Demography 

is the statistical study of human population. It can be a very general science that can be

applied to any kind of dynamic human population, that is, one that changes over time or space). It
encompasses the study of the size, structure and distribution of these populations, and spatial and/or
temporal changes in them in response to birth, migration, aging and death.

Demographic analysis can be applied to whole societies or to groups defined by criteria such

as education, nationality, religion and ethnicity. Institutionally, demography is usually considered a field
of sociology, though there are a number of independent demography departments. Formal
demography limits its object of study to the measurement of populations processes, while the broader
field of social demography population studies also analyze the relationships between economic, social,
cultural and biological processes influencing a population.

The term demographics is often used erroneously for demography, but refers rather to selected
population characteristics as used in government, marketing or opinion research, or the demographic
profiles used in such research.

There are two methods of data collection: direct and indirect. Direct data come from vital statistics
registries that track all births and deaths as well as certain changes in legal status such as marriage,
divorce, and migration (registration of place of residence). In developed countries with good registration
systems (such as the United States and much of Europe), registry statistics are the best method for
estimating the number of births and deaths.

A census is the other common direct method of collecting demographic data. A census is usually
conducted by a national government and attempts to enumerate every person in a country. However, in
contrast to vital statistics data, which are typically collected continuously and summarized on an annual
basis, censuses typically, occur only every 10 years or so, and thus are not usually the best source of
data on births and deaths. Analyses are conducted after a census to estimate how much over or
undercounting took place.

Censuses do more than just count people. They typically collect information about families or households,
as well as about such individual characteristics as age, sex, marital status, literacy/education,
employment status and occupation, and geographical location. They may also collect data on migration
(or place of birth or of previous residence), language, religion, nationality (or ethnicity or race), and
citizenship. In countries in which the vital registration system may be incomplete, the censuses are also
used as a direct source of information about fertility and mortality; for example the censuses of
the People's Republic of China gather information on births and deaths that occurred in the 18 months
immediately preceding the census.

Indirect methods of collecting data are required in countries where full data are not available, such as is
the case in much of the developing world. One of these techniques is the sister method, where survey
researchers ask women how many of their sisters have died or had children and at what age. With these
surveys, researchers can then indirectly estimate birth or death rates for the entire population. Other
indirect methods include asking people about siblings, parents, and children.
The various ratios used in calculating demography are:

 The crude birth rate, the annual number of live births per 1,000 people.
 The general fertility rate, the annual number of live births per 1,000 women of childbearing age
(often taken to be from 15 to 49 years old, but sometimes from 15 to 44).
 age-specific fertility rates, the annual number of live births per 1,000 women in particular age
groups (usually age 15-19, 20-24 etc.)
 The crude death rate, the annual number of deaths per 1,000 people.
 The infant mortality rate, the annual number of deaths of children less than 1 year old per 1,000
live births.
 The expectation of life (or life expectancy), the number of years which an individual at a given
age could expect to live at present mortality levels.
 The total fertility rate, the number of live births per woman completing her reproductive life, if
her childbearing at each age reflected current age-specific fertility rates.
 The replacement level fertility, the average number of children a woman must have in order to
replace herself with a daughter in the next generation. For example the replacement level fertility in
the US is 2.11. This means that 100 women will bear 211 children, 103 of which will be females.
About 3% of the alive female infants are expected to decease before they bear children, thus
producing 100 women in the next generation.[3]
 The gross reproduction rate, the number of daughters who would be born to a woman
completing her reproductive life at current age-specific fertility rates.
 The net reproduction ratio is the expected number of daughters, per newborn prospective
mother, who may or may not survive to and through the ages of childbearing.
 A stable population, one that has had constant crude birth and death rates for such long time
that the percentage of people in every age class remains constant, or equivalently, the population
pyramid has an unchanging structure.[3]
 A stationary population, one that is both stable and unchanging in size (the difference between
crude birth rate and crude death rate is zero).[3]

A stable population does not necessarily remain fixed in size, it can be expanding or shrinking.[3

Note that the crude death rate as defined above and applied to a whole population can give a misleading
impression. For example, the number of deaths per 1,000 people can be higher for developed nations
than in less-developed countries, despite standards of health being better in developed countries. This is
because developed countries have proportionally more older people, who are more likely to die in a given
year, so that the overall mortality rate can be higher even if the mortality rate at any given age is lower. A
more complete picture of mortality is given by a life table which summarises mortality separately at each
age. A life table is necessary to give a good estimate of life expectancy.

