World Population: A Reference Handbook presents the latest facts regarding population problems and issues in countries all over the world. An overview of world population highlighting terms, demographic processes, and background information leads to a tour of world population history through census counts, plagues, famines, breakthroughs in disease control and birth control, and landmark judicial decisions.

Biographies profile people who have worked to advance our understanding of world population issues or shaped population policy, such as M. S. Swaminathan, architect of India's "Green Revolution," who contributed to the expansion of the world's food supplies. A statistical chapter provides data on everything from the birth rate in Pakistan to AIDS orphans in the Caribbean, and a fascinating discussion of global trends for 2015 makes projections about world demographics, aging patterns, migration, and food.