A myopic view of history and underdevelopment of theory have been two shortcomings of demography, related to the pragmatism of the discipline and to demographers' predilection for precise measures. A healthy counterpoise is the current surge of interest in demographic history, where questions remote from current practical concerns invite study and exact data are scarce. Historical demography, hitherto an esoteric field of specialization, is now a robustly growing sub-discipline. Historians, archaeologists, and others are also joining in the exploration of neglected demographic fields of history. Demographer's horizons are being stretched, new frontiers of interdisciplinary contact are being opened, and the historical foundations of theory are being
Mankind is undergoing an extraordinary ex pansion of numbers, unparalleled in history, which began in the eighteenth century and which has gathered increasing momentum since the beginning of the present century. The increase of the earth's human population during the last two hundred years has been three times greater than the cumulated growth during all the previous millennia of man's existence on the planet, and it appears likely that a still greater increase may be in store for the future, before a position of numerical stability is reached. The speeding up of population growth has been brought about by a great improvement in the conditions of mortality, which has enhanced the biological power of multiplication of the species. This has been partly offset in the economically more developed countries by restraint of reproduction, but reproduction rates remain undiminished in most of the less developed countries. The latter countries contain the major share of world population and are receiving an even larger share of the current increase resulting from the excess of births over deaths throughout the world. The crux of the world population problem is in the association of persistent poverty and technological retardation with unremitting rapid growth of numbers in the less developed countries.
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