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International Journal of Population Studies

EDITORIAL

Editorial — First Issue International

Journal of Population Studies

Bernardo Lanza Queiroz

Department of Demography,
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais,
Avenida Antônio Carlos, 6627 — Sala 3052,
Belo Horizonte — Minas Gerais, 31270-901, Brazil
http://dx.doi.org/10.18063/IJPS.2015.01.010

I am proud to present the first issue of the International Journal of Population Studies
(IJPS) published by Whioce Publishing Pte Ltd. One might ask what is the need of yet
another journal in demography and population studies? I argue that IJPS comes at the right
time with the right purpose. It is a multidisciplinary journal (more details in Danan Gu’s
editorial note) on demography and population studies, it is also an open access journal,
aiming to reach a broad range of researchers.
IJPS is timely because demography and population issues have taken the center stage in
understanding social and economic change across the world. These issues pose challenges
to society and individuals and should be looked carefully by researchers and policy makers;
many are discussed in this issue. The first one is the rapid change in population age struc-
ture and its consequences to economic growth, living conditions, social support and health
care provision to the elderly. The second issue, related to rapid changes in population ag-
ing, regards the health conditions of the elderly in different parts of the world and the
prospects of future health conditions. The third issue is related migration flows that are
driven both by economic changes affected by climate change and migration flows related
to labor markets and social networks. One paper in this volume also discusses the implica-
tions of migration to economic growth in the era of population aging. Finally, one paper
discusses fertility behavior and decisions.
This first issue of the journal highlights a broad range of research. The content of the
eight papers can be grouped into four large thematic groups: aging, health, migration and
fertility. The scope of the papers ranges from more methodological to more theoretical
discussions, and each paper focuses on a different region of the world. In common, they
investigate important and current demographic and population problems we are facing
today. It was encouraging to receive such diverse and high quality papers. I would like to,
therefore, thank our contributing authors.
Our first paper is by Zimmer and colleagues about how the compression of disability
changes disability-free life expectancy in the rapid aging population of China. They show
a heterogeneous process of the compression of disability in China that is more favorable
for females and residents of urban areas.
In the second paper, Saito and colleagues examine differences in hypertensive states and
the levels of blood pressure among older persons in Japan and the United States. Investi-
gating the two countries is interesting because of differences in life expectancy and health

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