Biosocial models: Can demographers ignore them?

Social demographers must take seriously the challenge to dominant theoretical paradigms that is posed by biosocial models. Accumulating empirical evidence documents the significant contribution of biological variables to the determination of social behaviors, including demographic behaviors. The simplest biosocial models may prove inadequate in social demographic research. More appropriate models may need to allow for causal relationships between biological and social determinants, and for effects that are interactive, non-linear, and discontinuous. While the articulation and testing of such models is unattainable at present, considerable insight can be gained by adding selected biological variables to ongoing demographic research. Demographic surveys should incorporate features of behavioral genetic designs. The chief short-term obstacles to the application of biosocial models in demography are disclinary boundaries; that is, the obstacles are institutional, not scientific.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Workshop on Biosocial Factors, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, 12 October 1994.     

Population and Climate Change: Consensus and Dissensus among Demographers

What role does population play in thinking about the problem of climate change and some of its solutions? In a survey conducted between February and April 2020, we asked European demographers to state their views on the relationship between climate change and population developments, and asked them to rate their concern about climate change and other socio-demographic issues. We found that climate change is at the top of the list of demographers’ concerns, but that their sense of urgency with respect to taking action to redress global warming is not matched by their belief that population policy can make a crucial difference in reducing CO₂ emissions: demographers are highly divided on the question whether the global population size should be reduced to lower CO₂ emissions, as well as on the question whether family planning is an effective policy instrument.     

Biosocial models of demographic behavior: An introduction

A workshop on biosocial models of demographic behavior was organized to provide information to members of the Social Sciences and Population Study Section (SSP), the group entrusted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with the responsibility for conducting the first level of peer review of demographic applications submitted to NIH for possible funding. Some of the variables studies by demographers are biological, e.g., fertility, fecundity, morbidity, and mortality, so demographers are not unaware of biological variables. However, they tend to treat biological variables as something to be explained by social, economic, and psychological factors rather than to be integrated into an explanatory paradigm. This workshop contains papers that focus upon various stages of the life cycle and explore the importance of biosocial variables in explaining selected aspects of human behavior.This introduction presents an overview of the topics covered by the authors of the papers presented and the workshop, and is based upon opening remarks at the DRG Workshop on Biosocial Models of Demographic Behavior, Bethesda, MD, 12 October 1994.