31 articles
Aging of China
Aging of China: the rise in the older share of China's population. In 2025, 22.86% were 60+, 15.87% 65+; population fell a fourth straight year; retirement ages raised 2024; silver economy and pension reform responses.
Aging of Japan
Aging of Japan: the demographic shift to a society where 28.6% of people are 65+, birth numbers hit record lows (720,998 in 2024), and projections show the population falling toward 96 million by 2060.
An Essay on the Principle of Population
An Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Robert Malthus's 1798 anonymously published treatise arguing population grows geometrically while food grows arithmetically, with preventive and positive checks, poor-law policy implications, and influence on Darwin, economics, and neo-Malthusian thought.
Birth rate
Birth rate (crude birth rate): live births per 1,000 mid-year population per year; also CBR. Core fertility measure in demography; CBR minus CDR gives natural increase; differs from total fertility rate, which adjusts for age structure.
Charles F. Westoff
Charles F. Westoff is an American demographer, emeritus professor at Princeton University, known for his work on wanted and unwanted fertility and unmet need for family planning.
Christian population growth
Christian population growth tracks the change in the world's largest religious group. It reached 2.3 billion by 2020, though its share of the global population fell to 29%.
Demographic dividend
Demographic dividend: growth potential when fertility decline raises the working-age share. Also called first and second demographic dividends; East Asia gained up to 33.9% output per consumer, 1960-2000.
Demographic history of the United States
Demographic history of the United States: population growth from 3.9 million at the 1790 census to about 342 million in 2025, tracked by the decennial census, covering urbanization, immigration, racial composition change, undercounts, and aging.
Demographic transition
The demographic transition, or demographic transition theory, describes how societies move from high birth and death rates to low ones, with rapid population growth in between as mortality falls first.
Demography
Demography, also called population studies, is the statistical study of human populations: their size, composition, and distribution, shaped by fertility, mortality, and migration, using census, survey, and vital registration data and methods from life tables to projections.
Dependency ratio
The dependency ratio expresses dependents (under 15 or 65+) per 100 people of working age (15–64); also child and old-age dependency ratios; used in demographic dividend and fiscal aging analysis.
Estimates of historical world population
Estimates of historical world population reconstruct human numbers before modern censuses using tax lists, registers, archaeology, and datasets like HYDE, Gapminder, and McEvedy-Jones, anchored from 1950 onward by the UN World Population Prospects.
Famine in Sudan (2024–present)
Famine in Sudan (2024–present): IPC-confirmed famine in Darfur and Kordofan during the SAF–RSF war that began April 2023, first confirmed in Zamzam camp, later El Fasher, Kadugli, and the Western Nuba Mountains, with millions in Phase 3+ hunger.
Human overpopulation
Human overpopulation: the claim that population exceeds sustainable carrying capacity. Also Malthusianism. Current UN WPP 2024 projects peak at 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s; fertility at 2.25; carrying capacity estimates 7.7-12 billion.
Human population planning
Human population planning: deliberate government efforts to influence population size, growth, and structure, via pro-natalist or anti-natalist policies, distinct from individual family planning; spans Malthusian era, China's one-child policy, and modern pro-natalist programs in China, Japan, South Korea, and Hungary.
Human sex ratio
Human sex ratio: ratio of males to females, especially the sex ratio at birth (SRB), about 1.05 male per female live births naturally. Covers conception-to-birth trajectory, regional baselines (1.031-1.067), and the 12 countries with SRB imbalance and 23.1 million missing female births.
List of religious populations
List of religious populations: worldwide sizes and shares of Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, other religions and the religiously unaffiliated, per Pew Research Center estimates for 2010 and 2020 based on 2,700 censuses and surveys.
List of U.S. states by road deaths
List of U.S. states by road deaths: 2024 FARS/IIHS figures showing 39,254 U.S. motor vehicle deaths, state counts (Texas 4,160, California 3,876), and rates ranging from Mississippi's 25.6 per 100,000 to Rhode Island's 4.7.
Malthusianism
Malthusianism, from Thomas Robert Malthus's 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population, holds that population grows geometrically while food grows arithmetically, checked by positive checks (famine, war, disease) and preventive checks, tested empirically and countered by Boserup.
Migration background
Migration background (Migrationshintergrund) is a German-origin statistical category classifying people who, or whose parents, did not acquire German citizenship at birth; operationalized in the microcensus since 2005, criticized as an ethnic rather than migration category, and complemented since 2021 by immigration history.
Muslim population growth
Muslim population growth: worldwide increase of Muslims, 1.7 billion (2010) to 2.0 billion (2020), 21% growth, twice the rest of the world; driven by fertility of 3.1 and young age structure, per Pew projections.
One-child policy
One-child policy (独生子女政策): China's fertility restriction from 1979 to the end of 2015, enforced via fines and quotas, ended by the universal two-child policy on 1 January 2016, leaving ~90 million only children and lasting low-fertility effects.
Population ageing
Population ageing: rising share of older people in an age structure after the demographic dividend, driven mainly by falling fertility and longer lives; measured by 65+ share and old-age dependency ratios, with UN WPP 2024 projections.
Population decline
Population decline: sustained fall in a country's or region's inhabitants. 63 countries including China, Japan, and Germany have peaked; UN projects global peak of 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s, then decline.
Population density
Population density is the number of people per unit of area, also measured as agricultural or physiological density. Key figures include a Vancouver health threshold near 9,400 per km² and density elasticities of wages and rents.
Population projection
Population projection is a demographic method that estimates the future size and age-sex composition of a population by applying assumptions about fertility, mortality, and migration.
Population pyramid
Population pyramid: a paired bar chart of a population by age and sex, males left, females right. Also called age-sex pyramid. Types: expansive, stationary, constrictive; shapes record famines, wars, and baby booms.
Sub-replacement fertility
Sub-replacement fertility is a total fertility rate below the replacement level of about 2.1 births per woman. Over half of all countries, including India, China, and the US, are below it; global TFR was 2.25 in 2024 and is projected near 1.6 by 2100.
The Population Bomb
The Population Bomb is Paul Ehrlich's 1968 Sierra Club book predicting mass 1970s famine from overpopulation; it sold about 2 million copies, founded the ZPG movement, and its failed forecasts made it a landmark of discredited Malthusian demography.
Two-child policy
Two-child policy: China's 2016 universal two-child policy (全面两孩), replacing the one-child policy, and Vietnam's 1988 two-child limit, abolished 2025; covers birth effects, sex ratio, and the 2021 three-child shift.