DEMOGRAPHY

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.

TO GO FURTHER

? the census
? the birth rate
? the death rate
? the infant mortality rate
? the life expectancy
? the rate of fruitfulness
? the growth rate of the population
? density of population
? working population

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