DEMOGRAPHY                 CHILDREN AND THE FAMILY                 CAMBODIA

Demography

Demography is the scientific study of human populations. Traditionally, demographers study the size and age structure of populations, and the processes that affect them over time: fertility, mortality, and migration. Increasingly, demographers also study other “structural” characteristics of populations, for instance, the educational distribution of a population and its change over time.

The mission of The Center for Public Information on Population Research (at the Population Reference Bureau) is to explain and publicize the findings of population research. For more information about current activities in demography, one may also check the sites of two major professional organizations: the Population Association of America (PAA), and the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP). 

A good general reference is Paul Demeny and Geoffrey McNicoll (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Population. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2003. Demographic data on world population trends can be found on the site of the Population Division at the United Nations. For the United States, many demographic statistics are available from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Children and the Family

The Council on Contemporary Families (CCF) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to enhancing the national conversation about contemporary families. In particular, the CCF provides press information on family changes in the United States.

The William T. Grant Foundation supports research to improve the lives of young people and also makes related research findings accessible to the public. My research project supported by the William T. Grant Foundation is a comparison of the health behavior, educational achievement, and poverty risk for youths in the United States and other high-income Nations and an attempt to then relate those to the family and policy environments of these different Nations.

Cambodia

There are many general-interest sites on Cambodia, and one I find particularly informative is “Beauty and Darkness”. The Royal Embassy of Cambodia to the United States also has useful travel, cultural, and administrative information. Another useful site provides a set of maps of the country, its provinces or its main city. Researchers can also obtain statistical data from the National Institute of Statistics.

Khmer is the official language of Cambodia. English speakers determined to learn on their own, Cambodian language tapes are distributed by the Language Resource Center at Cornell University. Unfortunately, there are few formal Khmer language courses offered in the United States. The Southeast Asia Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI, located at the University of Wisconsin-Madison until 2009) offers an eight-week intensive language training program for undergraduates, graduate students and professionals at the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year levles. In the summer of 2006, the University of Hawai’i organizes an intensive six-week advanced Khmer language-training program will be held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

    As for my own research, I discussed it in a 20-minute interview on National Public Radio’s WBEZ program “Worldview.” To listen to the entire program, follow the links to the June 10, 2002 broadcast. (Mine is the 2nd of 3 interviews on the program, running approximately from 18:00 to 40:00). At the core of the project is a demographic surveillance system (MIPopLab) that collects continuous demographic information on the entire population of a particular site. INDEPTH is an international network of such systems, and although MIPopLab is not formally a member site of INDEPTH, it shares the network’s vision and objectives.

And, inevitably, here are a few pictures from fieldwork, featuring: our training in Phnom Penh, taking the ferry across the Mekong to reach the site, farming and silk-weaving on site, a marriage ceremony, our first recorded birth, and (most of) our team at the end of a day of fieldwork.

 

Finally, there are many NGOs doing humanitarian work in Cambodia, but my friends at Krousar Thmey operate since 1991 the first Cambodian Foundation assisting deprived children.

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