Stable Population Theory

Abstract

Stable population theory underpins much of our intuition about population dynamics and it continues to have a fundamental influence on research in demography. It has been well documented that any population subject to a stable set of birth, death, and migration rates will converge to a stable equilibrium characterized by a constant rate of growth and a stable proportional age-structure. In this chapter, we present the classical stable population model in terms of cohort change ratios (CCRs), demonstrate the consistency of this approach with classical stable population theory using CCR-based demographic forecasts, and evaluate the effect of the components of population change on convergence to a stable population. We conclude the chapter by showing how CCRs can lead to novel analyses aimed at answering traditional questions in stable population theory.