Demography/Overview

Course Outline

Nature of Demography

• What does a Demographer do?

Demography is a scientific study of the population. Demographers compute indicators that measure population size and structure, the levels of mortality, fertility and migration processes and certain aspects of demographic behavior such as marriages, divorces, cohabitation etc.

• Sources of Demographic Data

Census data, surveys, civil registration, church registers, hospital records, interviews

• An Overview of the Demographic Methodology

Theories of Population Change

• Malthusian Theory
• Other theories
• Demographic Transition
  • Western Experience
  • Experience of the Developing Countries

Population Composition

• Sex and Age Structure
• Marital Status
• Family Strucure and Life Cycle
• Household Structure
• Labor Force

Mortality

Mortality is the exit process of the populations. Main measure of this process is the coefficient of mortality. It is a number, computed by dividing the number of the people between two exact ages who die in certain time period and the average number of all people between two exact ages in the same time period. From this definition we can conclude that the denominator is always bigger than the nominator, so the coefficient takes values between 0 and 1. It is 0 when nobody dies and 1 if everybody died in this time period. The coefficient is usually represented "per mille" ore "per thousand".

Urbanization

In terms of demography, urbanization means increase of the relative percentage of the people who live in urban area. Hence, it also means a decrease of the share of the rural population.