From John Graunt to Adolphe Quetelet: on the Origins Of Demography

0581711 - ÚI 2024 RIV CZ eng C - Conference Paper (international conference)
Kalina, Jan
From John Graunt to Adolphe Quetelet: on the Origins Of Demography.
RELIK 2023. Conference Proceedings. Prague: Prague University of Economics and Business, 2023 - (Langhamrová, J.; Vrabcová, J.), s. 113-122. ISBN 978-80-245-2499-3.
[RELIK 2023: Reproduction of Human Capital - mutual links and connections /16./. Praha (CZ), 23.11.2023-24.11.2023]
Institutional support: RVO:67985807
Keywords : history of demography * history of statistics * probability theory * moral statistics * mortality tables
OECD category: Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology
https://relik.vse.cz/2023/download/pdf/671-Kalina-Jan-paper.pdf

John Graunt (1620-1674) and Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874) were two important personalities, who contributed to the origins of demography. As they both developed statistical techniques for the analysis of demographic data, they are important also from the point of view of history of statistics. The contributions of both Graunt and Quetelet especially to the development of mortality tables and models are recalled in this paper. Already from the 17th century, the available mortality tables were exploited for computing life annuities. Also the contribution of selected personalities inspired by Graunt are recalled here, the work of Christian Huygens, Jacob Bernoulli, or Abraham de Moivre is discussed to document that the historical development of statistics and probability theory was connected with the development of demography.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0349892