Applied Demography: Applications to Business, Government, Law and Public Policy - Book Review

Journal of Population Research, May, 2002 by Nick Parr

Jacob S. Siegel, Applied Demography: Applications to Business, Government, Law and Public Policy. San Diego: Academic Press. 2002. 686 pp.

The recent years have seen significant changes to the emphases and structures of Australian universities. In particular, disciplines with clearly defined career paths, especially the various branches of business studies, have grown rapidly in their number of staff, the number of courses they offer, and the number of students they serve. In this changed context there is a need for university demography disciplines to reassess the relevance of their units to the study programs and career directions of the students who elect to enrol in their course, and to change the emphasis of their programs accordingly.

Against this background, the arrival of a demographic textbook which is distinctive in its degree of focus on 'real world' uses of demography is most welcome. The selection of methods for inclusion clearly has been guided with a view towards equipping the reader for 'real work'. Pragmatic priorities would appear to underlie the extent of its coverage of the sources of data, both demographic and non-demographic, that may be useful in such applications, and of their limitations. The practical value of such demographic tools and resources is illustrated with a wonderfully varied range of examples, drawn from the business, government and non-profit sectors.

According to the preface, Applied Demography is intended for use as a textbook by advanced undergraduates and postgraduates and as a reference handbook for demographic practitioners. Certainly some prior knowledge of the elements of demography would be advantageous for the reader. A sound grasp of basic mathematics and statistics also is assumed. A few sections of the book refer to statistical techniques which in my experience are taught only at more advanced levels.

This is clearly a book designed with the American market in mind, since the examples of demographic trends and applications almost invariably relate to the United States, with passing mentions of examples from other countries relegated to appendices. Educators using this text to teach students from other countries will face a need to make clear the distinctions between their countries' demographic trends, sources of data, geographic area classification, governmental and legal systems and those of the United States, and the implications of those differences. Viewed from an Australian perspective, the attention devoted to the role of demography in litigation, especially litigation related to racial equality, is striking.

Chapter 1 rather wades through the definition of 'applied demography' before briefly, to my mind too briefly to serve as a useful reference, sketching some of the more important methods that would be covered in an introduction to technical demography. In Chapter 2 a concise account of recent demographic trends in the United States is followed, before one has the time to think 'so what?', by a discussion of their consequences for the provision of education, housing, transport and federal tax collection. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the limitations of demographic determinism.

Chapter 3 describes the basic sources of demographic data, classified by collection agency. A potentially dry topic is enlivened with accounts of the continuing controversies relating to adjustment for underenumeration and the classification of race and Hispanic origin in the United States, and a discussion of the uses of record linkage. The extensive list of the website addresses for collection agencies and displays of demographic data, presented in Appendix A, would be a most useful compilation were it not for a significant number of the addresses being either out of date or not functioning. Chapter 4 discusses the sources of error in census and survey data.

Chapter 5 covers the classification, retrieval and analysis of geographically defined demographic data. Whilst the analysis of the spatial distribution of demographic data is undoubtedly of major importance in applied demography, the lack of international standardization of geodemographic classification limits the applicability of much of the material in this chapter to other national contexts.

Chapters 6, 7 and 8, which address the applications of demography to business, government and nonprofit organizations, most clearly distinguish Applied Demography from other demographic textbooks. Chapter 6 focuses on the role of demography in the strategic planning of business expansion and contraction. Since most demography graduates will seek work in the private sector, this is arguably the most important chapter. Siegel's eye for the practical considerations is evident in his inclusion of a section on the methods of measuring the characteristics of customers. The next section provides a range of examples of the use of demographic variables in the definition of market segments and target markets, and discusses the demographic and non-demographic factors affecting business location. The inclusion of a section on the use of multiple regression in the analysis of the profitability of business establishments is a particularly pleasant surprise, because too many of the existing demographic textbooks omit coverag e of this essential element of empirical research. That said, since the fairly detailed coverage of small-area estimation methods and projections in Chapters 9 to 11 also have clear relevance to it, I think this section (along with sections of Chapter 7) could have been better placed later in the book. The final section of this chapter discusses the application of standard demographic techniques to the analysis of consumer behaviour and the durability of manufactured goods. Chapter 7, which covers the uses of demography by government and nonprofit organizations, devotes much attention to the use of measures of race and Hispanic origin, socio-economic disadvantage, and life tables in the analysis of service and facility provision. Chapter 8 deals at length (79 pages) with the demography of labour forces, making extensive use of formal demographic techniques.