Ansley J. Coale Papers

Coale, Ansley J. (1917-2002)

Professor Ansley J. Coale (1917-2002) was a demographer whose work focused on nuptiality, fertility, and mortality in several countries. His first influential publication, with Edgar M. Hoover, was Population Growth and Economic Development in Low-Income Countries(1958). Coale spent his entire career as a member of the Office of Population Research (OPR) at Princeton University.

Ansley Johnson Coale was born on November 14, 1917 in Baltimore, Maryland to Nellie Ansley (Johnson) and James J. Coale, Jr. He received his Bachelors (1939), Masters (1941), and Doctoral (1947) degrees in Economics from Princeton University. He married Sarah Hamilton Campbell in 1941. The couple had two sons, Ansley J. Coale, Jr. and Robert Campbell Coale.

Coale joined the Princeton University faculty in 1947 as an Economics professor. In 1954 he began a five year tenure as Associate Director of the OPR, and served as Director from 1959 to 1975. He was also president of the Population Association of America in 1967-68 and president of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population from 1977 to 1981. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 1986.

His first major influential work was Population Growth and Economic Development in Low-Income Countries (1958), co-written 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. Other notable works include New Estimates of Fertility and Population in the United States (1963), co-written with Melvin Zelnik, and Human Fertility in Russia Since the Nineteenth Century (1979) with Barbara A. Anderson and Erna Harm.

Much of Coale's work focused on nupiality, fertility, and mortality. He was the intellectual architect of the European Fertility Project, which examined the remarkable decline in marital fertility in Europe. Initiated in 1963, the project eventually resulted in the publication of nine major books summarizing the change in childbearing over a century in the 700 provinces in Europe.

One of Coale's major projects in the 1950s was studying population change and economic development in low income countries. Two of his case studies were India and Mexico. In the 1960s he engaged in a study of European fertility. Over the course of his career Coale studied stable populations, detected and corrected bad demographic data for both the United States and less developed countries, and created demographic models. The Office of Population Research honored Coale in June 2002 by naming its demographic research library "The Ansley J. Coale Population Research Collection." Coale passed away in November 2002.

Notestein, Frank W. (Frank Wallace) (1902)

Frank W. (Wallace) Notestein contributed significantly to the science of demography and to a better understanding of population problems in world affairs, notably through his work on family planning and population control. Born in Alma, Michigan in 1902, Notestein received his undergraduate degree from the College of Wooster in 1923. He earned his PhD in Economics from Cornell University in 1927 and was an Economics instructor there from 1926-1927. From 1927 through 1928, Notestein worked abroad as a fellow of the Social Sciences Research Council. He began work for the Milbank Memorial Fund, an endowed national foundation that supports nonpartisan analysis, study, and research on significant issues in health policy, as a research assistant and then became a member of its technical staff from 1929 through 1936, working on differential fertility, the total genetic contribution to the next generation.

In 1936, Notestein began as a Lecturer at Princeton University. At the same time, he developed and directed the Office of Population Research (OPR) at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs with funding from the Milbank Memorial Fund. The OPR focused on the study of the interrelation of population growth and change in underdeveloped areas and on the social and psychological factors affecting fertility in the American family. By 1941, Notestein had attained full professorship as the Director of the OPR and as a professor of Demography, holding both titles until his resignation in 1959. Notestein remained as "Acting Director" of the OPR for the fall 1959 term while his successor, Ansley J. Coale, took a sabbatical. After Notestein's resignation, he remained involved at Princeton as a "Visiting Senior Demographer" through 1963. In addition, he was a "Visiting Lecturer in Public and International Affairs," at Princeton beginning in 1968. He maintained both positions until June 1982.

Notestein's resignation from full professorship and director of the OPR at Princeton allowed him to become the president of the Population Council (PC) until 1968. The PC was founded in 1952 by John D. Rockefeller III to study and promote understanding of the scientific aspects of population change throughout the world by fostering scientific theory and research in social, economic and medical fields. Notestein had been a trustee of the PC since its establishment.

Along with Notestein's positions at Princeton and the PC, he was the organizer and first director of the Population Division of the United Nations, 1946-1948. In 1955 he advised India's Minister of Health on population policies and beginning a population center for training and research on demography in India. He chaired the Technical Advisory Committee on Population for the 1950 United States Census and was a member of the 1960 United States Census Committee.

Notestein was a co-editor of the Population Index, a bibliography of population literature that was the official publication of the Population Association of American and the OPR from 1936-1957. He co-authored Controlled Fertility in 1940 and The Future Population of Europe and the Soviet Union in 1944, as well as authoring numerous journal publications. Notestein was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Sociological Association, and the American Statistical Association. He was a member of the American Eugenics Society, the American Philosophical Society, the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Statistical Institute, the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, the Population Association of America, and the Century Association.

Notestein married Daphne Limbach in 1927; they had no children. He passed away in 1983.

Ryder, Norman B. (1923)

Norman B. Ryder (1923-2010) was a demographer and sociologist who specialized in fertility studies. Ryder obtained a Ph.D. in sociology at Princeton University in 1951. His dissertation originated the Cohort Approach to demographic study, which emphasizes collecting data about groups of people born in the same time period. Following a stint at the Canadian Dominion Bureau of Statistics during the early 1950s, Ryder was employed in the University of Wisconsin Department of Sociology, where he carried out research in demographic studies. Ryder accepted a position in the Sociology Department at Princeton in 1971. While at Princeton, Ryder taught sociology and continued demographic research in the Office of Population Research. During the 1970s, Ryder served as president of both the Population Association of America, and the Sociological Research Association.

