Abstract
As its name implies, the book is centered on providing a foundation for individuals interested in the core methods within the field of demography. The book’s intent is to provide extensive working knowledge of the major components to population dynamics. Fertility, mortality, and migration as the three demographic processes of change are covered in this text in great detail, although the first two processes of fertility and mortality are covered much more than the third (migration). The book also provides a solid foundation for understanding general population dynamics regarding age, period, and cohort effects on the three processes of change. Wachter clearly and succinctly lays out everything one needs to know about population characteristics and dynamics in this book, and he does it in a very accessible manner.
Relative to other demographic methods textbooks, Wachter’s text provides a substantial amount of information that can benefit those individuals who have never been exposed to the field of demography, those who need a refresher, or those who would like a deeper understanding of the mathematical components to formal demographic techniques. Because of its versatility to appeal to different audiences, this book can easily become a favorite go-to resource among students, faculty, and professionals in the field.
While its broad appeal is a major strength of the book, there are other equally compelling qualities that the text possesses that are worth mentioning. Wachter writes in a way that is accessible to virtually everyone; however, he does include more sophisticated language for those who have a working knowledge of calculus. In this regard, professors may use this book in graduate-level or very advanced undergraduate courses. Yet, one does not need to have taken calculus to follow along in the text. In fact, the sections where more mathematically sophisticated knowledge is necessary to understand some advanced component to demography are marked with an asterisk, so it is easy to skip should one feel compelled to do so.
As with any instructional aid, it is critical that the application of the material be clear and relevant to the reader. This particular text does an outstanding job in this domain. Demographic techniques can be used to model any living populations, and some techniques are derived from actuarial sciences so it is possible to craft examples that are not pertinent to the study of human populations or are not social science oriented in nature. Wachter intentionally uses national and international data to provide clear examples to illustrate the application of concepts and formulas in demography. The graphs and tables that are used to supplement what has been written in the text are also easily understandable and clearly presented. Individuals will have little difficulty in following along with the complexities of demographic techniques.
One might assume that because of my substantive research interest in health and well-being, I would be partial to Wachter’s chapters that discussed mortality. While he does a great job in discussing methods for studying mortality, I found his chapters on fertility (chapters 4 and 6) to be the most enjoyable. Most demographers would contend that fertility is much more multifaceted than mortality (and much more nuanced!). However, the author presents the most crucial components to studying period and cohort fertility in a way that does not confuse the reader. In effect, he was able to distill the complexities of fertility into more manageable information that is clear, which I appreciated and I feel others would appreciate as well.
While this book has some clear advantages over other demography textbooks, there are some limitations and areas of concern that need to be addressed. As alluded to before, two of the three major components to demography (i.e., fertility and mortality) are covered in greater detail than the third (migration). It is true that other methods texts have historically treated migration with less care than the other two processes, but migration (and the techniques for studying it) needs to be expanded upon in this text in order to give a more complete and accurate portrait of demographic processes. Texts such as Preston, Heuveline, and Guillot’s (2001) Demography: Measuring and Modeling Population Processes have provided similar depth of information on all three processes, and they also have the same amount of base information about fertility and mortality as the Wachter text.
The book is branded as one that one needs to obtain the essential information to know about major demographic processes. However, what readers really get is a crash course on formal demographic quantitative techniques and methods. This scope is too limiting for at least two reasons. First, the field of demography itself has surpassed the days of formal demography (i.e., population processes). A quick glance of the table of contents from the flagship journal Demography suggests that other social demography phenomena are much more relevant. Political demography, biodemography, demography of race/ethnicity, and spatial demography are all specializations within demography that rely on other methods that are not covered in the book but are essential to doing any kind of research in that field. In addition, because the purpose of demography has expanded to more than just counting and adjusting for change in populations, qualitative methods and techniques are becoming increasingly more common in demography. It is true that the methods that this book does not address are covered in other textbooks; however, I am unsettled by the assumption that the methods that are presented in this book are core to the discipline given the changing nature of it. Addressing these other methods within this textbook would have greatly expanded the intended audience and would have been even more useful to individuals who are in the field of planning.
There are two other minor weaknesses that may help readers of this review and readers of the Watcher textbook. While I find the “further reading” section at the end of each chapter to be useful, it is definitely not comprehensive. This section of the book could be greatly expanded to include other works, particularly since the author did not address other social demographic methods in this text. In addition, in some places, the notation for some of the formulas could be better managed. For example, the author uses ffab to discuss the fraction of females at birth in a population, but it seems that a simpler notation would have been f0 females . The use of superscripts to qualify is already seen in various parts of the text, so it would not conflict with the notational presentation found in other parts of the book. More intuitive notation would save time searching for it in the previous chapter or in previous sections within the same chapter.
These weaknesses do not undercut the overall solid quality of Wachter’s book. In less than three hundred pages, the author gives a near-flawless display of basic demographic methods in a careful and comprehensive manner. However, I would encourage individuals to use this book as a main textbook and supplement it with other books on demographic techniques that delve deeper into other critical methods that are also essential to the study of populations. While this book is centered on methodologically training the reader, it could benefit from a presentation of how these methods are seen in more recent research. Individuals who are looking to use this book as a teaching tool will also need to supplement their course with other texts to draw out its applicability and utility in current research.
This book has much relevance to the field of planning. Chapter 5 on population projection would be the most important chapter to planners. Projections, which capture changes in a population, are necessary to engage in any kind of evaluation research (such as cost–benefit studies or needs assessment research). Knowing and projecting births and deaths could give planners a sense of what structures need to be added or removed for particular areas. In a similar fashion, knowing and projecting who is likely to migrate to and from an area could also benefit planners. Planners who are interested in understanding demand, delivery, and location of services in a particular locale would greatly benefit from reading this book. However, benefit does not come from learning how to use projection software (for example). Rather, it provides a baseline understanding of what are the important components to consider when studying population change. In that way, this book is not necessarily directly applicable to applied planning, but it does show how to think about some of the issues that may arise in applied planning. Planners should naturally gravitate to this book because of its utility and the clarity of the information presented. However, for more applied components to demography, planners will need to supplement this book with an applied demography book.