Did the ever dead outnumber the living and when? A birth-and-death approach

Jean Avan, Nicolas Grosjean and Thierry Huillet

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2015, vol. 419, issue C, 277-292

Abstract: This paper is an attempt to formalize analytically the question raised in “World Population Explained: Do Dead People Outnumber Living, Or Vice Versa?” Huffington Post, Howard (2012). We start developing simple deterministic Malthusian growth models of the problem (with birth and death rates either constant or time-dependent) before running into both linear birth and death Markov chain models and age-structured models.

Keywords: Population growth; Malthusian; Constant vs time-dependent birth/death rates; Time-inhomogeneous Markov chain; Age-structured models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:419:y:2015:i:c:p:277-292

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2014.10.050

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