Population – the long view
Oxford, 16-17 September 2013
Micro and macro in long-term population change
Department of Sociology and Nuffield College
University of Oxford

| Some quotes (and scholars)
| Micro and macro demography
| Two stage approach z 1. (Complex) description z 2. Micro-founded explanation Æ integrative view

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| Coleman (2000): “I take demography to be the statistical study of the processes of reproduction, migration and death in the human species, their interrelations with the distribution and dynamics of population,and their biological, environmental and socio-economic causes and consequences’’

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| Preston, Heuveline, Guillot (2000):
“Demography is ‘the study of population processes’ … (the book) ‘attempts to impart an understanding of the behavior of human populations by describing carefully the basic measures, models, and observational procedures devised by generations of demographers”

| Ron Lee (2001): “Key issues are macrodemographic”, “Demography is changing in profound ways, in its methods and topics of research, and in its training. There is less aggregate level
(macro) analysis and more individual level (micro) analysis. There is less emphasis on process and dynamics, and more emphasis on individual decisions about demographic behavior. There is less formal demography, and more data analysis. There is much less funding of aggregate demography and formal demography, and much more funding of micro level empirical studies.”

| Kuhn (1962) z Innovation in “normal science” z Paradigm shift (“scientific revolution”)
| Formal demography is the paradigm
(Vaupel: “births, deaths and mathematics”)
| Still unsatisfactorily reconciled with new approaches to explanation in the social and natural sciences. We need an integrative view

| Goals
1.
2.
Documenting change ( description)
Establishing the object of further study ( explananda )
| Tools z z
Traditional measures (e.g., ageperiod-cohort specific rates and their summaries)
New measures (micro-based): sequence analysis

Traditional measures
TFR and e
0
(Coale & Watkins,
1986)
Source: Livi Bacci (2012)

Source: Rau et al. (PAA, 2013).

| Some threats when stopping at stage
1 z Insularity—withdrawal from comprehension and pure statistical basis for prediction (expert-based scenarios) z Reification (Wilson & Oeppen, 2003) z The challenge of “compositional demography” (heterogeneity)
(Kreager, 2011)

Source: Bras et al., Demography (2010)

Source: Bras et al., Demography (2010)

| Life course approach (macro Æ micro)
| James Coleman’s boat
| Transformational mechanisms
(micro Æ macro)

Macro level
Situational mechanisms (type
1)
Micro level
Action Formation
Mechanisms
(type 2)
Transformational mechanisms (type 3)

“…an explanation of the vigorous Japanese response to sustained natural increase must account for the antagonism between such increase and prosperity, in terms of behavior prompted by personal rather than national goals.” (Davis, 1963)

| Vaupel, Manton & Stallard (1979) (see also Perks, 1932).
| Macro level puzzle: declines and reversals with age of differential
| Explananda : shape of aggregate-level mortality rates
| Micro-macro z Aggregate-level force of mortality is an average of individual-level force of mortality z If there is heterogeneity (frailty), frail individuals tend to die first z Average frailty declines with age

Source: Vaupel, Nature (2010)

| Schelling (1971) segregation model
| Macro level puzzle: racial segregation in US cities
| Explanandum : segregation indices, graphs
| Micro-macro z Choices to migrate depend on the composition of the neighborhood z Also ‘tolerant’ micro-level preferences imply macro-level segregation

| Todd, Billari, Simão (2005) (see also
Billari, 2000)
| Macro level puzzle: micro-motivating the shape of age at marriage
| Explanandum : shape of hazard of marriage by age
| Micro-macro: z Fast-and-frugal search heuristics z Heterogeneity in search strategies z Agent-based modelling

| We need an integrative view of demography (see Goldthorpe on sociology)
| Macro-level puzzles (complex associations)
| Macro-micro-macro based explanations and prediction
| Life course and formal demography

Macro level
Situational mechanisms (type
1)
Macro (complex) descriptions
Micro level
Action Formation
Mechanisms
(type 2)
Macro-->Micro-->Macro links (J.
Coleman+Goldthorpe)
Transformational mechanisms (type 3)