Ansley J. Coale
Encyclopedia
Ansley Johnson Coale was one of America's foremost demographers. A native of Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...

, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...

, he earned his B.A. in 1939, his M.A. in 1941, and (after a period of service in the Navy) his Ph.D. in 1947, all at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

. A long-term director of the Office of Population Research
Office of Population Research
The Office of Population Research at Princeton University is the oldest population research center in the United States. It was founded in 1936....

 at Princeton, Coale was especially influential for his work on the demographic transition
Demographic transition
The demographic transition model is the transition from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates as a country develops from a pre-industrial to an industrialized economic system. The theory is based on an interpretation of demographic history developed in 1929 by the American...

 and leadership of the European Fertility Project.

Works

Coale, the William Church Osborne Professor of Public Affairs Emeritus and professor of economics emeritus at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

, was a prolific author, publishing more than 125 books and articles on a wide variety of demographic topics. His "Growth and Structure of Human Populations" (1972) is considered an essential textbook for those interested in formal demography. He also trained and served as a mentor to many students who became leaders in the field.

Coale joined the faculty at Princeton in 1947, the same year he received his Ph.D. there. He spent his entire academic career at the University's Office of Population Research
Office of Population Research
The Office of Population Research at Princeton University is the oldest population research center in the United States. It was founded in 1936....

, serving as director from 1959 to 1975. He was president of the Population Association of America in 1967-68 and president of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) from 1977 to 1981.

Coale's first major influential work was Population Growth and Economic Development in Low-Income Countries (1958), co-written with Edgar Hoover. The results, which showed that slowing population growth
Population growth
Population growth is the change in a population over time, and can be quantified as the change in the number of individuals of any species in a population using "per unit time" for measurement....

 could enhance economic development
Economic development
Economic development generally refers to the sustained, concerted actions of policymakers and communities that promote the standard of living and economic health of a specific area...

, had a major impact on public policy and set the research agenda in this field.

This study was followed by Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations (1966), co-written with Paul Demeny. These model life table
Life table
In actuarial science, a life table is a table which shows, for each age, what the probability is that a person of that age will die before his or her next birthday...

s both established new empirical regularities and proved invaluable in the development of later techniques for estimating mortality
Death
Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....

 and fertility
Fertility
Fertility is the natural capability of producing offsprings. As a measure, "fertility rate" is the number of children born per couple, person or population. Fertility differs from fecundity, which is defined as the potential for reproduction...

 in populations with inaccurate or incomplete data. Along with William Brass, Coale pioneered the development and use of these techniques, first explained in Methods of Estimating Basic Demographic Measures From Incomplete Data (1967, with Demeny) and in The Demography of Tropical Africa (1968, with other demographers).

Perhaps Coale's major scientific contribution was to the understanding of the demographic transition
Demographic transition
The demographic transition model is the transition from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates as a country develops from a pre-industrial to an industrialized economic system. The theory is based on an interpretation of demographic history developed in 1929 by the American...

. Coale was the intellectual architect of the European Fertility Project, which examined the remarkable decline in marital fertility in Europe. Initiated in 1963, the project eventually resulted in the publication of nine major books summarizing the change in childbearing over a century in the 700 provinces in Europe. With a long-time interest in the population of Russia, which first found outlet in Coale's work on the life table
Life table
In actuarial science, a life table is a table which shows, for each age, what the probability is that a person of that age will die before his or her next birthday...

s that he constructed for Frank Lorimer's classic The Population of the Soviet Union (1946), Coale also later co-authored a volume on Russia for the European Fertility Project series.

Toward the end of his career, Coale became interested in the population changes in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 and understanding the fertility transition there as well as factors affecting the sex ratio
Sex ratio
Sex ratio is the ratio of males to females in a population. The primary sex ratio is the ratio at the time of conception, secondary sex ratio is the ratio at time of birth, and tertiary sex ratio is the ratio of mature organisms....

 at birth.

Honors

Coale was a member of the National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...

 and the American Philosophical Society
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743, and located in Philadelphia, Pa., is an eminent scholarly organization of international reputation, that promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications,...

, and was a recipient of several honorary degrees from universities including Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

, the University of Louvain and the University of Liège
University of Liège
The University of Liège , in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium, is a major public university in the French Community of Belgium. Its official language is French.-History:...

. He was also a corresponding fellow of the British Academy
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...

.

Selected bibliography

  • Coale, Ansley J. (1967). “Factors associated with the development of low fertility: An historic summary,” in United Nations, Proceedings of the World Population Conference, Belgrade, 30 August–10 September 1965. Vol. 2. New York: United Nations: 205–9.

  • ——— (1969). “The decline of fertility in Europe from the French Revolution to World War II,” in S. J. Behrman and Leslie Corsa, Eds. Fertility and Family Planning: A World View. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press: 3–24.

  • ——— (1971). “Age patterns at marriage.” Population Studies 25: 193–214.

  • ——— (1972). The Growth and Structure of Human Populations: A Mathematical Investigation. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

  • ——— (1984). Rapid Population Change in China, 1952-1982. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

  • ——— (1992). “Age of entry into marriage and the date of the initiation of voluntary birth control.” Demography 29: 333–41.

  • ——— (1996). "Age Patterns and Time Sequence of Mortality in National Populations with the Highest Expectation of Life at Birth." Population and Development Review 22.

  • ——— (1996). "Five Decades of Missing Females in China," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 140 (4): 421-450.

  • Coale, Ansley J., Barbara A. Anderson, and Erna Härm (1979). Human Fertility in Russia since the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Coale, Ansley J., and Paul Demeny (1966). Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations. New York: Academic Press.

  • Coale, Ansley J., and Edgar M. Hoover (1958). Population Growth and Economic Development in Low Income Countries. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

  • Coale, Ansley J., and Frederick F. Stephan (1962). "The Case of the Indians and the Teen-Age Widows." Journal of the American Statistical Association 57 (298): 338-347.

  • Coale, Ansley J., and Roy Treadway (1986). “A summary of the changing distribution of overall fertility, marital fertility, and the proportion married in the provinces of Europe,” in Ansley J. Coale and Susan Cotts Watkins, Eds. The Decline of Fertility in Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 31–181.

  • Coale, Ansley J., and James T. Trussell (1974). “Model fertility schedules: Variations in the age structure of childbearing in human populations.” Population Index 40: 185–258.

  • ——— (1975). “A new method of estimating standard fertility measures from incomplete data.” Population Index 41: 182–210.

  • ——— (1978). “Finding the two parameters that specify a model schedule of marital fertility rates.” Population Index 44: 203–13.

  • Coale, Ansley J., and Susan Cotts Watkins, Eds. (1986). The Decline of Fertility in Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Coale, Ansley J., and Melvin Zelnik (1963). New Estimates of Fertility and Population in the United States: A Study of Annual White Births from 1855 to 1960 and of Completeness of Enumeration in the Censuses from 1880 to 1960. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Horiuchi, Shiro, and Ansley J. Coale. (1982). "A simple equation for estimating the expectation of life at old ages." Population Studies 36(2): 317-326.

  • ——— (1990). "Age patterns of mortality for older women: an analysis using age-specific rate of mortality change with age." Mathematical Population Studies 2(4): 245-267.

  • Preston, Samuel H.
    Samuel H. Preston
    Samuel H. Preston is an American demographer and sociologist. He is currently a Fredrick J. Warren Professor of Demography at the University of Pennsylvania....

    , and Ansley J. Coale (1982). "Age Structure, Growth, Attrition and Accession: A New Synthesis," Population Index (Summer) 50(2): 214-226.

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