SOCI 313: Demography - concepts

Doctrine of Book of Genesis regarding demography

"Be fruitful and multiply" 1300 BC

Rational Choice Theory

(sometimes referred to as RAT) The essence of rational choice the- ory is that human behavior is the result of individuals making calculated cost-benefit analyses about how to act and what to do

Urban Transition

- With empty lands filling up, migrants from the countryside in the world today have no place to go but to cities, and cities have historically tended to flourish by absorbing labor from rural areas. -

Age Transition

- begins to cave in at the younger ages as fewer children are being born (more surviving to adulthood) - shifts societal resources away from children to broader concerns like standard of living - in turn increases life expectancy - "master" transition - occurs with decline in mortality, then decline in fertility - age structure is young when mortality and fertility are high - but even more young when fertility is high and mortality low "golden age" - structure very beneficial to society - most of population is young adults (working age and fewer children) - older population has not increased enough to be a burden of dependency - bulge of young people born prior to fertility decline

"second demographic transition"

- changes in family and household structure since WW2 led Dirk van de Kaa to talk about second demographic transition - something that goes beyond a stable post-transitional period - this transition is associated with a postponement of marriage, arise in single living, cohabitation, and prolonged residence in the parental household - the end result of the "first" demographic transition is homeostasis, or population stability - the result of the "second" demographic transition is young people increasingly making decisions about having children on the basis of sea-fulfillment, without concerning themselves about biological replacement - if we count the neolithic demographic transition (increase in in both birth and death rates) the first transition - then the past 200 years or so (a decrease in both birth and death rates) would be the second transition) - then unexpected further decline in birth rates

Health and Mortality Transition

- changes in society that improve health: disease resistance and preventative premature death - decline in mortality - but death rates do not decline evenly by age - very old and very young are those whose lives are likely to be saved by improved life expectancy - initial impact is to increase number of young people - ballooning bottom end of age structure - appears to be an increase in birth rate - sets other transitions in motion

fertility transition

- in most places it is the decline in mortality, leading to greater survival of children, that eventually motivates people to think about limiting the number of children they are having. - throughout most of history, only 2 children survived to adulthood - with declining mortality, that number rose and threatened household economies - as the lives of women extend, they are increasingly empowered to delay childbirth and have fewer children - women now live longer than reproductive ages and beyond their children's arrival to adulthood - life is more than just raising children now

Migration Transition

- in rural areas, where most of the population lived for most of human history, the growth in the number of young people will lead to an oversupply of young people looking for jobs, which will encourage people to go elsewhere in search of economic opportunity. -Europeans could move out from rural Europe to rural areas in the Americas and South Pacific, but migrants from rural areas today no longer have that option - migration takes people (mainly young adults) out of an area and puts them in another area, thus affecting the age structure in both places - people from younger societies filing in the "empty" places in the age structure of older societies

David Hume and Robert Wallace

1700s Wrote 2 essays on Population growth, influenced Malthus Europe's population doubled in 1700s These essays sparked considerable debate and controversy, because there were big issues at stake: "Was a large and rapidly growing population a sure sign of a society's good health? On balance, were the growth of industry and cities, the move- ment of larger numbers from one social class to another—in short, all of what we now term 'modernization'—a boon to the people or the contrary? And in society's efforts to resolve such dilemmas, could it depend on the sum of individuals' self- interest or was considerable state control called for?"

Frank Notestein

1945, labeled Thompson's population groups Group A - incipient decline Group B - transitional growth Group C - high growth potential

Doctrine of St. Augustine regarding demography

Abstinence is the preferred way to deal with human sexuality (antinatalist view); the second best is to marry and procreate (pronatalist view) 400 AD

Theory of Neo-Malthusian

Accepting the basic Malthu- sian premise that population growth tends to outstrip resources, but unlike Malthus believing that birth control measures are ap- propriate checks to population growth.

Doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas regarding demography

Celibacy is not better than marriage and procreation 1280 AD

Theory of demographic change and response

Demographic response made by individuals to population pressures is determined by the means available to them to respond; causes and consequences of population change are intertwined.

Theory of Marxian

Each society at each point in history has its own law of population that determines the consequences of population growth; poverty is not the natural result of population growth. Karl Marx and Frierich Engels both teenagers in Germany when Malthus Germany & Austria welfare rolls grew with rise in illegitimate children saw the Malthusian perspective as an outrage against humanity Marxism arose in reaction to Malthus The basic Marxian perspective is that each society at each point in history has its own law of population that determines the consequences of popu- lation growth. For capitalism, the consequences are overpopulation and poverty, whereas for socialism, population growth is readily absorbed by the economy with no side effects. saw no reason to suspect that science and technology could not increase the availability of food and other goods at least as quickly as the population grew. poverty is the result of a poorly organized society, especially a capitalist society. Marxian thought on population is in fact attributable to Lenin, one of the most prolific interpret- ers of Marx.

John Graunt

Father of Demography From London, haberdasher by trade 1622 - analyzed the series of Bills of Mortality in the first known statistical analysis of demographic data discovered for every 100 people born in london, only 16 were still alive at age 36 and only 3 at age 66 (suggested very high levels of mortality) Graunt "opened the way both for the later discovery of uniformities in many social or volitional phenomena like marriage, suicide, and crime, and for a study of these uniformities, their nature and their limits; thus he, more than any other man, was the founder of statistics"

3 Cornerstones of population studies (processes)

Fertility Mortality migration

demographic metabolism

First popularized by Norman Ryder (1965) refers to the ongoing replacement of people at each age in every society. Each cohort is different from the one that preceded it, society will change over time. "tamp down innovative behavior among the young before it upsets the social order"

"South" to "North" Migration

For the past several decades, there has been far more migration from less developed countries (the "South") to developed areas (the "North"). Migrants are generally young adults of reproductive age, and less developed areas general have higher family size expectations, their migration makes a disproportionate contribution over time to the overall population increased in the developed are to which they have migrated

Achille Guillard

French Scientist First to term "Demography" to pressure French academics to see that statistical analyses of births and deaths would show Malthus wrong

Warren Thompson's Population Groups

Group A: (northern and western Europe and the US) - countries had moved from having very high rates of natural increase to having very low rates of increase "and will shortly become stationary and start to decline in numbers" Group B: (Italy, Spain, and Slavic people of central Europe) decline in both birth and death rates, but suggests that death rate will decline rapidly or even more rapidly than birth rate Group C: (rest of the world) little evidence of control in either birth or death Group C countries (which included about 70-75 percent of the population of the world at the time) would continue to have their growth "determined largely by the opportunities they have to increase their means of subsistence.

doctrine vs theory

In demography, as in all of the sciences, theories replace doctrine when new, systematically collected infor- mation (censuses and other sources discussed in the next chapter) becomes avail- able, allowing people to question old ideas and formulate new ones. doctrine - Early thinkers were certain they had the answers and certain that their proc- lamations represented the truth essence of modern scientific thought is to assume that you do not have the answer and to acknowledge that you are willing to consider evi- dence regardless of the conclusion to which it points. I

Set of Transitions - Demographic Transition

In general (not always) order - Health and mortality (shift from deaths at younger ages due to communicable diseases to older ages due to degenerative diseases) - fertility (shift from natural (and high) to controlled (and low) fertility, typically in a delayed response to the health and mortality transition - age transition (predictable changes in age structure brought about by the mortality and fertility transitions produce social and economic reactions as societies adjust to constantly changing age distributions) - rapid growth of population occasioned by the patter of mortality declining sooner and more rapidly than fertility almost always leads to overpopulation of rural areas, producing - migration transition - urban transition - family and household (structural changes that accompany longer life, lower fertility, an older age structure, and urban instead of rural residence)

