Editing Demography (section)

==History==
Demographic thoughts traced back to antiquity, and were present in many civilisations and cultures, like [[Ancient Greece]], [[Ancient Rome]], [[China]] and [[India]].<ref name="Srivastava2006">{{cite book| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=oNcflpmW3BUC&dq=studies+in+demography&pg=PA1| title = S.C.Srivastava,''Studies in Demography'', p.39-41| isbn = 9788126119929| last1 = Srivastava| first1 = Sangya| date = December 2005| publisher = Anmol Publications Pvt. Limited}}</ref> Made up of the prefix ''[[wikt:demo-|demo-]]'' and the suffix ''[[-graphy]]'', the term ''[[wikt:demography|demography]]'' refers to the overall study of population.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://assets.cambridge.org/97811070/42674/excerpt/9781107042674_excerpt.pdf |title=Population and society |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-107-04267-4 |edition=2 |pages=3 |chapter=An Introduction to Demography}}</ref>

In ancient Greece, this can be found in the writings of [[Herodotus]], [[Thucydides]], [[Hippocrates]], [[Epicurus]], [[Protagoras]], [[Polus]], [[Plato]] and [[Aristotle]].<ref name="Srivastava2006" /> In Rome, writers and philosophers like [[Cicero]], [[Seneca the Younger|Seneca]], [[Pliny the Elder]], [[Marcus Aurelius]], [[Epictetus]], [[Cato the Elder|Cato]], and [[Columella]] also expressed important ideas on this ground.<ref name="Srivastava2006" />

In the [[Middle Ages]], [[Christians|Christian]] thinkers devoted much time in refuting the Classical ideas on demography.  Important contributors to the field were [[William of Conches]],<ref name="Biller2000">Peter Biller,''The measure of multitude: Population in medieval thought''[https://books.google.com/books?id=LnqlgqeYhwYC&dq=Nicole+Oresme+on+demographics&pg=PA312].</ref> [[Bartholomew of Lucca]],<ref name="Biller2000" /> [[William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris|William of Auvergne]],<ref name="Biller2000" /> [[William of Pagula]],<ref name="Biller2000" /> and [[Muslims|Muslim]] sociologists like [[Ibn Khaldun]].<ref>See, e.g., [[Andrey Korotayev]], Artemy Malkov, & Daria Khaltourina (2006). [https://www.academia.edu/32757085/Introduction_to_Social_Macrodynamics._Models_of_the_World_System_Development._Moscow_KomKniga_URSS_2006 ''Introduction to Social Macrodynamics: Compact Macromodels of the World System Growth''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190709103050/https://www.academia.edu/32757085/Introduction_to_Social_Macrodynamics._Models_of_the_World_System_Development._Moscow_KomKniga_URSS_2006 |date=9 July 2019 }}. Moscow: URSS,  {{ISBN|5-484-00414-4}}.</ref>

One of the earliest demographic studies in the modern period was ''Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality'' (1662) by [[John Graunt]], which contains a primitive form of [[actuarial table|life table]]. Among the study's findings were that one-third of the children in [[London]] died before their sixteenth birthday. Mathematicians, such as [[Edmond Halley]], developed the life table as the basis for life insurance mathematics. [[Richard Price]] was credited with the first textbook on life contingencies published in 1771,<ref>"Our Yesterdays: the History of the Actuarial Profession in North America, 1809-1979," by E.J. (Jack) Moorhead, FSA, (1/23/10 – 2/21/04), published by the Society of Actuaries as part of the profession's centennial celebration in 1989.</ref> followed later by [[Augustus De Morgan]], ''On the Application of Probabilities to Life Contingencies'' (1838).<ref>The History of Insurance, Vol 3, Edited by David Jenkins and Takau Yoneyama (1 85196 527 0): 8 Volume Set: (2000) Availability: Japan: Kinokuniya).</ref>

In 1755, [[Benjamin Franklin]] published his essay ''[[Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.]]'', projecting [[exponential growth]] in [[British colonies]].<ref name=valtier>{{cite journal|title="An Extravagant Assumption": The Demographic Numbers behind Benjamin Franklin's Twenty-Five-Year Doubling Period|last=von Valtier|first=William F.|journal=[[Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society]]|volume=155|number=2|date=June 2011|pages=158–188|url=http://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/5VonValtier1550205.pdf|access-date=19 September 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305211515/https://amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/5VonValtier1550205.pdf|archive-date=5 March 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref> His work influenced [[Thomas Robert Malthus]],<ref>{{cite journal |last=Zirkle |first=Conway |author-link=Conway Zirkle |date=April 25, 1941 |title=Natural Selection before the 'Origin of Species' |journal=[[Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society]] |location=Philadelphia, PA |publisher=[[American Philosophical Society]] |volume=84 |issue=1 |pages=71–123 |jstor=984852 |issn=0003-049X}}</ref> who, writing at the end of the 18th century, feared that, if unchecked, population growth would tend to outstrip growth in food production, leading to ever-increasing famine and poverty (see [[Malthusian catastrophe]]). Malthus is seen as the intellectual father of ideas of [[Human overpopulation|overpopulation]] and the limits to growth. Later, more sophisticated and realistic models were presented by [[Benjamin Gompertz]] and [[Pierre François Verhulst|Verhulst]].{{citation needed|date=August 2024}}

In 1855, a [[Belgium|Belgian]] scholar Achille Guillard defined demography as the natural and social history of human species or the mathematical knowledge of populations, of their general changes, and of their physical, civil, intellectual, and moral condition.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Encyclopedia of the City|last=Caves|first=R. W.|publisher=Routledge|year=2004|pages=169}}</ref>

The period 1860–1910 can be characterized as a period of transition where in demography emerged from statistics as a separate field of interest. This period included a panoply of international 'great demographers' like [[Adolphe Quételet|Adolphe Quetelet]] (1796–1874), [[William Farr]] (1807–1883), [[Louis-Adolphe Bertillon]] (1821–1883) and his son [[Jacques Bertillon|Jacques]] (1851–1922), Joseph Körösi (1844–1906), Anders Nicolas Kaier (1838–1919), Richard Böckh (1824–1907), [[Émile Durkheim]] (1858–1917), [[Wilhelm Lexis]] (1837–1914), and [[Luigi Bodio]] (1840–1920) contributed to the development of demography and to the toolkit of methods and techniques of demographic analysis.<ref>de Gans, Henk and Frans van Poppel (2000) Contributions from the margins. Dutch statisticians, actuaries and medical doctors and the methods of demography in the time of Wilhelm Lexis. Workshop on 'Lexis in Context: German and Eastern& Northern European Contributions to Demography 1860-1910' at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, August 28 and 29, 2000.</ref>