First Published in 1969. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

According to the classic and widely accepted statement by Hauser and Duncan (1959: 2), demography is defined as “the study of the size, territorial distribution, and components of population, changes therein, and components of such changes.” Almost all disciplines of social sciences and most disciplines of natural sciences deal with human beings in one way or another, either directly or indirectly. Furthermore, demographic concepts (e.g., birth rate, death rate, and migration) and methods and analysis strategies (e.g., life table analysis) can be readily extended to other species (insects, animals, plants, etc.) and inanimate collectives (enterprises, automobiles, etc.). Clearly, demography is an important thematic field in science and it may provide the empirical foundation for studying human beings, animals, and inanimate collectives on which other relevant scientific research is built. The volume aims to be of value to the various audiences of both non-specialists and experts who seek a comprehensive understanding of issues related to human population. As reviewed in the very beginning of the Theme Introduction, “interdisciplinary” is one of the three major features of demography. Given the rapid development in techniques for collecting not only demographic data but also other related data concerning health, biomarkers, genetics, behaviors, and social and natural environments in conventional population surveys, as well as rapidly enhancing computing powers, this volume shows and concludes that demography will be even more interdisciplinary in the coming decades. A notable example is that the cross-field “marriage” between bio-medical sciences and demography will lead us to enter an era in which bio-medical and demographic methods will be well integrated. As indicated by James R. Carey and James W. Vaupel in Chapter 13 of this volume, the bio-demographic branches of demography are vibrant areas of demographic research that are rapidly growing and that have great potential to enrich and enlarge the domain of demography. Not only can demographers learn much from biologists and epidemiologists, but demographers can contribute much to research on life in general and to research on population health. The increasing availability of data sources and much enhanced computing/internet power will also lead demography to be more interactive with the other fields, such as psychology, environmental science, economics, business and management, etc. As discussed in this volume’s Chapter 11 by Swanson and Pol, for example, it is now possible to link conventional demographic data sources of census, surveys, and vital statistics with administrative records such as social security, tax reporting, medical insurance, hospital records, school registration, supermarket purchasing cards use, etc., while protecting individuals’ privacy. Such linkages will substantially increase the value of demographic methods, surveys and administrative records for scientific research and policy analysis, as well as the applicability of demography in business and governmental decision making processes.

Across the twentieth century, Earth's human population increased undeniably quickly, rising from 1.6 billion people in 1900 to 6.1 billion in 2000. As population grew, it also began to take the blame for some of the world's most serious problems, from global poverty to environmental degradation, and became an object of intervention for governments and nongovernmental organizations. But the links between population, poverty, and pollution were neither obvious nor uncontested. Building the Population Bomb tells the story of the twentieth-century population crisis by examining how scientists, philanthropists, and governments across the globe came to define the rise of the world's human numbers as a problem. It narrates the history of demography and population control in the twentieth century, examining alliances and rivalries between natural scientists concerned about the depletion of the world's natural resources, social scientists concerned about a bifurcated global economy, philanthropists aiming to preserve American political and economic hegemony, and heads of state in the Global South seeking rapid economic development. It explains how these groups forged a consensus that promoted fertility limitation at the expense of women, people of color, the world's poor, and the Earth itself. As the world's population continues to grow--with the United Nations projecting 11 billion people by the year 2100--Building the Population Bomb steps back from the conventional population debate to demonstrate that our anxieties about future population growth are not obvious but learned. Ultimately, this critical volume shows how population growth itself is not a barrier to economic, environmental, or reproductive justice; rather, it is our anxiety over population growth that distracts us from the pursuit of these urgent goals.

After WWII, Europe was awash in refugees. Never in modern times had so many been so destitute and displaced. No longer subjects of a single nation-state, this motley group of enemies and victims consisted of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, ex-Soviet POWs, ex-forced laborers in the Third Reich, legions of people who fled the advancing Red Army, and many thousands uprooted by the sheer violence of the war. This book argues that postwar international relief operations went beyond their stated goal of civilian "rehabilitation" and contributed to the rise of a new internationalism, setting the terms on which future displaced persons would be treated by nations and NGOs.