Population and Demographic Change

One of the most important features of globalization is the way that it affects, and is affected by, issues related to population and demographic change. Population as a social scientific term refers to a group of people and can be defined by a set of characteristics that these people share, such as their living or working place as well as their social, economic, and cultural characteristics. The observation of population refers to demography, which is the specific cross-discipline of social sciences that deals with the study of the size, structure, and distribution of populations. This includes spatial and temporal changes in response to birth, migration, aging, and death rates of a defined population. The term demography was first used by Achille Guillard, a Belgian statistician, in 1855.

The term demographic change can be understood in general as a description of past, current, or future changes in a population's structure (e.g., changes in age structure and declining birth rates) and its societal consequences resulting from this development. Often associated with demographic change is the term demographic aging, which means that the demographic structure of a society is changing in such a way that the population's average age is increasing. This phenomenon can currently be observed in many industrial countries. Demographic aging is often measured as either mean age or age quota of the population (percentage of older people in relation to working people, which may differ over countries).

Population studies are important for population prospects that can indicate possible changes and threats in life quality, future need for goods, workforce potentials or new challenges for the welfare states, and so on. Demographic research and insights are used in a variety of fields, among them sociology, economics, anthropology, public health, and geography, which together open up a large field of interest for global studies. This entry discusses the major concepts of population studies and the methods of demography, as well as the current and future state of world population.