What is on a Demographer’s Mind?

A worldwide survey conducted among IUSSP members (970 demographers) shows what is on Demographers’ Minds. A nice paper (via)!

And the prize for 'the most important population issue' goes to 'Population Aging'!  'Urbanization' got the second place, except in Europe (Figure 2).

The general remarks of the paper are closely related to this recent article by The Economist "A new science of population". Quote:

“Now though, […] the focus of demographers has switched from the overall size of populations to their composition—that is, to age groups and their relation to one another. Instead of high fertility rates, demographers study ageing, dependency ratios, the “demographic dividend” (a bulge of working-age adults) and distorted sex ratios, which result when millions of parents choose the sex of their children, often by aborting baby daughters.”

Figure 2: What do demographers think are the most important problems in their country of residence? Percentages of demographers who think a problem is very important

[click to enlarge image]

 

Image source