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Bringing Behavior Back into Micro-Simulation: Feedback Mechanisms in Demographic Models

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Agent-Based Computational Demography

Part of the book series: Contributions to Economics ((CE))

Abstract

Standard demographic models such as the cohort component method do not include explicit feedback mechanisms, although it is clear that long-term population growth rates have been fine-tuned to be very close to zero in almost all epochs. I compare models that do and do not include feedback mechanisms using the SOCSIM Monte Carlo simulation program, with approximately fixed stationary values of fertility, mortality and nuptiality, but with only nuptiality depending on the population size, in an approximation to the household formation models of Hajnal, and Wrigley and Schofield. Standard Monte Carlo micro-simulation models show greater variability than is observed in the dynamics of human populations. Negative feedback mechanisms lead to more realistic patterns of growth within an agent-based framework. Nuptiality adjustment is sufficient to maintain population homeostasis in most cases. Parity-specific adjustment does not lead to major differences from the unconstrained model, and a stem family system that promotes the nuptiality of one son appears to provide little advantage in perpetuating lineages compared with an unconstrained system.

Thanks are due to the Economic and Social Research Council who partially funded this work as part of a project, Evolving trends in British kin distributions and family life experience Ref. R000237076, and to the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure for providing unpublished historical vital rates.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK

    Mike Murphy

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  1. Mike Murphy
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Istituto di Metodi Quantitativi, Università Bocconi, Viale Isonzo 25, 20135, Milano, Italy

    Francesco C. Billari

  2. Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Konrad-Zuse-Straße 1, 18057, Rostock, Germany

    Alexia Prskawetz

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© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Murphy, M. (2003). Bringing Behavior Back into Micro-Simulation: Feedback Mechanisms in Demographic Models. In: Billari, F.C., Prskawetz, A. (eds) Agent-Based Computational Demography. Contributions to Economics. Physica, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2715-6_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2715-6_9

  • Publisher Name: Physica, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-7908-1550-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-7908-2715-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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