ISSUES IN THE TRAINING AND RECRUITMENT OF DEMOGRAPHERS

JUDITH BLAKEUniversity of California

RESUMEN

Aun cuando hay un reconocimiento cadavezmayorde quela demografia es un campo importantede estudio, todavia no se ha llegado a advertir que la demografia es una disciplina bdsica que mereceun puesto en los departamentos universitarios y un titt!lo profesional. La demografia es muy ampliaen el campo de su iniere«, y el adiestramiento de un buen demografo deberia comenzar durante susprimeros estudios superiores paraextenderse a traves deun programa avanzado queincluya adiestra­mientoen economia, fisiologia, historia, geografia, matenuuico« y estadistica, asi como sociologia. Setienela esperanza de que en una 0 varias instituciones importantes de ensenanza, los demografos seocupen de establecer un departamento de demografia a fin de suministrar este adiestramiento y hacerque los estudiantes que se especializan en demografia no se vean obligados a estudiar materias quetendran uso limitado en su carrera cientifica. En esta situacion academica de cambio y expansionrapidoe, los centros de adiestramiento demotmifico en todos partes deberian valorar nuevamente 8U

posicion y hacer un inventario de sus futuras posibilidades, y no: contentarse con la situacion destatus quo.

In his excellent summary of the mid­century American situation with respectto demographic training, Otis DudleyDuncan stressed the absence of depart­ments of demography.' Approximately adecade later, this emphasis is still sub­stantially correct.! Demographic trainingcontinues to be conducted principally indepartments of sociology. Moreover, thelack of academic spotlighting for popula­tion still implies correlative academiclimitations of an important nature. Un­dergraduate instruction in demography,if offered at all, typically remains confinedto a general, non-technical course on"population problems" or simply "popula­tion." At the graduate level, specializationin population is usually only for doctoralcandidates who must also qualify in per­haps three other sub-fields of sociology,and who may have little opportunity toprepare themselves in demographically re­lated disciplines of major importance suchas economics, geography, mathematics, orprobability theory and statistics. On theother hand, some academic breakthroughshave been made. For example, the Uni­versity of Pennsylvania has recently es-

1 The University Teaching of the Social Sciences:Demography, ed. by D. V. Glass, UNESCO, 1957,pp. 162-193.

2 The Harvard School of Public Health hasjust created a Department of Demography.

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tablished an M.A. degree specifically indemography, and Professor Hauser saysthat the University of Chicago now allowsinterested M.A. students to concentrateheavily in the population field, althoughthe degree itself does not carry the demo­graphic title as does that at Pennsylvania.This development at Chicago is apparent­ly so new that it did not appear in theformal literature received by me from theUniversity during the 1962-1963 aca­demic year. The University of Californiaat Berkeley is now working (through aChancellor's Committee on Training inDemography) to develop an interdisci­plinary population training program tosupplement and coordinate existing demo­graphic instruction in the departments ofeconomics, public health, and sociology.Participation by other interested depart­ments is planned and the program willemphasize undergraduate instruction aswell as graduate. The University hasevinced its support for this proposed pro­gram by establishing a professorship in de­mography at the School of Public Health.Although all of these university effortsseem propitious, their consolidation andexpansion will clearly require much ad­ditional effort. My remarks today offer nodefinitive solutions to demography's aca­demic problems, but rather a distillationof issues and reactions that we at Cali-

Issues in the Training and Recruitment of Demographers 259

fornia have encountered in our initial ef­forts to establish an interdisciplinarytraining program.

POPULATION AS A MAJOR FIELD OF STUDY

The present limited position of demog­raphy in American universities seems torest ideologically on the belief that thestudy of population is a narrow, empiricalfield-almost vocational in nature. It isfrequently claimed therefore that studentsshould not be exposed as undergraduatesto more population training than a generalintroductory course affords, and thatgraduate students should take demogra­phy only as an adjunct to courses in someother social science, preferably sociology.Obviously, any marked expansion of aca­demic training and recruitment will neces­sitate some reassessment of the nature ofthe field, its relationship to sociology, andits connections with other disciplines suchas biology, economics, and statistics. Onecould argue for example that the scope ofdemography is far broader than is usuallyunderstood, and that its potential aca­demic expansion is not only possible butlegitimate on the grounds of its scientificimportance and international significance.

