A recently published book highlights a symposium co-hosted by a research center at The University of New Mexico.

Population Change and Public Policy is the proceedings of the Second Biennial Population and Public Policy Conference, held in February 2019 at Hotel Albuquerque. The conference was presented by the International Association of Applied Demographers and hosted by UNM’s Geospatial and Population Studies (GPS) along with the Hobby Center for Public Policy at the University of Houston.

“We are very excited to see the conference proceedings in print,” said GPS Director Robert Rhatigan. “This conference was such a success that it is now sponsored by the Population Association of America.”

Two staffers from UNM’s GPS were involved in the book: Research Scientist III Billystrom Jivetti, co-editor; and Technical Journalist Maurreen Skowran, who wrote Ways to Evaluate Redistricting Plans.

The book provides a solid empirical portrait based on the complexities of demographic components of population change. It describes recent innovations, trends, challenges and solutions to population change and public policy issues. These include immigration, student housing, teen pregnancy programs, smoking and alcohol consumption, environment and self-rated health and gender discrimination in the labor market. As such, the book provides an interesting platform for academics, researchers, policy makers and students to explore experiences and research findings on special topics in applied demography and how those inform the field of population studies and public policy.

Skowran’s chapter on redistricting outlines varying measures for compactness and rules against splitting political units. It further discusses proposed standards concerning gerrymandering using new mathematical methods and principles, such as the efficiency gap and sampling.

The Applied Demography series, of which this book is one part, provides a forum for illustrating and discussing the use of demographic methods, concepts, and perspectives in a wide range of settings – business, government, education, law and public policy – as well as the influence of these settings on demographic methods, concepts and perspectives. The books within the series can be used as resources for practitioners and as materials serving as case studies for pedagogical uses.

The book is a vision of the founding GPS director, the late Adelamar Alcantara. Robert Rhatigan, the current director, provided support during the book publication process.

Besides Jivetti, the book was edited by Md. Nazrul Hoque from the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston. Dr. David Swanson of the University of California, Riverside, provided oversight to the editors.

The book is published by Springer Nature Switzerland (2020).
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-57068-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-57069-9
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57069-9