Population Issues in Development

Population issues have an impact on many features of society, from where we live and work, to the partnerships we form and how many children we raise. Understanding why population characteristics vary and how population change influences human behaviour and well-being is central to development planning and policy-making. Major areas of interest include population dynamics, such as fertility trends, aging and migration, and interactions between population and environment, culture and health. Interdisciplinarity is a key feature of population studies: issues in development are tackled by scholars from demography, epidemiology, sociology, economics, and anthropology. Anthropology in particular encourages a holistic and critical perspective on the inter-relationship between the demographic characteristics of a society (fertility, mortality and migration) and their economic, biological, social and historical context. These contributions offer the possibility of predicting future population change and highlight the importance of local contingencies in determining the success or failure of development initiatives.