Recent work on galactic planetary nebulae (PN) has emphasized the complex nature of this galactic subsystem (W. J. Maciel, 31st Herstmonceux Conference, ed. R. Terlevich, in press). A fairly large amount of data is now available, including distances, galactic distribution, kinematical properties, and chemical composition of the nebular gas, supplemented by data on the central stars for some objects. In this work, a large sample of PN is used to study the different stellar populations associated with the galactic nebulae. It is seen that the available data imply a physical description of the PN phenomenon that is consistent with an evolutionary model based on stellar populations.