Definition of
Demography
The demography is the analysis of human communities from the statistics. The concept comes from a compound Greek word that can be translated as “description of the town”. This discipline studies the size, stratification, and development of a communityfrom a quantitative perspective.
For demographics, the population It is a group of people linked by reproductive ties that can be identified by cultural, social, geographical, political or other particularities. The population, therefore, has continuity over time, although it is not eternal.
From this definition, we can understand that demography is the social science that is responsible for analyzing the processes that determine the creation, maintenance, and eventual disappearance of populations. Notions like fertility, mobility and mortality They are key to demography, since they determine the structure of each population.
- Origins of demography
- Birth and death rates and migratory movements
- demographic types
- Study methods
- Related Topics Tree
Origins of demography
Arab statesman and sociologist Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) is considered a pioneer in the field of demography. He was the one who began to collect statistical information to study populations and generate new data from these statistics.
The British john graunt (1620–1674) and thomas malthus (1766–1834) also made great contributions to the development of demography.
It can help you: Population explosion
Birth and death rates and migratory movements
The birth and death rates and the population movements are part of the basic studies of demography, whose works are very important for the development of policies of State.
From demographic data, for example, it is possible to know which are the main public health problems or which regions of a country are relegated at an economic level.
See also: Migration movements
demographic types
Within this social science there are various branches, they respond to the following names: general demographics (investigates the theories that exist around demography and the research methodologies used), geographic demographics (check the mobility of populations: migrations, new settlements, etc.), historical demography (studies issues related to fertility, mortality rate and migrations that occur within a group), fertility (which is in charge of analyzing the birth and marriage rates and the fertility of the population) and mortality (studies the mortality rate of a group in general and the causes and age of deaths in particular, trying to relate the various variables).
To carry out demographic studies various censuses are carried out whose objective is to extract the relevant information regarding the state of the population that is being studied: number of occupied dwellings, number of people living in each one, illnesses, deaths that occurred in the last year in each family, migrationsetc.
The results of these analyzes will not only allow us to know the current size of the population, but also the risks to which they are exposed and can help find solutions or prevent lethal consequences such as plagues, famines or accidents.
Continue on: Research
Study methods
There are two types of study methods within this social science:
* Composite method: It is about combining different study techniques that allow arriving at an approximate conclusion of the conditions in which the population studied is located. One of these techniques can be, for example, school enrollment. Researchers can have an approximate notion of the changes that the population has undergone from one year to the next in the sector of the group that is of school age, in this way they could know the number of minor inhabitants that there are and verify the migrations that have occurred. suffered the population in the last year of young people of school age.
* Statistical methods: They are the most accurate because they are carried out based on obtaining specific data, collected from the censuses. Through statistical theories, it is possible to relate the changes indicated in the results of the censuses and obtain information on the conditions in which the population is at the time of carrying out said analysis.
See also: Conclusion