Doctrine of Mercantilism regarding demography

Increasing national wealth depends on growing population that can stimulate export trade 1500-1800

Condorcet

Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, a member of the French aristocracy who forsook a military career to pursue a life devoted to mathematics and philosophy. belief that technological progress has no limits With all this progress in industry and welfare which establishes a happier proportion between men's talents and their needs, each successive genera- tion will have larger possessions, either as a result of this progress or through the preservation of the products of industry, and so, as a consequence of the physical constitution of the human race, the number of people will increase saw prosperity and population growth increasing hand in hand, and if the limits to growth were ever reached, the final solution would be birth control.

William Petty

Member of Royal Society in London man who invented field of economics brought Graunt's work to the attentio of the people

Cohort

People who share something in common (Ex. age range) they represent a potential force for change

Theory of Malthus

Population grows exponentially while food supply grows arithmetically, with misery (poverty) being the result in the absence of moral restraint Thomas Robert Malthus English clergyman and college professor "Essay on the Principle of Population as it affects the future improvement of society; with remarks on the speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other writers" published in 1798 wanted to show that the unbounded optimism of the physiocrats and utopian philosophers was misplaced. "principle of population" - population grows exponentially and food (means of subsistence) arithmetically checks of growth, positive checks, preventative checks (birth control), and moral restraint food supply increased more than he predicted due to technology natural consequence of population growth was poverty, and it was the fault of poor people who didn't learn from their pain Malthus believed that a natural consequence of population growth was poverty. This is the logical end result of his arguments that (1) people have a natural urge to reproduce, and (2) the increase in the food supply cannot keep up with population growth.

Doctrine of Confucius regarding demography

Population growth is good, but governments should maintain a balance between population and resources 500 BC

Doctrine of Ibn Khaldun regarding demography

Population growth is inherently good because it increases occupational specialization and raises incomes 1380 AD

Doctrine of Cicero regarding demography

Population growth necessary to maintain Roman influence 50 BC

Doctrine of Plato regarding demography

Population quality is more important than quantity; emphasis on population stability 360 BC

Doctrine of Aristotle regarding demography

Population size should be limited and the use of abortion might be appropriate 340 BC

Social and Political Dynamics affected by Population

Regional Conflict (accepting change or rejecting change. Ex. Taliban) - Adolescent bulge --> revolutions / political unrest Globalization (jobs have moved to developing countries, due to rise in young population in those areas) Immigration (low fertility countries take in migrants from higher fertility nations, which lag behind mortality increase, so jobs are short. Movement into developed countries) Age Wave (older population, new demands - social insurance)

Easterline Relative Cohort Size hypothesis

Richard Easterlin has shown that relative cohort size can then feed back to influence the birth rate itself - also sometimes known as the relative income hypothesis - based on idea that the birth rate does not necessarily respond to absolute levels of economic well-being but rather to levels that are relative to those to which one is accustomed - the standard of living you experience in late childhood is the base from which you evaluate your chances as an adult. - If you easily improve your income as an adult compared to late childhood, you will be more likely to marry early and have more children. - if young people are scarce in society, they will be in demand and get high wages - if young people are abundant in society, they will be in competition and have lower wages (not likely to start family) - demographic feedback cycle

Adam Smith

Scotsman One of the first modern economic theorists Central to Smith's view of the world was the idea that, if left to their own devices, people acting in their own self-interest would produce what was best for the community as a whole believed that wealth sprang from the labor applied to the land (we might now say the "value added" to the land by labor), rather than it being just in the land itself. felt that population size is determined by the demand for labor, which is, in turn, determined by the productivity of the land. These ideas are important to us because Smith's work served as an inspiration for the Malthusian theory of population, as Malthus himself acknowledges

Demography

Study of populations, size, distribution, composition, and the determinants of these namely fertility, mortality, migrations, and implications and the consequences of all of the above.

