Contour Maps of Demographic Surfaces

This paper presents a bouquet of contour maps to suggest the broad potential of their use in demographic studies. Every picture presented could serve as the basis for a thousand words or more of explanation and analysis, but here we merely serve up the maps as illustrations of the method. For an example of how such maps can be used in demographic analysis, see Caselli, Vaupel, and Yashin (1985): Mortality in Italy--Contours of a Century of Evolution (CP-85-24, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria).