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The book Handbook of Population, edited by Dudley L Poston and Michael Micklin, is reviewed.
Eur J Population (2007) 23:213214
DOI 10.1007/s10680-007-9116-8
Dudley L. Poston and Michael Micklin (eds.), Handbook of Population
Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, 2005, XIII + 918 pp
Joshua R. Goldstein
Published online: 30 March 2007 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007
The Handbook of Population edited by Dudley L. Poston and Michael Micklin aims to provide an update of the landmark 1959 publication, The Study of Population: An Inventory and Appraisal, by Hauser and Duncan. In 28 substantive chapters, as well as an introduction and epilog, Poston and Micklin have succeeded in getting leading demographers, mostly from the United States, to provide surveys of their own specialties.
The editors have provided the authors great leeway, with the result being that the chapters vary considerably in form and contents. Some, such as the chapter on mathematical demography by Land et al. provide impressively condensed and comprehensive overviews. Others, such as Masons highly readable chapter on Economic Demography, offers a discussion of selected highlights. Nearly all of the authors have ventured their opinions about what the research agenda in their eld should be. As such, the major contribution of the volume is to provide a forum for leading demographers to offer their opinions about the state of their eld and their vision of the future.
The volume does not aim to be comprehensive. There is for example little discussion about the consequences of population growth. On the other hand, there are interesting overviews of elds with which many demographers are unfamiliar. For example, the chapter on Organizational and Corporate Demography provides an excellent introduction and overview. Other chapters, like that on Social or Sociological Demography by Hirschman and Tolnay analyze the disciplinary boundaries and exchanges between the eld of sociology and demography. The Morgan and Hagewen chapter on Fertility searches for universals, and provides a provocative list of 10 stylized empirical
J. R. Goldstein (&)
Ofce of Population Research, Princeton University, Wallace Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544, USAe-mail: [email protected]
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ndings in fertility research. The Carey and Vaupel chapter on biodemography tries to do both: with detailed sections on both theory and stylized results. In general, theory is no more omnipresent in this volume than in demography in general. Waites chapter on Marriage and Family skimps on Marxist, Parsonian, anthropologic, and economic theories of the family and household and instead focuses on recent patterns of union formation. On the other hand, the chapter on Demography of Race and Ethnicity by Saenz and Morales provides theoretical background in assimilationist and structural theories to their discussion of inequality.
This nearly 900 page book has few formulas and many references. It provides personal and at times idiosyncratic views of the various sub-elds of demography. It is probably of interest mostly to already-practicing research demographers, who are interested in reading reections and syntheses of their own eld. Unlike some of the handbooks, say in Labor Economics, the chapters do not aim to be stand-alone introductions, but rather essays of syntheses and reection. While most of the chapters of this book will not be particularly useful as introductions, say for graduate students, this is the kind of book that a research library will want to have, and most researchers will at least want to consult the volume to see what the authors have to say about the state of their subeld.
A name index of authors enables the book to serve as a kind of comparative whos who. Poston and Micklins epilog on research priorities tries to think outside of the box, identifying male fertility, biosocial demography, and sexual orientation as areas that have received insufcient attention.
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Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007