The fertility rates can also give a misleading impression that a population is growing faster than it in fact
is, because measurement of fertility rates only involves the reproductive rate of women, and does not
adjust for the sex ratio. For example, if a population has a total fertility rate of 4.0 but the sex ratio is 66/34
(twice as many men as women), this population is actually growing at a slower natural increase rate than
would a population having a fertility rate of 3.0 and a sex ratio of 50/50. This distortion is greatest
in India and Myanmar, and is present in China as well.

The history of demography can be traced back to ntiquity, and are present in many civilisations and
cultures, like Ancient Greece, Rome, India and China. In ancient Greece, this can be found in the writings
of Herodotus, Thucidides, Hippocrates, Epicurus, Protagoras, Polus, Plato and Aristotle. In Rome, writers
and philosophers like Cicero, Seneca, Pliny the elder, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Cato and Collumella
also expressed important ideas on this ground.

In the Middle ages, Christian thinkers devoted much time in refuting the Classical ideas on demography.
Important contributors to the field were William of Conches, Bartholomew of Lucca, William of
Auvergne, William of Pagula, and Ibn Khaldun.

The Natural and Political Observations ... upon the Bills of Mortality (1662) of John Graunt contains a
primitive form of life table. Mathematicians, such asEdmond Halley, developed the life table as the basis
for life insurance mathematics. Richard Price was credited with the first textbook on life contingencies
published in 1771, followed later by Augustus de Morgan, ‘On the Application of Probabilities to Life
Contingencies’ (1838).

At the end of the 18th century, Thomas Malthus concluded that, if unchecked, populations would be
subject to exponential growth. He feared that population growth would tend to outstrip growth in food
production, leading to ever-increasing famine and poverty (see Malthusian catastrophe). He is seen as
the intellectual father of ideas of overpopulation and the limits to growth. Later, more sophisticated and
realistic models were presented by Benjamin Gompertz andVerhulst.

The period 1860-1910 can be characterized as a period of transition wherein demography emerged from
statistics as a separate field of interest. This period included a panoply of international ‘great
demographers’ like Adolphe Quételet (1796–1874), William Farr (1807–1883), Louis-Adolphe
Bertillon (1821–1883) and his son Jacques (1851–1922), Joseph Körösi (1844–1906), Anders Nicolas
Kaier (1838–1919), Richard Böckh (1824–1907), Wilhelm Lexis (1837–1914) and Luigi Bodio (1840–
1920) contributed to the development of demography and to the toolkit of methods and techniques of
demographic analysis.

Contrary to Malthus' predictions and in line with his thoughts on moral restraint, natural population growth
in most developed countries has diminished to close to zero, without being held in check by famine or
lack of resources, as people in developed nations have shown a tendency to have fewer children. The fall
in population growth has occurred despite large rises in life expectancy in these countries. This pattern of
population growth, with slow (or no) growth in pre-industrial societies, followed by fast growth as the
society develops and industrializes, followed by slow growth again as it becomes more affluent, is known
as the demographic transition.

Similar trends are now becoming visible in ever more developing countries, so that far from spiraling out
of control, world population growth is expected to slow markedly in this century, coming to an eventual
standstill or even declining. The change is likely to be accompanied by major shifts in the proportion of
world population in particular regions. The United Nations Population Division expects the absolute
number of infants and toddlers in the world to begin to fall by 2015, and the number of children under 15
by 2025.

The figure in this section shows the latest (2004) UN projections of world population out to the year 2150
(red = high, orange = medium, green = low). The UN "medium" projection shows world population
reaching an approximate equilibrium at 9 billion by 2075. Working independently, demographers at
the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria expect world population to peak at 9
billion by 2070. Throughout the 21st century, the average age of the population is likely to continue to
rise.
Populations can change through three processes: fertility, mortality, and migration. Fertility involves the
number of children that women have and is to be contrasted with fecundity (a woman's childbearing
potential). Mortality is the study of the causes, consequences, and measurement of processes affecting
death to members of the population. Demographers most commonly study mortality using the Life Table,
a statistical device which provides information about the mortality conditions (most notably the life
expectancy) in the population.

