Year: 2002
Type: article
Abstract: This paper displays the way demography overrun different pathbreaking issues encountered during its history, draws the main paradigms followed and shows their strengths and weaknesses. From a cross-sectional to a cohort approach demography, from its origins, was a holism. However, these methods were followed by an event history approach, which introduced methodological individualism. Finally, a multilevel approach released demography from the opposition between holism and individualism: it introduces different aggregation levels, to be simultaneously considered, and permits a synthesis of the previous approaches, while going beyond their initial purpose.
DOI: 10.4000/msh.2884
Author: Daniel Courgeau
Language: French
Subfield: Demography
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W319631871