An Illustration of Population Growth

Abstract

The extract which follows assembles several fragments of Euler’s work in stable theory that complement, and apparently precede, his better known 1760 article (paper 11 below). Euler here prepares for Süssmilch a population projection that begins with one couple of age 20 who give birth to an additional couple at ages 22, 24 and 26, and who die at age 40, later generations repeating the same fertility and mortality schedules. Euler demonstrates that after 300 years the population will be growing approximately geometrically and recognizes this as the limit of a recurrent series; i.e., he is working with a very general result.

From Die göttliche Ordnung, Vol. 1, pp. 291–299. Berlin. Translated by Nathan Keyfitz.