Migration refers to the movement of persons from an origin place to a destination place across some pre-
defined, political boundary. Migration researchers do not designate movements 'migrations' unless they
are somewhat permanent. Thus demographers do not consider tourists and travelers to be migrating.
While demographers who study migration typically do so through census data on place of residence,
indirect sources of data including tax forms and labor force surveys are also important.

Demography is today widely taught in many universities across the world, attracting students with initial
training in social sciences, statistics or health studies. Being at the crossroads of several disciplines such
as sociology, economics, epidemiology, geography, anthropology and history, demography offers tools to
approach a large range of population issues by combining a more technical quantitative approach that
represents the core of the discipline with many other methods borrowed from social or other sciences.
Demographic research is conducted in universities, in research institutes as well as in statistical
departments and in several international agencies. Population institutions are part of
the Cicred (International Committee for Coordination of Demographic Research) network while most
individual scientists engaged in demographic research are members of the International Union for the
Scientific Study of Population or, in the United States, the Population Association of America.
Demographic economics or population economics is the application
of economics to demography, the study of human populations,
including size, growth, density, distribution, and vital statistics. Analysis
includes economic determinants and consequences of marriage
and fertility, the family, divorce, morbidity and life
expectancy/mortality, dependency ratios, migration, population
growth, population size, public policy, and the demographic
transition from "population explosion" to (dynamic) stability[ or decline.
Other subfields include the measuring the value of life and the
economics of the elderly and the handicapped and of gender, race,
minorities, and non-labor discrimination. In coverage and subfields, it
complements labor economics and implicates a variety of other
economics subjects.

Some studies relating to the relationship between demography and

economics are:

The demographic-economic paradox is the inverse correlation found between wealth and fertility within

and between nations. The higher the degree of education and GDP per capita of a human population,
subpopulation or social stratum, the fewer children are born in any industrialized country. In a 1974 UN
population conference in Bucharest, Karan Singh, a former minister of population in India, illustrated this
trend by stating "Development is the best contraceptive."

The term "paradox" comes from the notion that greater means would necessitate the production of more
offspring as suggested by the influential Thomas Malthus. Roughly speaking, nations or subpopulations
with higher GDP per capita are observed to have fewer children, even though a richer population can
support more children. Malthus held that in order to prevent widespread suffering, from famine for
example, what he called "moral restraint" (which included abstinence) was required. The demographic-
economic paradox suggests that reproductive restraint arises naturally as a consequence of economic
progress.
It is hypothesized that the observed trend has come about as a response to increased life expectancy,
reduced childhood mortality, improved female literacy and independence, and urbanization that all result
from increased GDP per capita, consistent with the demographic transition model.

Current information suggests that the demographic-economic paradox only holds up to a point though.
Recent data suggests that once a country reaches a certain level of human development and economic
prosperity the fertility rate stabilizes and then recovers slightly to replacement rates.

Graph of Total Fertility Rate vs. GDP per capita of the corresponding country, 2009. Only countries with over 5 Million

population were plotted.

The Preston curve is an empirical cross-section relationship between life expectancy and real per capita
income. It is named after Samuel H. Preston (1975) who described it in his article "The Changing Relation
between Mortality and Level of Economic Development" in the journalPopulation Studies in 1975. Preston
studied the relationship for the 1900s, 1930s and the 1960s and found it held for each of the three
decades. More recent work has updated this research.

The Preston curve indicates that individuals born in richer countries, on average, can expect to live longer
than those born in poor countries. However, the link between income and life expectancy flattens out.
This means that at low levels of per capita income, further increases in income are associated with large
gains in life expectancy, but at high levels of income, increased income has little associated change in life
expectancy. In other words, if the relationship is interpreted as being causal, then there are diminishing
returns to income in terms of life expectancy.

