Beyond Six Billion: Forecasting the World's Population

This is a book that examines the issues you encounter when forecasting demographic variables and focuses on long-term forecasts. This is not a book on methods, you will not see any formulae, it only gives you ideas for how you should approach long-term demographic forecasting, what to think about etc. See it as an 'advisor' to your research. Because there is no mathematics or statistics in this book so it can be understood by almost anyone with a basic experience of statistical analysis regardless their field of study. Basically the book talks about the major demographic variables: fertility, mortality, and migration. It also talks about how forecasts are made and what to watch out for. The different contributing authors talk about their own experiences and give advise, together with examples, graphs and tables. In short this is a book for researchers to help them understand their variables better. I really liked this book, it was easy to read and understand. The content of the book is: 1. introduction 2. the accuracy of past projections 3. transitional fertility 4. posttransition fertility 5. mortality 6. international migration 7. the uncertainty of population forecasts (8. biographies and index) Note that the appendices of the book (dealing with formulae, software use, simulation data etc.) has to be bought separately from the publisher's website. You will not get any of the formulae used or statistical software guides used in the book, which was a big disappointment to me because that was one of the reasons I bought it. Because of this the book looses a star.