This book interprets and explains contemporary population issues from historical and cultural perspectives. These include lowest-low fertility in the Republic of Korea and Taiwan, early population aging in China relative to the developmental level, and various modes of domestic and international migration in the region. The book shows that divergent fertility decline can be attributed to the family patterns established in the pre-modern era in each country. It also examines the diversity of international migration in Eastern Asian countries today is also understood from the long-term historical view.

The study of Asian historical demography has lagged behind that of its European and American counterparts for some time. This volume serves to narrow the gap by drawing together material from scholars specializing in demography across the spectrum of Asian countries. The collection divides into four parts and contains nineteen chapters covering issues on comparative perspective, fertility, disease and mortality, and marriage and family. The geographic coverage of the chapters is also wide, extending from East Asia to South Asia, with specific emphasis on Japan, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka. Authors focus on a whole range of social groups, discussing how demographic issues affect and have affected both urban and rural dwellers from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. This volume, which is perhaps the first to bring together a number of in-depth, specialist studies on Asian population history, should prove a useful and engaging tool for both students and academics in the fields of demography, history, and Asian studies.

The fifteen essays in this volume address from several viewpoints the question of what role population change played in East Asia's rapid economic development.

East Asia is one of the most important origins of government-led population control in the mid-twentieth century. The states in Japan (1946-62), mainland China (1958-73), Korea (1951-1961), and Taiwan (1949-1964) developed different discourses and intervening policies of population control. In particular, Japan witnessed a population regime of human resource paradigm aimed at higher labor quality in the early 1960s, while the Chinese government launched a Malthusian paradigm to accelerate capital accumulation by slowing down population growth in the early 1970s. The states of Korea and Taiwan also established the Malthusian paradigm in the 1960s and transferred it to the human resource paradigm in the 1980s. This dissertation seeks to explain why population problems were constructed as an economic crisis and how the process shaped different population policies. I argue that the population problems were constructed as an economic crisis through the elite conflicts for different industrial strategies. Population discourses contribute to elite conflicts in three ways, namely, the mechanisms of visualization, neutralization, and politicization. The role of elite conflicts in shaping population problems further explains the rise of different population paradigms in East Asia.This study contributes to the existing literature by historizing the population policy processes and exploring how the population discourses and policies were "locked in" the elite politics prevailing in the industrialization of East Asia. It also associates the literature on population history with the affluent theories of developmental states. My conclusion reveals the isomorphism between the Malthusian paradigm of population policy and the accumulative model of the East Asian developmental states. It helps to understand the extremely low fertility rate prevailing the contemporary East Asian countries and indicates the broad policy impacts of the East Asian economic model.

This book compares the population history of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China to understand such emergent changes as extremely low fertility in Korea and Taiwan, compressed urbanization and a massive diaspora from Korea, early population aging relative to economic development in China, and changing patterns of cross-border migration in the region. After discussing the origin of each ethnic group, premodern population changes are examined by reviewing historical demographic studies including those written in local languages. A new population estimation for premodern Korea is also presented. Topics covered in this book include population growth, fertility, mortality, domestic and cross-border migration, marriage, divorce, and households. Contrasts between economic and population giants (China and Japan), former Japanese colonies (Korea and Taiwan), feudalism and Confucianism (Japan and others), and capitalism and socialism of the same ethnic groups (South and North Korea, Taiwan, and China) provide a fresh view of population dynamics in relation to political, economic, and cultural changes. The population study of Eastern Asia has great importance. If economic development is checked by early and rapid aging, it functions to preserve the conventional Euro-centric world system and Pax Americana. On the other hand, if China succeeds in further development while sustaining a socialist dictatorship, it is a challenge to the authority of liberal democracy. If the institution of marriage remains robust and extramarital births do not increase in Eastern Asia, it implies that an aspect of family change is culturally dependent. This book provides clues to help answer such important questions.

While the balance between private and public sectors are based primarily on the experiences of the wealthy societies in Western Europe and North America, the global reach and increased political weight of East Asian economies is bound to influence other societies as well. Contemporary Social Issues in East Asian Societies: Examining the Spectrum of Public and Private Spheres focuses on modern highly developed East Asian societies and their social issues, particularly ones that are related to family, institution, and health. By examining the modernized global society and its connectedness, this book is a vital resource for researchers, students, and academicians interested in the distinctive features connected with local, social and cultural traditions of East Asian society.