A further significant finding of Preston's study was that the curve has shifted upwards during the 20th
century. This means that life expectancy has increased in most countries, independently of changes in
income. Preston credited education, better technology, vaccinations, improved provision of public health
services, oral rehydration therapy and better nutrition with these exogenous improvements in health.
[4]
 According to Preston, the independent increases in life expectancy have been greatest in the poor
countries, although he also believed that a good portion of the potential gains from better medical
technology have not been realized.[4] Furthermore, several poor countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have
actually seen declines in life expectancy in the 1990s and 2000s as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic,
even if their per capita incomes have increased during this time.

Overall Preston found that improvements in health technology (the upwards shifts in the curve) accounted
for 75% to 90% of the increase in life expectancy, while income growth (movement along the curve) was
responsible for the rest.

Analysis of more recent data, for example by Michael Spence and Maureen Lewis, suggests that the "fit"
of the relationship has gotten stronger in recent decades since Preston's study.

While the relationship between income and life expectancy is log linear on average, any one individual
country can lie above or below curve. Those below the curve, such as South Africa or Zimbabwe, have
life expectancy levels that are lower than would be predicted based on per capita income alone. Countries
above the curve, such as Tajikistan, have life expectancies that are exceptionally high given their level of
economic development. In 2000, the US data lay just below the curve, indicating that it had a slightly
lower life expectancy than other rich countries.
If the relationship is estimated with nonparametric regression then it produces a version of the curve
which has a "hinge"; a kink in the relationship at which point the slope of the regression equation falls
significantly. This point occurs around the per capita income level of $2,045 (data for the year 2000)
which is about the per capita income level of India. This level of income is generally associated with a
crossing of a "epidemiological transition", where countries change from having most of their mortality
occur due to infant mortality to that due to old age mortality, and from prevalence ofinfectious diseases to
that of chronic diseases.

The fact that the relationship between income and health

is concave implies that a transfer of income from the rich to the poor
would increase the average health of a society. However, this policy
prescription will have this effect only if the relationship between income
and health is causal - higher income causes longer life expectancy (see
below). If the relationship is driven by other factors, if it is spurious, or if it
is in fact health that leads to higher income, then this policy outcome will
no longer be true.
The existence of the Preston curve has been used by Lant
Pritchett and Larry Summers to argue that poor countries should focus
on economic growth, and that health improvements will come about on
their own as a result of increases in income. According to these authors,
in 1990, more than half a million child deaths in the world could have
been prevented with better economic performance. However, the
upward shifts of the Preston curve still imply that the main portion of
gains in life expectancy has come about as a result of improved health
technology rather than just increases in per capita income. Preston did,
however, acknowledge that, for the poorest countries, economic growth
may be necessary for improvements in health, as even the most
inexpensive technologies have a cost of adoption that poor countries
may not be able to afford.
Preston's work has also contributed to the broadening of the definition
of economic development. Gary Becker  has included longevity in a
more general welfare measure and have illustrated that increases in life
expectancy have made up a large portion of increases in overall global
welfare since the 1960s. In the same work they also found that while
cross-country incomes have diverged, the distribution of health has
converged.
The Preston curve, using cross-country data for 2005. The x-axis shows GDP per capita in 2005 international dollars, the y-

axis shows life expectancy at birth. Each dot represents a particular country.

Improvements in health technology shift the Preston Curve upwards. In panel A, the new technology is equally applicable in

all countries regardless of their level of income. In panel B, the new technology has a disproportionately larger effect in rich

countries. In panel C, poorer countries benefit more.

CRITICISM AND SHORTCOMINGS

Lack of longitudinal evidence

The Preston curve is a relationship found in cross-country data - that is, it holds for a sample of countries
taken at a particular point in time. Some research however suggests that a similar relationship does not
hold in time series and longitudinal data within individual countries. In particular, per capita incomes
between countries have generally diverged over time, while life expectancies, and other health indicators
such as the infant mortality rates, have converged (this trend was interrupted in the 1990s with the
outbreak of the AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa). This suggests that over time changes in income
may have no impact on health or even be negatively related.

