| Summary: | Demography is the statistical study of human populations. It can be a very general science that can be applied to any kind of dynamic human population, that is, one that changes over time or space. It encompasses the study of the size, structure and distribution of these populations, and spatial and/or temporal changes in them in response to birth, migration, aging and death. Demographic analysis can be applied to whole societies or to groups defined by criteria such as education, nationality, religion and ethnicity. Institutionally, demography is usually considered a field of sociology, though there are a number of independent demography departments. Formal demography limits its object of study to the measurement of population processes, while the more broad field of social demography population studies also analyze the relationships between economic, social, cultural and biological processes influencing a population. The term demographics is often used erroneously for demography, but refers rather to selected population characteristics as used in government, marketing or opinion research or the demographic profiles used in such research.
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