In this regard four quite general state­ments may be made about the actual andpotential academic scope of demography.First, like other scientific disciplines it hasan internal dynamic. The developmentof new methods and the uncovering ofnew substantive findings and unresolvedproblems perpetually shift its intellectualboundaries. One of the best known ex­amples of this process in demography isthe line of inquiry moving from the rela­tively simple population projections ofthe nineteen-thirties and forties to thecomplex and varied studies of Americanfertility that have been conducted duringthe last 20 years. Although it has becomefashionable recently to stress the variancein fertility that this research leaves unex­plained, from the point of view of demog­raphy's history these efforts-explainedvariance or no-helped to inaugurate a newera for the discipline. They explicitly rec-

ognized the scope of socio-economic anddemographic interconnections and at­tempted to incorporate this recognitioninto research designs. As a result, it wouldbe hard to deny that these studies repre­sent as cumulative and rigorous an effortto understand social change in America asone is likely to find.

Second, demography's scope is influ­enced by the changing (in this case, grow­ing) significance of its subject-matter forworld affairs and by the augmented ap­plicability of demographic knowledge andtechniques. The discipline's horizons havewidened concomitantly with man's abili­ty to manipulate population processes­births, deaths, migration. The fact thatthese are today so uniquely subject tohuman volition, with all that this meansfor large-scale planning and policy, makesany final delineation of the boundaries ofour field both arrogant and idle. This isparticularly true when we recall that weare moving into an international statis­tical era in which our potential knowledgeof comparative demography will be un­paralleled, and in which the demands forsuch knowledge will be unequalled as well.

Yet if we are to take action regardingacademic training in population, we musthave some notion, however tentative, ofour sights and our boundaries. In search­ing for such direction, perhaps we shouldnot look at existing academic programsand courses primarily, but at the natureof ongoing research on the one hand, andthe logical and substantive organizationof the discipline on the other. Hence, athird point that can be made about thepotential academic scope of demographyis that the field's character and breadthmust in large measure be seen in demo­graphic research, rather than in therelatively limited courses demographershave had an opportunity to give inAmerican universities. When we turn tothis research, we find a great variety ofinterests and endeavors. Population sci­entists of the highest caliber are to befound in national and international agen­cies working persistently, oftenbrilliantly,

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to collect, improve, and expand datawhich are the life-blood of our field. De­mographers whose chief undertakings in­volve substantive inquiry into the deter­minants and consequences of demographicprocesses and structure encompass thestudy of the labor force and manpower aswell as the probable length of the fertileperiod; the determinants of migration aswell as the correlates of fetal loss; the his­torical statistical demography of the firstAmerican state as well as the currentmortality situation in developing nations;and sociodemographic characteristics ofautopsied cases as well as the study offamily-size desires and intentions. De­mographers will know that I have not hadto search far to find these examples andthat they represent bona fide, long-termefforts by one or more students of popula­tion. In addition, the substantive scope ofour field is immeasurably broadened bythe research of persons from other disci­plines who, through sheer fascination anddevotion, train themselves in demographyin order to engage in demographic inquiryrelevant to their major interests. Much ofhistorical demography is pursued by suchallies, and the shoestring basis of theseendeavors belies their importance for pop­ulation theory. The same is true for re­search on demographic aspects of eco­nomic development, the theory of cohortmortality, the relation of population tonatural resources and conservation, theinternational demography of minority lin­guistic groups, and the study of noncon­traceptive methods of fertility control, togive but a few examples. It seems to metherefore that when we speak of the scopeof demography, it is only fair to take intoaccount the very wide range of researchdemographers undertake. Even here, how­ever, the topics reflect not simply demog­raphers' talents and enthusiasms but theirmodest number and resources as well.

