Talk:Historical demography

Is there an article on modern demography?
The medieval demography article goes into early modern demography, but some of Walter Scheidel's articles mention 19th-century population levels. 96.231.17.131 (talk) 17:28, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Is the study of skeletal remains really the most common method before modern times?
I am not a demographer and I guess it depends on the topics one is researching, but which the study of skeletal remains is useful to understanding life expectancy, malnutrition, etc. it is less useful to understanding total population, which is another important topic. 173.66.211.53 (talk) 02:44, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 28 December 2014

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: No conensus to move. Clearly there is no overwhelming support or policy reason for the move to go ahead. I suggest that interested parties continue the discussion about whether there should be one or two articles, and take it from there. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 15:54, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Historical demography → Demographic history – target article is not a simple redirect but is a see also section, source article has content and refs --Relisted.  &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 10:22, 20 January 2015 (UTC)  – Xaxafrad (talk) 07:47, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
 * This is a contested technical request (permalink). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 10:11, 28 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Historical demography is an article and Demographic history is a disambig. See also Talk:Demographic history. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 10:11, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Agree  we need two articles, and this one is basically focused on population history. It can be greatly expanded in terms of time and geography.  we need a new separate article on the technical field of historical demography, which overlaps history & sociology & some other areas as well. Rjensen (talk) 10:58, 28 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Google Scholar gives: "Historical demography" 18k and "Demographic history", 30k. Google Books, "Historical demography", 58k, and "Demographic history", 47k. Regular Google, 146k vs 274k. So I am not seeing evidence that one if clearly more common than the other, since books are going in the opposite direction. More worrisome are some sources like  and  which seem to distinguish between those two concepts.  states "While a distinction between historical demography and demographic history can be and has been made by some scholars, it is difficult in practice to draw a clear line between the two approaches and their practitioners." I am uneasy to suggest the best course of action, and would love to hear from an expert in those fields. Should we have one or two articles? And if one, what is the best name? I think we first need to answer the first question, before we engage in what may be pointless move (if two articles should exist), or if we chose the wrong name for what is described here. For now, therefore, I suggest to preserve the status quo. Ping me if any new arguments are presented here.  --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  14:39, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
 * @User:Rjensen: Why do we need both articles? It's like saying "This is a red apple" and "This apple is red". Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a technical reference work. Anything that could go in "historical demography" could equally well go in "demographic history". Oh wait, now I see it. "Demographic history" is the actual story, with numbers and years and stuff, while "historical demography" should be a general article discussing the subject in outline terms. Do I understand the basic argument now? BTW, did you mean to oppose this proposal? Xaxafrad (talk) 03:58, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
 * @User:Piotrus: You asked "do we need one or two articles?" One is duplicated, in its entirety, in the see also section of the other. Therefore, one article is entirely redundant. Perhaps in the future a historical demographer or a demographic historian will expand one or the other article, but for now, I advocate merging the two articles, and let the hypothetical demographer/historian expand a redirect into it's own distinct article if they feel so compelled. Xaxafrad (talk) 03:58, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Also, we could discuss the Category:Demographic history and Category:Historical demography categories, and the criteria for deciding which articles go into which category. Personally, I don't know which term is more common, I was simply working under the assumption posted by User:Oncenawhile. I don't prefer one term over the other, but I don't believe demographic history will ever turn into a real article, and I don't see it's value as a disambig. page given its redundancy. Make it a redirect. I'm not suggesting to eliminate anything, just organize it better. Xaxafrad (talk) 03:58, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I think we need two articles. One would cover the population history of different countries at different times, a reasonably well-covered field that describes what happened in France in 1700 or China in 1990 etc. The second article would survey  techniques like the many different rates (various fertility rates for example), standardization, use of parish registers and censuses, dealing with undercounts, etc. Rjensen (talk) 08:53, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not opposed to your suggestion, but they sound like pipe dreams to me. I've seen other articles get filled with so much information, that a new article is created out of a over-grown sub-section. Why don't we wait until the content is there before we keep a virtually empty article and wait for contributions? I think the article on this subject should follow an outline similar to this: Intro, history, methods, results, see also, external links, further reading. Xaxafrad (talk) 04:23, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I've already expanded greatly the bibliographies for both articles, and I am starting to add textual materials. "Demographic history" covers the entire globe, which is been subject to a huge amount of scholarly territory. On the other hand, "historical demography" has plenty of complicated methodologies to consider, but most of them are focused on a handful of geographical areas, such as France and England. Rjensen (talk) 07:23, 26 January 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Unsourced statement
The article previously said: As previously the acceleration was more marked in the European population, due to the scientific revolution and resulting inventions lowering the childbirth mortality rate.

The source given was: Historical Demography in Encyclopedia of Public Health, Retrieved on 3 May 2005

The source, at this time, does not mention "scientific", "revolution", or "invention". Its mention of "acceleration" is restricted to a statement of numbers. Xaxafrad (talk) 06:36, 30 December 2014 (UTC)