Demography is the science of populations.
Demographers seek to understand population dynamics by investigating three main demographic processes: birth, migration, and aging (including death)..
Basically demography studies the change of the population in terms of its size, influenced by fertility, mortality and migration.
The correspondence to that in the field of health is not epidemiology but “public health”, which looks at the change in health status at the population level..
Demographic analysis is important because it gives valuable information that can be used to make good decisions in business, government, and social services, among other places.
It helps people understand the characteristics of a population and how it might change in the future, which is important for making decisions..
Health demography is perhaps best defined as the application of the content and methods of demography to the study of health status and health behavior.
Demog- raphy, of course, is the study of human populations..
The fact that mortality is primarily affected by population health therefore resulted in demography and epidemiology becoming bedfellows.
This also defines the difference between the two disciplines.
Epidemiologists are less interested in population in itself and more in the diseases that affect individuals..
Interactions with Demographic Changes
The decline in mortality that comes with the epidemiologic transition widens the “demographic gap” between birth rates and death rates and hence affects demographic change by bolstering population growth (see Figure 2)..
Studies of trends in population changes and epidemiological profiles in the developing world have overwhelmingly relied upon the concepts of demographic, epidemiological, and health transitions, even though their usefulness in describing and understanding population and health trends in developing countries has been repeatedly called into question
Epidemiology and demography, although both encumbering several theoretical constructs, are generally applied, problem-solving disciplines concerned with the nature and trajectories of defined groups
1 Department of Epidemiology, University of Iowa College of Public Health, Iowa City 52242, USA
Epidemiology and demography, although both encumbering several theoretical constructs, are generally applied, problem-solving disciplines concerned with the nature and trajectories of defined groups
