D emography is the systematic study of population. The term is of Greek origin and is composed of the two words, demos (people) and graphein (describe), implying the description of people. 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 different varieties of demography, including formal demography which is a largely quantitative field, and social demography which focuses on the social, economic or political aspects of populations.
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 – in fact, the emergence of sociology and its successful establishment as an academic discipline owed a lot to demography. 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. 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. This new and constantly expanding sphere of state activity required the systematic and regular collection of social statistics – or quantitative data on various aspects of the population and economy. The practice of the collection of social statistics by the state is in itself much older, but it acquired its modern form towards the end of the eighteenth century. The American census of was probably the first modern census, and the practice was soon taken up in Europe as well in the early 1800s.
In India, censuses began to be conducted by the British Indian government between – , and regular ten yearly (or decennial) censuses have been conducted since . Independent India continued the practice, and seven decennial censuses have been conducted since , the most recent being in . The Indian census is the largest such exercise in the world (since China, which has a slightly larger population, does not conduct regular censuses). Demographic data are important for the planning and implementation of state policies, specially those for economic development and general public welfare.
But when they first emerged, social statistics 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. Even though country-level or state-level statistics like the number