American economist
Ansley Johnson Coale (November 14, 1917 – November 5, 2002), 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 (after a period of service in the Navy) 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.
Early childhood and education.
Ansley Coale was the youngest of three children born from Nellie and James Coale. One year after he was born, his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he spent most of his early years receiving an "excellent" education.
The Coale family moved to Annapolis, Maryland, in 1928. Ansley Coale attended a public high school starting in 1930. His intentions were to enroll in Princeton University like his older brother, Jim, did in 1933. By the time Ansley was 16 years old, he was ready to graduate high school. After an extra year at the Mercersburg Academy, a preparatory school, he was accepted into Princeton. This extra year of education was not only important for his intellectual development, but he ended up having 18 companions from the academy that also went to Princeton.
After he obtained his Bachelor's of Arts (BA) and master's degree in economics, Ansley Coale was offered a fellowship by the director of the Office of Population Research, Frank Notestein, as long as demography was a field of study. Over the years, the two of them became well-known demographers. In 1947, six years after he received his master's degree, Ansley Coale obtained his Ph.D.
Works.
In addition to being the William Church Osborne Professor of Public Affairs Emeritus and professor of economics emeritus at Princeton University, Coale 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 would become 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), which 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), which 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 most 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 Fertility Project's goal was to correlate the fertility rates within married couples with the rate of infant mortality. Coale established three pre-conditions to fertility decline. The first is "within the conscious of choice." In other words, it is up to the individual and within their own decision whether or not to have children. The second is that if a society sees not having children as advantageous, then fertility will decline. The third pre-condition is to have contraception methods ready. A society will start to show signs of fertility decline if these three pre-conditions are met.
Initiated in 1963, the project 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 led 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 Fertility Project led 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 1986 study he conducted, 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 contributed to 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 introduced the possible causes of differences in fertility trends in such highly populated countries. These reasons are based on policies put in place to reduce birth rates as well as some cultural differences that come into play. Finally, Coale presents the future of both countries and states that despite the efforts to reduce birth rates, the countries will remain the 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.
References.
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