Contemporary Developments in Applied Demography within the United States

Abstract

Changes in technology and methodological developments have significantly changed the field of applied demography in the U.S. over the last decade. These have been accompanied by alterations in perceptions of how the demographic perspective contributes to addressing public and private sector issues. This paper focuses on contemporary developments with the goal of identifying areas of future direction. Following a brief history of applied demography, recent developments are placed into five categories: training, including programs; courses and course materials; institutional structures such as the Population Association of America, the Southern Demographic Association and funding agencies; career opportunities in government, educational institutions and the private sector; technological developments in communication and data storage and retrieval; and methodological developments, such as GIS, that allow researchers to extract additional information from data. These developments provide an overall picture of applied demography in the U.S. early in the twenty-first century and provide ideas about the state of the art in applied demography in the near future.