World populations: an analysis of vital data
- Chicago University of Chicago Press. 1968
- 672 p.
"In the single month of September, 1967, the increase [in world population] is more than in mankind's first half million years. This statement from the Preface to World Population indicates why populations are no longer thought of in terms of tribes and clans, but in relation to global effects a change which marks population control as the first important matter on which local and national sovereignty has yielded to the interest of mankind. World Population brings to bear as much of the theory of population as can be applied to numerical data. The first book of its kind in this field, it provides data important to biologists and social scientists of diverse interests. World Population was first conceived as a collection of birth, death, and population statistics, all by age and sex, for whatever countries and periods of time these are available. It has been expanded to provide nine additional tables for each population. These include life tables computed by a new method devised for this book; Net and Gross Reproduction Rates; population projections; intrinsic rates; the stable population and a measure of how close the observed age distribution is to the stable; rates of birth and death compared by three different standards; the projection matrix and its spectral components; reproductive value; and the decomposition of the age distribution. For accuracy in the reproduction of the numerical results, the book has been printed by photo-offset from the original computer printout. To clarify the results, explanatory symbols are printed above or alongside the figures. The book contains some 300.000 separate items of information, and no other means of publication could have ensured the necessary accuracy.