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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
Elizabeth Leahy Madsen

Elizabeth Leahy Madsen

Elizabeth Leahy Madsen is a consultant on political demography for the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program and a senior policy analyst at the Population Reference Bureau.

She has 13 years of experience developing and implementing effective research and advocacy programs, with a focus on family planning/reproductive health, political demography, modeling, and the intersections between population and multisectoral development. She previously served in senior technical roles at Futures Group (now Palladium) and Population Action International (now PAI), and has consulted on demographic issues for the Aspen Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and George Washington University. She has published over 50 journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports and holds a Master’s degree in international affairs.

  • Bangladesh and Pakistan: Demographic Twins Grow Apart

    ›
    Guest Contributor  //  October 10, 2018  //  By Richard Cincotta & Elizabeth Leahy Madsen
    Bangladesh Youth

    While the World Population Prospects—the UN Population Division’s demographic estimates and projections—will never land on anyone’s non-fiction best-seller list, the latest version holds some noteworthy true stories. And the most remarkable demographic story of all may be Bangladesh’s.

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  • What’s Behind West and Central Africa’s Youthful Demographics? High Desired Family Size

    ›
    May 11, 2015  //  By Elizabeth Leahy Madsen
    Ghana mother

    Sub-Saharan Africa is often characterized as an outlier in terms of population dynamics and reproductive health. While women are having fewer children around the world, even prompting some places to begin worrying about aging populations, the demographic transition is proceeding more slowly in Africa. Fertility rates in North and Southern Africa have declined to around three children per woman, but the three other sub-regions of the continent – East, Central, and West Africa – retain much higher fertility, between five and six children per woman. Whether, and how quickly, fertility rates decline in these regions over the next few decades will in large part determine the peak of world population. These regions’ demographic trajectories also have important implications for health, governance, food security, economic development, land use, climate vulnerability, and even security.

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  • Mobile Tech Drives Faster Data Collection for Family Planning Indicators With PMA2020

    ›
    December 22, 2014  //  By Elizabeth Leahy Madsen
    PMA2020_Kenya

    In an effort to revamp the time-intensive process of conducting household surveys to collect health data in developing countries, a new project is using mobile phones and rapid processing techniques to generate regular updates for a tranche of indicators previously only adjusted every three to five years.

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  • UN Further Refines Population Projections: 80 Percent Probability of 10-12 Billion People by 2100

    ›
    October 16, 2014  //  By Elizabeth Leahy Madsen
    Johannesburg

    Seasoned demography geeks know to anticipate the release of the UN Population Division’s World Population Prospects in the spring of odd-numbered years. An off-cycle update published last month in Science, summarizing new results and methodological changes to the projections, therefore provoked a buzz of interest and a mini-flurry of media coverage.

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  • What Can Demography Tell Us About the Advent of Democracy?

    ›
    April 28, 2014  //  By Elizabeth Leahy Madsen
    thailand_protests2

    Democracy is fickle. Many of the competing theories on the best ways to foment and consolidate plural, inclusive governance or predict its rise and fall focus on political and economic forces. Yet a small group of demographers have explored population age structure as a catalyst for and reflection of a host of changes in societies that can affect governance.

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  • For Fast-Growing Countries, Should Aging Be a Concern? Planning for the Second Demographic Dividend

    ›
    September 10, 2013  //  By Elizabeth Leahy Madsen
    figure1-population-65

    Population aging and decline are frequently described as a threat to countries’ economic development and social stability. Evocative language, such as “demographic winter” and “graying of the great powers,” portrays the serious consequences that many observers envision as fertility and growth rates decline and the elderly comprise a greater percentage of the population. These concerns reach around the globe, including in Africa, which has the lowest percentage of elderly among the world’s major regions.

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  • Why Has the Demographic Transition Stalled in Sub-Saharan Africa?

    ›
    August 7, 2013  //  By Elizabeth Leahy Madsen
    Ibadan Streets

    In a recent post on the new United Nations population projections, I discussed the risk in assuming that countries in sub-Saharan Africa will progress through the demographic transition at a pace similar to other regions. Making this assumption is questionable because fertility decline in Africa has generally proceeded more slowly than in other parts of the world, with several cases of “stalls” and even small fertility increases over time.

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  • New UN Population Projections Released: Pockets of High Fertility Drive Overall Increase

    ›
    June 26, 2013  //  By Elizabeth Leahy Madsen
    Kigali Sunset

    October 31, 2011, was notable not only for the annual ritual of candy and costumes, but also for its designation by the United Nations as the date when global population reached seven billion. Although just an estimate – demographers are not able to count individuals in real time on such a large scale – the event was an important opportunity to present population trends to the media and public dialogue. Several babies born that day were named the “seven billionth;” in Russia, where various incentives have been implemented to try to boost an ultra-low fertility rate, Vladimir Putin visited a maternity ward to greet one of them.

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