Easterlin relative cohort size hypothesis

Successively larger young cohorts put pressure on young men's relative wages, forcing them to make a tradeoff between family size and overall well-being.

"South" to "North" Growth

The most rapidly growing regions in the world tend to be in the mid-latitudes, and these are nations that are least developed economically—the "global south"; whereas the slowest growing are the richer nations, which tend to be more northerly and southerly (even though we label them as the "global north." It has not always been that way, however.

Census of Population

The primary source of data on population size and distribution, as well as on demographic structure and characteristics wanted to know who the taxpayers were or identify potential laborers and soldiers population census - a complete enumeration of the population "the traditional census is among the most complex and massive peacetime exercises a nation undertakes. It requires mapping the entire country, mobilizing and training an army of enumerators, conducting a massive public campaign, canvassing all households, collecting individual information, com- piling vast amounts of completed questionnaires, and analysing and disseminating the data" census is latin for assessing or taxing

Urban Revolution

The principal economic activities in these areas were not industrial but commercial in nature, associated with buying and selling. The wealth acquired by people engaged in these activities naturally attracted attention and urban centers sprang up all over the world. During the second half of the twentieth century, when the world began to urban- ize in earnest, the underlying cause was the rapid growth of the rural population. in order to grow enough food for an increasing population, people have had to be replaced by machines in agriculture (as I will discuss in Chapter 11), and that has sent the redundant rural population off to the cities in search of work.

Demographic Transition

The process whereby a country moves from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates with an interstitial spurt in population growth. Explanations based originally on modernization theory. Health and mortality fertility age migration urbanization family and household The original model of the demographic transition is divided roughly into three stages. In the first stage there is high growth potential because both birth and death rates are high. The second stage is the transition from high to low birth and death rates. During this stage the growth potential is realized as the death rate drops before the birth rate drops, resulting in rapid population growth. Finally, the last stage is a time when death rates are as low as they are likely to go, while fertility may continue to decline to the point that the population might eventually decline in numbers. Modernization theory is based on the idea that in premodern times human society was generally governed by "tradition," and that the massive economic changes wrought by industrialization forced societies to alter traditional institu- tions: "In traditional societies fertility and mortality are high. In modern societies fertility and mortality are low. In between, there is demographic transition"

Political Unrest (MENA)

The rapid drop in mortality after World War II, followed by a long delay in the start of fertility decline, pro- duced a very large population of young people in need of jobs. The economies within the region have not been able to keep up with the demand for jobs, and this has produced a generation of young people who, despite being better educated than their parents, face an uncertain future in an increasingly crowded world. The demographic situation has fueled discontent and has almost certainly contributed to the rise of radical Islam and terrorism. Turkey seems to be exception in the region

3 Major criticisms of Malthus

The three most strongly criticized aspects of his theory have been (1) the assertion that food production could not keep up with population growth, (2) the conclusion that poverty was an inevitable result of population growth, and (3) the belief that moral restraint was the only acceptable preventive check.

Doctrine of Physiocrats regarding demography

Wealth of a nation is in land, not people; therefore population size depends on the wealth of the land, which is stimulated by free trade (laissez-faire). 1700-1800

Demographic perspective

a way of relating basic information to theories about how the world operates demographically There are actually two levels of population theory. At the core of demographic analysis is the technical side of the field—the mathematical and biomedical theories that predict the kinds of changes taking place in the biological components of demography: fertility, mortality, and the distribution of a population by age and sex. outer wrapping of theory that relates demographic pro- cesses to the real events of the social world (1) What are the causes of population change? (2) What are the consequences of population change?

secularization

attitude of autonomy from otherworldly powers and a sense of responsibility for one's own well-being . It is associated with an enlightened view of the world—a break from traditional ways of thinking and behaving.

