Dudley, K. (1996.). Demographic Transition Theory. Population Studies, 50, 361-387.

Demographic Transition Theory is a summary of demographic transition theory and its

state in 1996. It covers the history and why of demographic transition theory in immense
detail. It is difficult to thoroughly analyze this article since it is meant for a professional
audience, but Dudley does an amazing job of exploring the various whys of demographic
transition theory. He does this by summarizing the view of multiple authors, explaining
their rationale, and explaining where their arguments fall apart. He also goes really far
back and is able to reference the first paper that demographic transition theory grew from.
He does weaken this article very slightly when he supposes, without evidence, that the
psychological effects of family planning have an effect on fertility. The article is mostly an
overview of demographic transition theory, and that proposition does not fit in with the
rest of the paper. The author is very credible; he was a professor emeritus of population
studies before passing away.
Greenwood D., & Holt R. (2016.). Sustainable Development in Affluent Countries and the NeoInstitutional Synthesis. Journal of Economic Issues, 3, 647-666.
doi:1080/00213624.2016.1210363
Sustainable Development in Affluent Countries and the Neo-Institutional Synthesis is
about a new economic model designed to better predict sustainable development for
already affluent countries. This new model, called neo-institutionalism emphasizes the
idea that economic growth is not equivalent with an increase in quality of life or
sustainability. The authors are able to build upon previous theories and develop their own.
They even show how their new theory applies by using certain anecdotes, like the Koch
family influencing public universitys curriculum through donations. However, one of the

footnotes does slightly weaken the article, since it is literally an anecdote about how
people do not like changing the rules of thumb they use to view the world. This
anecdote only makes the article slightly awkward instead of entirely invalidating it,
because the article is more about economics than human behaviors. Greenwood works as
a professor of economics, while Holt seems to be just an author. Holt did his graduate
work at UC Berkeley, but none of his qualifications are mentioned. Regardless, he has
several publications and award winning books.
Heudtlass P., Speybroeck N., and Guha-Sapir D. (2016.). Excess Mortality in Refugees,
Internally Displaced Persons, and Resident Populations in Complex Humanitarian
Emergencies (1998-2012) insights from operational data. Conflict and Health. doi:
10.1186/s13031-016-0082-9
This paper describes how inadequate resources affect the excess mortality rates of
refugee and internally displaced persons (IDP) populations. The paper found that
refugees do not experience significantly higher mortalities than average in their host
country. This article is very transparent. It really emphasizes the few data points that they
had available to them, and it also makes clear the possible biases the data might have. It
also is very suited for our project, since it gives us a slight idea of what the mortality rate
might be when we resettle our refugees. However, it appears that the article takes many
of its data points from crises in Somalia and Sudan. This would hurt the overall
applicability of the conclusions, as the authors mention. Displacements that required a
thorough international response made up the majority of the data points, so, depending on
where our refugees come from, it may or may not be as applicable. Heudtlass has

published many articles about public health and works as a medical statistician. Both
Speybroeck and Guha-Sapir are very credible professors.
Hopfenberg R. (2003.). Human Carrying Capacity Is Determined by Food Availability.
Population and Environment, 25(2), 109-117.
Human Carrying Capacity Is Determine by Food Availability is a proposition on how to
model the earths carrying capacity for people. The author assumes that human society
makes the necessary social, cultural, environmental, and economic changes to increase
the food supply, and that other carrying capacity defining factors, such as disease, are not
relevant enough currently for determining the current global carrying capacity. This helps
give us an understanding of what factors to use to estimate the carrying capacity of
Houston. The article itself seems a slightly suspicious, because the methods Hopfenberg
took to reach his conclusion only took one page to describe. Hopfenberg especially
mentions the knotty problem of finding out how human carrying capacity is determined
and claims to solve almost six years worth of debate in seven pages. The author is a
trained psychologist who owns a private practice, but he is also a reviewer on both
Demographys editorial board and Environment, Development and Sustainabilitys
editorial board. Not much on his resume implies expertise in demography, but it appears
he is an accepted contributor in that field.
Hopwood B., Mellor M., &OBrien G. (2005).) Sustainable Development: Mapping
Different Approaches. Sustainable Development, 13, 38-52.
Sustainable Development: Mapping Different Approaches is a summary of the different
approaches sectors have used to achieve sustainable development. The article also gives a
brief history of how humans have viewed the environment in the context of economic

