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The Field of Demography

Demography is an interdisciplinary field involving mathematics and statistics, biology, medicine, sociology, economics, history, geography, and anthropology. The field of demography has a relatively brief history. Its beginning often is dated from the publication in 1798 of An Essay on the Principle of Population by the British economist Thomas Robert Malthus. In this work Malthus warned of the constant tendency for human population growth to outstrip food production and classified the various ways that such growth would, in consequence, be slowed. He distinguished between “positive checks” to population growth (such as war, famine, and disease) and “preventive checks” (celibacy and contraception).

The development of demography has been tied closely to the gradually increasing availability of data on births and deaths from parish and civil registers, and on population size and composition from the censuses that became common in the 19th century (see Census). The growth of behavioral sciences in the 20th century and advances in the fields of statistics and computer sciences further stimulated demographic research. Subfields of mathematical, economic, and social demography have grown rapidly in recent decades.