The Distribution of Births in Human Populations

Abstract

Progress in the biometrical sciences has been greatly stimulated by the study of mathematical models which have been constructed to represent approximately events and processes. This approach often leads to a deeper understanding of underlying factors and suggests useful methods of collecting describing and analysing data. In demography there have been fewer attempts to construct models than in other branches of biometry. Perhaps the main reasons for this are a belief that the behaviour of human beings is too individual to be adequately described by simple structures and the relative abundance of information for more complex populations compared with the scarcity for less developed communities for which simpler patterns might be defined. In this paper models of the distribution of births in human populations will be discussed. These models are designed to describe broadly the main features common to a wide variety of communities. Their use for closer study of individual populations would require modifications which are indicated but not developed. Only an outline of the models is given here and there is no detailed consideration of applications. Nor is there any examination of certain problems which are best studied in connection with special applications in particular the efficiency of methods for fitting the models to sample data and measurements of errors of fit. (excerpt)