Making Comparisons of Demographic Aggregates more Meaningful: A Case of Life Expectancies and Total Fertility Rates

With the recent emphasis on human development, development researchers are making frequent use of aggregate demographic measures in describing development experiences and more so while linking health and development. And it is often seen that comparison of these demographic aggregates across space and time is naïve given their complex construct on one hand and the implied meaning on the other. Are these comparisons across the board valid for the meanings ascribed to them? Or are the stated achievements as well as projected trends based on them reliable? This paper attempts to illustrate these concerns taking the twin aggregate measures frequently in use namely the life expectancy and Total fertility Rates. The primary focus here has been to link additional dimension of the same phenomenon (referring to survival or fertility here) which does not follow the principle of matched ordering while read along with these aggregates. Taking into account these additional dimensions, the magnitude of the differences in these aggregate measures gets moderated and their comparison across levels (between lower and higher) becomes more consistent.