Introduction

Abstract

Demography is often defined as the study of population, particularly with regard to its size, age-sex structure, socio-economic composition, geographical distribution, change over time, and processes driving change (Shryock and Siegel 1976). The specialist area of applied demography, which is the focus of this volume, has been summarised as “the subfield of demography focusing on practical applications of demographic materials and methods” (Siegel 2002, p. 2). Applied demography, in turn, is sometimes divided into two discrete areas of interest - business demography and public sector demography (Swanson and Pol 2008) – based on the audience for the work. This book focuses primarily on the la..