Academy Fellow

Gavin Willis Jones - 21 November 1940 - 27 August 2022

When Gavin Willis Jones died in Perth, Western Australia on August 27, 2022, we lost one of Australia’s foremost scholars of demography, development economics and Asian Studies.  

Born in Armidale, NSW during the Second World War, Gavin built on his training as a star athlete to achieve academic success with First Class Honours in Economics at the University of New England. He came of age when demography was focused on international panic over explosive population growth and Australians were increasingly orienting their interests away from England and toward their close Asian neighbours. He later recalled that his interest in demography was piqued by population lectures given by Eric Woolmington in the Geography Department. Despite pressure from his Economics professor to cleave to that “dismal science” Gavin was attracted to the relatively young and vibrant Demography Department in Canberra. Always an adventurer, he left Armidale to undertake a PhD under the guidance of Professor W.D. (Mick) Borrie. 

His thesis topic was suggested to him by a recent graduate of the Department, Jack Caldwell, who had completed his PhD on the Population of Malaya, Jack said Gavin might go the next step by studying the labour force of the newly independent Malaysia. Soon Gavin, and his newly married wife, Margaret Donaldson, were off for half a year of fieldwork in dusty archives and conducting surveys across Malaysia (which at that time included Singapore). In a later memoir, Gavin related the story of how he and Margaret were members of Ken Rivett’s Immigration Reform Group campaigning against the White Australia Policy. When they heard that the Immigration Minister (Hubert Opperman) was arguing that Asians felt no resentment over the policy, they decided to add a small survey to the fieldwork, approaching Malaysian secondary students and Malaysian members of the Australian Graduates Association to gauge their knowledge and attitudes about the policy. In an article they published in Australian Outlook, they reported that Malaysians were both knowledgeable and resentful about Australia’s racist law. Later they learned that an official of the Department of Immigration had complained about the publication to Professor Borrie. He never raised the issue with Gavin . 

In the 1960s, the ANU Institute of Advanced Studies was emerging as an influential centre for Asian studies, attracting preeminent scholars across a wide range of disciplines. It was a magnet for bright students from across Australia and the world, all being well-supported with higher degree scholarships to undertake language studies and fieldwork. Gavin was in a cohort of demographers who would later become the foundation of many programs of population studies around the world, including D. Ian Pool, J. D. Allingham, M. V. George, Farhat Yusuf, and Yun Kim. Later in life, Gavin reflected on the decision to go to the ANU as the turning point in his life. 

With a fresh PhD in hand, Gavin was recruited by the Rockefeller Foundation-funded Population Council in 1966 following a recommendation from Professor Borrie. The Jones family spent three years in New York. Ever the athlete, Gavin entered a number of marathons. In 1967, in the iconic Boston Marathon which draws thousands of runners from around the world, Gavin came in 30th with a time of 2 hours and 32 minutes. His CV doesn’t, but should, list all the marathons and half marathons he ran but we know from anecdotes that he pounded the pavement in many cities including the very hot and humid Bangkok and Jakarta races. Whenever a conference or meeting scheduled a “fun run” you could expect to see Gavin in the front of the pack, chatting with colleagues all the way to the finish line. 

During the 1960’s, the Population Council was spreading across the developing world, establishing offices in all continents (except Australia and Antarctica). For Gavin, this meant overseas projects with a team of professionals committed to population policy and demographic analysis challenges. It also led to overseas postings, where he laid the foundations of his expertise in Southeast Asia, first in Bangkok (1969-1972) and then in Jakarta (1972-1975). 

In 1972, he teamed up with recent ANU demography graduate Peter McDonald to assist the Demographic Institute of the University of Indonesia to carry out Indonesia’s first national survey of fertility and mortality. Their collaborative style with the Demographic Institute became a template for a generation of Australian demography graduates. Their professional links (and often their salaries) were from the ANU, channelling financial support from the USA-based Population Council or the Australian-Asian Universities Cooperation Scheme (AAUCS) respectively. But they worked under the supervision of the Indonesian Directors of university population centres, and they formed strong collaborations and friendships with their Indonesian colleagues and students. At the same time, their disciplinary ambitions grew across international institutions. 

Caldwell came to be regarded as a fieldwork researcher of the first order. With his encouragement, Jones and McDonald spread the influence of the Demography Department across the ANU campus. McDonald managed a group of teachers and tutors to establish ANU’s Master’s degree in Demography, and Jones contributed to the program. They attracted a generation of Asian university and government employees for higher degree coursework, and this produced a steady stream of doctoral candidates and later the foundation for coursework requirements for Demography PhD work. 

