countries were ready for this; the chief recent obstacle has been the policy of United States governments. Finally, the authors note that we need to know about the demographic effcts of recent developments in reproductive technology.

These points show that if they concentrate on factual reporting and constructive ideas, and get the ‘Postmodernist’ nonsense out of their heads, these authors may yet write interesting books.

W.M.S. Russell

References:

Andreski, S. (1972). Social Sciences as Sorcery. Andre Deutsch, London.

James, P. (ed.) (1966). The Travel Diaries of Thomas Robert Malthus. Cambridge University Press for The Royal Economic Society, London.

Parsons, J. (1977). Population Fallacies, Elek/Pemberton, London.

Petersen, V.J. (1999). Malthus, Founder of Modern Demography, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, N.J.

Russell, C. and Russell, W.M.S. (1999). Population Crises and Population Cycles, The Galton Institute, London.