Population Problems Webwatch

Image by permission from 6 milliards d'Hommes / 6 billion Human Beings

Academic Institutes and Associations

Centre for Population Studies, London School of Health and Tropical Medicine  Lindsey Tilberg

Britain's largest population demography-related research group, the Centre for Population Studies, sponsors many different kinds of population research. While some of the research deals with Britain's population, its focus is on developing areas of the world such as Pakistan and Africa, especially in the areas of reproductive and sexual health. Several recent research papers are online using Adobe Acrobat, but older ones must be ordered through them ranging in price from £1.00 to £3.00. Also available through the centre are short courses about various issues dealing with population. One other useful aspect to the site is their list of  links to related pages.

The Demography Program of the Australian National University Kennon Bauman

The Demography and Population Studies Program of the Australian National University provides a useful springboard into research of the study of demography and population problems. Most importantly, the site provides a way to search through an online library of demographic and population data. The site also provides links to several other useful sources of information for the study of population problems. There are links to several electronic journals, census servers, sites about conferences dealing with the material, and even other virtual libraries to name a few. The site is essentially a crossroad from which one may pursue information in many directions.

International Union for the Scientific Study of Population   Benjamin C Aaker

The International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, founded in 1928, is a professional institution composed of around 2000 members. 670 of these members are from developing countries. Such a wide range of scientific backgrounds gives the IUSSP a better objectivity than is found in other institutions for population study. The IUSSP's main concern is to promote demography as a science. To accomplish this goal, the institution has set up three different types of groups that members can join or create. These groups can deal with anything the members would like dealing with population studies. The group types range in work intensity and duration. The IUSSP then hosts conferences to highlight the groups' findings. Some conferences the IUSSP has hosted include Demography of Famines, Family Planning, and the Spread of HIV. IUSSP's website is easy to navigate, but contains little direct information on population. A links page is provided to find this information.

Office of Population Research at Princeton University  Michael Harkness

The Office of Population Research (OPR) at Princeton University is the oldest population research center in the United States. The website for the OPR has been rated as a "Top 5% Internet Site" for it's friendly interface and quality of information.
The OPR contains both the Center for Research on Child Well Being and the Center for Migration and Development. Through the OPR website, students and non-students alike can access archived research data, survey results, conference papers, and research papers. The OPR website also provides access to the Population Research Library and contains links to over 30 other population research centers and institutions.
Although the OPR website does not include information on a broad range of population topics, the topics covered by the OPR site contain a great deal of information. For example, this site would be quite valuable for someone seeking information regarding the impact of population issues on children.

Population Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin Tabitha Lurz

This web site has a lot to offer for online research materials. Its online PRC Library Catalog allows the user to search for anything from libraries across the country. Searches can be conducted with keywords, location, and/or dates. However, the actual documents are not online and must be obtained through Inter-Library Loan. There are a few draft papers which contain useful information. The many links (1-2) to other web sites related to demographics are also a good source of information.

Population Research Institute (Pennsylvania State University)   Benjamin C Aaker

The Population Research Institute is composed of 130 members who are mainly research associates and graduate students. PRI's website is largely a place for its members to post their research. Information can be found on a member publications page. Most publications explore issues including fertility rates, the spread of HIV, infant health, and education. The site is difficult to navigate because of the large number of links on the first page. A great amount of jargon familiar to demographers is used throughout the site, making it unfriendly for others to utilize.

The Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University Justin Kopetsky

This is a useful website that contains research on family and household demographics, health and fertility, aging and health, and migration and immigration and pupluation distribution. The People section of the site offers a listing of all of the faculty staff and alumni along with email links. The most in-depth section is the Publications. This is a listing of full-text newsletters and reports that also provideas a list of facutly articles and books. The Data Archive and Library sections are basically useless because the information in the archive is only available to students of Brown and the Library page only describes the on-campus library.

Population Studies Center (PSC) at the University of Michigan  Stacy Fuchs

Population Studies Center, PSC, is one of the oldest population centers in the United States.  It was founded in 1961 as an interdisciplinary organization.  PSC is one of four centers within the Institute for Social Research (ISR) and currently draws faculty from Sociology, Economics, Anthropology, Public Health, and Social Work.  Their website provides information about PSC as a whole and gives summaries of all the research.  The PSC has five major research areas: 1) fertility, family planning, health, and sexual behavior; 2) marriage, family, children, and links between generations; 3) inequality, social mobility, race, and ethnicity; 4) aging and disability; 5) education and training.  The website also provides information on graduate and postdoctoral positions, funding, training, events, and numerous other resources.  The PSC website provides a lot of good information about what they do, but it is not extremely useful for generally information gathering. 

