Trends in the concept of historical demography: From traditional issues and analysis to contemporary questions and methods of study
Abstract
Historical demography undergoes nowadays a notable development of methods as well as studied issues - not only in the world but also in the Czech environment. The article describes briefly the development of historical demography in the Czech Republic and also in the world.
However, rather than on the past development and classical approaches to the analysis the attention is focused on description of the current trends of research. Level of infant and child mortality or specifics of the reproductive behavior (intensity and timing of fertility, duration of birth intervals) before and during the demographic transition belong among the frequent questions of historical analysis nowadays.
Both those processes are described not only according to their overall level, however, researches focus above all on the study of potential explanatory factors. The shift of the research focus from description to a detailed analysis is supported also by the methodological development - the often used methods of survival analysis, Cox regression, etc. use individual family histories data and also enable to include incomplete records (so called censored data).
One positive aspect of the Czech historical demography can be considered as the fact that it has managed to keep up with the level of research abroad in the past as well as today. An important share of this success is achieved thanks to Ludmila Fialová.