Causality
A further limitation of the correlation is that it does not necessarily imply that the causality runs from
income to health. It could actually be that better health, as proxied by life expectancy, contributes to
higher incomes, rather than vice versa. Better health can increase incomes because healthier individuals
tend to be more productive than sick ones; on average they work harder, longer and are more capable of
focusing efficiently on production tasks. Furthermore, better health may affect not just the level of income
but also its growth rate through its effect on education. Healthier children spend more time at school and
learn faster, thus acquiring more human capital which translates into higher growth rates of incomes later
in life. Diseases such as malaria can short circuit these processes. Likewise there is evidence that more
healthy individuals save more and thus contribute to the faster accumulation of physical capital of an
economy. Jeffrey Sachs in particular has emphasized the role that the disease burden has played in the
impoverishment of countries located in the tropical zones.

The problem of reverse causality between health and income means that any estimates of the impact of
income on life expectancy could mistakenly reflect the influence of life expectancy (more generically,
health) on income instead. As such, studies which do not account for this potential two-way causation
may overestimate the importance of income for life expectancy. In economic research, this kind of
problem has traditionally been dealt with through the use of instrumental variables which allow the
researcher to separate out one effect from another. In order for this strategy to succeed however an
"instrument" – a variable which is correlated with per capita income but is not correlated with the error
term in the linear regression – has to be found. However, since any variable which is likely to be
correlated with income is also likely to be highly correlated with health and life expectancy this is a difficult
task. Some research suggests that in low and middle-income countries, the causality does indeed go from
income to health, while the opposite is true for rich countries.

Population:1,173,108,018
Age structure:0-14 years: 30.5% (male 187,197,389/female
165,285,592) 15-64 years: 64.3% (male 384,131,994/female
359,795,835) 65 years and over: 5.2% (male 28,816,115/female
31,670,841) (2010 est.)

Median age:total: 25.9 years male: 25.4 years female: 26.6

years (2010 est.)

Population growth rate:1.376%

Birth rate:21.34 births/1,000 population

Death rate:7.53 deaths/1,000 population (July 2010 est.)

Net migration rate:-0.05 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2010 est.)

Urbanization:Urban population: 29% of total population (2008)

rate of urbanization: 2.4% annual rate of change (2005-10 est.)

Sex ratio:At birth: 1.12 male(s)/female under 15 years: 1.13

male(s)/female 15-64 years: 1.07 male(s)/female 65 years and
over: 0.91 male(s)/femaletotal population: 1.08 ale(s)/female

Infant mortality rate:total: 49.13 deaths/1,000 live births male:

47.7 deaths/1,000 live births female: 50.73 deaths/1,000 live
births

Life expectancy at birth:total population: 66.46 years male:

65.46 years female: 67.57 years

Total fertility rate:2.65 children born/woman

HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate:0.3%

HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/AIDS:2.4 million

HIV/AIDS - deaths

310,000 (2001 est.)

Major infectious diseases:Degree of risk: high food or

waterborne diseases: bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis A and E, and
typhoid fever vectorborne diseases:chikungunya, dengue fever,
Japanese encephalitis, and malaria animal contact disease:
rabies water contact disease:leptospirosis note: highly
pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza has been identified in this
country; it poses a negligible risk with extremely rare cases
possible among US citizens who have close contact with birds
(2009)

Nationality:noun: Indian(s) adjective: Indian

Ethnic groups:Indo-Aryan 72%, Dravidian 25%, Mongoloid and

other 3% (2000)

Religions:Hindu 80.5%, Muslim 13.4%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh

1.9%, other 1.8%, unspecified 0.1% (2001 census)

Languages

Hindi 41%, Bengali 8.1%, Telugu 7.2%, Marathi 7%, Tamil 5.9%,
Urdu 5%, Gujarati 4.5%, Kannada 3.7%, Malayalam 3.2%, Oriya
3.2%, Punjabi 2.8%, Assamese 1.3%, Maithili 1.2%, other 5.9%
Note: English enjoys the status of subsidiary official language but
is the most important language for national, political, and
commercial communication; Hindi is the most widely spoken
language and primary tongue of 41% of the people; there are 14
other official languages: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu,
Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese,
Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; Hindustani is a popular variant of
Hindi/Urdu spoken widely throughout northern India but is not an
official language (2001 census)

Literacy:definition: age 15 and over can read and write total

population: 61% male: 73.4% female: 47.8% (2001 census)

School life expectancy (primary to tertiary education):total:

10 years male: 11 years female: 10 years (2007)
Education expenditures:3.2% of GDP (2006)