In 1979, after Terence and Valerie Hull completed secondments with the Population Institute of Gadjah Mada University, they returned to Canberra to re-join Caldwell’s Demography Department. The group was approached by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) to develop an outreach program for demographic research and teaching in Asian universities. They designed and established the International Population Dynamics Program (IPDP) to manage external funding for institutions from China and Indonesia to Vietnam and Cambodia. Over the years funding came from a variety of donors, including UNFPA, Ford Foundation and AUSAID. The template remained strongly in the control of the ANU. Staff were hired by the University and seconded to local universities under common conditions, irrespective of the funding agency. 

Gavin was an active participant in IPDP, recruiting and supervising students, contributing to the series of Research Notes published and distributed globally, and advising research fellows. Out of this activity arose the joint publication “Demographic Dimensions of Indonesian Development” (Hugo, Hull, Hull and Jones, 1987) which remains one of the most comprehensive treatments of Indonesian demography. During the period from 1987 until 1995 Gavin became the Head of the Demography group at the ANU steering the discipline through a time of growing challenges in higher education. 

To the end, Gavin juggled a full schedule of consultancies many of which were commissioned by UN agencies and national governments to feed into innovative population policies. He was particularly excited by the invitation to help Prime Minister Imran Khan to supercharge Pakistan’s family planning program. Ever the cricket fan, Gavin was delighted to be able to chat with the legendary fast bowler even as they pored over fertility rates and demographic projections. Khan’s overthrow by a no-confidence motion undermined their innovative plans, but Gavin remained hopeful the report they prepared would eventually bear fruit. 

Gavin drew great satisfaction from compiling one of the most lengthy and varied curriculum vitae in the discipline of Demography. The document available to the authors of this note was compiled in 2021. The statistics on his publications over the period from 1964 to 2021 reveal a steady pace and varied range of topics. Four single-authored books were monographic in scope, covering issues of population, education and development (1975), the population of North Sulawesi (1976), population and development in Southeast and East Asia (1978) and marriage and divorce in Islamic regions of Southeast Asia (1994). Typically, Gavin preferred to work with collaborators. He produced ten collaborative monographs and 21 collaboratively edited collections of papers. 

Most impressive is the list of over 240 papers published in journals and books. The typically modest apology is at the end of that list: "Not listed are about 25 book reviews in scholarly journals, of which I have never kept a record.” Listed separately are conference and working papers spanning 5 pages and associated with a plethora of institutions that Gavin visited or worked with over the years. All his friends and colleagues were aware of his productivity, and all marvelled at his ability to keep up this flow of serious academic work while supervising PhD students, examining PhD theses, travelling the globe on consultancies and conferences, and maintaining fitness through running, surfing and tennis. When asked how he maintained such productivity, he referred to his sporting training in his childhood in Armidale, NSW where he had fostered a lifetime of driving energy. 

More than that, his was a happy sociability that was infectious in forming friendships wherever work took him. He had no trouble finding a tennis partner, running mate or academic collaborator wherever he landed. Around the turn of the century, Gavin was at the peak of his international career, an indispensable pillar of stature and good sense both for reviews of academic bodies and the guidance of national governments in their population policy. He was in demand for his rare mixture of tactful congeniality, analytic clarity and technical mastery of data. 

The boy from the Australian bush had come a long way when elected in 2002 to global leadership as chair of the Paris-based Committee for International Cooperation in National Research in Demography (CICRED 2002-2007). Peter McDonald was elected as the future President of IUSSP in 2005 but, following IUSSP practice, served as Vice President from 2006-2009 before being President from 2010 to 2013. What did the two Australians have that made them good candidates to head these international (European-dominated) organisations? Their answer is practicality and common sense but more than that, like Jack Caldwell and Mick Borrie before them, they shared an Antipodean trait of a deep belief in global citizenship.  

The ceaseless travel took a toll on his marriage to Margaret Donaldson Jones. It had broken down irretrievably by 2002, and Gavin found that making a move from Canberra was welcome. The ANU’s loss was Singapore’s gain. Anthony Reid had just agreed to lead a new Asia Research Institute (ARI) to boost the Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and seized the opportunity of encouraging Gavin to apply for the first advertised chair in the new Institute. It may not have been a good look (wags suggested ARI was the ANU Retirees Institute), but he proved an immediate success. The generously funded Institute had plenty of critics, but Gavin was the one social scientist that the engineers and medics could see was useful, even necessary, especially when he addressed the urgent problem of the flight from motherhood of Asia’s urban women. Almost uniquely, he was at home in the whole of Asia, having advised governments, supervised students and written reports arising from everywhere from China and Japan to Iran and Pakistan. 

In Singapore from 2003 to 2014, Gavin started a new family with Hennie Listianingsih, and a new circle of university, tennis-playing and family friends. He was a central figure in the Asia Research Institute (acting Director on Tony Reid’s retirement), the Sociology Department and the National University of Singapore more broadly. He organised ARI’s first public showpiece ‘Asia Trends’ conference on ‘Ideal and Reality in Asian Marriage’ (2004), and one of ARI’s first Southeast Asia graduate student forums. Being at one of Asia’s key hubs, he was in ceaseless demand for keynote lectures for conferences, which helps explain the switch in the ARI period from monographs to articles and book chapters arising from these conferences. 

