What are some of the main theoretical perspectives used in the field of Demography?

Question

What are some of the main theoretical perspectives used in the field of Demography?

Answer 1

I am not a demographer, but I can tell you that historians use demographic statistics all the time.  So if you think about it in reverse, what kinds of applications might demographers use to make sens of their work, I would say, first and foremost, their work is built on a materialist conception of the world (i.e. stuff that's tangible).  Then you can say that it can be used for a variety of fields such as history (numbers of people in certain regions at a certain time), sociology (classes of people in certain place), anthropology (a study of particular human communities and how demographic (ie: population) statistics affect those communities, etc.  Of course, political economists have used demography since the modern period--here, think about Thomas Malthus (the depressing population guy) or even Karl Marx.