Course summary
Demography, the science of population, is concerned with virtually everything that influences, or can be influenced by, population size, distribution, processes, structure, or characteristics. This course pays particular attention to the causes and consequences of population change. Changes in fertility, mortality, migration, technology, lifestyle and culture have dramatically affected the United States and the other nations of the world. These changes have implications for a number of areas: hunger, the spread of illness and disease, environmental degradation, health services, household formation, the labor force, marriage and divorce, care for the elderly, birth control, poverty, urbanization, and business marketing strategies. An understanding of these is important as business, government, and individuals deal with the demands of the changing population.
Course Syllabus Requires Adobe Acrobat.
Online Readings Packet (ND.Edu Netid is required for access)
Discussion Questions
These are questions we will be discussing in class. Most of them are covered in the readings but we'll fill in gaps in class as necessary. Keeping these questions in mind as you go through the readings will help you to focus on some of the most critical points. This list will be updated regularly, at least a few days before we cover the material in class. We will break down into small groups to go over many of these questions. Similar questions will often appear on the exams, so being prepared to discuss these as we go along will be very beneficial to you.
Useful Web Links
Remember, there is a lot of junk on the web! But there are also some excellent scholarly resources. Here are some links that I find particularly helpful.
United States Census Bureau. The main page includes easy access to lots of data, statistics and reports. See especially the Census 2000 web page, which includes links to data and findings from both the 2000 and 1990 censuses. If you want to do your own analysis of census data sets, several of them can be accessed here. To find out about your own neighborhood, go here and type in your address.
World & US Population Clocks (Click on the clocks to get more useful info).
World Population Information (includes both current and historical information on world population)
Fedstats (In particular, go to the A-Z index and look up the topic you want, e.g. births, deaths.)
National Center for Health Statistics (The links for Fastats and Health Topics are especially helpful)
The Washington Post has a web pages devoted to the 2000 Census. Other useful research-oriented sites include the Population Reference Bureau (see in particular the Population Bulletins), The Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research, and the Brookings Institution Center on Metropolitan Policy.
Our library has put together some great online resources for Notre Dame users; the Electronic Journal Access is especially great. Google is a good search engine, but for academic work you'll often do better with Google Scholar and Web of Science. EBSCOhost describes itself as "a powerful online reference system accessible via the Internet. It offers a variety of proprietary full text databases and popular databases from leading information providers. The comprehensive databases range from general reference collections to specially designed, subject-specific databases for public, academic, medical, corporate and school libraries." Lexis-Nexis will let you "Search the full text of today's news or search back more than 20 years." The library also has resource pages devoted to the Social Sciences in General and to Sociology in particular. And, of course, the library has books too! Don't just limit your research to those items that you can access electronically.
Other Universities have been hard at work too. For example, the University of Michigan has a pretty extensive selection of materials (you might be especially interested in its Sociology, Demography and Health sections).
