Author Description

Annotation "In this book, the authors compare the demography of the Taiwanese town Lugang and the Dutch town Nijmegen using data on the lifes of thousands of their inhabitants. The period covered is approximately 1850 to 1945. First, the standard demographic rates on nuptiality, fertility and mortality are calculated to test the Malthusian predictions on a so called 'positive' and a 'preventive' demographic regime, Next, the authors try to disentangle the individual rationality behind aggregated measures in order to find out how the inhabitants of the two towns used the one life they had. Unaware of each others existence, the people living in Nijmegen and Lugang had more in common than one would expect given the huge cultural differences."--BOOK JACKET.