World Population: Past, Present, & Future uses a multidisciplinary approach to investigate in depth on important aspects of the evolution of world population not well addressed previously. The authors from the Universidad Autonoma, Madrid (Spain), professors Julio A Gonzalo, Manuel Alfonseca, and Felix-Fernando Munoz, point out that the recent pronounced growth in world population (accompanied by an even more pronounced growth in agricultural production) was due mainly to the increase of life expectancy and not to the (inexistent) growth in fertility rate. Using a 'rate equations' approach for the first time, they describe population trends and forecast the possibility of steps up (or down) in population rather than the exponential growth predicted by UN demographers around 1985 and thereafter. This book provides a new perspective that our planet is not overpopulated and could, in fact, house a considerably larger population.

Citizenship and Disadvantaged Groups in Chile seeks to overcome an existing void in the literature of Latin American studies addressing the impact of Chile's post dictatorial legal framework on its historically and structurally disadvantaged groups, concentrating on the various issues and challenges that affect them. Within its eleven chapters it explores the changing social and legal status of LGBTI people, the political disenfranchisement and the social exclusion that affects imprisoned individuals, the harshness of policing on poor and marginalized communities, the deprivation of indigenous peoples of meaningful rights, the vulnerability that affects workers as a consequence of the existing model of labor relations, the disenfranchisement that affects migrants seeking economic opportunities, the denial of citizenship to women involved in the prohibition of abortion, the unsatisfactory regulation of sex work, the prevalence of domestic violence, and the absence of adequate means for disadvantaged groups to institutionalize their political representation. This book offers a distinctive contribution, focusing on a specific country in the Global South that is presently undergoing a process of economic consolidation while facing many of the problems of traditional and unequal Latin American societies.

Over the last few years, organizations have adopted a labour management stance which puts more emphasis on non-standard forms of labour contracts as compared with the traditional full-time employment contract. Although temporary help agencies have become emblematic of these structural changes in employment relations, many questions about these intermediaries have been unsatisfactorily addressed by suitable empirical evidence. This book describes the rising incidence of agency employment, business incentives to address these intermediaries and the labour market intermediary function of temporary help agencies. In addition, it provides both theoretical and empirical analyses on dynamic labour market patterns of agency-intermediated work. Its purpose is to gauge whether agency employment generates any measurable benefits for the workers involved. The analysis should be especially useful for human resource professionals, labour economists and policy makers, since it helps us better understand the institutional role of these labour market intermediaries as well as its consequences for individual careers.