OR
I See Trends in Dead People
I. Purpose:
Is there a correlation between age of death before 1950 and after 1950 due to underlying factors? Between both sexes before and after 1950 from discriminating factors? What types of factors, and why?
II. Hypotheses
Within death rates and the factors that affect them, I hypothesize that death rates of both males and females will be higher in the younger populations before 1950 than after because of the medical advances we have made in technology, the wars before 1950, and other outlying factors such as lower awareness of the people, and widespread epidemic-level diseases. I additionally hypothesize that due to medical advances and child birthing techniques being more adequate and less risky in the post-1950’s era, that infant mortality as well as that of females at the age of being able to bear offspring will be lower past the 1950’s. However, I also predict that males and females at the working age of about 20-50 will have higher death rates prior to 1950 due to lack of safety standards and fewer regulations on safety of working conditions. Because of the aforementioned death causes for “younger” populations before 1950, I predict that death rates for 50-80 year old females and males to be higher because, quite bluntly, there are more of them to experience mortality than before the 1950’s. In addition, medical coverage and care has become more extensive and more widely available to the typical citizen, so more people are living longer and boosting their life span.
III. Background
Demography is the systematic analysis of population and population dynamics including mortality. This lab examines the effects of different time periods and their individual variables on the sizes and mortality rates of populations.
Human population ecology also deals with population dynamics, and measures how populations interact with their environments, which in