To secure the structural safety of structures and members against earthquakes, the plastic deformation capacity demand of members should be accurately predicted. In the present study, a method for the evaluation of the plastic deformations of members for moment frames was developed. To facilitate the practical use of the proposed method in equivalent seismic design, the plastic deformations of members were evaluated based on the results of elastic analysis, without using nonlinear analysis. The plastic deformation demands of members were formulated as functions of story drift demand, redistributed moment and member stiffness. Story drift demand and moment redistribution were directly determined from elastic analysis. The proposed method was applied to an 8 story-2 bay moment frame, and the predicted plastic deformations were verified using nonlinear analysis. The results showed that the proposed method could be used to accurately predict the member plastic rotations with simple calculations. The proposed method can be applied both to the earthquake design of new structures and to the performance evaluation of existing structures.