Demographic Metabolism: A Predictive Theory of Socioeconomic Change

This essay introduces a general theory of how societies change as a consequence of the changing composition of their members with respect to certain relevant and measurable characteristics. These characteristics can either change over the life course of individuals or from one generation to the next. While the former changes can be analytically identified and described by certain age- and duration-specific transition schedules, the latter changes resulting from cohort replacement can be modeled and projected using standard models of population dynamics.