This book presents a cross section of the work and concerns of social demographers worldwide, covering a broad range of topics from social structure through population structure to social policy; from fertility and mortality through migration to the way in which organisations deal with the demographic environment in which they operate. Topics addressed also include morbidity and health profiles and transitions, as well as policies and programs concerned with these and other issues.The volume touches on some of the major links between population and societal dynamics. It addresses demographic patterns and issues from micro-level, meso-level, and macro-level perspectives and helps put into focus the past, present and future of the mutual relations between population dynamics and societal responses.With a unique introductory chapter discussing the global unevenness of population growth today, its associations with inequality and the challenges it presents for the future, and a truly international approach to social and demographic change and policy responses, this book will serve as a valuable resource for professionals and students in sociology, demography, social policy and local governance.

Covers all major areas of demography

Chapter 1. Introduction: The Roots and Fruits of Population Growth and Social Structures: Demographic and Sociological Vistas (Jon Anson).- Part 1: Demography and Social Structure.- Chapter 2. The Demographic Transition in the Nasa Indigenous People and Black Populations of Northern Cauca (Colombia) (Fernando Urrea-Giraldo).- Chapter 3. Intermarriage and Assimilation Among Arabs in the United States: Estimates, Causes, and Trends, 1990-2010 (Andrzej Kulczycki).- Chapter 4. Occupational Classes of Immigrants and their descendants in East-Germany (Oliver Winkler).- Chapter 5. Violence, Firearms and Life Expectancy In Mexico (Guillermo Julián González-Pérez).- Part 2: Population Structure.- Chapter 6. Sex ratios in old age: Comparing Countries in Middle Eastern Asia to East and Southeast Asia (Sehar Ezdi).- Chapter 7. From ageing-driven growth towards the ending of growth: Subnational population trends in New Zealand (Natalie Jackson).- Chapter 8. Natural Decrease in Semi-Peripheral Nations: County-Level Analyses of Mexico and Turkey (Guadalupe Marquez-Velarde).- Chapter 9. From Topic to Problem: Organisational Mechanisms of constructing demographic change (Sven Kette).- Part 3: Social Policy.- Chapter 10. Minorities in Spanish Secondary Education: School Segregation, Between Reality and Official Statistics (Brahim El-Habib Draoui).- Chapter 11. Small School Closures in Rural Areas ¿ the Beginning or the End of a Downward Spiral? Some evidence from Austria (Sigrid Kroismayr).- Chapter 12. Maternal outcomes in the context of free maternal healthcare provisioning in North Central and Southwestern Nigeria (Anthony Ajayi).- Chapter 13. The Association between Household and Community Single Motherhood and Adolescent Pregnancy in South Africa (Sibusiso Mkwananzi).- Chapter 14. Tobacco use among men in sub-Saharan Africa: Does family structure matter? (Favour L.C. Ntoimo).