Life not lived due to disequilibrium in heterogeneous age-structured populations (Q1087499)

In this paper three models of age-structured populations with demographically heterogeneous subpopulations are analyzed. All three models ignore nonlinear interactions between sexes. The models are therefore most naturally interpreted as applying to a single sex, or to a two-sex population in which the sex not described is present in abundance. In the first model, each subpopulation has its own age-specific vital rates, fixed in time, and grows independently of all others. In the second, each subpopulation has its own age-specific vital rates, and these are all uniformly inhibited by increasing the total numbers of individuals. In the third, each subpopulation has its own age-specific vital rates, but the vital rates of groups of these subpopulations are inhibited by the total numbers of individuals in other groups of subpopulations with an intensity that depends on the interacting pair of groups of subpopulations. It is described how disequilibrium affects total population size. Three functions \(H_ p\), \(H_ V\), and \(H_ N\) are defined which measure disequilibrium in the subpopulation frequencies, subpopulation age structures, and total population size, respectively. For the first model, it is shown that disequilibrium will shift the trajectory of the total numbers of individuals by an amount that is asymptotically constant and that this constant is proportional to the sum \(H_ p+H_ V.\) For the second model, sufficient conditions for the existence of a globally stable equilibrium are established. For the last model, the results of the second model are extended to two or more interacting populations. The results are illustrated using the census data and demographic projection matrices of Keyfitz and Flieger (1968) for Mexico, the United States, and Canada in the year 1962.