Amanda K. Baumle – författare

This book provides the first compilation of demographic research focused on transgender, nonbinary, and gender minority populations. It discusses the measurement and conceptualization challenges that shape demographic knowledge of these populations, including how we capture gender on surveys. It examines our current knowledge of demographic characteristics and health disparities and outcomes. Overall, this research demonstrates the increasing knowledge of gender variation at the population level. At the same time, it reveals the need for better survey questions, additional data, and inquiry into a broader subset of demographic questions for these populations as there is little understanding of fundamental demographic information, including migration or spatial distribution of transgender populations, fertility and household structure, labor market outcomes, or broader patterns of morbidity and mortality. The research set forth in this book lays the groundwork for a trans demography that would produce population-level knowledge of these populations and points researchers and policymakers toward needed areas of research, conceptualization, and data collection.

A decade after the publication of the first International Handbook on the Demography of Sexuality, there have been fundamental shifts in how we measure sexual and gender identities and the breadth of available population-level sexuality data. The chapters in this second edition of this handbook provide guidance on methodological approaches involved in studying population sexuality, as well as insight into the ways that sexuality shapes key demographic outcomes. Chapters examine how we measure sexual identities and behaviors on surveys, sexuality changes across the life course, international perspectives on sexual behaviors and identities, and the ways that sexual identities shape families, labor market experiences, and health outcomes. Despite these developments, we still know relatively little about key demographic questions related to fertility and migration for sexual minorities, as well as about understudied topics of sexuality that fall outside of risk-focused analyses. In particular, much of our understanding of sexuality has been motivated by controlling the spread of sexually transmitted infections or adolescent pregnancies, rather than understanding motivations for sexual interactions, such as pleasure. Accordingly, although the research set forth in this book provides insight into existing knowledge of sexual behavior and of sexual minority populations, the chapters also point researchers and policymakers toward needed areas of research and data collection.

The International Handbook on the Demography of Sexuality is the first book to specifically address the study of sexuality from a demographic perspective. Demographic research has largely paid little attention to sexuality as a whole, or sexual orientation in particular, other than in studies examining the “consequences” of sex – sexually transmitted infections or fertility. Instead, the content of this handbook explores population sexuality in order to describe the prevalence of sexual behaviors, desires, and identities, as well as their connections with other demographic outcomes. The focus is on analyzing sexuality as a demographic topic in its own right, rather than solely as a variable in studies of sexually transmitted infection or other health-related topics. In this book, both researchers with traditional demographic backgrounds, as well as those with training in other disciplines, provide an overview of the state of current research on population sexuality. These chapters provide a foundation for the development of research in the burgeoning field of the demography of sexuality.