growth. The article is making a proposition on how to classify different approaches to

sustainable development, so it uses some infographics to illustrate what it is saying. This
helps strengthen the article. However, most of the article is just pure text after that first
infographic. The article has a positive bias for towards reform sustainable development,
which is roughly equivalent to more liberal approaches in politics. All 3 of the authors
work at Northumbria University, New Castle upon Tyne UK. Mellor is both a social
science professor and part of the Green Economics institute. OBrien is a senior lecturer.
Hopwood is much harder to credit or discredit, because he has no online presence besides
a profile on Research Gate. And on there, he only has 7 publications.
Lipowsky A., Roscher C., Schumacher J., & Schmid B. (2012.). Density-Independent Mortality
and increasing Plant Diversity Are Associated with Differentiation of Taraxacum
officinale into r- and K-Strategists. PLoS ONE 7(1). doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0028121
Density-Independent Mortality and increasing Plant Diversity are Associated with
Differentiation of Taraxacum officinale into r- and K-Strategists describes how limiting
factors affect the survivorship curves a species goes through. The authors created an
experiment in which they had two groups with each affected by either densityindependent mortality or density-dependent mortality. The article does a fantastic job of
being transparent; the articles journal is open source, and the article lists its source of
funding and any conflicts of interest the authors may have. This articles content is useful
because r- and K-strategists are integral to the AP Environmental Science curriculum, and
we are modelling human populations using plant populations. However, the articles
journal is not very prestigious. It claims itself as being a broad, multidisciplinary journal,
but all of its publications focus on the life sciences. All the authors seem fairly credible.

The lead author, Lipowsky, works at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry and
has little to no online footprint. The final author, Schmid, is a professor at the University
of Zurich.
McLanahan, S. (2004). Diverging destinies: How children are faring under the second
Demographic Transition. Demography, 41(4), 607-627.
Diverging destinies: How children are faring under the second demographic
transition goes into detail about how post-industrial society affects the resources
available to children, explains how said resources affect children, and argues that it is the
governments responsibility to shorten any disparities. McLanahan uses the term Second
Demographic Transition to refer to the development of western countries post-1960.
This period would be equivalent to an industrial to post-industrial transition. The article
gives a lot of background on why birth rate would decline in a post-industrial society and
explains how people decide whether to have children. However, some of the syntax is
unnecessarily hard to understand, such as the last paragraph on page 610. This is really
minute though. McLanhan is a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton and
is a principal investigator of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study.
Reher D. (2012.). Population and the Economy during the Demographic Transition.
Institute of Economic affairs. 10-16.
Population and the Economy during the Demographic Transition is about linking the
demographic transition and its economic effects. The body of the text is initially
concerned with framing demographic transition theory in the modern world, but past the
third page, it is purely about the social and economic implications of the transition.
Rehers expertise on demographic transition strengthens the article; he is able to refer to a

variety of papers he is written over twenty years. However, these citations weaken the
article. Reher relies heavily on citing his own work. He also fails to make citations for
claim that demographic transition is most advanced in Japan, and he does not include a
UN study he referenced earlier in the text in his references. Regardless, Reher is a
credible author. He works as a PDI Funcionario at the Universidad Complutense de
Madrid. This seems to be the equivalent of a principal investigator. It is likely that this
article is less precise to make it more accessible, since the journal it is published in isnt
focused on demographics, his expertise.
Smit, B., & Pilifosova, O. (2003). Adaptation to climate change in the context of
Sustainable development and equity. Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and
Vulnerability, 879-906. Retrieved from
https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg2/pdf/wg2TARchap18.pdf
Adaptation to Climate Change in the Context of Sustainable Development and Equity is
both a primer on adaptation and an analysis of what adaptations certain regions should
make due to climate-induced problems. The article starts out explaining what adaptation
means and is in the context of sustainable development, transitions towards the argument
that climate change necessitates preliminary coordinated adaptations, and ends with key
recommendations for regions of the world. The articles use of infographics while
explaining adaptation makes it much more accessible. The executive summary at the start
also helps. After the first third though, the text becomes much more dense and
inaccessible. This is unfixable though, it just demands time for a more thorough
investigation of any potential flaws. The authors are very credible, both Pilifosova and
Smit pioneered studies on climate change. She works as a program manager for the

United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change, while Smit is a professor

emeritus at the University of Guelph.