Demography and Nutrition

This exciting and important book covers the impact on demography ofthe nutrition of populations, offering the view that the changefrom the hunter-gatherer to an agricultural life-style had a majorimpact on human demography, which still has repercussions today. Demography and Nutrition takes an interdisciplinary approach,involving time-series analyses, mathematical modelling, aggregativeanalysis and family reconstitution as well as analysis of dataseries from Third World countries in the 20th Century. Contentsinclude details and analysis of mortality oscillations, foodsupplies, famines, fertility and pregnancy, infancy and infantmortality, ageing, infectious diseases, and populationdynamics. The authors, both well known internationally for their work inthese areas, have a great deal of experience of population datagathering and analysis. Within the book, they develop the thesisthat malnutrition, from which the bulk of the population suffered,was the major factor that regulated demography in historical times,its controlling effect operated via the mother before, during andafter pregnancy. Demography and Nutrition contains a vast wealth of fascinatingand vital information and as such is essential reading for a widerange of health professionals including nutritionists, dietitians,public health and community workers. Historians, social scientists,geographers and all those involved in work on demography will findthis book to be of great use and interest. Libraries in alluniversity departments, medical schools and research establishmentsshould have copies of this landmark publication available on theirshelves.