International and Non-governmental Agencies

International Planned Parenthood Federation   Colleen Kelley

Colorful and well presented, this site is easy to navigate. Dealing with many controversial issues, this site is also very up-to-date and features commentary on current events, such as President Bush's Global Gag Rule. Though much of the information is presented from the Planned Parenthood viewpoint, aside from these controversial issues and attitudes the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) site provides access to important demographics such as country profiles. Because this is an international site, there is a lot of information regarding the IPPF worldwide, but this information is divided according to regions, making it easy to access.

Population Action International  Kori Werner

This organization advocates slowing population growth in order to enhance quality of life for all people. They support expansion of voluntary family planning, educational and economic opportunities for girls and women, and further expanding general reproductive health services. The organization is one of the co-sponsors of the PLANet Campaign. The goal of this group is to inform the American public about the importance of international family planning programs to everyone in the world and how US support for such programs is critical to their success. The links on this site mainly pertain to news stories relevant to current population issues. However, it does not contain many useful links to other relevant factual sites. There is a link to "The Day of Six Billion" (www.dayof6billion.org), an informational site that advocates that people make informed decisions about their health, education, and environment because each person has 5,999,999,999 neighbors and all of our decisions influence each other. Day of Six Billion provides facts about family size, natural resources, contraception, and age of childbearing.

The Population Council Justin Kopetsky

This is a very useful web site. It contains a multitude of information on reproductive health, contraception, fertility, and family planning. Avery useful feature is the Population and Social Policy page. It gives information on how various aspects of a nation's population affects policy and how policy can change the demographics of a nation. There is also nation-specific information that can be obtained by clicking on the region where a country of interest is located. Along with all of this there is also a general search feature and a What's New section with current articles that are of interest.

Population Reference Bureau  Michael Harkness

The Population Reference Bureau (PRB) provides a wide range of information about every region on the globe. The PRB website contains population data sheets for the US and for the world. These data sheets include extensive information such as population, crude birth & death rates, population projections, mortality & fertility rates, life expectancy, GDP per capita, etc.
Both monthly newsletters and quarterly bulletins are published and sold by the PRB and discuss current issues and research. The PRB website includes summaries of these publications and provides for the purchase of these publications online.
The PRB website includes "The World of Child 6 Billion", an examination of the issues today's children will face as adults. This examination outlines 6 key topics of concern: air, water, nutrition, health, housing, and education. Detailed lesson plans and presentation guides for "The World of Child 6 Billion" can be purchased online through the PRB website.
Also on the PRB website is a comparison of 41 US states to other regions of the world with similar geographical area. This comparison puts world population issues in more familiar terms and brings to light many similarities between the two regions.
The PRB web page also contains an extensive glossary of terms with definitions and units of measure for statistics. Also available on the PRB web site are PRB press releases, contact information, links by topic, and a quick facts section by region and by topic.

UNEP/GRID Clearinghouse  Lindsey Tilberg

With servers located at EROS in Sioux Falls, the UNEP/GRID (United Nations Environment Programme / Global Resource Information Database) Clearinghouse contains data about each of the following: Population/Population Density, Topographics, Climate, Soils, and Vegetation. Each of these issues relate to population in various ways. Because this is from the US Geological Survey, it relates more to the way people react to the environment and vice versa. It's a great site with graphics displaying population density of different areas (where available), a report on the density and metadata (data about the data). It is even possible to download specific data about each region (Africa, Asia, Latin American and Caribbean, Brazil) as well as global population. There are also map servers that allow you to pick which features you want to view on a map. It is a great site with a lot of information if you know how to use it.

United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (the Cairo Conference)  Ben Tesch

Also known as the "Cairo Conference," The United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) was held September 5-13, 1994. World leaders, representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGO), and United Nations agencies descended upon Cairo to agree on a course of action. On the website, one can find the conference's final program of action, which includes sections on reproductive rights, migration, development, and international cooperation. One can also find full text documents of all statements made by NGO's, government officials, and UN agencies. The website also features documentation prepared before the conference by the coordinating committee and the follow-up debate held by the UN General Assembly regarding the conference. Of particular usefulness on the site is the final report made by the conference and the statements made by all the countries represented.

World Bank Health Nutrition and Population Tabitha Lurz

This section of The World Bank Group site has a variety of online information related to population. Many of its key publications are available for viewing or downloading. The two main topics, HIV/AIDS and Safe Motherhood, are discussed in-depth. Documents from the United Nations Commission on Population and Development (34th Session) are also online. The archive of HNPFLASH, the monthly electronic newsletter, offers information on recent trends and developments in population and other related topics.
In addition, there is a lot of information contained in their Health, Nutrition, and Population section including publications, events and news, country information sheets, and related links.

