Demography - by Samuel Preston & Patrick Heuveline & Michel Guillot (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This book presents and develops the basic methods and models that are used by demographers to study the behaviour of human populations. The procedures are clearly and concisely developed from first principles and extensive applications are presented.

From the Back Cover

This book presents and develops the basic methods and models that are used by demographers to study the behavior of human populations. The procedures are clearly and concisely developed from first principles, and extensive applications are presented.

The authors focus on quantitative procedures for studying the growth and structure of populations, including measurement of fertility and mortality, population projection, and equilibrium models. The book also covers procedures for evaluating data quality and estimating demographic parameters when conventional data are deficient. It will provide a comprehensive introduction to demographic methods for all students and researchers in this subject.

Review Quotes

"This will be a bible for demographers in coming years and decades." Professor James Vaupel, Founding Director, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

"It is really a graduate-level textbook of formal demography. As such, it is sorely needed. I will certainly use it as my basic textbook when it comes out. The authors have done an excellent job of keeping this interesting and informative." Professor Kenneth Hill, Director of the Johns Hopkins Population Center

"It is not a text on population geography. That was not the creative intention of the authors: they provide a carefully crafted toolkit for advanced exercises on demographic analysis. It succeeds as an undergraduate level text and is reasonable priced" Geographical Association

"For the mathematically competent, it is terrific. The coverage of the book is indicated by its 12 chapters: basic concept and measures, age-specific rates and probabilities, the life table and single decrement processes, multiple decrement processes, fertility and reproduction, population projections, the stable population model, demographic relationships in non-stable populations, modelling age patterns of vital events, methods of evaluating data quality, indirect estimation methods, and increment-decrement life tables ( this chapter contributed by Alberto Palloni). As a text, the book could be used as a first course for those with particularly good mathematical skills but it is probably better employed as a successor to a simpler methods course in which the fundamental ideas of demography have been made clear. The earlier course would filter out those students who would most benefit from a course based on this book.

For the practitioner, this is an excellent reference book. It takes the fear out of a lot of mathematical material in demograohy through clear and explicit explanantion...this is a five star book. Fantastic, terrific, exciting. Its authors deserve very great praise for the service that they provided to the discipline. Its emergence has already led us here at the ANU to consider a restructuring of our teaching to incorporate a course based on this book." Journal of Population Research

"This is a five-star book. Fantastic, terrific, exiting. Its authors deserve very great praise for the service that they have provided the discipline." Journal of Population Research

About the Author

Samuel H. Preston is Frederick J. Warren Professor of Demography and Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written monographs on mortality patterns, world urbanization, the history of child health, and other subjects. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

Patrick Heuveline is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Research Associate of the Population Research Center at the University of Chicago. His recent work applies demographic analysis to such diverse topics as the Cambodian genocide and the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Michel Guillot is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, where his research focuses on formal demography and mortality in developing countries. He has a Ph.D. in Demography and Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.