Hence, a final indicator of demogra­phy's potential lies in the logical and sub­stantive organization of the field. As an es­sentially quantitative discipline, the studyof population involves application of

mathematics, probability theory and sta­tistics. In recent years demography's aca­demic connections with these fields havebeen slight, but were such affiliations re­established they would clearly broadenthe subject's scope and applicability. Thesame may be said for demography's in­trinsic involvement with biology throughthe birth, aging, and death processes, aswell as through morbidity and human evo­lution. Finally, demography has impor­tant connections with many social sci­ences, some of which (as is the case witheconomics) were closer in the past thanthey are today. Even within sociology,the interrelationships of social structureand demographic behavior are as yet onlyoccasionally explored. It would seemtherefore that demography is not intrin­sically lacking in scope and diversity.Rather, as it is currently situated inAmerican universities, its boundaries mustbe cut and trimmed to suit the structuralrequirements of a single department whichhas many subspecialties to support andcompeting demands to adjudicate.

If on the basis of considerations suchas these one were to grant that thestudy of population is an independentscientific discipline of potentially impres­sive breadth, then discussion of improve­ment in training and recruitment becomesa viable issue. Otherwise, debate is effec­tively nullified by the belief that at pres­ent, relative to its scope and importance,the field is fundamentally well-enoughsituated in American universities-all thatis required is a few extra fellowships hereand another professor there. Such stop­gap support is doubtless salutary, but anystriking improvement in demographictraining and the long-run supply of de­mographers will require, it seems to me,at least two major changes in the aca­demic position of demography: first, agradual abandonment of the Americanpractice of locating the field within a moregeneral department; and second, a shiftdownward in the age at which academicinstruction in the population field begins.

The suggestion that demography

Issues in the Training and Recruitment of Demographers 261

should begin to break its ties with one de­partment exclusively seems to follow logi­cally from its actual and potential scopeoutlined above. Moreover, it seems un­likely that more independence for the fieldwould undermine the development of so­ciological demography. Rather, the lattershould be enhanced by the general aug­mentation of the discipline that wouldresult. There probably would be moresociologicallyoriented demographers thanif population studies remained as a sub­area of sociology, although proportionate­ly there might be fewer demographerstrained principally as sociologists. How­ever, the liaison between sociology anddemography seems to be substantivelyand methodologically so appropriate thatit will be renewed and enriched constantlythrough the scientific demands of demo­graphic research. It seems unlikely thatthis intellectual relationship depends onkeeping demography in an administra­tively subordinate position.

A few of the seemingly most cogentreasons for more academic independencein the population field deserve mention.First of all, from the point of view of cur­riculum and instruction some sort ofadministrative independence would givepopulation programs wider substantivescope and the opportunity to select fromother departments those courses mostrelevant to population. Demography stu­dents would receive basic training notonly in more aspects of demography thanis at present the case, but in disciplinessuch as biology, economics, geography,history, mathematics, and statistics, aswell as sociology. Much of this broadercontact would be substituted for the pres­ent very intensive work in sociology thatvirtually all demographically interestedstudents now must undergo. Clearly, asstudents advance they will wish to spe­cialize more and more within demography,but they will have already received anexceptionally full and appropriate educa­tion.

Second, a more independent status fordemography accords with the ongoing

trends in subspecialization of major de­partments like biology, chemistry, eco­nomics, physics, and sociology. Such gen­eral fields-although obviously having:some integration and overall principles­are increasingly becoming administrative­ly convenient rubrics for rapidly develop­ing specialties. The successful growth ofsubspecialities is an impressive indicatorof a field's viability, but it is understoodthat subfields are perpetually maturing:and requiring more independence and re­sources than the parental department canprovide. This seems to be the case withdemography and this fact will doubtless:create uneasiness in some universities inthe future as it has occasionally in thepast. There is plainly no single resolutionto the problem, although the eventualcreation of departments of demographyseems logical and attractive. But such a,bold venture is not immediately necessaryto move demography ahead on a moreautonomous basis. Since the study ofpopulation is so visibly an interdiscipli­nary endeavor, group degrees in popu­lation (shared by more than one de­partment) can be organized in the samemanner as they are in numerous otherinterdepartmental fields like genetics, bio­chemistry, biostatistics, and molecularbiology. Doubtless other organizationalpossibilities exist as well, and in someuniversities demography may be so gen­erously supported within sociology de­partments that no problem of either train­ing or recruitment is felt to exist. In de­fault of such happy circumstances, it,seems wise to remind ourselves that manydynamic, emerging specialties are movingahead in the direction of group degrees:(and similar adjustments) with the posi­tive blessing, assistance, and pride of theparental departments. These examplesshould offer us some clues as to the or­ganizational variety open to the field ofpopulation in academic life.

