Sampling properties of the asymptotic behavior of age- or stage-grouped population models.

The discrete-time linear recurrent models proposed by Leslie in 1945 and Usher in 1966 for age-or stage-grouped populations are discussed with emphasis on the random nature, due to sampling variations, of their well-known asymptotic behavior. The statistical properties of the estimated asymptotic multiplication rate, stage, or age stable structures and mean generation time are inspected by both a theoretical approach and a simulation procedure. Illustrative case studies provide some order of magnitudes of the sampling bias and variance of these statistics.