Model-Based Demography: Towards a Research Agenda

This chapter aims to contribute to the debate on the role of model-based approaches, such as agent-based modelling, in the future of demography. First we call attention to the developments of the discipline since the seventeenth century, and we describe its four successive paradigms related to the period, cohort, event-history and multilevel perspectives. We argue that these paradigms are complementary and that demography, since its beginnings, has subscribed to the classical scientific research programme launched by the promoters of modern science. Next, we examine how simulation modelling developing in population sciences recently, may help to respond to three main challenges: how to overcome complexity in social research; how to reduce its uncertainty; and how to reinforce its theoretical foundations. We sketch a model-based research programme for demography, looking specifically at interactions between various population systems. We then show how this approach might conform to the classical scientific research programme, in order to take advantage of its benefits.