Model-based demography: towards a research agenda

This chapter aims to contribute to the debate on the role of model-based approaches in the future demography. First we call attention to the developments of the discipline since the XVIIth century, and we describe its four successive paradigms related to the period, cohort, event-history and mutilevel perspectives. We argue that these paradigms are complementary and that demography, since its beginnings, has suscribed to the classical scientific research programme launched by the promotors of modern science. Next, we examine how simulation modelling developing in population science recently, may help to respond to three main challenges: how to overcome complexity in social research, how to reduce the uncertainty, and how to reinforce its theoretical fundations. 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 advantages of its benefits.