This book offers an overview of the latest developments in contemporary population issues by examining the current unprecedented changes in fertility, family behavior, mortality, and migration. It explores new theoretical perspectives that seek to incorporate narratives of the future, demographic uncertainty, and determinants of unplanned pregnancy. The context of fertility is changing, and the new, important subjects of policy interventions, multi-partner fertility and complex parenthood are explored. Recent developments in assortative mating, partner choice, and relationship stability are examined in both national and international contexts, while further chapters analyze contemporary international migration. Methodological advances in modeling heterogeneity in mortality and extending period/cohort translation relationships are presented, and new analyses explore the implications of age patterns of fertility change. As such, this book provides up-to-date research spanning the entire field to illuminate contemporary developments, and will be of value to demographers, sociologists, economists, and all those interested in understanding demographic change.

Autorentext

Robert Schoen received a Ph.D. degree in Demography from the University of California Berkeley in 1972. He has been a Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Johns Hopkins University, and Penn State University, where he was the Hoffman Professor of Family Sociology and Demography. In 2004, he received the Mindel Sheps Award in Mathematical Demography / Demographic Methods from the Population Association of America.