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The contributors to this discussion were invited to submit comments, each from a different standpoint, on the paper by John Caldwell and Thomas Schindlmayr that appeared in the preceding issue of the journal. The invitation was issued with the approval of these authors, and the journal is grateful to them for allowing their paper to be used to generate debate on the issues they had raised. The discussion is followed by the authors' response to it.

Population Studies advances research on fertility, mortality, family, migration, methods, policy, and beyond, yet it lacks a recent, rigorous review. We examine all papers published between 1947 and 2020 (N = 1,901) and their authors, using natural language processing, social network analysis, and mixed methods that combine unsupervised machine learning with qualitative coding. After providing a brief history, we map the evolution in authorship and papers towards shorter, multi-authored papers, also finding that females comprise 33.5 per cent of authorship across the period under study, with varied sex ratios across topics. Most papers examine fertility, mortality, and family, studying groups and change, but topics vary over time. Children are rarely studied, and research on women focuses on family planning, fertility decline, and unions, whereas key domains for research on men are migration, historical demography (war, famine), and employment. Research on Africa and Asia focuses on family planning, with work on fertility decline concentrated on North America and Europe, consistent with theories of demographic transition. Our resulting discussion identifies future directions for demographic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many contemporary demographers pay attention to historical demography, there is often a surprising lack of appreciation of the demographic circumstances and systems of the past, suggesting an implicit assumption that they are not relevant to the present or that the methods, data, and questions addressed by historical and contemporary demographers are different. This paper provides an overview of historical demography as published in Population Studies and how this has developed over time. Drawing on this, I demonstrate that historical and contemporary demography use similar data sources and identical methods, and they often address comparable questions. I argue that an appreciation of demographic patterns and processes is beneficial for all demographers, even those who work on the most recent time periods, and that better integration of historical and contemporary demography would be beneficial to both. The paper also considers three challenges for historical demography as it moves forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article lists the editors that passed their reviewing papers to the journal including Mary Abbott, Linda Adair and Juha Alho.

A list of the referees for papers submitted to "Population Studies" in 2005 and 2006 is presented.

The article lists researchers who have refereed papers related to population studies submitted to the journal. Some of these researchers are Omar Ahmad from University of Ghana, George Alter from Indiana University, Barbara Anderson from University of Michigan, Alaka Basu from Cornell University, David Bishai from John Hopkins University, Lisa Cameron of University of Melbourne, Sam Clark from University of Pennsylvania, Donald Cox from Boston College, Benjamin Davis from Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, David Dunson from Duke University, Sumit Guha from Brown University, Hugh Gravelle from University of York, Roger Jeffery from University of Edinburgh, James Lee from University of Michigan, Nancy Luke from Brown University, Orly Manor from Tel Aviv University, Cynthia Osborne from Princeton University, Kelly Raley from University of Texas, Ann Stevens from University of California at Berkeley, John Stillwell from University of Leeds, Susan Watkins of University of Pennsylvania, and Thomas Vartanian from Bryn Mawr College.

The article lists reviewers for the periodical "Population Studies" from 2009 to 2010. People mentioned include Stan Becker, Eva Bernhardt, and Ann Biddlecom.

In this issue, Ronald (Ron) Skeldon's rich and thoughtful review outlines the developments in migration research within demography and population studies. In his contribution to the 50th anniversary issue of I Population Studies i , John Hobcraft suggested that demographers spend too little time trying to explain the phenomena they measure and describe (Hobcraft [5]). The authors of the papers in this special issue are certainly more diverse in terms of their disciplinary background, career stage, ethnicity, and sex than those of the 1996 special issue. He discusses the development of a separate field of migration studies in recent decades and identifies the ways in which greater communication between scholars working in migration studies and population scientists who study migration would be beneficial. [Extracted from the article]

This paper examines the position of migration in population studies, focusing on the period 1996–2021. It considers the reasons why migration remains problematic for demographers, but also how approaches to migration have changed over the last 25 years. While it has arguably become more important to both demography and population studies because of the transition to low fertility and mortality, migration has metamorphosed into a complex field in its own right, almost independently from changes in demography. Both internal and international migration form the subject of this examination and four main themes are pursued: data and measurement; theories and approaches; migration and development; and migration and political demography. The papers published in the journal Population Studies are used to provide a mirror through which to view these changes over the last 25 years. This paper concludes by looking at likely future directions in migration studies, demography, and population studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social isolation/marginalization in sub-Saharan Africa is under-researched, despite increasing evidence of weakening traditional community-based social support. This paper aims to develop a typology of social networks capable of accounting for social marginalization in a rural community in Western Senegal and to describe the socio-demographic characteristics of network profiles. Building on prior qualitative work, we carry out a latent profile analysis using a unique and extensive social network data set, identifying four different network profiles: Locally integrated, Constrained relationships, Locally marginalized, and Local elites. This paper provides the first empirically supported classification of social integration and marginalization in social networks in rural sub-Saharan Africa. In doing so, it can serve as a reference for future research seeking to understand both the broader scope of social integration and marginalization and the consequences of differential access to social capital through social networks on access to health resources and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In his paper Okore(1) critically examines the view of Olusanya and Ekanem that, partly because of shorter periods of breastfeeding and abstinence associated with 'modernization', urban fertility exceeds rural. Unfortunately, the proponents of this view have produced very few hard data on durations of breast-feeding and abstinence.(2).

Abstract At the present time there are very few populations, whose members do not practise contraception at all, or only to a very limited extent, and for whom accurate data on nuptiality and fertility exist. Among populations of European residence or origin, there are only a few groups who reject any limitation of families for religious reasons. One of these, the Hutterites, has already been studied; the other, the Old Order Amish, is studied in Ericksen's papers, and my preceding remarks point to the importance of this study.