Demographic Methods and Concepts

”‘A key feature of the text is a diskette that contains Microsoft Excel-based programs for illustrating and doing fundamental demographic calculations (life tables, growth rates, standardization, and so forth)…The book is a very good compendium of basic demography that clearly is based on the author’s practical teaching experience. It has re-opened for me the possibility of successfully teaching demographic methods to students not primarily interested in population studies. I look forward to using it’. Population Studies, Vol.58, No.2, 2004, pp255-256.“”‘Demographic Methods and Concepts is likely to have such a broader readership, since it is designed to serve also as a self-contained introduction and instructional manual on its subject. It is well written (enlivened with apt quotations from Graunt) and requires little mathematical backround. The graphics are excellent. Fully up-tp-date in terms of ‘desktop demography, it has bibliographies that cater to the internet generation as well as to old-style page turners, numerous spreadsheet exercises, and an attached CD-ROM containing excel modules linked to the text’. Population and Development Review 2003.”

Don Rowland is a Reader in Population Studies at the Australian National University, where he teaches courses on demographic methods, population trends and social changes. He has published monographs, and numerous papers in academic journals and books, focussing on migration, the family, ageing, and national population changes. His research has included many studies undertaken for Australian and international organisations. Like many demographers, his research and teaching is undertaken in an interdisciplinary setting; interests in family sociology and social gerontology supplement his formal academic qualifications in geography and demography.