David Shapiro | |
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Born | November 25, 1946 |
Nationality | American |
Academic career | |
Institution | Pennsylvania State University |
Alma mater | Princeton University |
David Shapiro (born November 25, 1946) is an American economist at the Pennsylvania State University. He joined the Penn State faculty [1] in 1980. He is a leading academic in the field of Economic Demography, specializing in fertility transition in sub-Saharan Africa and in the study of children's schooling in Africa. In addition to research and teaching, Shapiro currently heads the economics honors program and previously served as first director and then co-director of undergraduate studies in the department of economics.
Shapiro grew up north of New York City and attended Irvington High School. Following graduation in 1964, he studied at the University of Michigan, majoring in economics and political science. Shapiro obtained a Ph.D in economics at Princeton University in 1972, [2] specializing in labor economics and demography.
During the 1970s, Shapiro was on the faculty at the Ohio State University. His early research work focused on women, youth, and older men in the U.S. labor market. In 1976, he was a recipient of Ohio State's top award for undergraduate teaching. After his move eastward to Penn State in 1980, he became involved in development work in sub-Saharan Africa, and this region subsequently became the major focus of his research. Beginning in the late 1980s, Shapiro traveled to sub-Saharan Africa and worked on a long-term project focused on women's education, employment, and fertility behavior in the city of Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That work led to a book with co-author Basile O. Tambashe, entitled Kinshasa in Transition: Women's Education, Employment, and Fertility. In spring 2004, Shapiro received a Fulbright grant to spend the 2004-05 academic year at the University of Kinshasa, teaching and pursuing further research there.
In addition to research, Shapiro has been heavily involved with undergraduate education at Penn State. He was director or co-director of undergraduate studies in economics from 1998-2011, and he has been the honors adviser and director of the honors program in economics since 1987. He has taught a number of courses, including principles of economics, intermediate microeconomic theory, and field courses in labor and demography. In recent years, his teaching has concentrated on the honors seminar in economics, and coordinating the honors thesis class in the economics department's honors program, as well as on labor economics and economic demography. In 2006, he received Penn State's top award for undergraduate teaching.
In his free time, Shapiro enjoys walking his dog, Odie, and climbing. He plays basketball and also is an avid music lover, with a large, varied collection from around the world.
In demography, demographic transition is a phenomenon and theory which refers to the historical shift from high birth rates and high death rates in societies with minimal technology, education and economic development, to low birth rates and low death rates in societies with advanced technology, education and economic development, as well as the stages between these two scenarios. In economic growth, the demographic transition has swept the world over the past two centuries, and the unprecedented population growth of the post-Malthusian period was reversed, reducing birth rates and population growth significantly in all regions of the world, and enabling economies to translate more of the gains of factor accumulation and technological progress into per capita income growth. The demographic transition strengthens economic growth process by three changes: (i) reduced dilution of capital and land stock, (ii) increased investment in human capital, and (iii) increased size of the labor force relative to the total population and changed age population distribution. Although this shift has occurred in many industrialized countries, the theory and model are frequently imprecise when applied to individual countries due to specific social, political and economic factors affecting particular populations.
In macroeconomics, the labor force is the sum of those either working or looking for work :
The population of Africa has grown rapidly over the past century and consequently shows a large youth bulge, further reinforced by a low life expectancy of below 50 years in some African countries. Total population as of 2020 is estimated to be more than 1.3 billion, with a growth rate of more than 2.5% p.a. The total fertility rate for Africa is 4.7 as of 2018, the highest in the world according to the World Bank. The most populous African country is Nigeria with over 206 million inhabitants as of 2020 and a growth rate of 2.6% p.a.
Demographic dividend, as defined by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), is "the economic growth potential that can result from shifts in a population’s age structure, mainly when the share of the working-age population is larger than the non-working-age share of the population ". In other words, it is “a boost in economic productivity that occurs when there are growing numbers of people in the workforce relative to the number of dependents”. UNFPA stated that “a country with both increasing numbers of young people and declining fertility has the potential to reap a demographic dividend."
David E. Bloom is an American author, professor, economist, and demographer. He is a Professor of Economics and Demography at the Harvard School of Public Health, and director of the Program on the Global Demography of Aging. He is widely considered as one of the greatest multidisciplinary social science researchers of the world.
