The fitting of parameter-constrained demographic models

It is common to have knowledge about the unknown parameters of a demographic model which restricts the values of the parameters. With such knowledge, it is reasonable to require that our parameter estimates satisfy the parameter constraints and one should use a constrained estimation procedure. We briefly review existing approaches to fitting parameter-constrained models. We describe a Bayesian approach for the fitting of parameter-constrained demographic models, which is the main focus of the paper. We illustrate the Bayesian approach by fitting a parameter-constrained proportional hazards model based on current-status data and a parameter-constrained log-linear regression model for standardized mortality ratios.