Demography and population policy

Pavlik Zdenek, Charles University, Prague

Population policy is often considered as a part of demography. Such an approach leads to the confusion of demographic knowledge where the question why should be answered (e.g. why the level of mortality is decreasing or the intensity of fertility is increasing) and political intentions where the main goal is what should be done to affect the demographic reproduction. Demography is a scientific discipline; population policy is a part of the whole state policy. It could be based on selected demographic knowledge, but much greater role in its formulation plays the belief what is good and what is bad (a certain ideology in general). The clear definition of demography is needed to overcome this confusion. Demography studies the reproduction of human populations. It looks for conditions of basic demographic processes in their economic, social and geographic environment and formulates regularities of their development, such as theories of demographic transitions.