Estimation of age structure in anthropological demography.
Estimation of age structure in anthropological demography.
复制标题
人类学人口学中年龄结构的估计。
DOI：
10.1002/ajpa.1330890208
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发表时间：
1992
影响因子：
2.8
通讯作者：
Frankenberg,SR
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Konigsberg,LW;Frankenberg,SR
在过去的十年里，关于古人口研究的可行性引起了相当大的争论，人们的注意力集中在年龄估计的可靠性问题上。我们在这里表明，在估计年龄而不是已知年龄的情况下，将个人分配到年龄类别的传统方法将产生对年龄结构的有偏见的估计。我们从数学和计算机模拟两方面论证了这种偏差的影响，并展示了如何使用渔业文献中更合适的方法(“迭代年龄长度关键字”)来估计年龄结构。由于估计现存群体的年龄通常是这样的，我们建议我们的结果与人类学人口学的一般领域相关，现在是时候改进年龄结构估计的统计基础了。我们进一步认为，骨骼收集中经常注意到的老年人稀少是使用不适当的年龄估计方法的简单结果，并且这个问题可以在未来通过使用包含年龄估计的不确定性的生命表或危险函数的最大似然估计来纠正。©1992 Wiley-Liss，Inc.
The past decade has produced considerable debate over the feasibility of paleodemographic research, with much attention focusing on the question of reliability of age estimates. We show here that in cases where age is estimated rather than known, the traditional method of assigning individuals to age classes will produce biased estimates of age structure. We demonstrate the effect of this bias both mathematically and by computer simulation, and show how a more appropriate method from the fisheries literature (the “iterated age length key”) can be used to estimate age structure. Because it is often the case that ages are also estimated for extant groups, we suggest that our results are relevant to the general field of anthropological demography, and that it is time for us to improve the statistical basis for age structure estimation. We further suggest that the oft noted paucity of older individuals in skeletal collections is a simple result of the use of inappropriate methods of age estimation, and that this problem can be rectified in the future by using maximum likelihood estimates of life table or hazard functions incorporating the uncertainty of age estimates. © 1992 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.