THE AGENDA OF POPULATION STUDIES - A COMMENTARY AND COMPLAINT

Increasing technical sophistication in the analysis of population processes has been accompanied by an apparent lessening of interest by demographers in the larger related questions of social and behavioral change. It is argued that population studies contributes little to any cumulative social scientific enterprise and often fails to draw on potentially relevant advances in neighboring fields. With global demographic transition seen to be well underway, population studies has been content with a policy role marked chiefly by close attentiveness to existing antinatalist program operations. Yet the likelihood of departures from the smooth, surprise-free future of the standard medium-variant population projections is considerable. A more politically turbulent world and one with intractable economic and environmental instabilities may well be in store. Predictive capabilities claimed in the past, modest as they were, may over-estimate what is possible. Population studies' agenda in theory, policy thinking, and even technical analysis should be based on a much wider-angled view of the future.