Year of publication 1975

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Place of publication Rome, Italy ;

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Pages 46

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Author Brander, K.

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Product type Book (series)

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ISBN 9251008760

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Series title FAO Fisheries Technical Paper

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Series number 0429-9345 - T148

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Edition 1

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Synopsis (short abstract) The need to collect data arises when attempts are made to manage the economic and social activities of a society. For example data on population size and distribution are used in planning the building, of houses, schools, roads and hospitals. The raw data which appear on the source document (e.g., a census form filled in by the head of a household) are collected and processed to provide statistics of, among other things, the number of children of primary school age in each district of each town. Instead of the wealth of individual detail which exists on the source document about age, family size, occupation, income and activities we may, for the purposes of the types of planning listed above, devise a simplified description or model of the population. In our model there may be only four age classes pre-school, school age, child bearing age and post-child bearing and we may use this as a basis for estimating the number of school places or hospital beds needed in five years time, given c ertain information about numbers of children born per family per year and rate of hospitalization for different age groups. This model describes the age structure of the population in a simple way which helps us to make predictions about the changes likely to take place in the population.

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Cite this content as:

Language English

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Also available in:

• Arabic

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