Entries by Griffith Feeney in the Encyclopedia of Population, edited by Paul Demeny and Geoffrey McNicoll, published in 2003 by Macmillan Reference USA.
Data assessment
In a perfect world, data would always be complete, accurate, current, pertinent and unambiguous. In the real world, data is generally flawed on some or all of these dimensions. Data assessment in practice has tended to focus on completeness and accuracy, and that is the focus of these notes. Currency, pertinence and clarity deserve more attention than they receive, perhaps, but their assessment requires very different methods.” More
Lexis diagrams
Lexis diagrams play a valuable role in demographic analysis by providing a highly effective visual language for conveying information about the sets of persons and events that are the basis of all population statistics. The diagrams complement verbal descriptions of these sets, which are often clumsy and hard to grasp. The diagrams are named after the German statistician and actuary Wilhelm Lexis (1837–1914). More (Related Work: Lexis Diagram Presentation)
Population momentum
Population momentum is the tendency for changes in population growth rates to lag behind changes in childbearing behavior and mortality conditions. Momentum operates through the population age distribution. A population that has been growing rapidly for a long time, for example, acquires a “young” age distribution that will result in positive population growth rates for many decades even if childbearing behavior and mortality conditions imply zero population growth in the very long run. Population momentum is important because of the magnitude and duration of its effects. More