Population and Economics 2(3): 1-41, doi: 10.3897/popecon.2.e36054
Dmitriy Mendeleev’s Forecasts of the Population of Russia. and the Realities of its Present Development
expand article infoT. Belova‡
‡ Academy of Law and Administration of the Federal Penitentiary Service, Russia

Corresponding author: T. Belova ( belova_t_n@mail.ru )

© T. Belova.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Belova T (2018) Dmitriy Mendeleev’s Forecasts of the Population of Russia. and the Realities of its Present Development. Population and Economics 2(3): 1-41. https://doi.org/10.3897/popecon.2.e36054
Open Access
Abstract
In his last work “The Sacred Thoughts” an outstanding Russian scientist and encyclopedist Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev has explored demographic processes, acting as an economist and sociologist. The author of this article examines methodical approaches and tools, repeats and continues calculations of Mendeleev using modern data and information technologies. Comparing Mendeleev’s forecasts of the size and age structure of population of Russia with the modern statistical data, the author discusses the reasons for the “failure” of forecasts. The arsenal of modern demographic tools can be supplemented with Mendeleev’s idea on using the formula (law) of the vertical parabola in studying the age structure (the dependence between the size of the group and age).
Keywords
Mendeleev; size of population; fertility; mortality; population growth; age structure of the population