Demography

Today, there is growing interest among the public in demography, as “demographic change” has become the subject of political debates in many developed countries. Most of these countries have birth rates below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, and, at the same time, life expectancy has been rising considerably and continues to rise – a development sometimes called “the aging of societies.”

While demography cannot offer political advice on how to tackle demographic change, demographers seek to describe the phenomena related to this change, and to understand their causes. Using reliable data and the statistical processing of these data, modern demographic research embraces many scientific disciplines, including mathematics, economics and other social sciences, geography or biology.