Syllabus
1. Demography and its position among other scientific disciplines, object and subject of demography, internal division. History of demography. Overview of demographic organizations and institutions.
2. Sources of demographic data (censuses, records of natural change and migration, registers, sample surveys,...), the most important sources of demographic data.
3. System and construction of demographic indicators
4. Display of demographic indicators (demographic network/Lexis diagram).
5. Structure of the population by age and sex. Age pyramid, types of age structures and their characteristics. Other selected population structures (nationality, education, marital status,...)
6. Mortality process and its wider determinants; mortality by age and sex, infant and child mortality. Comparative mortality indicators - methods of standardization.
7. The "life expectancy" indicator as an output of the mortality table; the meaning of modelling the mortality process - the principle of constructing the mortality table, its use for analyzing and forecasting the size and composition of the population. Mortality in international comparison.
8. Classification of diseases and causes of death. Disease and health status of the population, possibilities of assessment.
9. Fertility process - data collection and recording, indicators, broader conditions and linkages. Development of fertility levels in Czechia and international comparison.
10. Abortion process - categories of abortion, development of legislation, basic indicators.
11. Processes of marriage and divorce - demographic, social, cultural, legislative. Basic indicators. Changes in the level of marriage and divorce rates in Czechia and international comparison. Structure of families and households, unmarried cohabitation and other non-traditional ways of cohabitation.
12. General characteristics of demographic reproduction. Importance of migration - possibilities of evaluation, indicators. Population distribution, urbanization and population concentration - trends, indicators
13. Population forecasts and projections: types of demographic forecasts in terms of time and population covered; methodology, determination of parameters, results. Population forecasts in Czechia, in the world; derived forecasts.
14. World population development - demographic revolution, second demographic transition.
Annotation
The course is an introduction to the basic concepts and historical development of demography and the principles of its work. Demography is presented as a scientific discipline with a specific object and subject of interest and its own terminology.
Students will learn about the purpose and specifics of demographic knowledge, the current position of demography among other disciplines, and the history of demography as a discipline on a global and national scale. They are provided with basic information about the sources, methods and principles of collecting and disseminating data on population and its demographic reproduction, as well as sources of specialized information.
Detailed attention is given to the concept of time in demography, including the representation of demographic data in the Lexis diagram. The basic approaches to description and analysis in demography are discussed in relation to the various concepts of time, and a general system of demographic indicators is introduced.
Interspersed throughout the course are illustrations of selected determinants and consequences of population development through the presentation of real cases, discussions of the relationships of population development with other social, economic, political, cultural, and natural processes, and examples of the application of demographic knowledge in practice. The lecture part is interspersed with a practical part, in which students practice the material discussed, become familiar with the form of calculations of basic demographic indicators, in order to better understand the basics of demographic studies.
All materials for the exercise will be entered in Moodle (https://dl2.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=2369).