Population Pyramids in Action

Found a neat site where you can run an interactive population pyramid of several of the developed nations, including the US. 
As a cursor below the graph runs through the years, the pyramid shows the population distribution of males and females by age group.  You can stop it and a mouse-over will highlight the age group of each bar for males and females. 

Here is the present Graph showing that edge of the baby-boomers hitting the social security bracket, and two mild periods of reduced birth rates around 1990 and 1970 (why???... are these just the dampened oscillations of the baby-boom... born around 1950 we would have our children born around 1975-1980 and grandchildren around 2000 to 2005? or do they cue off economic boom and bust... what was the impact of Aids )

This one is for 1950, I had just moved into the second bar, and the peak of the baby boom was about to hit. In the next five years the population would grow from 159 million to 171 million. 

A little research suggested that the first population pyramid split by gender was created for the US census by General Francis Walker, who used them in the 1840, 1850, 1860 and 1870 census.  The image below is one such for the state of Nebraska which it seems is from the 1874 census data-book.  It was around this time that Heinrich Schwabe (who discovered that sunspots moved in ten-eleven year cycles) adjusted them to be more like bar graphs and they have changed little since that time. 

I also came across this interesting population "pyramid" which is in three dimensions.  It was by Luigi Perozzo and was modeled on the Swedish Census from 1750 to 1875.   The graph shows the number of births each year over the period, and then shows the population distributed by age in perspective for the census results each five year period.  The chart was presented, and apparenty well praised at the 1875 Geographic Congress and again at the 1878 Paris Exhibition. 

The Sin of David

In the bible stories in Samuel and Chronicles, God sent a plague on the people of Israel because of David's "numbering the people". It is not clear what the word meant in this context, or why God was displeased, but thousands of years later religious people fought to defeat the idea of public numeration (census) based on the fear that it would bring God's wrath.

[from 2nd Samual 24]
"David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the LORD, "I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, O LORD, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing."
11 Before David got up the next morning, the word of the LORD had come to Gad the prophet, David's seer: 12 "Go and tell David, 'This is what the LORD says: I am giving you three options. Choose one of them for me to carry out against you.' "
13 So Gad went to David and said to him, "Shall there come upon you three [b] years of famine in your land? Or three months of fleeing from your enemies while they pursue you? Or three days of plague in your land? Now then, think it over and decide how I should answer the one who sent me."
14 David said to Gad, "I am in deep distress. Let us fall into the hands of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into the hands of men."
15 So the LORD sent a plague on Israel from that morning until the end of the time designated, and seventy thousand of the people from Dan to Beersheba died.

Not sure why God couldn't have chastised David more directly instead of killing 70,000 other folks.... or why his son Solomon was not punished later for a similar counting is not clear, "Solomon took a census of all foreigners in the land of Israel, like the census his father had taken, and he counted 153,600."  2nd Chronicles 2:17.  He would have surely known of his father's experience...and he was, afterall, as wise as ....well... Solomon. 

Similarly God's retribution seems not to fall on a later enumeration reported in Ezra 2:1-34 where many of the people were not only counted, but named by name...."Now these are the people of the province who came up from the captivity of the exiles, whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had taken captive to Babylon (they returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to their own town, ² in company with Zerubbabel, Joshua, Nehemiah, Seraiah, Reelaiah, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispar, Bigvai, Rehum and Baanah):
   The list of the men of the people of Israel: .....
" 

So why the singular focus on David's sin became so common is unclear to me..but it lasted well into the 18th century. 


In a letter from John Winthrop to Sir Nathaniel Rich he reported that the people of the Colony had not been formally numbered, by reason of " David's example," but there were believed to be more than 4000 of them. 

In The "Triumph of Numbers" by I B Cohen he quotes Winthrop letter with the colorful reasonin that, "David's example sticke's somewhat with us."

From the same source I found, "In 1712, in a letter to the Lord of Trade, the Governer of New York blamed the imperfections of the census of 1712 on the fear of God's wrath and, in a report, claimed that an earlier count had been followed by excessive sickness in the colony."