Ergodicity of age structure in populations with Markovian vital rates. II. General states

Abstract

The age structure of a large, unisexual, closed population is described here by a vector of the proportions in each age class. Non-negative matrices of age-specific birth and death rates, called Leslie matrices, map the age structure at one point in discrete time into the age structure at the next. If the sequence of Leslie matrices applied to a population is a sample path of an ergodic Markov chain, then: (i) the joint process consisting of the age structure vector and the Leslie matrix which produced that age structure is a Markov chain with explicit transition function; (ii) the joint distribution of age structure and Leslie matrix becomes independent of initial age structure and of the initial distribution of the Leslie matrix after a long time; (iii) when the Markov chain governing the Leslie matrix is homogeneous, the joint distribution in (ii) approaches a limit which may be easily calculated as the solution of a renewal equation. A numerical example will be given in Cohen (1977).