Demography: Study of size, compositions and change of human populations.
Examples of composition:
- age
- sex
- race
- marital status
- education level
- economic status (i.e. unemployment %, income level, etc)
Changes happen due to:
- fertility
- mortality
- nuptiality
- divorce
- migration
- redefining/drawing borders, changes in definitions
Example Question: What's the Infant Mortality Rate?
How to define Infant Mortality: Live birth then dies before their first birthday.
It is important how you define live birth because some countries have different definitions. Countries, like France, may exclude pre-term babies (full-term is 39 weeks).
Here is a CDC report that includes information on different definitions of live birth, and on how those differences affect international comparisons.
Sources of data on infant mortality: death certificates and birth certificates (if there is a vital registration system)
Using vital statistics on the web: US births
In class we then went to: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/VitalStats.htm
and chose 'Births', chose "Characteristic of mothers" on a National level, chose the stats for 2007, and exported them into Excel.
We did not finish the excel calculations till Thursday, August 26th, where I will continue my notes.
