Joachim Singelmann is the Dean's Distinguished Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Demography at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His previous positions were at Louisiana State University, United Nations Population Division, University of California-San Diego, and Vanderbilt University. He obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Texas at Austin. Singelmann's research areas include industrial restructuring, transitions from central planning to market economies, demographic development, sociodemographic consequences of disasters, and inequality and poverty. His research has been funded by several foundations including NSF and the U.S. Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, the Interior, and Agriculture. Singelmann is the author of many books and his research has been published in the major social science journals in the United States and Europe, including Demography, American Journal of Sociology, European Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Rural Sociology, and Demographic Research. Singelmann has been the editor of Rural Sociology and President of the Southern Demographic Association and the Rural Sociological Society.

Dudley L. Poston, Jr. is Professor of Sociology and the Abell Professor of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. Poston also holds the positions of Adjunct Professor of Demography at People's University, Beijing, China; Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, China; and Adjunct Professor of Demography at Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China. He previously served on the faculties of Cornell University (1988-1992) and the University of Texas at Austin (1970-1988). He has co-authored/edited eighteen books and over 320 journal articles, book chapters, and research reports. The 2^nd edition of his demography text (with Leon Bouvier), Populationand Society: An Introduction to Demography was published in January, 2017. Poston is presently editing the 2^nd edition of the Handbook of Population (Springer). At Texas A&M University he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on Statistics, Demography, and Demographic Methods.