Statistical demography and forecasting. (Q2565573): Difference between revisions

Statistics and demography share important common roots, yet as academic disciplines they have grown apart. Both, statistics and demography are necessary ingredients in any serious analysis of the sustainability of pension or health care systems in the aging societies, in the assessment of potential inequities of formula-based allocations to local governments, in the estimation of the size of elusive populations such as drug users, in the investigation of the consequences of social ills such as unemployment, and so forth. This book was written to bring together much of the basic statistical theory and methodology for estimating and forecasting population growth and its components of births, deaths and migration. Areas covered include classical mathematical demography, event history methods, multi-state methods, stochastic population forecasting, sampling and census coverage, and decision making. The methods are illustrated with empirical applications from Europe and the United States. For statisticians the book provides a unique introduction to demographic problems in a familiar language. For demographers, actuaries, epidemiologists and professionals in related fields, the book presents a unified statistical outlook on both classical methods of demography and recent developments. To facilitate its classroom use, exercises are included. Over half of the book is readily accessible to undergraduates, but more maturity may be required to benefit fully from the complete text. Knowledge of differential and integral calculus, matrix algebra, basic probability theory and regression analysis is assumed. There are many results that have appeared in journals or working papers only. Some appear here for the first time and make this book, very important and useful.