Sociology and New York

972 death and dying article argued that a policy of simply making contraception available to women will not be successful because fertility will decline substantially only if there are fundamental changes in features of social organization that determine the motivation to bear children. The article was lauded by conservatives and berated by liberals, despite the explicitly stated corollary, and essentially feminist argument, that achieving the goal of sharply reduced fertility would better be achieved by policies making educational, occupational, and income opportunities for women equal to those of men. Davis continued to contribute to understanding changes in the family, economy, and women’s roles at the University of Southern California
(1977–92), most notably in ‘‘Wives and Work:
The Sex Role Revolution and its Consequences’’ (1984).
Davis’s early interest in cities and urbanization also was abiding. Prominent among his contributions were ‘‘The Origin and Growth of Urbanization in the World’’ (1955), ‘‘Colonial
Expansion and Urban Diffusion in the Americas’’ (1960), ‘‘World Urbanization 1950–1970’’
(V. 1, 1969; V. 2, 1972), Cities: Their Origin,
Growth, and Human Impact (1973), and ‘‘Asia’s
Cities: Problems and Options’’ (1975). In the final years of his career at the Hoover Institution
(from 1981 until his death on February 27,
1997), Davis organized conferences and edited books addressing causes, consequences, and policies for below-replacement fertility in industrial societies (1987) and the connections linking resources, environment, and population change (1991).
Davis’s creativity and the breadth of his influence in academia, in the Washington policy community, and the discourse of the general public are reflected in the terms demographic transition, population explosion, and zero population growth which he coined, and in the honor bestowed upon him as the first sociologist to be elected to the US National Academy of

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