A particularly important struggle faced by demographic analysts is, how to arrive at statements about family formation processes from a cohort perspective from data that are essentially collected on an annual basis. The present paper is concerned with this struggle, mostly restricted to the case...

The 1930 population census of the former Dutch East Indies (currently Indonesia) shows for the European population a striking shortage in the age range 10-20. This paper deals with the possible causes of this constriction in the age structure, in particular, the phenomenon of European children...

How does demography as a science function? Is this discipline characterized by consensus in approach and outlook, as so many commentators claim, or is there widespread dissent? On the basis of an internet survey, carried out from April to September 2009 among IUSSP members, this paper sheds...

How age-conscious are human resource policies? Using a survey of Dutch employers, we examine how employers deal with the prospect of an ageing work force. We supplement our analysis with an additional survey of Dutch employees to compare human resource policies to practices. Results show that a...

European countries are experiencing population decline and the tacit assumption in most analyses is that the decline may have detrimental welfare effects. In this paper we use a survey among the population in the Netherlands to discover whether population decline is always met with fear. A...