Synopsis Population, term refers to the total human inhabitants of a specified area, such as a city, country, or continent, at a given time. Population study as a discipline is known as demography. It is concerned with the size, composition, and distribution of populations; their patterns of change over time through births, deaths, and migration, and the determinants and consequences of such changes. Population studies yield knowledge important for planning, particularly by governments, in fields such as health, education, housing, social security, employment, and environmental preservation. Such studies also provide information needed to formulate government population policies, which seek to modify demographic trends in order to achieve economic and social objectives. The true problems of living - in politics, economics, education, marriage etc. - are always problems of overcoming or reconciling opposites. They are divergent problems and have no solution in the ordinary sense of the word. They demand of man not merely the employment of his reasoning powers but the commitment of his whole personality. All social and political problems are interwoven - that energy, for example, affects economics, which in turn affects health, which in turn affects education, work, family life, and a thousand other things. The attempt to deal with neatly defined problems in isolation from one another, creates only confusion and disaster.