Western Han Population Study

By far, it is widely believed that population issue is one of the key issues in today's society. Not only because it have a great bearing on social and economic sustainable development of a country or an area, but also it concerns the social stability of that country or area. All we know that from the process of the development of human history, historical population is the basis of today's population or in other words, today's population is the expansion of the historical population therefore population problems of todays is the expansion of the problems of past. So, it is of great theoretical, and practical significance to study the historical population to find out and formulate the draft to solve the population problems we face nowadays.In the present research work, based on the studies of the other scholars, the materials and findings from historical documents and archeology, by using a number of methods adopted in history and population studies, the author analyzed, microscopically and macroscopically, the population of the West H an Dynasty.This paper consists of seven chapter. The first chapter, the basis of the paper, is introduction in which the author showed us the outline of this research work, including review of literature, discussion of the methodology, explanation of the data sources and objectives of study. In the second chapter, the author mainly discussed the amount of the population of the West Han Dynasty, which is becoming a focus in history studies due to reason ofthe extreme lack of such kind of data in historical documents. Also in this chapter, the author further explored the social and natural factors influencing the amount of the population of that period. The third chapter is related to the natural increase of the population in West Han Dynasty. Naturezl increase is regarded to be an important index that reflects the speed and trend of population change, and understand of the true nature of population natural increase can help us know better of the future change of the population. In the fourth chapter, the author assessed the distributions and the factors associated with the distributions of the West Han's population such as the density, the distribution center, the characteristics of distribution, etc.In the fifth chapter, the author discussed the composition and structure of West Han's population.And the sixth chapter covers the statistical and management system of the population in West Han's Dynasty, i.e. the domiciliary register system and its importance and implications. In the last chapter, the author explored the amount and the distribution of the minorities lived in West Han's Dynasty. It is well known that, besides the Hans in Central Plains, there also lived many minorityes from ancient time in China, which are also the important members of the Chinese nation. And the study of the minorities is also one branch of history studies. In this Chapter, the author will give us a clear picture of the amount the distribution of the minorityes in West Hans Dynasty.