ICFRC: Effects of Low Fertility Rates in East Asia

Published: Feb. 16, 2012, 10 a.m.

Dr. Rubie Watson attended the University of Iowa in the 1960s, received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the London School of Economics, and has taught anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and Harvard University. Her research interests include gender, family organization, and memory and history with a focus on China. She is recently retired from Harvard University where she was Director of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and now lives in western Illinois. Dr. Watson will address the four East Asian societies (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong) that lead the world in low fertility and the reasons behind these population declines as well as the social, economic, and political implications of low fertility. Dr. Watson's publications include several articles and a book entitled Inequality Among Brothers: Class and Kinship in South China (1985). She is editor of Memory, History, and Opposition under State Socialism (1994), and with James L. Watson co-authored Village Life in Hong Kong (2004). She is currently working on two projects: a book manuscript tentatively entitled 'British Colonial Rule in Rural Hong Kong' and a research project focused on Hong Kong's fertility decline. More information on the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council can be found here.