Population and Climate Change: Considering Climate Change Demography's Past and Future

Kathryn Grace, Emily Klancher Merchant and Nicholas Nagle

Population and Development Review, 2025, vol. 51, issue 1, 361-388

Abstract: This article explores the potential for the development of a climate change–informed demography. Climate change impacts society in some ways that demographers are best suited to evaluate, providing a setting for demographers to advance foundational theories of demographic change. By considering demography in the context of climate change and climate change in the context of demographic change, climate change demography has the potential to expand scientific and policy understanding of human vulnerability to climate change, while also advancing demographic science. To explore the development of climate change demography, we first reflect on demography's roots and consider how foundational demographic research has and has not considered the natural environment. Second, we describe the beginnings of research by demographers into connections between the natural environment and fertility, mortality, and health. Third, we explore current research at the intersection of climate change and demography, highlighting theory and policy successes and opportunities resulting from research on key issues related to maternal, reproductive, and child health and food insecurity. This research often reflects interdisciplinary engagement between the physical and social sciences, where demographic foundations underlie many of the approaches. Fourth, we consider how the rapidly evolving data landscape and increasing awareness of social and health inequalities in the context of climate change pave the way for more complex and dynamic modeling efforts (e.g., ecological and systems‐based research). In this final section, we also highlight the opportunities provided by framing demographic research within the context of climate change and using increasingly sophisticated data and methodological tools to expand on and revisit key demographic models like the demographic transition. Together, these sections build an overarching and linked climate change–demography–health research agenda rooted in awareness of the past and focused on the needs of the future.

Date: 2025
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