Introduction to Demography - What is Demography?

Introduction to Demography

• QUOTE "Demography is a science concerned with the analysis of the size, distribution, structure, characteristics and processes of a population." END QUOTE (Weeks 1994). 
• Good demography requires explanations and understandings drawn not just from population statistics and demographic methods, but also from sociology, anthropology, politics, human geography, etc

Population

• Demography is about studying populations.
• A population is something that QUOTE "persists through time, even though its members are continuously changing through attrition and accession." END QUOTE (Preston, Heuveline & Guillot 2001).
• Demography is about understanding population patterns and population regularities/irregularities 

Population measures

• These are important as they allow comparison
• This comparison allows different populations to be understood in context of each other
• More generic measures (fertility rate, mortality rate, etc) are used
• As are some more specific measures (age of buying first house, age of graduating college/university)
• Although the two do of course overlap 
• These are known as population characteristics 

Population trends over time

• These include increased life expectancy
• Decreased number of children per woman/smaller family size
• And increase in average age of many populations (especially in the West) (ageing populations)

Population Growth

• Often (though not always) net migration (both immigration and emigration) have a significant impact on…