DEMOGRAPHY

Demography is the science of human population. A Belgian name of ACHILE GLUILLARD first used the term in 1855 when he published his book in FRENCH named “Elements of Human Statistics or Comparative Demography”. He defines it as the natural and social history of the human species or the mathematical knowledge of population, of their general changes and of their physical civil intellectual and moral conditions. Population analysis is more or less used as synonymous to demography. However population analysis has more mathematical and numerical analysis. The term demography has been derived from two Greek words DEMOS meaning to human population and GRAPHY means to measured. Demography has further defined in different senses and levels. We have narrowest sense, broadest sense and widest sense.

DEMOGRAPHY IN NARROWEST SENSE:

In narrowest sense demography is considered as the formal demography, is concern with size, distribution, structure and change of population. Size is simply measured through the number of unit (persons in the population). Distribution refers to the arrangement of the population in space at a given time that is geographically or among various types of residential areas or units.

Structure in its in narrowest sense is the distribution of population among sex and age grouping and other person characteristics. Change in the growth or decline of the total population are of its one of the structural units. The components of change in total population are births, death and migration.

DEMOGRAPHY IN BRODEST SENSE:

Broadest sense demography includes additional characteristics of unit these include ethnic characteristic, economical characteristic and social characteristic. Ethnic characteristic is like legal, nationality and mother tongue into social characteristic. Other social characteristic are marital status, family status, place of birth, literacy and education attainments. Economic characteristic includes employment economic activity, occupation, industry and incomes. Other characteristic that might encompassed are genetic inheritance, intelligence and health but the usual sources of demographic data such as censes, seldom deals with this directly. Further more demography may look beyond the basic personal unit to such customary social grouping such as families and married couple.

DEMOGRAPHY IN WIDEST SENSE:

Widest sense of demography extends to applications of its data and findings in number of fields including the study of problems that are related to demographic process and human population. These include the pressure of population on resources, de-population, family limitations, eugenic, assimilation, urban/rural problem, main problem and the main distribution of income and resource.

Eugenics is concern with controlling the population both quantitatively and qualitatively by separating out mentally and physical defective people from the act of mating and reproducing.

LEVELS OF DEMOGRAPHICS STUDIES:

Demographic or population studies can be made at different levels extending its spectrum and are known as “Macro Demography”. However for minute knowledge demographic analysis may be performing on a smaller area for example, a city, a town, village or a designated area. Such studies are term as “Micro Demography”.

Macro studies are generally performed on global, continent, regional, sub regional and national language. Micro studies are conducted in sub national, provincial, District, cities, town, villages, or small De-limited area.

Macro studies are being made under united nation or its allied organization except national level which are being done by national government in their respective countries. All member countries of U.N. are supposed to supply their data to U.N’s various organization.

SOURCES OF DEMOGRAPHIC DATA:

Demographic analysis and population studies either in narrower sense or Browder sense required basic data on person count and counts of various vital events which are available through various resources. None of the resources are overlapping rather they are complimentary to each other. How ever, these resources differed to a great extend and thus the data generating through them is also to be used with care. There are three different resources through which we obtained basic demographic data. Additional data is possible through some indirect sources. The three basic resources are:
1. Census
2. Sample survey
3. Registration

CONCLUSION:

HOUSER and DUNCAN( static an) regard the field of demography as consisting of a narrower scope, demographic analysis in a wider scope and population studies in the widest scope. Demographic analysis is confined to the components of population, variation and change. Population studies are concerned not only with the population variable but also with relationship between population changes and the other variables such as social, economical, political, biological, genetic, and geographical and the like. The field of population studies is at least as browed as interest in the determinants and consciences and trends. UN multilingual (demographic dictionary) demography is the scientific study of primarily with respect to their size, their structure and their development.