Along with Charles Westoff, Ryder directed the American Fertility Study. These broad surveys collected data about Americans' shifting attitudes toward contraception, family planning, and sexuality. The methods employed by the study formed the basis for the World Fertility study which was carried out throughout the 1980s in over 40 countries.

Ryder continued to publish widely on fertility issues, and was a population policy advisor in the United States and Canada.

Princeton University. Office of Population Research.

According to its website, the Office of Population Research (OPR) at Princeton University is a demographic research and training center founded in 1936 by Frank Notestein. It is an interdisciplinary center that supports PhD students in demography as well as in other joint degrees with departments; masters students in public policy; as well as sponsoring workshops and conferences. It supports, houses or is affiliated with other centers including the Eviction Lab, the Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing (CRCW), the Center for Health and Wellbeing (CHW), the Center for Migration and Development (CMD), and the Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China (CCC). After founder and director Frank Wallace Notestein left OPR to become the first director of the United Nations Population Division, subsequent directors of the OPR have been Wildred D. Borrie (1959); Ansley J. Coale (1959-1975); Charles Westoff (1976-1991); James Trussell (1992-1997, 2002-2006, 2008); Marta Tienda (1998-2001); Noreen Goldman (2007, 2016); and Douglas Massey (2011-2015, 2017-2020). Office of Population Research

Princeton University

The College of New Jersey was initially chartered in 1746. The first classes were held in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in the parsonage of the president, the Reverend Jonathan Dickinson. Upon his death, the College moved to Newark, New Jersey, and was headed by the Reverend Aaron Burr, Sr. Since 1756, the College has been located in Princeton, New Jersey. For the first fifty years, nearly all College operations took place within Nassau Hall. Fires, fundraising difficulties, low student enrollment, and the Civil War challenged the vitality of the College in the early and middle nineteenth century, but the College grew vigorously under the leadership of President James McCosh, and it was renamed Princeton University in 1896. The Graduate School was established in 1900, although a limited graduate program had existed since the 1870s. Princeton enthusiastically supported the country (living up to its informal motto, "Princeton in the Nation's Service") during the First and Second World Wars, offering the expertise of faculty and campus space for training, as well as facilitating the early graduation of students so they could enlist. The post-World War II years brought dramatic changes to Princeton. The size and strength of the University's facilities and academic programs—especially for the applied sciences and public policy—were increased dramatically. Under President Robert Goheen, Princeton began to admit minority students in greater numbers in the 1960s and admitted women undergraduates in 1969. Today, Princeton is widely regarded as one of the top universities in the world.

The Ansley J. Coale Papers document Coale's professional activities as a faculty member of Princeton's Office of Population Research (OPR), including his work on the nuptiality, fertility, and mortality of populations around the world. The papers contain correspondence, Coale's research papers and projects, and samples of data collected. The material spans the several decades (1950s to 1990s) Coale spent as a member of the faculty, as well as work he did during his retirement. A portion of the collection includes material related to Frank Notestein, Coale's colleague and mentor, and the correspondence of three other OPR staff members.

Please see the series descriptions in the contents list for additional information about individual series.

Coale, Ansley, J. Ansley J. Coale: An Autobiography. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2000. News @ Princeton. Emeritus professor Ansley Coale dies. 2002. Princeton University. As retrieved on May 24, 2006. http://www.princeton.edu

This collection was received from the Office of Population Research in March 2003.

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The papers include one 5 1/4" double-density floppy disk containing Coale's autobiograpy in an unknown format, eight reel-to-reel tapes and an audio-cassette tape. All are located in Box 17. This collection contains disks formatted for MS-DOS 1200k. Researchers are responsible for meeting the technical requirements needed to access these materials, including any and all hardware and software.

This collection was processed by Jennifer Sharp in June 2006. Materials were re-housed in archival folders and boxes at this time. Finding aid written by Jennifer Sharp in June 2006. Digital materials in Series 6 were processed by Elena Colon-Marrero in July 2015

Other collections at the Mudd Manuscript Library of particular relevance to the Ansley J. Coale Papers include the papers of Frank Notestein, Coale's mentor and colleague in the Office of Population Research. Notestein's papers contain a significant amount of correspondence to and from Coale in Subseries 1A: Alphabetical Correspondence. Additional collections are the papers of Alfred J. Lotka, a pioneer in the study of population dynamics, and the Hugh Moore Fund Records, which include a significant section on population control.

Duplicate material, material not related to Ansley Coale or Princeton University, and student recommendations were separated from this collection.

Use

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Preferred Citation

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Ansley J. Coale Papers, Box and Folder Number; Public Policy Papers, Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Publisher

Public Policy Papers

Finding aids author

Jennifer Sharp

Date

2006

Creator

Coale, Ansley J. (1917-2002)

Subject

Demography

Fertility, Human

Marriage

Mortality

Population research

People

Hoover, Edgar Malone (1907)

Notestein, Frank W. (Frank Wallace) (1902)

Ryder, Norman B. (1923)

Organization

Princeton University. Office of Population Research.

Princeton University -- Faculty

Language

English

Form

Correspondence

Office files

born digital