Demographic Models

Abstract

Demographic models incorporate entities and relations that are well defined and involve certain empirical regularities. According to Coale (1988), there are two categories of demographic models. The first is a set of relations that are tautologically appropriate to the basic subject matter of demography. The latter involves populations, collectivities which increase or decrease by the entry or the exit of members. At each moment, each member of the population has a specific age, and the events or risks that determine entry or exit vary with age. Suitable collectives for study include conventionally defined populations subject to birth, death, and migration, and also the set of currently married couples (age in this regard becomes duration of marriage), postoperative patients, and so forth.