Handbook of Population

Completion of this Handbook would not have been possible without the generous and dedicated assistance of numerous people. Several years ago Howard Kaplan, Editor of the Kluwer/Plenum Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research, asked Dudley Poston to edit a Handbook of Population. Poston then asked his long-time collaborator and fellow demographer, Michael Micklin, to join him as co-editor. Poston and Micklin next assembled a list of chapter topics and possible authors. We endeavored to shape the contributions to the Handbook in two ways: We wished to parallel in many ways the outline of The Study of Population, edited by Philip M. Hauser and Otis Dudley Duncan, and published in 1959. The Hauser and Duncan volume was the key comp- dium and inventory of the state of demography; one had not been published since. In shaping this Handbook we also took into account the increased scope of demography, its development in other social science areas, and its application outside the academy. In the subsequent development of this Handbook, we worked closely with Teresa Kraus, our editor at Springer, and also received advice from Howard Kaplan. Poston and Micklin read and edited each of the Handbook chapters and then sent them back to the authors for their revisions. We appreciate their timely responses to our requests for revisions. All the chapters were then copy edited at Texas A&M University by Amanda K. Baumle, who then discussed and reviewed the final changes and edits with Poston.

The Handbook of Population is organized for classroom as well as reference use. It is divided into four sections – Population Structure, Population Processes, Population and the Social Sciences, and Applied Demography – and includes both an Introduction and an Epilogue by the editors. Part I, Population Structure, contains chapters on population size and growth, age and sex composition, marriage and family structure, and demographic analyses of gender, aging, race and ethnicity, and the labor force. Part II is focused on population processes, and includes chapters on fertility, infant and adult mortality, internal and international migration, and the demography of social stratification. Part III reflects the growing multidisciplinary nature of demography. Finally, Part IV recognizes the varied practical applications of demographic perspectives and data to national and global issues and problems.

The chapter authors in this volume are among the leading contributors to demographic scholarship over the past four decades, representing a variety of disciplines and theoretical perspectives, as well as interests in both basic and applied research.

From the reviews:

"A systematic appraisal of the field of demography is long overdue. It has been almost five decades since Philip Hauser and Otis Dudley Duncan published their classic The Study of Population. The volume naturally covers the latest developments in time-honored  fields such as age and sex, marriage and family, mortality, fertility, and both internal and international migration. It also inlcudes new material on subjects that did not even exist at the time of the last survey, including biodemography, anthropological demography, and political demography.  This comprehensive review of 50 years of progress in theoretical and empirical knowledge confirms that demography is indeed a cumulative science." (Douglas S. Massey, Princeton)

"The Handbook of Population is a worthy successor to the 1959 publication of The Study of Population edited by Hauser and Duncan. The editors did a remarkable job of putting together an excellent outline that covers every topic within Demography. The editors did an even more remarkable job in gathering such talented scholars to write each chapter. Together they mesh into what will soon become ou 'bible.' It should be in every college library and should be on every demographer's desk." (Leon Bouvier, Old Dominion University)