Social Demography
Book: demographic methods and concepts- Donald T. Rowland
Exam
12/20 written exam
8/20 demographic paper → compare the demographic profile of 2 countries: low and high income
Class 1-Introduction
Aim
1. Societal
Provide insights in population issues/trends and social problems resulting from these pop issues
→detect and interpret current demographic trends
2. Theoretical
Provide insights into the most theories and frameworks concerning the relation between population and social
phenomena
→detect and interpret current demographic trends
3. Methodological
Knowledge of data sources
Teach methods and techniques to describe demographic structures and processes
Hypo of linearity
→to be capable to calculate and interpret demographic indicators correctly in order to document goals 1
and 2
“If you are not interested in demography, you are not interested in yourself…(J. McFalls, 2007)”
→consider: when are you born? How many babies were born at the same time?
What gender and how will this determine your identity? Will you have children? Grankids?
How many times will you move in your life? How long will you live in good health? When will you die?
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,Formal demography?
= methods and techniques to investigate population issues significantly
Our level of technicity: necessary level to correctly investigate and interpret demographic events
e.g what does an increase of the number of births imply? How should we interpret an increase in
Investigate the relationship between demographic and societal events – reciprocal relationship:
• Impact of demography on society (Ex: aging pop →discussions about pensions)
• Impact of society on demography (Ex: environmental change)
Founding fathers:
Thinking and philosophizing on popular issues: as old as mankid: Conficius, Plato, Aristoteles, Ibn Khaldun
Demography became more important when states developed in strong states → needed data to plan the way that
they were working
❖ John Graunt- 1662
• Demography as hobby- avant la lettre
• Book in 1662 about biologic and social/societal dimension
• Constructed a “lifetable” using bills of mortality= weekly mortality stats in London
• Lifetable: age specific mortality rate → info for each age group and see how many deaths there are for that age
group → calculation of life exp
Investigates the age distribution of deaths in a systematic way
Data collected from women that went from door to door to ask if
someone died
• Was the first author who established a (kind of) lifetable
• Reciprocal dependency between demographic parameters
Number of births + life tables →number of women belonging to the
reproductive age groups
In a city: more deaths than births
In rural areas vice versa →growth in London?
• In the population: number of men= number of women →”Christian prohibition on polygamy is in accordance
with the law of nature”
Father of the formal, analytical demography
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, ❖ Thomas R. Malthus- 1798
• Father of demographic theories
• Political meaning of demography
• “Essay on the Principle of Population”
Reaction against the ideas of enlightenment thinkers 18th century
→Enlightenment: optimism about progress, rationality, science, technology and population as a self-
regulating system avoiding overpopulation
Malthus confronted this optimism with the economic situation of England at that time:
Bigger pop → decline of mortality, increase of the number of
marriages and births
England needed to import food: no more independent country →
problem pop and food supply
Population growth should be kept in line with food production
• Preventive checks: “moral restraints” such as delayed marriage
• Positive checks: disease, starvation and war →premature death
• Opponent of the poor laws: the poor have no rights on support whenever they fail to restrains
themselves morally and have fewer children
Still today his idea is very present (e.g Africa) but we have enough food for everyone
It’s more an issue of distribution of resources (EU even throws food away)
❖ Adoplhe Quetelet- 1796- 1874
• Father of standardized data collection
• Belgian, astronomer, mathematician
• Procedures for scientific and standardized data collection
o Important for data collection → first Belgian census and still one of the best one (1846)
o Schedule for national data collections
o International standardization of methods to collect, process, analyse and present pop data
o Founder of a number of international statistical organizations
Migration is hard to compare internationally bcs of the diff definitions
• Statistic applied on human beings: l’homme moyen (=top of the normal bell curve distribution)
❖ Achille Guillard- 1855
“Eléments de statistique humaine, ou démographie comparée”
• First time that the concept of demography has been used – 1855
= natural and social history of the human specie
▪ In demography both social and biologic processes are important
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, ▪ Predominantly quantitative
Demography?
• UNO definition= study of human populations
Essentially a quantitative study: size, structure, evolution and general characteristics of populations
• Dictionary of demographic and reproductive health termionology
=scientific study of human populations, including:
• Sizes, compositions, distributions, densities, growth, and other characteristics
• Causes and consequences of population changes
o Fertility, mortality, marriage and divorce, migration
• New definition: not only demography (describing) but also “demology” (causes and consequences)
• Population=collection of people
• Often regionally and temporally delimited
Transversal: pop at one point in time
Longitudinal: evolution of the pop through time
• Population= e.g “pop of Belgium the 1st of jan is X”
• Demography: restricted definition →analytical and formal demography without link to society
• Broader definition: the interdisciplinary science par excellence
From anthropology to biomedical sciences
Ecological demography, social demography, historical demography, anthropologic demography
Historical demography
Initially: interest in historical population issues →theoretical speculations
Three research projects changed this situation:
1. M. Fleury & L. Henry (1956): method to reconstruct nuclear family based on parish registers
2. During the 1960s: study of A. Coale: large-scale historical-demographic project concerning the decline of fertility
in Europe of the 19th and 20th century (Princeton)
3. Mid 1960s: P. Laslet triggers a research concerning the size and structure of households between 1500-1800 and
in the 19th century (Cambridge)
Anthropological demography
Demographers increasingly recognized the importance of cultural aspects
Anthropologists increasingly recognized the role of demographic phenomena in order to understand foreign cultures
Large gap between both disciplines bridged by
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