econometricsI am quite curious about whether these two topics are very much related, since I see quite a lot a econometricians are also heavily involved in demography.
Are the methodologies similar for these two areas? Is there a lot of stochastic process involved in demography?
By definition, “demography” is the science of vital and social statistics, as of the births, deaths, diseases, marriages, etc., of populations. (Dictionary.com’s definition)
I am pretty sure you noticed the word in bold: “statistics” and I think it says it all.
Your questions:
(i) “Are the methodologies similar for these 2 areas?”
Demography as a social science (and it is the case for many other sciences) needs statistical methods to explain itself. You would like to know things like “the life expectancy of a certain population”, “the income per capita in a nation”, “the girl child education rate” and many other statistical indicators. Determining them will definitely require you to use statistical/econometric methodology. In other words, statistics/econometrics is a tool that helps to understand demography.
(ii) “Are there lots of stochastic processes involved in demography?”
The answer is a BIG YES. Remember, the definition states that demography is a “social science”, which means that it is directly related to humans. As you may have noticed, studying humans is a very complex task and there are definitely plenty of things we can’t scientifically observe in the human nature. These unobserved things are the “stochastic processes” you are asking about. For example, one may ask: “What are the factors that determine a person’s happiness?”. Some possible answers maybe: “the level of income”, “the amount of leisure time”, “the number of children (maybe, lol)” and “the rule of democracy in the country”. These are elements that certainly can be quantified with relative ease (as far as the rule of democracy is concerned, there exist some indices). However, there are a lot of determinants of a person’s happiness that may not be easily quantifiable. Some examples are: “the quality of the food where the person lives”, “the kindness of the person’s neighbors”, “the kindness of the person’s colleagues at his work place”, etc. Therefore, these are stochastic.
Hope I have been able to help.
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