Demographic Models of Urbanization

A comparative study of three demographic models of urbanization is carried out and their consequences are compared with empirically validated patterns of urbanization resulting from the ‘replacement dynamics’. The United Nations projections of world urbanization over the period 1950–2000 are also found to follow the same pattern. It is noted that, with appropriate changes in the parameters of the UN model of urbanization, the predictions obtained from this modified model are much closer to reality. An interesting feature which emerges from the analysis is the constancy of the replacement rate parameter (which turns out to be a linear combination of the time-dependent demographic parameters) over a considerable length of time.