Between 1965 and 1985, the Western world and the United States in particular experienced a staggering amount of social and economic change. In Birth Quake, Diane J. Macunovich argues that the common thread underlying all these changes was the post-World War II baby boom—in particular, the passage of the baby boomers into young adulthood. Macunovich focuses on the pervasive effects of changes in "relative cohort size," the ratio of young to middle-aged adults, as masses of young people tried to achieve the standard of living to which they had become accustomed in their parents' homes despite dramatic reductions in their earning potential relative to that of their parents. Macunovich presents the results of detailed empirical analyses that illustrate how varied and important cohort effects can be on a wide range of economic indicators, social factors, and even on more tumultuous events including the stock market crash of 1929, the "oil shock" of 1973, and the "Asian flu" of the 1990s. Birth Quake demonstrates that no discussion of business or economic trends can afford to ignore the effects of population.

WARNING: Highly prone to spontaneous fits of delirium, irrational logic and violent, unpredictable mood swings. This individual has been sober, swollen and hungry for the past nine months, so proceed with caution and handle with care. Anything said during the course of labor and delivery should not be taken seriously. Side effects may last up to eighteen years. Please consult your physician should castration occur. And never forget, this is all your fault.

First book addressing the concerns and issues of people of color in spiritual direction “These essays speak of how we have incorporated our contemplative practices into our family life; our urban, non-religious background; how we have been nurtured in struggles for health and life through our contemplative prayer practices and our courage to survive and even thrive in the midst of dire circumstances. We speak of the unfolding bridge between faith and culture; our conflicts with an Interspiritual journey with a Christian foundation; our sexuality; our journey to healing and authenticity; and how we are taking this practice that began in the first centuries of the church with the desert mothers and fathers to the present and into the future with spiritual direction through the Internet across the world.” —from the Introduction

On request, this reader is free when packaged with any Worth text. This single-topic issue from Scientific American magazine features the latest findings from the most distinguished researchers in the field. It covers a range of fascinating subjects and is a terrific supplement for any psychology course.

What does the birth of babies whose embryos had gone through genome editing mean--for science and for all of us? In November 2018, the world was shocked to learn that two babies had been born in China with DNA edited while they were embryos—as dramatic a development in genetics as the 1996 cloning of Dolly the sheep. In this book, Hank Greely, a leading authority on law and genetics, tells the fascinating story of this human experiment and its consequences. Greely explains what Chinese scientist He Jiankui did, how he did it, and how the public and other scientists learned about and reacted to this unprecedented genetic intervention. The two babies, nonidentical twin girls, were the first “CRISPR'd” people ever born (CRISPR, Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, is a powerful gene-editing method). Greely not only describes He's experiment and its public rollout (aided by a public relations adviser) but also considers, in a balanced and thoughtful way, the lessons to be drawn both from these CRISPR'd babies and, more broadly, from this kind of human DNA editing—“germline editing” that can be passed on from one generation to the next. Greely doesn't mince words, describing He's experiment as grossly reckless, irresponsible, immoral, and illegal. Although he sees no inherent or unmanageable barriers to human germline editing, he also sees very few good uses for it—other, less risky, technologies can achieve the same benefits. We should consider the implications carefully before we proceed.

For more than 200 years, America has turned to the decennial census to answer questions about itself. More than a mere head count, the census is the authoritative source of information on where people live, the types of families they establish, how they identify themselves, the jobs they hold, and much more. The latest census, taken at the cusp of the new millennium, gathered more information than ever before about Americans and their lifestyles. The American People, edited by respected demographers Reynolds Farley and John Haaga, provides a snapshot of those findings that is at once analytically rich and accessible to readers at all levels. The American People addresses important questions about national life that census data are uniquely able to answer. Mary Elizabeth Hughes and Angela O'Rand compare the educational attainment, economic achievement, and family arrangements of the baby boom cohort with those of preceding generations. David Cotter, Joan Hermsen, and Reeve Vanneman find that, unlike progress made in previous decades, the 1990s were a time of stability—and possibly even retrenchment—with regard to gender equality. Sonya Tafoya, Hans Johnson, and Laura Hill examine a new development for the census in 2000: the decision to allow people to identify themselves by more than one race. They discuss how people form multiracial identities and dissect the racial and ethnic composition of the roughly seven million Americans who chose more than one racial classification. Former Census Bureau director Kenneth Prewitt discusses the importance of the census to democratic fairness and government efficiency, and notes how the high stakes accompanying the census count (especially the allocation of Congressional seats and federal funds) have made the census a lightening rod for criticism from politicians. The census has come a long way since 1790, when U.S. Marshals setout on horseback to count the population. Today, it holds a wealth of information about who we are, where we live, what we do, and how much we have changed. The American People provides a rich, detailed examination of the trends that shape our lives and paints a comprehensive portrait of the country we live in today. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Census Series

The Consequences of Disasters: Demographic, Planning and Policy Implications presents innovative multi-disciplinary perspectives on how people and societies respond to, and recover from sudden, unexpected crisis events like natural disasters which impact tragically on the established patterns and structures of their lives. Through detailed empirical analysis which employs both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, the twenty-two chapters in this fine volume explore these critical issues. Chapters have a wide global range across both democratic and transforming governance systems which spotlight the many different ways in which different political jurisdictions respond to the demographic, planning and policy implications of the natural disasters affecting their citizens. The authors collectively provide insights into varying socio-cultural and political disaster frameworks from China, Japan, the USA, New Zealand, Myanmar, Indonesia, Taiwan, Iran, The Philippines and Pakistan. Taking the conceptual and analytical lens of social capital, family formation and migration patterns, the authors employ comparative demographic, anthropological and sociological approaches to present the human security contexts of natural disasters when they unexpectedly wreak havoc on human societies, and the coping and response behaviors they adopt, develop and use as survivors as they set about re-building their lives over periods that can extend over several years. This book provides many innovative insights which will be of value to disaster policy experts, practitioners in the humanitarian field, civil society and government sectors and researchers engaged in disaster recovery and reconstruction practice and research.