Demography is more than just population figures. It is also about people and how they behave in certain situations. This book provides an interpretative framework that integrates a number of theoretical approaches to various behavioural processes underlying the numerical aspects of population development. The leading concepts in this interdisciplinary approach are choice, context and process (time), which are elaborated in a micro-perspective, drawing on cognitive, institutional and developmental interpretations. The resulting framework is developed for the study of fertility and is applied to a case study on family planning and reproductive health in India.
The added value of this conceptual model for the discipline of demography is to be found in its contribution to a more profound understanding of the causal processes of demographic behaviour and to the ability to found population research, policy and interventions on a behavioural-scientific basis.
Bart de Bruijn was born in 1959 in Heemstede, the Netherlands. He graduated in Sociology of Developing Countries (Leiden University) and he completed his training at the Netherlands Graduate School of Research in Demography (pdoD). During his working career he has been involved in research activities at the Institute of Cultural and Social Studies (Leiden), Population Research Centre (Groningen), and the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (The Hague). His main areas of research cover reproductive health, fertility, international migration and census taking. At present he is working as Census Adviser, and lives in the Solomon Islands with his wife and two sons.
