The first in a series entitled "The Implications of Demographic Change in China," this colloquium features Professor Feldman speaking to us about his research program on demographic issues and statistics concerning the sex ratio in China. His joint research with scholars from Xi’an Jiaotong University is focused on the role of son preference in marriage customs. He will also talk about recent work on rural-urban migrants and how this migration affects the well-being of both the migrants and their elderly parents who remain in the rural areas. Gender is a factor in both migration and the pattern of remittance.

Marcus Feldman is the Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor of Biological Sciences and director of the Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies at Stanford University. He uses applied mathematics and computer modeling to simulate and analyze the process of evolution. He helped develop the quantitative theory of cultural evolution, which he applies to issues in human behavior, and also the theory of niche construction, which has wide applications in ecology and evolutionary analysis.

Rapid population aging in many Asian countries poses an increased burden of care for elderly people with disabilities. Traditionally, care for the disabled elderly was provided by family members co-residing or living nearby. However, declining fertility rates, eroding social norms, and growing rates of labor force participation among females have changed the overall picture of informal care. 

One important policy question is whether informal caregiving affects caregivers' labor force participation. This question is particularly relevant for rapidly developing economies including newly industrialized countries, because a shrinking working-age population is another major concern with population aging. Providing different answers to this question leads to different policy implications for long-term care policy and labor market policy. 

Most of the existing literature on this issue comes from the United States and Europe. Using data from the first wave of the "Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging", Do's research not only provides results from a less-studied Asian society, but also takes into account different patterns of living arrangements and labor force participation. His talk will deal with the methodological issue of endogeneity between informal caregiving and labor force participation, and explore gender and age group differences.

Young Kyung Do is currently completing his PhD in health policy and administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health. He has also earned both an MD and a master of public health degrees from Seoul National University (in 1997 and 2003, respectively). Young earned board certification in preventive medicine from the Korean Medical Association in 2004.

Monday, June 11, 2007

1:30 - 3:30 Panel 1: Election Campaigning in Japan

"Surrogate Representation: Forging New and Broader Constituencies in Japanese Politics"

Sherry Martin, Cornell University

"Running for National Office in Japan: The Institutional and Cultural Constraints Faced by Women Candidates"

Alisa Gaunder, Southwestern University

"How Large are Koizumi's Coattails? Party Leader Visits in the 2005 Japanese Election"

Kenneth McElwain, Stanford University

Discussant: Laurie Freeman, University of California - Santa Barbara

3:45 - 5:30 Panel 2: The Organization and Behavior of Political Parties

"Where Have All the Zoku Gone? LDP DM Policy Specialization and Expertise" (written with Ellis Krauss and Robert Pekkanen)

Ben Nyblade, University of British Columbia

"When Preferences are Not Behavior: Explaining Party Switch among Japanese Legislators in the 1990s"

Jun Saito, Wesleyan University

Discussant: Len Schoppa, University of Virginia

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

9:30 - 11:30 Panel 3: Electoral Systems and Voter Behavior

"The Political Economy of the Japanese Gender Gap"

Barry Burden, University of Wisconsin - Madison

"Has the Electoral System Reform Made Japanese Elections Party-Centered?"

Ko Maeda, University of North Texas

"The Incumbent Personal Vote in Japanese Politics"

Shigeo Hirano, Columbia University

Discussant: Mike Thies, University of California - Los Angeles

1:00 - 3:00 Panel 4: New Approaches to Electoral Analysis

"Stealing Elections on Election Night: A Comparison of Statistical Evidence from Japan, Canada, and the United States"

Ray Christensen, Brigham Young University

"Measuring Competitiveness in Multi-Member Districts"

Steven Reed, Chuo University and Kay Shimizu, Stanford University

"Declining Electoral Competitiveness: Post-reform Trends and Theoretical Pessimism"

Rob Weiner, Stanford University

Discussant: Margaret McKean, Duke University

3:00 - 3:15 Break

3:15 - 5:00 Panel 5: Legislative Issues in Japan Today

"Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Postal Privatization as a Window on Political and Policymaking Change"

Patricia Machlachlan, University of Texas - Austin

"The Slow Government Response to Japan's Bank Crisis: A Principal-Agent Analysis" (with Michio Muramatsu)

Ethan Scheiner, University of California - Davis

Discussant: Frances Rosenbluth, Yale University

5:15 - 5:45 Closing remarks