Growth rate, population entropy, and perturbation theory (Q1113840)

This paper is concerned with the connection between two classes of population variables: measures of population growth rate - the Malthusian parameter, the net reproduction rate, the gross reproduction rate, and the mean life expectancy; and measures of demographic heterogeneity - population entropy. It is shown that the entropy functions predict the response of the growth rate parameters to perturbations in the age- specific fecundity and mortality schedule. These results are invoked to introduce the notion of environmental intensity. The intensity function, expressed in terms of the entropy parameters, is applied to give a comparative study of the effect of environmental factors on the dynamics of Swedish and French populations.