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World population, an analysis of vital data
136
BOOK REVIEWS
this approach, but there are very definite gains for those who work under these conditions and also for the book's readers. Gerontological smorgasbord can be tempting, tasteful, and interesting; while it may not satisfy everyone, of course. The work represents a series of pilot studies which have uncovered some very useful leads which, it is hoped, will be followed up by the Duke researchers and by others. GORDON F. STREIB, Ph.D.
Dept. of Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y., U.S.A.
W O R L D P O P U L A T I O N , AN ANALYSIS OF VITAL DATA. NATHAN KEYFITZ and WILHELM FL1EGER. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1968. 672 pp. $16.50. P O P U L A T I O N AND P E O P L E . EDWARD G. STOCKWELL. Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1968, 307 pp., $6.95. THESE tWO works are welcome additions to the rapidly growing population of books about population. The first is destined to be a valuable reference work. It is a compilation of available birth, death and other population statistics for every country of the world for all periods during which these figures have been duly collected. From these data the authors have computed the following tables (among others): Life Tables, Net and Gross Reproduction Rates, Intrinsic Rates of Birth, Death and Natural Increase, Observed and Projected Vital Rates and Analyses of Age Distributions. This gargantuan task, accomplished with the assistance of the computer facilities of the Population Research and Training Center at the University of Chicago, will permit more sound comparisons of international and historical population dynamics and will offer several checks on the quality of the original census data. This volume, which consists almost entirely of tables in computer print-out format, is well indexed with non-technical explanations provided for the non-demographer when necessary. It is easy to use and will be a helpful supplement to such references as the Demo-
graphic Yearbook. The second book is a more modest compilation of facts about the population of the United States written in a breezy style that is seldom found in the demographic literature. Using the classic demographic colors of mortality, fertility, migration, population size, population composition and population distribution, the author paints a distinct but far from optimistic picture of the United States. This introspection is refreshing at a time when it is fashionable to bemoan the expansion of world population from the smug cinder-block towers of U.S. suburbia. The author handles the paradox of metropolitan expansion and central city decay extremely well, and his chapter on migration and mobility is also lucid, His treatment of mortality, however, verges on the naive, especially when he suggests that age-specific mortality differences between the sexes may be related to the fact that the sick female is
BOOK REvl~*ws
137
more likely to remain at home in bed than the sick male or that auto accident fatalities are increasing when, in fact, death rates from them have been dropping since 1930. The book proposes no solutions, which is unusual but quite appropriate. Since one of the author's major concerns is the threat posed to Jeffersonian ideals of freedom by the expanding United States population, he is prudent to recognize that laws providing abortions for women on welfare or contraceptive pills for junior high school students on weekends are not the facile solutions that other self-styled Jeffersonians may think them. This b o o k would be particularly useful for use in student groups where medical care in an urban setting is being discussed or for bedside reading by the physician who thinks that population statistics are dull and that the United States has no population problem anyway. HENRY W. VAILLANT, M.D.
Department of Demography and Human Ecology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Mass. 02115, U.S.A.
BOOK REVIEWS
this approach, but there are very definite gains for those who work under these conditions and also for the book's readers. Gerontological smorgasbord can be tempting, tasteful, and interesting; while it may not satisfy everyone, of course. The work represents a series of pilot studies which have uncovered some very useful leads which, it is hoped, will be followed up by the Duke researchers and by others. GORDON F. STREIB, Ph.D.
Dept. of Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y., U.S.A.
W O R L D P O P U L A T I O N , AN ANALYSIS OF VITAL DATA. NATHAN KEYFITZ and WILHELM FL1EGER. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1968. 672 pp. $16.50. P O P U L A T I O N AND P E O P L E . EDWARD G. STOCKWELL. Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1968, 307 pp., $6.95. THESE tWO works are welcome additions to the rapidly growing population of books about population. The first is destined to be a valuable reference work. It is a compilation of available birth, death and other population statistics for every country of the world for all periods during which these figures have been duly collected. From these data the authors have computed the following tables (among others): Life Tables, Net and Gross Reproduction Rates, Intrinsic Rates of Birth, Death and Natural Increase, Observed and Projected Vital Rates and Analyses of Age Distributions. This gargantuan task, accomplished with the assistance of the computer facilities of the Population Research and Training Center at the University of Chicago, will permit more sound comparisons of international and historical population dynamics and will offer several checks on the quality of the original census data. This volume, which consists almost entirely of tables in computer print-out format, is well indexed with non-technical explanations provided for the non-demographer when necessary. It is easy to use and will be a helpful supplement to such references as the Demo-
graphic Yearbook. The second book is a more modest compilation of facts about the population of the United States written in a breezy style that is seldom found in the demographic literature. Using the classic demographic colors of mortality, fertility, migration, population size, population composition and population distribution, the author paints a distinct but far from optimistic picture of the United States. This introspection is refreshing at a time when it is fashionable to bemoan the expansion of world population from the smug cinder-block towers of U.S. suburbia. The author handles the paradox of metropolitan expansion and central city decay extremely well, and his chapter on migration and mobility is also lucid, His treatment of mortality, however, verges on the naive, especially when he suggests that age-specific mortality differences between the sexes may be related to the fact that the sick female is
BOOK REvl~*ws
137
more likely to remain at home in bed than the sick male or that auto accident fatalities are increasing when, in fact, death rates from them have been dropping since 1930. The book proposes no solutions, which is unusual but quite appropriate. Since one of the author's major concerns is the threat posed to Jeffersonian ideals of freedom by the expanding United States population, he is prudent to recognize that laws providing abortions for women on welfare or contraceptive pills for junior high school students on weekends are not the facile solutions that other self-styled Jeffersonians may think them. This b o o k would be particularly useful for use in student groups where medical care in an urban setting is being discussed or for bedside reading by the physician who thinks that population statistics are dull and that the United States has no population problem anyway. HENRY W. VAILLANT, M.D.
Department of Demography and Human Ecology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Mass. 02115, U.S.A.