The Future of the Demography of Sexuality

Abstract

Demography is an ever-evolving field of study, which has moved well beyond the core fields of fertility, mortality, and migration. As evidenced in Poston and Micklin’s (2005) Handbook of Population, the discipline now includes at least two dozen subfields, such as marriage and family, the labor force, biodemography, historical demography, race and ethnicity, and gender. The incorporation of population research on sexuality, therefore, is in many ways simply a continuation of the expansion of the field. As described in this handbook, demographic research increasingly reveals insight into both population patterns on sexual behaviors and identities, as well as the manner in which sexuality affects other demographic outcomes. These findings are likely to contribute to a growth in data collected, and research conducted, on population sexuality.