The arithmetic of populations, which drives more than most people expect.
9 topics · 8 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
World Population Ageing 2023: Highlights
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division · 2023
Argues, from the UN's own population estimates, that population ageing is now a near-universal trend rather than a rich-country phenomenon, and that…
+1 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality
John Graunt · 1662
Argues from London's weekly mortality records that regular, predictable patterns underlie birth and death in a population, founding demography as a…
+4 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
Modeling the Fertility Impact of the Proximate Determinants: Time for a Tune-Up
John Bongaarts · 2015
Revisits his own proximate-determinants framework after three decades of new evidence, arguing that its original simplifying assumptions about…
8 works
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division
Argues, from the UN's own population estimates, that population ageing is now a near-universal trend rather than a rich-country phenomenon, and that most future ageing will happen in countries not yet equipped for it.
link checked 17 Sept 2026United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division
Argues, from the UN's official projections, that global population will peak around the mid-2080s and then decline, a reversal driven by falling fertility rather than rising mortality.
link checked 17 Sept 2026John Graunt
Argues from London's weekly mortality records that regular, predictable patterns underlie birth and death in a population, founding demography as a quantitative discipline.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Thomas Robert Malthus
Argues population outruns food supply — wrong about the outcome, right that demography and resources are one problem, and never out of the argument since.
about 3.5 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Notes on this copyE. G. Ravenstein
Argues, from British and Irish census data, that migration follows regular statistical patterns — mostly short-distance, step-wise toward cities, and generating a counter-current in the opposite direction.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Robert Wyman (YaleCourses)
Argues that fertility decline is driven by the changing cost of children and by women's control over reproduction rather than by prosperity alone, and works through the demographic transition case by case.
link checked 17 Sept 2026United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division
Documents how far government population policy has shifted from limiting growth to managing ageing and low fertility, arguing that most governments now intervene in demographic outcomes rather than leaving them alone.
link checked 17 Sept 2026John Bongaarts
Revisits his own proximate-determinants framework after three decades of new evidence, arguing that its original simplifying assumptions about contraceptive effectiveness and postpartum infecundability no longer hold and updating the model accordingly.
link checked 17 Sept 2026