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  • PRESTON - Contours of Demography

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    Carolina Vaz
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    Demografia

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    Demografia

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    8 visualizações15 páginas

    PRESTON - Contours of Demography

    Enviado por

    Carolina Vaz
    Demografia

    Direitos autorais:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Baixe no formato PDF ou leia online no Scribd
    Sinalizar o conteúdo como inadequado
    de 15
    ‘The Contours of Demography: Estimates and Projections Samuel H. Preston Demography, Vol. 30, No. 4. (Nov., 1993), pp. 593-606, Stable URL: hup:/links jstor.org/sici?sici=0070-3370% 28 199311%2930%3A4%3C593%3A TCODEA %3E2.0,CO%3B2-F Demography is currently published by Population Association of America, Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceplance of ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hup:/iwww jstor.org/aboutterms.html, JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at bitp://www jstor.org/journals/paa,hiral. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, ial archive of JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to ere scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please cont ing and preserving a dig suppor @jstor.org. hup:thwww jstor.orgl ri Jul 28 16:04:21 2006 Demography, Vol. 30, No. 4, November 1993 The Contours of Demography: Estimates and Projections* Samuel H. Preston Population Studies Center University of Pennsylvania Philadalphia, PA 19174 ‘This paper considers the scope of demography and the various research approaches that legitimately could claim the label, As a small field lacking security in academic structures, demography has been unusually sensitive to demand factors, including those associated with perceived population problems. International health is cited as fan area of increased demographic presence; reasons for this development are explored, The technology for performing research in demography is improving more rapidly than in many other areas of the social sciences, and thus is helping to improve the relative standing of the field. Taking a demand-oriented approach, the paper identifies several promising research azeas in which demographers will be called on to addres issues of national and international concer. ‘The field of demography admits no simple definition. Certainly it includes research using ‘what are widely recognized to be “demographic techniques”: the accounting identities involv- ing stocks and flows of people moving into and out of a population, the measures developed to shed light on specific features of population movements, and the models that demonstrate the implications of assumptions about vital processes for population structure and change. The core models include biometric approaches to studying processes of birth and death. Although these methods are shared to some extent by actuarial science and population biology, they have reached their fullest development for application to human populations in the hands of de- rmographers. They are the fundamentally unique feature of the field of demography. ‘The essence and many of the details of these techniques can be conveyed to students in ‘wo semesters. Because what is unique to demography must be stretched thin in order to sustain a degree-granting program, demography lacks departmental status in American universities." Its academic base relies mainly upon continuous negotiation with departments representing the larger subjects of the social sciences, To date these negotiations have been most fruitful with sociology departments. The reason for this state of affairs is not obvious but probably reflects the empiricist orientation of American sociology and the fact that two pioneering sociologist/ demographers, Kingsley Davis and Otis Dudley Duncan, were able to demonstrate the value cof demographic approaches to studying a broad array of social phenomena If we choose an operational definition of demography that comprises all of the subject matter included in the journal Demography and in the annual meetings of the Population ‘Association of America, the field extends well beyond its technical core. It includes the + Lam grateful to lrma Elo, Doug Ewbank, Antonio McDaniel, Herb Smith, and Susan Watkins for comments and suggestions. Copyriht © 1993 Population Association of America 593 594 Demography, Vol. 30, No. 4, November 1993 collection and evaluation of demographic data; research of any disciplinary stripe on the causes and consequences of population change (often grouped under the term popularion studies), and primacily descriptive studies of a diverse set of variables such as poverty, living arrangements, marital status, and occupation (sometimes called social demography). These three areas are allied with demography for different reasons. The basis for the connection of demography with data collection and evaluation is most obvious: those who use the accounting relations of demography must attend to the varieties and quality of data that are available for implementing those relations. Likewise, demographic methods have proved valuable in assessing the quality of data, including the completeness of censuses, the nation’s most basic source of information about its population (Himes and Clogs 1992; Robinson et al. forthcoming). ‘The close connection between producers, evaluators, and users of demographic data is cone of the most attractive features of demography. The interchange helps to produce better data and to avert misinterpretation of existing data. It also affords demographers unusual opportunities to affect the content of large-scale data instruments, especially national surveys. In part because of their closeness to data production, demographers are the most inductive of social scientists, focused to a greater extent than other social scientists on careful measurement and cautious interpretation. This stance sometimes has antagonized other social scientists when demographers puncture their theoretical balloons. In turn, the demographers are accused of never even venturing off the ground. The contrasting styles of demographers and of most other social scientists may reflect different predispositions to error, reinforced by patterns of occupational selection and daily routine. Demographers seem unusually reluctant to commit Type II errors—saying that something is true when it isn't. As a result, they are unusually prone to committing Type I errors-faiing to say that something is true when i is. Social demography entered through a doorway labeled population composition. In the now-

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