Ansley J Coale

Works

Coale, the William Church Osborne Professor of Public Affairs Emeritus and professor of economics emeritus at Princeton University, 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. at the same site. He spent his entire academic career at the University's Office of Population Research, 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), whom he co-wrote with Edgar Hoover. The results, which showed that slowing population growth could enhance economic development, 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), whom he co-wrote with Paul Demeny. These model life tables both established new empirical regularities, and proved invaluable in the development of later techniques for estimating mortality and fertility 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. The Demographic Transition, as stated by Coale, occurs when a country develops a strong economy, and within the society, low fertility and mortality will start to reflect based upon the economic standpoint. Coale was the pioneer of the European Fertility Project, which examined the decline in marital fertility in Europe. The European Project's goal was to correlate the fertility rates within married couples, and also the rate of infant mortality. Coale established three pre-conditions to fertility decline. The first one is "within the conscious of choice". In other words, it is up to the individual and within their own decision to have children. The second one would be if a society sees not having children as advantageous, then fertility will decline. The third pre-condition is to have contraception methods ready. It is important to emphasize that a society will start to shows signs of fertility decline if these three pre-conditions are met. 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. The Project findings eventually lead to the conclusion that even though economical factors can play a role in fertility decline, this is not the absolute determinant of fertility decline. The European Project lead to a better understanding that infant mortality and fertility decline do not necessarily follow each other. With a long-time interest in the population of Russia, which first found outlet in Coale's work on the life tables 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 and understanding the fertility transition there as well as factors affecting the sex ratio at birth. In a study conducted by Ansley J. Coale, India and China were compared in both their population size and fertility trends. A survey named the 1/1000 Fertility Survey, reached out to women living in various provinces of China and asked them to relate a brief history of their marital status and a family planning discussion. The survey then served as an understanding of the population and fertility changes that would occur in China shortly after. Published in a Journal article called Population trends in China and India, Coale introduces the possible causes of differences in fertility trends in such high populated countries. These reasons are based on policies put in place to reduce birth rates and some cultural differences that come into play as well. Finally, Coale presents the future of both countries and states that despite the efforts to reduce birth rates, the countries will remain to be most populated.

Honors

Coale was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and was a recipient of several honorary degrees from universities including Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Louvain and the University of Liège. He was also a corresponding fellow of the British Academy.