8 - Some final thoughts

Summary

Demographers' techniques and perspectives are useful elements in the array of approaches used in the social and health sciences. With their careful attention to issues of measurement and data and their orientation to aggregate-level processes, they have provided valuable insights into many important issues … It is possible, however, that the field is missing important opportunities for expansion … Demography can be a starting point for forays into bigger subjects requiring supplementary analytic strategies and approaches … It is no advantage to the field to define itself so narrowly that unconventional subjects are turned aside and imaginative young researchers are turned away.

(Preston 1993: 604)

What do the examples we presented in Chapter 7 tell us? In this final chapter we will attempt to synthesize both what we have learned from reading works such as those described, and discuss the benefits to demography of bringing in and using work and perspectives that are represented in those works.

Lessons to be learned

What we find most compelling about the examples in Chapter 7 is that they contribute to demographic understanding by taking a different perspective on a familiar topic. One of the best examples is that of the new reproductive technologies (NRT) literature. As is much demographic research, that work is focused on birth. The purpose and even the focus within the topic of birth is, of course, quite different between the two literatures.