Link of the Week: Population Reference Bureau

There are many useful sources of demographic information and data that you will find on our Demography and Population Resource Guide. One that I have always found interesting, is the Population Reference Bureau.

The PRB publishes a wide variety of articles and reports. Some, like The Feminization of Migration: Obstacles to Good Health Care, are quite specific. Others, like their wide-ranging Population Handbook try to provide the big picture.

Here's how they describe their mission: "The Population Reference Bureau informs people around the world about population, health, and the environment, and empowers them to use that information to advance the well-being of current and future generations. Read more

PRB's Core Themes and Strategic Approaches

We focus our work around four "core themes": Reproductive Health and Fertility; Children and Families; Population and the Environment; and Population Futures—Aging, Inequality and Poverty, Migration and Urbanization, and Gender. We also emphasize two Strategic Approaches: Building Coalitions and Mobilizing Civil Society.

Reproductive Health and Fertility
Children & Families
Population and the Environment
Population Futures
Strategic Approaches

PRB's work is funded by private foundations, government agencies, and individual donors, and we frequently collaborate with other nonprofit organizations and universities."

Especially useful is their DataFinder option, which allows you to search for specific types of data on specific countries and regions. "DataFinder contains data on 136 population, health, and environment variables for more than 220 countries, 28 world regions and sub-regions, and the world as a whole." By selecting a country and then selecting "all variables" in the different categories, you can build a tabular report of the PRB's available demography data on that nation.