demography
Demography is the
science which studies the human populations. This study is primarily quantitative:
demography enters the number of inhabitants of a territory at a given time, the
number of births and death, the number of displacements, etc. It thus rests
above all on figures and statistics.
WHAT STUDIES THE DEMOGRAPHERS?
The demographers want initially to
describe the populations per quantities: they study for example the number
of births, the number of deaths or the number of inhabitants in a delimited
geographical area.
They are interested then in the
composition of this population: they thus will divide the population in
groups by age, profession, social category, and place place of work of habitat.
The comparison of the statistics makes it
possible to highlight differences by country. Thus, in France, 7 children
out of 1000 die before the one year age; to Mali, 159; in China, 44.
The comparison also makes it possible to
identify evolutions: if the birth rate is higher than the death rate, the
population increases.
Demography also seeks to
explain the evolutions of the population
which it highlights. The strong fall of the mortality occurred since the
xviii E century in Europe is explained by progress of
hygiene, medicine, the food. Demography is thus related on the economy, the
history, the geography, medicine, sociology, etc.
FOR WHAT IS USED DEMOGRAPHY?
The statistics make it possible to
identify certain problems and to set
up solutions: when the infant mortality is much more significant in a country
than in the others, the State knows that this mortality can be reduced, and can
thus seek to promote measurements of hygiene, vaccination, information…
Demography does not have only one
descriptive or explanatory interest: it is
a significant tool of forecast for the State. If the number of births
strongly increases, of new schools will be necessary three years later, of new
universities 18 years later, of new old people's homes 70 years later. In the
same way, if the demographers note that the urban population increases, it is
necessary to encourage the construction of residences downtown.
Demography also makes it possible at the
State to take measures to rebalance the generations or to influence the number of the population.
In the Western countries where the population comprises more and more old
people and less and less young people, the State encourages the births by
proposing family benefits proportional to the number of children. In other
countries, the population is too significant for the size of the country or its
capacity to produce enough food for all; the action of the State then aims on
the contrary at discouraging the birthrate, while encouraging
contraception —this policy of
birth-control can go until prohibition to have more than one child by family.
WHO A INVENTED DEMOGRAPHY?
The first censuses date from the Roman
time and spread to the xix E century. Demography
itself is a rather recent science: one considers that it was born with the work
from Robert Malthus, Essai on the principle of population, published in 1798. This English economist
underlined the dangers of the increase in population when the production does
not make it possible to nourish it. In France, the economist and
demographer Alfred Sauvy melt in 1945
the national Institute of demographic studies (INED), whose mission is the
study of the problems of population, considered under all their aspects.
