George J. Stolnitz, professor emeritus of economics at Indiana University, died Tuesday (Dec. 18) at his home in Bloomington, Ind., at the age of 81.
Stolnitz was an international expert on demographic trends and a frequent consultant to the United Nations and U.S. government agencies. He was a past president of the Population Association of America.
Born April 4, 1920, in New York City, the son of Isadore and Julia Stolnitz, he received a bachelor of arts degree in economics, at age 19, from the City College of New York, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. After graduation, he worked as a statistical analyst for the U.S. Census Bureau before winning a Millbank Memorial Fund Fellowship for graduate work at Princeton University.
Stolnitz received a master of arts degree in economics from Princeton in 1942 and then served in the U.S. Air Force until 1946. Upon his discharge, he studied mathematics and statistics under the noted Abraham Wald at Columbia University, before returning to Princeton in 1948.
In 1952, Stolnitz earned his Ph.D. degree from Princeton, after working at its Office of Population Research and Econometric Research Institute, and he was appointed an assistant professor there the following year. He won a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship to study mathematics and mathematical economics at Yale University in 1959-60.
He joined the Indiana University Department of Economics faculty as a full professor in 1956, and subsequently he became involved in a very diverse body of research. He served as director of the International Development Research Center at IU between 1966 and 1972, when it was a prolific source of social science research published by the IU Press. In 1986, he founded the Population Institute for Research and Training at IU, and he served as its director until 1991.
Stolnitz gained international recognition for his research on international mortality comparisons, world population trends, population-development interrelations, population policy assessments, internal migration, and the socio-economic consequences of population aging. He also consulted with government and private industry on public-utility control. His recent work focused on the consequences of population aging and population-environment interactions.
Stolnitz often advised United Nations commissions and conferences. Between 1976 and 1978, he was principal officer for population and development of the United Nations. He was chairperson of the U.N. Task Force on Population-Development Interrelations (1977-79) and the U.N. Conference on Population Projections (1981), and keynote speaker at the U.N. International Forum on Population Policies in Development Planning (1987).
He also was a consultant for the National Academy of Sciences, the Economic Commission for Europe, the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Agency for International Development; the U.S. Departments of State, Commerce, Energy and Human Services; and the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, The Futures Group, and the Population Reference Bureau.
Throughout his career Stolnitz lectured around the globe, including in Moscow, Jerusalem and Brazil. He was a visiting professor at Kiel University and the Institut fur Weltwirtschaft.
His writings include the books Demographic Causes and Economic Consequences of Population Aging: Europe and North America, Technological Prospects and Population Change, Issues of U.S. Migration, and Life Tables from Limited Data: A Demographic Approach.
He is survived by wife Monique Stolnitz; daughters Cindy Heaton, Dr. Wendy Silverstein and Dia Stolnitz; and brother Daniel Stolnitz.
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Recent interview on global population aging |
Created on ... December 19, 2001