Essay on the Pioneers of Population Studies – The Founding Fathers of Population Studies

Curiosity and concern about the size and characteristics of the population have had a long history. Investigations, however, were sporadic and received little systematic attention, for they were usually undertaken in response to some specific problems faced by society.

The credit for initiating a new field of empirical research in population studies goes to John Graunt, an English haberdasher, who is generally acclaimed as the Father of Demography or Popula­tion Studies. His pamphlet, Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality, published in London in 1662, is the first important landmark in the history of population studies.

Graunt’s Observations mainly contained a quantitative analysis of mortality and only incidentally that of fertility and migration. The “bills of mortality” from which Graunt obtained the data for his analysis, were weekly current reports on burials and christenings in a popu­lation of nearly half a million persons in London and its environs.

These reports were compiled and maintained regularly from 1603 onwards by parish clerks. Graunt assembled the data contained in these reports for the period 1604 to 1661 and prepared a report, which is today regarded as the first systematic and objective study of population. It is said that “in the maze of events recorded in the bills of mortality, he sought and found order.”⁷

Graunt’s study is monumental in several respects. He considered many aspects in the field of population studies, which are even today regarded as important. He critically examined the data on mortality and fertility and pointed out their weaknesses, biases and inadequacies.

He is, therefore, deemed to be a pioneer, for he started an important tradition of evaluating any population data for various biases and lacuna and of devising adjustments in them to minimize the weaknesses and biases before using such data for research purposes.

He made several observations based on his basic data, which he presented in his work-in great detail. Some of his inferences are mentioned here, so that the reader can get some idea about his ingenious and painstaking investigations.

He discovered the biological phenomena of the excess of male births over female births and measured sex ratios at birth in London and in the surrounding rural community. He also observed that the number of deaths exceeded that of births in London, whereas in the rural areas it was the other way round.

He estimated the ratio of deaths to births in London as nearly 12 to 11 in contrast to that of 52 to 63 in the countryside. He estimated the size and growth of the population of London in absolute numbers. Since deaths outnumbered births in London for over half a century, he attributed the increase in the population of London to migration and estimated the volume of migration.

By using the ratio of births to marriages, he tried to measure fertility. At several points, he tried to give explanations for the regularities which he observed in his data. At all other times, however, he avoided speculations which were not supported by empirical data.

The discipline of population studies is indeed indebted to John Graunt for laying the foundation of a new science. At the same time, a grateful tribute must be paid to those unknown parish clerks who initiated, compiled and maintained the “bills of mortality.”

Some of Graunt’s English contemporaries and successors share with him the credit of founding population studies. Sir William Petty (1623-1687), an English scholar and Graunt’s contemporary, was also his friend and collaborator. He inspired and encouraged Graunt in his undertaking.

Petty’s own Political Arithmetic has considerably influenced the future development of population studies. He also contributed a great deal to the enhancement of the social prestige of this new discipline through the Royal Society. It was Petty who called this newly-founded discipline “Political Arithmetic” and named himself as its godfather. Graunt and Petty together even prepared a life table.

An6ther important contribution to the advancement of population studies was made in London about thirty years after the publication of Graunt’s Observations by Edmund Halley (1665-1742), an English astronomer, whose surname has been immortalised by the comet named after him 1693, Halley constructed the first empirical life table, based on the data of births and deaths.

It was he who coined the term “expectation of life.” Gregory King (1648- 1712), another English Scholar, contributed to the discipline by estimating the population of England and Wales.

It is worth noting that this is the only estimate of the population size of England and Wales between the time of the Norman Conquest and the first census of England and Wales held in 1801.

The works of Graunt, Petty and Halley inspired further research in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and other European countries. In 1761-62, Johann Peter Sussmilch, a Lutheran clergyman, who lived during the reign of Frederick the Great, wrote a massive book on population, consisting of nearly 1,200 pages and an appendix of 68 tables.

By combining the Swedish, German and French data, he tried to construct mortality tables of universal applicability. Sussmilch based his findings on a large number of observations and concluded that generally there is an excess of women over men in the adult ages.

He is considered to be the first person to emphasise the “law of large numbers” implying that the value of the findings increases along with the number of cases on which the findings are based. Observing the frequencies and remarriages among men and women, he concluded that men are more prone to remarry.

He also studied the factors influencing fertility, such as age at marriage, disruption of marriage by death, prolonged nursing of infants, effects of various diseases etc. He also observed that deaths were most frequent in the first few weeks of life and that the number of deaths declined to a low level around the age of fifteen.

With a great deal of effort, he tried to estimate the population of the world in the third edition of his treatise, The Divine Order, published in 1765. This was the first such attempt ever made.

He also noted, like Gregory King, that population grew in geometric progression. The observations of Sussmilch were, however, interpreted mainly in a theological manner. He saw the divine hand in the regular movements of the populations.

Early explorers in the field of population studies, hailing from different social strata, were engaged in varied avocations and had different ideologies. Yet these amateurs had one thing in common their desire and enthusiasm to discover the hitherto unknown relationships, specially in quantitative terms, in the vital processes of life and death. They all shared a respect for empirical observa­tions.

Most of the research on population during the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries was carried out in the field of mortality and rarely in the field of population dynamics. Such a one-sided development was not unexpected, for the public was mainly concerned with conquering, epidemics and diseases.

Two social reform programmes concerning mortality, life insurance and public health also made great demands on mortality analysis. Insurance companies needed precise data on mortality and hence efforts were concentrated on mortality research.

Another development was the acceptance by Government of the responsibility of protecting the health of citizens by undertaking public health programmes. Evaluation of such efforts in the field of public health called for data on deaths and related topics.