PAPP101 - S02: How to measure demographic events

Introduction

Demography is the study of population size, structure and spatial distribution, and how these elements change in response to demographic events; namely births, deaths and migration. It is this interplay between demographic events and population size and structure that we refer to when discussing population dynamics. An understanding of population size, structure, and dynamics is essential for estimating both current and future population needs.

To do so, demographers need to be able to measure both the size of the population and the number of demographic events occurring in a given time period. This session will introduce you to the measures demographers use to describe such features of a population.