First published in 1976, Economics and Demography discusses how the world population doubled in the thirty years prior to its publication, and considers the economic implications of this demographic transformation.

Professor Bowen, with many years' experience of research into the economic and statistical aspects of population and world development, provides a survey of the population of the world, and of how political economists have explained population growth. The author's survey looks first at the mechanisms of growth – fertility, mortality, and migration – followed by an account of theories of growth from Adam Smith to the present day. Professor Bowen, a former fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, who taught at universities in England, America, Australia and Asia, writes from the point of view of a political economist rather than a demographer, and Economics and Demography is of particular value to students of development, development economics and demography within departments of economics, economic history and geography.