Peter McDonald | |
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Born | Peter Francis McDonald 1946 (age 77–78) |
Occupation(s) | Academic, demographer |
Awards |
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Academic background | |
Alma mater | Australian National University |
Thesis | Age at First Marriage and Proportions Marrying in Australia, 1860-1971 (1972) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Demographer |
Notable ideas | Gender equity theory of fertility |
Peter Francis McDonald AO FASSA (born 1946) is an Australian demographer and Emeritus Professor of Demography in the Crawford School of Public Policy of the Australian National University. He is known for his research on fertility transition and migration. He has researched extensively in Southeast Asia.
McDonald has had a significant impact on demographic teaching,research and policy formulation. [1] In 2013,then-Prime Minister of Australia,Malcolm Turnbull,described McDonald as "arguably the world’s leading demographer". [2]
In 2016,McDonald was appointed Professor of Demography and head of the Demography Unit within the Centre for Health Policy at the University of Melbourne. [2]
He was President of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) from 2010 to 2013. [3]
McDonald was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 1998. [4]
Together with Mohammad Jalal Abbasi-Shavazi and Meimanat Hosseini-Chavoshi,McDonald won Iran's Book of the Year Award in 2010 for the book The Fertility Transition in Iran:Revolution and Reproduction . [5]
In 2015,McDonald was awarded the Irene B. Taeuber Award by the Population Association of America. [6] He received the IUSSP Laureate Award in 2022. [7]
McDonald was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2008 Queen's Birthday Honours. [8] He was promoted to an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 2024 Australia Day Honours for "distinguished service to demographic research,to policy development,and to professional associations". [9]
In demography, demographic transition is a phenomenon and theory which refers to the historical shift from high birth rates and high death rates to low birth rates and low death rates, as societies attain more technology, education and economic development. The demographic transition has occurred in most of the world over the past two centuries, bringing the unprecedented population growth of the post-Malthusian period, then reducing birth rates and population growth significantly in all regions of the world. 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.
Population ageing is an increasing median age in a population because of declining fertility rates and rising life expectancy. Most countries have rising life expectancy and an ageing population, trends that emerged first in developed countries but are now seen in virtually all developing countries. In most developed countries, the phenomenon of population aging began to gradually emerge in the late 19th century. The aging of the world population occurred in the late 20th century, with the proportion of people aged 65 and above accounting for 6% of the total population. This reflects the overall decline in the world's fertility rate at that time. That is the case for every country in the world except the 18 countries designated as "demographic outliers" by the United Nations. The aged population is currently at its highest level in human history. The UN predicts the rate of population ageing in the 21st century will exceed that of the previous century. The number of people aged 60 years and over has tripled since 1950 and reached 600 million in 2000 and surpassed 700 million in 2006. It is projected that the combined senior and geriatric population will reach 2.1 billion by 2050. Countries vary significantly in terms of the degree and pace of ageing, and the UN expects populations that began ageing later will have less time to adapt to its implications.
Population momentum is a consequence of the demographic transition. Population momentum explains why a population will continue to grow even if the fertility rate declines. Population momentum occurs because it is not only the number of children per woman that determine population growth, but also the number of women in reproductive age. Eventually, when the fertility rate reaches the replacement rate and the population size of women in the reproductive age bracket stabilizes, the population achieves equilibrium and population momentum comes to an end. Population momentum is defined as the ratio of the size of the population at that new equilibrium level to the size of the initial population. Population momentum usually occurs in populations that are growing.
Ansley Johnson Coale, was one of America's foremost demographers. A native to Baltimore, Maryland, he earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1939, his Master of Arts in 1941, and his Ph.D. in 1947, all at Princeton University. A long-term director of the Office of Population Research at Princeton, Coale was especially influential for his work on the demographic transition and for his leadership of the European Fertility Project.
The middle of the 20th century was marked by a significant and persistent increase in fertility rates in many countries of the world, especially in the Western world. The term baby boom is often used to refer to this particular boom, generally considered to have started immediately after World War II, although some demographers place it earlier or during the war. This terminology led to those born during this baby boom being nicknamed the baby boomer generation.
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.
Eugene Grebenik, known as "Grebby", was a British civil servant who was a central figure in the development of demography in Britain. He was the first director of the British Civil Service College.
Chidambara Chandrasekaran (1911–2000) was noted Indian demographer and statistician, was educated in India, UK and the US. He graduated from Morris College, Nagpur, with a B.Sc. degree, followed by a M.Sc. degree from the Nagpur University, and a PhD degree in Statistics from University College London in 1938. He was also awarded an MPH degree from Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1947.
Note that in some publications his name is spelled as "Chandra Sekar".
He was related to two Nobel Prize winners: C. V. Raman was his uncle and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was his cousin.
Jan Michael Hoem was a Norwegian scientist in population studies.
In demography, replacement migration is a theory of migration needed for a region to achieve a particular objective. Generally, studies using this concept have as an objective to avoid the decline of total population and the decline of the working-age population.
Mohammad Jalal Abbasi-Shavazi is an Iranian demographer and the president of the Asian Population Association. He is a professor of the Department of Demography and Chair of the Division of Population Research at the University of Tehran.
James Mahmud Rice is an Australian sociologist in the Demography and Ageing Unit, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne. He works at the intersection of sociology, economics, and political science, focusing in particular on inequalities in the distribution of economic resources such as income and time and how private and public conventions and institutions shape these inequalities.
Wolfgang Lutz is an Austrian demographer specializing in demographic analysis, population projections, as well as population and sustainable development. He is the current Interim Deputy Director General for Science of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), as well as the Founding Director of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital – a collaboration between IIASA, the Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the University of Vienna. In the latter, he also established the new Department of Demography.
Sergei Scherbov is a demographer specializing in demographic analysis and population projection. He is Deputy Program Leader with the World Population Program (POP) at IIASA since 2013 and Leader of the Population Dynamics and Forecasting Group at the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences since 2002.
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).
The Fertility Transition in Iran: Revolution and Reproduction is a 2009 book by Meimanat Hosseini-Chavoshi, Peter McDonald and Mohammad Jalal Abbasi-Shavazi in which the authors examine the fertility rate changes in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The book was awarded Iran's Book of the Year Award.
Susan E. Short is the Robert E. Turner Distinguished Professor of Population Studies at Brown University who is known for her work on how gender, family, health and well-being are effected by social and political environments.
Eileen Baldry is an Australian criminologist and social justice advocate. She is Deputy Vice-Chancellor Equity Diversity and Inclusion and Professor of Criminology at the University of New South Wales (UNSW).
Wilfred David "Mick" Borrie was a New Zealand-born Australian demographer and academic.
Karen Oppenheim Mason was an American sociologist and demographer. She served as president of the Population Association of America in 1997 and was best known for her research on the relationship between changes in fertility patterns and social changes in gender roles.