Irene Barnes Taeuber (December 25, 1906 – February 24, 1974) was an American demographer who worked for the Office of Population Research at Princeton University, where she edited the journal Population Index from 1936 to 1954.[1][2] Her scholarly work is credited with helping to establish the science of demography.[3]
She took a faculty position at Mount Holyoke College in 1931, but in 1934 her husband joined the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and she moved with him to Washington, DC. She began working on the journal Population Literature of the Population Association of America; when its editor Frank Lorimer left the position in 1935, the journal moved to the Office of Population Research at Princeton University, where it became Population Index, and she moved with it. She was initially a research associate there (part-time while her children were young), and was promoted to senior research demographer in 1961; she retired in 1973.[2]
She died on February 24, 1974, of pneumonia and emphysema.[2]
Taeuber wrote and edited many books and articles,[2] totalling "a dozen influential books and book-length reports and some 250 articles and chapters."[4]
But her most significant work was the book The Population of Japan (Princeton University Press, 1958).[1][2][4]
Nearly 500 pages long, this book is in seven sections. The first one gives a historical and sociological overview of Japanese life and culture, followed by sections on the Meiji period and the modern era. Next follow sections on internal migrations, the Meiji-era expansion of the Japanese empire, the effects of fertility and mortality on the population, and a demographic view of the effects of World War II on Japan with an eye to future possibilities.[5][6][7][8][9] This work "demonstrates the power of demographic analysis ... as an instrument for the description of social change".[4] It was well-received in Japan, and a Japanese translation was published by the Mainichi Press.[2]