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of food insecurity are among the highest on the continent. Demographic conditions are mostly as expected: rapid population growth, young age structure, high fertility, declining but still relatively high mortality. Surprisingly, fertility in the capital, Addis Ababa, with a population of well over 3 million, is below the replacement level. This volume presents a wide-ranging overview of Ethiopias demographic landscape. Chapters cover the demographic transition, human development, health and nutrition, population distribution, migration, population-resource pressure, food insecurity, and population policy. Most chapters are written by Ethiopian researchers who make extensive use of censuses, surveys, in-depth case studies, routine information systems, and service statistics. In addition to describing national and sub-national levels and trends, many contributions examine correlates and determinants. A key motivation for the book is an assessment of progress toward the 2015 targets of the Ethiopian National Population Policy, the Millennium Development Goals, and the new Growth and Transformation Plan. Remarkably, despite widespread poverty and weak infrastructure and institutions, many indicators are improving rapidly and are on target to meet these goals. The authors are reasonably optimistic about Ethiopias demographic future, citing a supportive policy environment and substantial international support. The government is rapidly expanding primary education, health, food safety, and family planning programs into rural areas. A notable exception is maternal mortality, which remains extremely high. Concluding chapters describe the national population policy, adopted in 1993, whose main goal was to reduce high fertility and increase contraceptive use, mainly by expanding family planning information and services. Resource and institutional constraints have limited the policys implementation. Nevertheless, the authors predict a steady decline in rural fertility by demonstrating a substantial demand for contraception. Nearly half of married women want no more children, and more than a third have an unmet need for contraception. The most recent DHS survey, whose results became available after the books publication, conrms that fertility decline continues and contraceptive use has risen substantially in the past ve years.J.B.

WOrLD BANK World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development
Washington, DC, 2011. xxiii + 426 p.

The goals that would mark the achievement of gender equality, as interpreted by the World Bank, are male/female equality in endowments (in health, education, and assets), in economic opportunity, and in agency. Progress toward these goals is to be valued both in its own right and instrumentally as smart economics. The 2012 WDR assembles a solid body of data and analysis to esh out the economics of gender inequalities, to examine the empirical and policy records, and to propose ways forward. It documents substantial but uneven advances over the past several decades in lessening gaps in education and health. In education, in much of the world the female disadvantage in enrollment has vanished or even reversed (in tertiary education many countries show a strong and increasing male disadvantage), but in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia, women still lag well behind men. In

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mortality, the gender gap requires specication by age. A table in the WDR allocates the total estimated number of excess female deaths under age 603.9 million in 2008across ages and regions. Some 1.4 million of this total (1 million in China alone) are described as being at birth, the result of sex-selective abortion. Excess unborn girls and subsequent missing women are clearly appropriate concepts in gauging gender inequality, though unconventional qua demography. Another 0.6 million excess female deaths were at ages under 5 and 1.3 million at reproductive ages, both mainly in Africa and South Asia. In these regions maternal mortality, in particular, has remained high, lagging far behind MDG target trajectories. Offered as models to emulate are Malaysia and Sri Lanka, where dramatic declines in maternal mortality were obtained at low cost by upgrading the quality of service providers. Mostly, of course, the longevity gap between the sexes favors women: this is not seen as a matter for gender-equalizing policy concern. On fertility, the prime factor generating inequality is agency. Demographic and Health Survey data are drawn on to downplay issues of knowledge, access, distance, and cost in constraining contraceptive use, in comparison to the womans health concerns and her or her partners opposition. Improving womens agency means ensuring their increasing voice in fertility decisions. Keeping with the times, a companion iPad app is available for the Report, offering exible access and searching features. Index.G.McN.