Natural fertility is the fertility that exists without birth control. The control is the number of children birthed to the parents and is modified as the number of children reaches the maximum. Natural fertility tends to decrease as a society modernizes. Women in a pre-modernized society typically have given birth to a large number of children by the time they are 50 years old, while women in post-modernized society only bear a small number by the same age. However, during modernization natural fertility rises, before family planning is practiced.
The Population Reference Bureau (PRB) is a private, nonprofit organization specializing in collecting and supplying statistics necessary for research and/or academic purposes focused on the environment, and health and structure of populations. The PRB works in the United States and internationally with a wide range of partners in the government, nonprofit, research, business, and philanthropy sectors.
John Charles "Jack" Caldwell was an Australian demographer. He researched extensively in Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia since 1959, particularly the fields of fertility transition and health transition. Caldwell had a significant impact on demographic teaching, research and policy formulation.
Income and fertility is the association between monetary gain on one hand, and the tendency to produce offspring on the other. There is generally an inverse correlation between income and the total fertility rate within and between nations. The higher the degree of education and GDP per capita of a human population, subpopulation or social stratum, the fewer children are born in any developed country. In a 1974 United Nations population conference in Bucharest, Karan Singh, a former minister of population in India, illustrated this trend by stating "Development is the best contraceptive." In 2015, this thesis was supported by Vogl, T.S., who concluded that increasing the cumulative educational attainment of a generation of parents was by far the most important predictor of the inverse correlation between income and fertility based on a sample of 48 developing countries.
Dr. Magued Osman is the CEO and Director of the Egyptian Center for Public Opinion Research "Baseera," which ran the only transparent public opinion surveys by phone for the first Egyptian Presidential elections in 2012. Baseera implemented also the first exit poll in the middle east. Dr. Osman is a member of Egypt National Council for Women. Dr.Osman is acting as the chairman of Telecom Egypt (we), the main landlines service provider in Egypt, since 2016.
Demographic economics or population economics is the application of economic analysis to demography, the study of human populations, including size, growth, density, distribution, and vital statistics.
The term "missing women" indicates a shortfall in the number of women relative to the expected number of women in a region or country. It is most often measured through male-to-female sex ratios, and is theorized to be caused by sex-selective abortions, female infanticide, and inadequate healthcare and nutrition for female children. It is argued that technologies that enable prenatal sex selection, which have been commercially available since the 1970s, are a large impetus for missing female children.
Joseph John Spengler was an American economist, statistician, and historian of economic thought. A recipient of the 1951 John Frederick Lewis Award of the American Philosophical Society and the 1981 Distinguished Fellow Award from the History of Economics Society, he was Professor Emeritus of Economics at Duke University at the time of his death.
Fertility factors are determinants of the number of children that an individual is likely to have. Fertility factors are mostly positive or negative correlations without certain causations.
Access to safe and adequate sexual and reproductive healthcare constitutes part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as upheld by the United Nations.
The culture, evolution, and history of women who were born in, live in, and are from the continent of Africa reflect the evolution and history of the African continent itself.
Anatole Romaniuk was a Ukrainian Canadian demographer who contributed to fertility and sterility, African demography, Aboriginal studies, demographic processes, and population forecasting. He played a key role in numerous population censuses, including the first population census in the Democratic Republic of Congo, several censuses in Canada from 1970 through to 1993, and the first census of independent Ukraine (2001).
Jane Menken, née Golubitsky, is an American sociologist and demographer known for her work in sociology in public and international affairs, population studies, social statistics.
Youth in Africa constituted 19% of the global youth population in 2015, numbering 226 million. The United Nations defines youth as people aged 15 to 24 years. By 2030, it is predicted that the number of youths in Africa will have increased by 42%. Africa's population as a whole is very young, with 60% of the entire continent aged below 25, making it the youngest continent in the world, in relation to its population makeup. All of the world's top 10 youngest countries by median age are in Africa, with Niger in first place with a median age of 15.1 years. There is contention among critics and analysts over what this demographic dividend could mean for African nations; some believe that, with effective governance, the economy could significantly benefit and develop, whilst others have argued that a large, poorly-managed youth population may lead to greater instability and civil conflict.
Elizabeth Asiedu is a professor of economics at the University of Kansas. She has facilitated research that is centered around foreign aid, foreign directed investment (FDI), and gender. She is a founder of the Association for the Advancement of African Women (AAAWE), as well as the current president of the organization. Asiedu is an editor of the Journal of African Development.