https://www.worldometers.info/
world-population/
Theory and Method in Demography
SOST30012
Live lecture (1)
11/02/2022
Course Director: Mark Brown
Other Lecturers: Kati Morosow, Tina Hannemman
Teaching Assistants: Andrea Castro and Xinyi Kou
Social Statistics
2
Course in an equation
3
What is Demography?
• Scientific study of human populations: their
structure and the way they change
• Course is quite applied – a focus on learning
practical methods used to analyse population
data – lots of hands-on work with real data
• But method set within theoretical context
4
Theory and practice…
A typical week
5
Video
lectures
Reading
Live
lecture
Practical
Workshop
DOES DEMOGRAPHY MATTER?
6
7
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/07
/africa-birth-control-global-population-crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/22/collapse-
civilisation-near-certain-decades-population-bomb-paul-ehrlich
Population
growth
Ageing populations
8
Brasil 1970 > 2020 > 2070
9
https://www.census.gov/data-tools/demo/idb/#/country?COUNTRY_YEAR=2022
Challenges of aging
populations
10
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-
politics/article/2155366/chinas-ageing-
population-problem-worsens-birth-and
11
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/london-
faces-social-care-time-bomb-ageing-migrant-
workers-a4501601.html
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-budget-
is-more-proof-that-britain-is-turning-into-an-
elderly-care-system-with-a-state-attached-
3r6xkfhmq
CHALLENGES OF
AGING POPULATIONS
12https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/jan/27
/women-child-free-30-ons
A collapsing
birth rate
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/17/chin
as-birth-rate-drops-to-record-low
Migration
13
https://www.euronews.com/2021/12/30/a-year-since-brexit-
how-bad-are-the-uk-s-labour-shortages-now
Mass Migration
14
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58283177
https://www.theguardian.com/global-
development/2015/jul/09/syria-refugees-4-million-
people-flee-crisis-deepens
Challenges of demographic change
• Operate at all spatial scales: Global ; UK ; Local
• At national and local level, population size and structure directly
influences demand for services in a range of policy areas
– e.g. housing, education, social security, health
• ‘Applied’ demography:
– Helps policy makers, service providers and planners to
quantify that need AND predict future developments in need
– providing essential information for allocation of resources
• e.g how many school places needed in 5 years time?
• how many houses needed and where to build them?
15
16
What about the relationship BETWEEN population
STRUCTURE and demographic EVENTS?
17
Population Structure
and components of change
(VIDEO LECTURE 1.2)
Population
Structure
Demographic
Events
a 2-way relationship
Structure affects events:
risk of a birth, death or
migration varies by age & sex
Events determine structure:
age-sex structure is itself the
result of previous trends in
demographic events 18
19
Mortality
Migration
Fertility
Population Structure
and components of change
(VIDEO LECTURE 1.2)
Population
Structure
Demographic
Events
a 2-way relationship
Structure affects events:
risk of a birth, death or
migration varies by age & sex
Events determine structure:
age-sex structure is itself the
result of previous trends in
demographic events 20
Reading a Population Pyramid
Think of an age-sex pyramid simply as the function of previous
patterns of fertility, migration and mortality
e.g. the length of the bar for men
aged 50
is determined by:
births 50 years previously
depleted by deaths
+ or - migrants
21
The importance of scale
But what about variation at the sub-national level?
22
The UK Population
23
• Manchester
• Torbay
• Westminster
• Milton Keynes
Which is Which?
UK 43
21
Workshop this week
Constructing a series of demographic measures for a
country of choice
◼ Population pyramids
◼ Age Sex ratios
◼ Dependency ratios
◼ Rates of natural increase
What’s involved?
◼ Step 1 Sourcing the data
◼ Step 2 Calculating and interpreting the measures 24
Assessment
Coursework (30% of final mark):
1500 word report based on your own analysis of data.
(using techniques and measures learned through the
practical exercises)
Submission deadline: Thursday April 26th
Examination: Open Book (70% of final mark)
Structured questions (with choice)
Formative exercises – weekly practical exercise, past
paper questions, quizzes
25
Reading?
26
Help and support
Workshops: chance for you to ask questions
Discussion Board: questions on any aspect of the course.
◼ Quicker response than emails
◼ Everyone benefits from the question and answer
Office hours - See Blackboard for our office hours. For help on a
specific topic, we encourage you to approach the lecturer
responsible for that bit of the course e.g. me for fertility, Tina for
mortality, Kati for migration etc
27