By standing side by side ‐ with four square feet each ‐ every human being on Earth (and that is 5.7 billion) could fit inside Rhode Island, the smallest state in the USA. This fascinating and thought‐provoking fact is contained in one of the nine essays found within the first 90 pages of this book. These essays are highly readable and informative; the quote above hints at pithiness, but not at all: the content of the pieces is well researched and well written. Covering such topics as demography, resources and the environment, the demography of families and households, the demography of labour and the economy and the demography of health care and education, the essays inform on the wide span of human existence.
Following the essays is the main body of the encyclopedia, over 800 pages of tables. The tables offer a demographic profile of all the world’s sovereign states, arranged alphabetically by country. The statistical information is from UN and other official sources: the authors had endeavoured to provide consistent and comparable data, encapsulating the information into the headings of Geography, Population, Identity, Vital Statistics, Households, Economics and Labor, Transport, Health and Health Care, Education and Communications. Around four or five pages are devoted to each country, with data for 1995, 1980, and 1965 (where available).
While not offering the depth of coverage of publications such as the United Nations Demographic and Statistical Yearbooks, this encyclopedia provides a clearly laid out and not overwhelming set of data for the whole world. It will be a useful addition for large reference libraries or an alternative (to UN publications) for smaller libraries.
