Abstract

Demography, the social science of population studies, has changed dramatically over the past forty years, responding to a dual crisis of funding and moral legitimacy that hit the field in the mid-1970s. This article uses structural topic modeling in conjunction with the Oral History Project of the Population Association of America (PAA) to examine how demography survived the crisis. It finds that demographers turned to a new source of funding, the National Institutes of Health, shifted their research focus from overseas population growth to domestic socioeconomic inequality, and transformed the PAA from an interest group for people concerned about population problems to a professional association for academic demographers. These three shifts turned demography into the field it is today.

摘要

人口学是一门人口研究的社会科学，在过去 40 年中发生了巨大变化，以应对 1970 年代中期冲击该领域的资金和道德合法性双重危机。本文结合美国人口协会 (PAA) 的口述历史项目使用结构主题建模来研究人口统计学如何在危机中幸存下来。它发现，人口统计学家转向了新的资金来源——美国国立卫生研究院，将他们的研究重点从海外人口增长转向国内社会经济不平等，并将 PAA 从关注人口问题的利益集团转变为专业协会。学术人口统计学家。这三个转变将人口统计学变成了今天的领域。