Aristotle's "Politics" contains the most extensive consideration of actual populations to survive from Antiquity. Population, for Aristotle, is a logistics of memberships. The size, fertility, and other properties of a state's population are determined by relationships among the several...

The demographic study of child supply has long concentrated on the implications of reproductive excess, rather than a lack of children. In recent years attention to population aging has begun to redress this emphasis, but even in aging research the comparative study of childlessness has a low...