'This comprehensive handbook provides an overview and update of the issues, theories, processes, and applications of the social science of population studies. The volume's 30 chapters cover the full range of conceptual, empirical, disciplinary, and applied approaches to the study of demographic phenomena. This book is the first effort to assess the entire field since Hauser and Duncan's 1959 classic, The Study of Population. The Handbook of Population is organized for classroom as well as reference use. It is divided into four sections --- Population Structure, Population Processes, Population and the Social Sciences, and Applied Demography --- and includes both an Introduction and an Epilogue by the editors. Part I, Population Structure, contains chapters on population size and growth, age and sex composition, marriage and family structure, and demographic analyses of gender, aging, race and ethnicity, and the labor force. Part II is focused on population processes, and includes chapters on fertility, infant and adult mortality, internal and international migration, and the demography of social stratification. Part III reflects the growing multidisciplinary nature of demography. Chapters are devoted to sociological, anthropological, economic, historical, ecological, mathematical, and political demography, to biodemography, and to demographic perspectives on organizations and corporations as well as on urban and spatial phenomena. Finally, Part IV recognizes the varied practical applications of demographic perspectives and data to national and global issues and problems. Its chapters cover population and development, population and environment, fertility planning, population distribution planning, small area and business demography, health demography, and population policy. The chapter authors are among the leading contributors to demographic scholarship over the past four decades. They represent a variety of disciplines and theoretical perspectives as well as interests in both basic and applied research.