ASOA15071U Demographic analysis for Social Scientists

Topics in demographic analysis relevant for social scientists include population rates, standardization, decomposition, life tables, event history (survival) analysis, cohort analysis, and demographic data sources. This course will provide you with a basic introduction to these core concepts and basic methods. You can use the concepts and methods thought in this course to study how gender, age, race, family origin, and historical or cultural contexts shape individual lives and opportunities. 

In this course we will cover classic topics including fertility, mortality, and migration, as well as the extensions into fields such as aging, families, and health. You will learn how fertility and mortality rates, lifetables, and life expectancy are calculated.  We will also work with analytical approaches and empirical applications commonly used in social demography including an introduction to event history techniques and cohort analysis.

Traditionally, demographic analysis uses quantitative research methods, including the analysis of survey and register data. Still, ethnographic and other qualitative approaches are increasingly being incorporated in contemporary demographic analyses and in particular so when employed by social scientists. Recently, big data and data science perspectives have also started to emerge in the demographic field. Due to the introductory nature of this course, we will focus on traditional quantitative approaches. However, when relevant we may discuss additional perspectives pertaining to qualitative research strategies and results or new types of knowledge as generated by insights offered by big data and data science.