David Yaukey

Dudley L. Poston Jr.

Student~ interested in world populations and demography inevitably need to know China. As the most populous country of the world, China occupies a unique position in the world population system. How its population is shaped by the intricate interplays among factors such as its political ideology and institutions, economic reality, government policies, sociocultural traditions, and ethnic divergence represents at once a fascinating and challenging arena for investigatIon and analysis. Yet, for much of the 20th century, while population studies have developed into a mature science, precise information and sophisticated analysis about the Chinese population had largely remained either lacking or inaccessible, first because of the absence of systematic databases due to almost uninterrupted strife and wars, and later because the society was closed to the outside observers for about three decades since 1949. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, things have dramatically changed. China has embarked on an ambitious reform program where modernization became the utmost goal of societal mobilization. China could no longer afford to rely on imprecise census or survey information for population-related studies and policy planning, nor to remaining closed to the outside world. Both the gathering of more precise information and access to such information have dramatically increased in the 1980s. Systematic observations, analyses and reporting about the Chinese population have surfaced in the population literature around the globe.

The Population of Modern China

Douglas L. Anderton

The Study of Human Population

Demography

Jennifer Hickes Lundquist

The population processes in which we all participate are compared, contrasted, and synthesized into understandable trends in the latest edition of this widely acclaimed text. The authors’ cogent analysis encompasses demographic milestones like surpassing the seven billion population mark and becoming a majority urban population for the first time in human history, as well as the repercussions of a global financial crisis and the implications of two important ongoing trends: aging and fertility decline. New data, examples, and discussions of emerging demographic issues are incorporated throughout the value-priced Fourth Edition, along with graphics that highlight trends and facilitate comparisons among world regions. This pedagogically rich volume also includes propositions for debate and end-of-chapter exercises that allow readers to become comfortable with the quantitative tools that demographers use to measure and describe populations. Moreover, users will learn about some of the people behind the research that informs this text in a new feature called Careers in Demography.

David Yaukey

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