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Demographic change can be a positive contributor to development at any stage of demographic transition. This paper revisits the literature on the determinants and economic impacts of demographic change, and presents a new global typology that classifies countries into four categories based on demographic characteristics and future development potential. In the first group are high-fertility, low-income countries that are lagging in many human development indicators. In the second group are mostly low- and lower-middle-income countries where fertility rates have started falling recently and where changes in age structure offer tremendous opportunity for growth in the near future. The third group comprises mostly upper-middle-income countries that experienced rapid fertility declines in the 1960s, and where working age people will be a shrinking share of the population in the coming decade. The last group is made up of mostly high-income countries that have some of the highest shares of elderly in the world, and below-replacement fertility rates since at least the 1980s. The typology helps identify development policy priorities for countries in different stages of demographic transition, and opportunities through globalization due to demographic differences between countries.

Demographic Change --- Demographic Dividend --- Economic Development

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The Russian Federation's population has been declining since 1992, but recently the decline appears to be over. Although fertility has risen since the 2007 introduction of the family policy package, which focused on stimulating second and higher-order births, total fertility rates still remain significantly below replacement rate. Unlike some Western European countries, low overall fertility in Russia can be explained predominantly by a high prevalence of one-child families, despite the two-child ideal family size reported by the majority of Russians. This paper examines the correlates of Russian first-time mothers' desire and decision to have a second child. Using the 2004-12 waves of the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, the study focuses on the motherhood-career trade-off as a potential obstacle to higher fertility in Russia. The preliminary results indicate that among Russian first-time mothers, being in stable employment is positively associated with the likelihood of having a second child. Moreover, the desire to have a second child is positively associated with the first child attending formal childcare, which suggests that the availability, affordability, and quality of such childcare can be important for promoting fertility. These results are broadly consistent with previous studies in other European countries that indicate that the ability of mothers to combine work and family has important implications for fertility, and that pro-natalist policies focusing on childcare accessibility can offer the greatest payoffs. In addition to these factors, better housing conditions, being married, having an older child, and having a first-born boy are also positively associated with having a second child.

Demographic Change --- Fertility Rate --- Gender and Labor Market

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The demographic transition in the Sahel region has been slower than that in the rest of the world. Although child mortality rates have declined in recent decades, they are still higher in West Africa than in other regions. Furthermore, the fertility decline has progressed very slowly, with some countries seeing stalls and others even an increase in birth rates. The speed with which this transition takes place has a critical impact on a population's age structure and future potential for economic productivity. The current rates of change in the Sahelian sub region will make it unlikely that countries will achieve an age structure that will create a youth bulge of a healthy, well-nourished, and educated cohort ready to enter a modern labor market to capture a sizable demographic dividend. Once missed, this opportunity for a demographic dividend will not return. This analysis uses quantitative data triangulated with the qualitative findings and policy analyses to identify the triggers necessary to accelerate the demographic dividend in this sub region.

Demographic Change --- Demographics --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Labor Market --- Labor Markets --- Skills Development and Labor Force Training --- Social Protections and Labor

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Mimesis, or the imitation of nature, is one of the most important concepts in eighteenth-century German literary aesthetics. As the century progressed, classical mimeticism came increasingly under attack, though it also held its position in the works of Goethe, Schiller, and Moritz. Much recent scholarship construes Early German Romanticism's refutation of mimeticism as its single distinguishing trait: the Romantics' conception of art as the very negation of the ideal of imitation. In this view, the Romantics saw art as production ('poiesis'): imaginative, musical, transcendent. Mattias Pirholt's book not only problematizes this view of Romanticism, but also shows that reflections on mimesis are foundational for the German Romantic novel, as is Goethe's great pre-Romantic novel 'Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship'. Among the novels examined are Friedrich Schlegel's 'Lucinde', shown to be transgressive in its use of the aesthetics of imitation; Novalis's 'Heinrich von Ofterdingen', interpreted as an attempt to construct the novel as a self-imitating world; and Clemens Brentano's 'Godwi', seen to signal the end of Early Romanticism, both fulfilling and ironically deconstructing the self-reflective mimeticism of the novels that came before it. Mattias Pirholt is a Research Fellow in the Department of Literature at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Mimesis in literature. --- Romanticism --- Representation (Literature) --- Imitation in literature --- Realism in literature --- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, --- Artistic production. --- Demographic change. --- Early German Romanticism. --- Goethe. --- Mimesis. --- Romantic novel. --- Self-imitation. --- Wilhelm Meister.

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Japan gilt als alte Gesellschaft. Eine Lesart dieser Aussage ist: Wo viele Alte sind, da sterben auch viele. Aber wer kümmert sich um die jährlich 1,4 Mio. Verstorbenen und deren Gräber? Geht es nach der japanischen Bestattungsindustrie, dann das Individuum selbst. In einer Gesellschaft, in der sich niemand mehr um einen sorgt, erscheint Eigenvorsorge als letzter Ausweg, um niemandem zur Last zu fallen. Dorothea Mladenova hinterfragt diese Diskurse kritisch und zeigt, wie im Zuge der »aktiven Planung des eigenen Lebensendes« (shukatsu) neoliberale Prinzipien des »unternehmerischen Selbst« auf den Tod übertragen werden: Aus Selbstbestimmung wird gemeinwohlorientierte Selbstverantwortung.

Social sciences. --- SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gerontology. --- Aging Studies. --- Body. --- Capitalism. --- Death Industry. --- Death. --- Demographic Change. --- Dying. --- Economy. --- Funeral Home. --- Funeral. --- Grave. --- Neoliberalism. --- Self-Determination. --- Self-responsibility. --- Sociology of Work and Industry. --- Sociology. --- Subjectivation. --- Technologies of the Self.