As yet nothing has been said about thecontribution to recruitment that a morestellar position for demography wouldmake. The opportunity to major in de-

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mography at the graduate and/or under­graduate levels will in and of itself prob­ably attract students to the field whomight otherwise have not been aware ofits existence. In addition, more of an in­terdepartmental affiliation would affordstudents from numerous disciplines an op­portunity to choose demography as aminor field as do students in sociologytoday. At present, graduate students out­side of sociology are somewhat hesitantto invest much effort in demography dueto its relatively minor role in academiclife and its all but universal attachment todepartments of sociology.

THE TIMING OF DEMOGRAPHIC TRAINING

Implicit in the suggested administra­tive expansion of demography is the ra­tionale for more youthful training in thefield. An undergraduate major in popula­tion seems to promise advantages that areworth attention especially on the part ofrapidly expanding state universities. Forexample, as an interdisciplinary field de­mography characteristically would furnishundergraduates with intellectual bridgesto other domains, while still affording asense of direction and purpose. Thesetasks are increasingly difficult for manyof the larger liberal arts departmentsto perform because the relatively loose­jointed liberal arts education dependsheavily for its success on the intermediatepersonal attention of faculty advisers.Since genuine, long-term faculty advisingis a vanishing commodity, undergraduatesfind the size and scale of many depart­ments incomprehensible and frequentlyare at a loss for criteria of relevance inchoosing electives. Consequently, to pro­vide some of the built-in guidance thatundergraduates require while still allow­ing for flexibility and breadth of interest,large universities are discovering thatfocused but clearly interdepartmental ma­jors (like demography) are a positiveadvantage.

It is worth realizing as well that al­though offering a broad undergraduateeducation, a major in population is also

practically desirable. Indeed it is preciselyits career advantages that lead the field tobe called "vocational" by those who thinkthat an undergraduate education shouldbe economically irrelevant. At the risk ofreinforcing this point of view I shall men­tion that the job potential for B.A.'s withdemographic training is impressive. Forexample, I have made some preliminaryinquiries this year concerning opportuni­ties in federal agencies for such liberal artsgraduates. There appears to be a real de­mand for their services and a number offederal agencies apparently intend to be­come increasingly enterprising in helpingtheir professional employees to receivemore advanced academic training if theywish to do so and qualify for it. The exist­ence of such specifically demographic ca­reers at all levels of training-B.S., M.A.,and Ph.D-leads me to think that wehave been missing an important occasionfor recruitment by restricting the aca­demic emphasis to graduate students.

Finally, an expanded undergraduateprogram would be advantageous for thequality, breadth and execution of grad­uate work. Instead of a belated and hastyintroduction to the field, graduate train­ing in population could evolve into a pro­gram of advanced technical concentrationand interdisciplinary requirements, withfar more opportunity for students to workat actual research than is now typicallythe case. Such prerequisite training indemography and demographically relatedsubjects should accelerate the process ofgetting advanced degrees-especially thePh.D. As things now stand, many stu­dents make contact with demography solate in their graduate careers that they areeither discouraged from going ahead bytheir lack of preparation, or are sloweddown in their graduate work because ofthe extra training required for specializa­tion in population. Such delays representactual as well as opportunity costs whichare hard to rationalize at a time whenmost departments are trying to facilitatethe rapid completion of graduate training.

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In sum, since the scope and significanceof demography are constantly expandingat the same time that university educa­tion and departmental demarcations arerapidly changing, it seems crucial for usto reassess the premises upon which de­mography's present academic position isbased. It would be a discouraging indica-

tor of the "incipient decline" of our fieldwere we to feel that extensive academicadjustments are unnecessary despite suchobvious signs of transition. I have as­sumed therefore in my remarks that thiscollective attention to training and re­cruitment at our annual meetings is not,to use a currently popular term, tokenism.