Definition, Nature, Scope And Importance Of Demography
Definition, Nature, Scope and Importance of Demography
The term ‘demography’ is derived from two Greek Words, ‘Demas’ the people and ‘Grapho’, to draw or write. Thus its meaning is to draw or Write about people.
The credit for fusing together the two Greek words and coining the term demography goes to Achilles Guillard in 1855 wrote his book. ‘Elements de statistique humaine en demographic camparee’. In fact John Graunt is the real founder of demography, who in 1762 wrote the book “Natural. and poliica1 observation made
upon the bills of Mortality”.
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Definition of Demography
As regard definition of this term, the economists, geographers, social scientists and others have defined it in their own way that suits their convenience and view point. Obviously some definitions have adopted a narrow outlook on the subject while some have made its scope very wide. Some of the important definitions which have been given in this regard are discussed below.
The Multilingual Demographic Dictionary defines demography as the “Scientific study . of human populations, primarily with respect to their size, their structure and their development.”. (U.N. 1958: 3)
The Multilingual Demographic Dictionary, however, differentiates between various aspects of demography by defining separately demographic statistics, economic demography and social demography; the latter two imply the “study of relations between demographic phenomena on the one hand and economic and :social phenomena on
the other”.
Another limited view Of demography is taken by Wrong who defines it as the statistical description and analysis of human populations.
According to Peter R.Cox“Demography is the study of statistical methods of human population involving primarily the measurements
of the size, growth and diminution of the numbers of the people ,the proportions of living being born...
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