The role of languages for modeling and simulating continuous-time multi-level models in demography

Demographic microsimulation often focuses on effects of stable macro constraints on isolated individual life course decisions rather than on effects of inter-individual interaction or macro-micro links. To change this, modeling and simulation have to face various challenges. A modeling language is required allowing a compact, succinct, and declarative description of demographic multi-level models. To clarify how such a modeling language could look like and to reveal essential features, an existing demographic multi-level model, i.e., the linked life model, will be realized in three different modeling approaches, i.e., ML-DEVS, ML-Rules, and attributed pi. The pros and cons of these approaches will be discussed and further requirements for the envisioned language identified. Not only for modeling but also for experimenting languages can play an important role in facilitating the specification, generation, and reproduction of experiments, which will be illuminated by defining experiments in the experiment specification language SESSL.