World Health Organization / Organisation mondiale de la Santé  Chris Dabney

The World Health Organization, or WHO, is an organization dedicated to improving the physical and mental health of all individuals. The website itself serves a wide array of functions, providing information about the organization and its activities (from the form of WHO publications, to documentation of WHO Executive Board meetings), as well as offering much information on diseases throughout the world. Furthermore, the “Information Sources” portion of the website alone holds information on disease outbreaks, international health legislation, statistical information, and world health reports. To assist in easily locating desired information, the site also provides a “search the site” function. This is a very good site to visit if you’re in need of statistical information.

World Resources Institute  Colleen Kelley

Taking a more environmental approach, this site focuses on the ecological effects of today's population. This site provides an in-depth look at resources and usage and offers articles on a variety of topics and concerns. The mission of the World Resources Institute (WRI) is to provide information and solutions in order to halt the damage that is being done to the ecosystem and the earth's changing climate. Within the site, there are links to facts and figures and in-depth articles from agriculture to economics. Some examples of the information available at this site range from graphs on public transportation usage in the United States to images of the watershed basins in Africa. The themes and issues of the organization are clearly outlined and there are also a number of regional resources that provide information on various aspects of population and its effect on the ecosystem.

Zero Population Growth (ZPG)  Stacy Fuchs

Zero Population Growth (ZPG) is a national nonprofit organization established in 1968.  It is committed to slowing population in an attempt to achieve a balance between people and resources, protect the environment, and stop population growth around the world.  ZPG is headquartered in Washington, DC, and the website offers contact information, membership information, a list of publications about population, job opportunities, legislative information, and a catalog with information for educators and others interested in ZPG.  ZPG supports women’s rights and works to increase their position in the world.  ZPG advocates population control, including abortion as a means of control.  This site is extremely biased and offers very little useful information for the objective researcher.  However, it does have some interesting information and articles if the reader is actively aware of their bias.

Government Agencies

Committee on Population of the National Academy of Sciences Ben Tesch

Established in 1983, the Committee on Population (CPOP) was created by the Natural Academy of Science (NAS). The purpose of the committee is to bring knowledge of the population sciences to bear on major issues of science and public policy. The committee is currently engaged many projects focusing on current population projections and the effect this projected increase will have on social, environmental, economic and health factors around the world. The website gives you little information other than tidbits on their current projects, a brief history of the committee, and a list of its members. Unless you are looking for information on the CPOP itself, the site is not of much use.

USAID's Center for Population, Health & Nutrition  Chris Dabney

USAID’s Center for Population, Health, & Nutrition is “The United States Agency for International Development.” While, in my opinion, not as useful as the World Health Organization site, this site still has its merits. It offers descriptions of PHN’s major program areas, including “Child Survival, HIV/AIDS, Nutrition & Maternal Health, and Population.” Each area offers a reasonable amount of information, but in addition to this the site offers an extensive list of links to other such organizations. If you’re ever in need of research and don’t know where to begin… go to the PHN links page. Also, there is a fairly large publications list provided to augment online sources. This is a good site to visit if you are interested in getting some idea of what the United States itself is doing, as opposed to the activities of more international groups.

US Census Bureau, International Programs Center  Kennon Bauman

The US Census Bureau and International Programs Center provides a host of information dealing with every facet of population research possible. Not only do these sites provide a host of links to other, more specific programs and databases, there is also no lack of data on the site itself, including results from the most recent (2000) United States Census. The site contains almost every government study and program even vaguely related to the study of population in the United States. While the site's data is mainly applied to the US, the International Programs Center provides information with a world-wide emphasis. The International Programs center provides basic data, graphs, and charts for nearly every country in the world. Although the US Census site provides in-depth data on the demographic issues of the United States, the International Programs center serves more as a basis for deeper research. The information it provides is extensive, and useful, but hardly complete.

Exhibitions

6 milliards d'Hommes / 6 billion Human Beings  Kori Werner

This is an excellent informational site run through the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, France. The site is extremely interactive and addresses 4 major issues: 1) "How Many Children in Your Lifetime?" 2) "Death, a Game of Chance" 3) "Towards a Stabilization" and 4) "Questions for the Future" In each section, the user is asked to enter his/her age and the population information is personalized to the age that is inputted. The user can learn how many people were alive when he/she was born, what proportion of the population is older and younger than he/she, and what proportion of babies born during the same year as the user are still alive, etc. In other sections, the user is asked questions about his/her life choices and the website calculates the maximum number of children the user could have. Each section also contains options allowing the user to view information relevant to other parts of the world. I would recommend this website to anyone--it is simultaneously entertaining and educational. The interactive aspect of the experience thoroughly enhances the memorability of the information. It is a wonderful resource for some basic facts and figures regarding population, however, it does not provide the in-depth details required for a larger project.

Last update: 09 May 2001