Judith Blake; Population Expert Who Wrote on Only Children

Judith Blake, a nationally recognized demographer and population policy expert best known for her 1989 book debunking myths disparaging only children, has died. She was 66.

Ms. Blake, professor emeritus of the UCLA School of Public Health, died April 29 of respiratory illness, UCLA officials announced.

She was named Fred H. Bixby professor of population policy in 1976, becoming the school’s first holder of an endowed chair and one of the first women to hold an endowed chair in the UC system.

Ms. Blake’s 1989 book, “Family Size and Achievement,” based on many years of research, concluded that children from one- and two-child families are better educated and more successful than children in larger families because their parents have more time and money to invest in them.

Herself the mother of an only child, a daughter who earned a doctorate and became an assistant professor at Duke University, Ms. Blake dismissed the stereotype of only children as isolated and socially inept. She said only children often do better socially, as well as educationally, because they have more interaction with parents and are motivated to seek companions outside the family.

The book won the prestigious William J. Goode Book Award of the American Sociological Assn. for 1989.

Ms. Blake also studied population control in developing countries.

Her other subjects of research included fertility, older childbirth and attitudes toward abortion.

After earning her doctorate from Columbia University, Ms. Blake joined the faculty at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, where she spent 15 years teaching and managing departments in demography and public policy.

Ms. Blake is survived by her husband, LeRoy Graymer; her daughter, Laura I. Davis of Durham, N.C., and a sister, Valerie Oppenheimer of Los Angeles.