Demographic Anthropology

Abstract

Demography is the study of human populations, along with the processes that structure and change them. Demography thus intersects with all four subfields of anthropology, albeit in different ways. Biological anthropologists have collaborated with demographers on topics from the evolution of life span to small‐area estimation to the inclusion of biomarkers in population surveys. Archaeologists and demographers have worked together on the relationship between population size, population concentration, and sociopolitical complexity. Sociocultural anthropologists have had the most extensive, but also most conflictual, relationships with demographers. And linguistic anthropologists are only now beginning to develop collaborations with demographers. Demographic anthropology includes all of these multiple intersections.