The population growth rate, or intrinsic rate of increase, measures the potential rate of growth of a population with specified and fixed vital rates.The sensitivity of population growth rate to changes in the vital rates can be written in terms of the stable stage or age distribution and the...

Perturbation analysis examines the response of a model to changes in its parameters. It is commonly applied to population growth rates calculated from linear models, but there has been no general approach to the analysis of nonlinear models. Nonlinearities in demographic models may arise due to...