What is demography and what does it study?

Demographics, in Greek, literally means "national description". What is demography in general? This is the science of the methods, the types of reproduction of different peoples and the factors that (one way or another) affect this process.

The author of the term "demography" became the French scientist A. Guillard in 1855, and in Russia this concept began to be used from the 70s of the 18th century. Initially, the concepts of "population statistics" and "demography" were considered synonymous, but over time the situation changed somewhat. At present, demography is an independent science that studies factors that affect mortality, fertility, conclusion and termination of marriage. In addition, this science analyzes and predicts also demographic processes with the help of special methods. To understand what demography is, it is necessary to study the structure of this science. So, in the conduct of the demographic theory is the explanation of important processes, the formulation of hypotheses, the generalization of data and the derivation of trends.

The collection of primary data is carried out in the process of the population census, which is carried out with a certain periodicity. Federal statistics is another source of information. The methods of processing information are borrowed from sociometry and statistics, which, in general, is natural. In addition, this science describes the demographic processes. Analytical demography studies the connections between various demographic phenomena and ongoing processes. Thus, demographers can explain a sharp or gradual decrease in the population or an increase in the birth rate due to various economic, social, environmental and other factors. In addition, there is a historical, social, military demography. The problems of demography in Russia have been studied since the middle of the 18th century. What is demography in tsarist Russia? This is mainly the study of population statistics. In the first half of the 20th century, the works of A.A. Chuprova, devoted to the influence of wars on the processes of concluding and dissolving marriage and childbirth, and Novoselsky, who studied mortality in detail.

Population censuses were conducted after the October Revolution. And these data became the basis for various studies (not only demographic). However, in the 1930s all studies of this kind were discontinued. Demography resurfaced in the 1960s. By that time, scientists realized that this science is not just about population statistics. Researchers began to study the influence of factors of increase and decrease in fertility, marriage, family development. Since the 70s of the last century, the concept of the demographic revolution has been developing, the author of which was A.G. Vishnevsky. In the Russian demography, the Cahors method and the modeling method have become firmly established, the domestic science has gradually integrated into the world. By the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century, researchers paid special attention to the study of mortality, the patterns of fertility and marriage, and the development of modeling and forecasting. All this in aggregate allows us to answer the question about what demography is.