Resources on Populations

Instructors wishing to improve their background in demography can find good introductions in most ecology textbooks. To get a better handle on issues in human demography, three publications from the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) provide short introductions:

• Gelbard, A. C. Haub and M.M. Kent. 1999 World population beyond six billion. Population Bulletin 54 (1).
• McFalls, Joseph A. Jr. 1998. Population: a lively introduction (3rd edition). Population Bulletin 53 (3): 1-43.
• Lutz, Wolfgang. 1994. The future of world population. Population Bulletin 49 (1) 1-47.

PRB also publishes a very useful annual global data sheet in poster format (electronic versions are also available).

For a lengthier introduction to population issues, see:

• Cohen, J. 1995. How many people can the Earth support? W.W. Norton and Co. NY. 530 pp.

For World Wide Web resources, see:

• the PRB home page and PRBís PopNET ,
• the U.S. Census Bureauís home page and their excellent international page,
• the United Nations Population Information Network home page.

An interesting (but rather one-sided) video is "Paul Ehrlich and the Population Bomb", available through Films For the Humanities. See also the excellent web site, maintained by PBS, which originally aired the video.

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