What are some practical uses of demography?
MARTHA: Demography is a very practical discipline. Essentially, we are a bag of tools and methods that we apply to a very concrete subject matter, which is people. People are the focus of policies. They’re the focus of programs. They’re the focus of advertising, entertainment, what have you, but they’re the common denominator. So we, with our practical tool kit, work with people in other disciplines whohave their own agendas. It could be political. It could be economic. And they may have their own ideologies. We don’t have an ideology. We count and we place and we describe. And then we help colleagues who have other purposes make the connection they need to make or they ought to be making with the people that they’re targeting. I’m currently preparing a paper for the Applied Demography meeting in January called One Among Many. It’s about being the demographer on a multi disciplinary team. What kinds of things need to be in place for us to work productively with the team? Probably the m
