Page 1 - Lesson Note

Class-XII

Chapter-2

The Demographic structure of Indian Society

Short Notes :

 Demography is the systematic study of the population of a country, area, community,
etc. The term is of Greek origin and is composed of the two words, demos (people)
and graphein (describe).
 Demography studies the trends and processes associated with population including –
changes in population size; patterns of births, deaths, and migration; and the structure
and composition of the population, such as the relative proportions of women, men
and different age groups.
 There are two types of demography:
1. Formal Demography: statistical analysis of population i.e., total population,
number of males, number of females, number of youth, working population,
rural urban (quantitative data)
2. Social Demography: birth rate, death rate and migration that happens in a
particular society.
 All demographic studies are based on processes of counting or enumeration – such as
the census or the survey – which involve the systematic collection of data on the
people residing within a specified territory
 Demography is a field that is of special importance to sociology:
1. The emergence of sociology and its successful establishment as an academic
discipline owed a lot to demography.
2. Two different processes happened to take place at roughly the same time in
Europe during the latter half of the eighteenth century – the formation of
nation-states as the principal form of political organisation, and the beginnings
of the modern science of statistics.
3. The modern state had begun to expand its role and functions. It had, for
instance, begun to take an active interest in the development of early forms of
public health management, policing and maintenance of law and order,
economic policies relating to agriculture and industry, taxation and revenue
generation and the governance of cities
 Demographic data are important for the planning and implementation of state policies,
specially those for economic development and general public welfare.
 Social statistics, when they first emerged, also provided a strong justification for the
new discipline of sociology. Aggregate statistics – or the numerical characteristics
that refer to a large collectivity consisting of millions of people – offer a concrete and
strong argument for the existence of social phenomena.
 Distinction between formal demography and a broader field of population studies
(social demography)