So central was he in the Asian population scene that his new journal, Asian Population Studies (2004-), appeared to arise seamlessly to become a major fixture by the time he laid down the editorship on leaving Singapore in 2014. Most of Singapore’s ‘ex-pats’ are firmly shown the exit once they reach retirement age and the expiration of their contracts. But NUS just did not want to let Gavin go, inventing one responsibility after another until at age 74 he said enough. He and Hennie chose Perth as a new and ‘neutral’ retirement base, close to Jakarta and Singapore. He continued to be exceptionally active there up to his death, with frequent consultancies in the region until COVID slowed travel. He found himself turning to Zoom to maintain consultancies and lectures. 

Throughout his ANU career, Gavin was an active member of the ANU Indonesia Study Group and helped to organize some of the annual Indonesia Updates and advise the leaders of the Indonesia Project. Even after he left Canberra for appointments in Singapore and Perth, he retained his links to the ANU as an Emeritus Professor in the School of Demography. Days before his death in Perth he spoke about plans for a visit to Canberra to attend the 2022 Indonesia Update. He knew that the School of Demography had his name on an office door. The prospect of spending a week or so on campus with a new generation of PhD candidates was attractive and he said he would try to arrange a visit. Alas, that was an ambition that would not eventuate.

Gavin is survived by his first wife Margaret Donaldson and their children, Tanya Jones Tear, Andrew Jones and Gregory Jones; and his second wife Henny Listianingsih and daughter Stephanie Larasati Jones; and hundreds of close colleagues and friends who will miss his warm personality and good humour. 

*Obituary written by Terence H. Hull, Anthony Reid and Peter F. McDonald

Director, JY Pillay Comparative Asia Research Centre, Global Asia Institute, National University of Singapore, 2012-2014

Research team leader, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, 2003-2012

Head, Division of Demography and Sociology, Australian National University, 1997-1999

Coordinator, Demography Program, Australian National University, 1990-1996

Senior Fellow, then Professorial Fellow, then Professor, Department of Demography, Australian National University, 1975-1991

Staff Associate, The Population Council, New York, 1966-1975

The following are selected from about 30 sole authored, co-authored or edited books and about 170 papers in peer reviewed journals and book chapters:

Jones, Gavin W., 1975, Population Growth and Educational Planning in Developing Nations, Irvington Publishers, New York.

Jones, Gavin W., 1994, Marriage and Divorce in Islamic South-East Asia, Oxford University Press, Singapore.

Hugo, Graeme, Terence Hull, Valerie Hull and Gavin Jones, 1987, The Demographic Dimension in Indonesian Development, Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur.

Jones, Gavin W. and Mike Douglass (eds), 2008, Mega-Urban Regions in Pacific Asia – Urban Dynamics in a Global Era, Singapore: NUS Press.

Jones, Gavin W., Paulin Tay Straughan and Angelique Chan (eds), Ultra-low Fertility in Pacific Asia: Trends, Causes and Policy Issues, London, Routledge.

Suryadarma, Daniel and Gavin W. Jones (eds), 2013, Education in Indonesia, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

Jones, Gavin W., 1990, Fertility Transitions Among Malay Populations of South-East Asia: Puzzles of Interpretation, Population and Development Review, 16(3): 507-537.

Knodel, John and Gavin W. Jones, 1996, Post-Cairo Population Policy: Does Promoting Girls' Schooling Miss the Mark?, Population and Development Review, 22(4): 683-702.

Jones, Gavin W., 1997, Modernization and Divorce: Contrasting Trends in Islamic South-East Asia and the West, Population and Development Review, 23(1): 95-114.

Jones, Gavin W., 2001, “Which Indonesians marry earliest and why?” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 32(1): 67-78.

Jones, Gavin W., 2004, “Urbanization trends in Asia: the conceptual and definitional challenges” in Tony Champion and Graeme Hugo (eds), New Forms of Urbanization, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing: 113-132.

Jones, Gavin W., 2005, “The flight from marriage in East and South-East Asia”, Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 36(1): 93-119.

Jones, Gavin W., 2007, “Delayed marriage and very low fertility in Pacific Asia”, Population and Development Review, 33(3): 453-478.

Jones, Gavin W.,. 2012, “Population policy in a prosperous city-state: dilemmas for Singapore”, Population and Development Review, 38(2): 311-336.

Alkema, Leontine, Gavin W. Jones and Cynthia U.R.Lai, 2013, “Levels of urbanization in the world’s countries: alternative estimates”, Journal of Population Research, 30(4): 291-304.

Jones, Gavin W. and Wei-Jun Jean Yeung, 2014, “Marriage in Asia”, Journal of Family Issues, 35(12): 1567-1583.