This Demographic Yearbook is the the sixty-first in a series published_since 1948. Through the cooperation with the national statistical offices, official demographic statistics are compiled in the Yearbook, as available, for more than 230 countries and areas of the world. This edition of the Yearbook contains chapters on the population size and distribution, the population of capital cities, fertility, foetal mortality, infant and maternal mortality, general mortality, nuptiality and divorce.