Modernization theory

based on the idea that in premodern times human society was generally governed by "tradition," and that the massive economic changes wrought by industrialization forced societies to alter traditional institu- tions: "In traditional societies fertility and mortality are high. In modern societ- ies fertility and mortality are low. In between, there is demographic transition"

Why was early growth so slow?

death rates were very high life expectancy of hunter-gatherers was roughly 20 years more than half of the children born died before age 5 average woman had 7 children to ensure two survived

Why are more recent population increases so rapid?

declines in death rate, result of scientific revolution and industrial resolution rising standard of living better diets cleaner water lower exposure to disease public health improvements vaccinations

John Stuart Mill

english philosopher and economist influential writer of 1800s Mill's basic thesis was that the standard of living is a major determinant of fer- tility levels: "In proportion as mankind rises above the condition of the beast, popu- lation is restrained by the fear of want, rather than by want itself. Even where there is no question of starvation, many are similarly acted upon by the apprehension of losing what have come to be regarded as the decencies of their situation in life In the event that population ever did overrun the food supply, however, Mill felt that it would likely be a tem- porary situation with at least two possible solutions: import food or export people. before reaching the point at which both population and production are stable, there is essentially a race between the two. What is required to settle the issue is a dramatic improvement in the living conditions of the poor. convinced that an important ingredient in the transformation to a non-growing population is that women do not want as many children as men do, and if they are allowed to voice their opinions, the birth rate will decline.

Edmund Halley

first scientist to elaborate on the probabilities of death used life table technique to determine that the expectation of life in Breslau between 1687 and 1691 was 33.5 years

Resources affected by Population (growth)

food water energy (rising standards of living) housing and infrastructure (rise of cities) environmental degradation (strain on natural resources, excess waste)

Migration (General Trends)

generally flows from areas where there are too few jobs to areas where there is more opportunity Migrants are generally young adults of reproductive age, and less developed areas general have higher family size expectations, their migration makes a disproportionate contribution over time to the overall population increased in the developed are to which they have migrated

population structure

how many males and females there are of each age

Population size

how many people there are in a given place

population growth or decline

how the number of people in a given place is changing over time

Arsène Dumont

late 1800s French demographer felt he had discovered a new principle of population that he called "social capillarity" Social capillarity refers to the desire of people to rise on the social scale, to increase their individuality as well as their personal wealth. social aspiration was a root cause of a slowdown in population growth

Émile Durkheim

late 1800s French sociologist "the division of labor varies in direct ratio with the volume and density of societies, and, if it progresses in a continuous manner in the course of social development, it is because societies become regularly denser and more voluminous" population growth leads to greater societal specialization because the struggle for existence is more acute when there are more people. derived (he himself acknowledged) from Darwin's theory of evolution.

Almost all the growth of the world's population is originating in what type of nation?

less developed nations

carrying capacity

number of people that can be supported indefinitely in an area given the available physical resources and the way in which people use those resources

Neolithic Demographic Transition

population increase as humans settled into agricultural communities fertility rates rose (stable diets, and soft food availability good for weaning.) Death rates rose (sedentary life, high-density living - sanitation problems, disease exposure, etc) birth rates still rose above death rates

homeostasis

population stability - normal state of affairs in human societies

The major source of info on the population processes of births and deaths

registration of vital statistics in few countries its done via population registers in developing nations vital events are estimated from sample surveys

William Godwin

scientific progress would enable the food supply to grow far beyond the levels of his day, and that such prosperity would not lead to overpopulation because people would deliberately limit their sexual expres- sion and procreation. Furthermore, he believed that most of the problems of the poor were due not to overpopulation but to the inequities of the social institutions, especially greed and accumulation of property influenced Malthus

Six Major Demographic Factors, population ___

size growth or decline processes spatial distribution structure characteristics

population processes

the levels and trends in fertility, mortality, and migration that are determining population size and change and that can be thought of as capturing life's three main moments: hatching, matching, and dispatching

population characteristics

what people are like in a given place, in terms of variables such as education, income, occupation, family and household relationships, immigrant and refugee status, and the many other characteristics that add up to who we are as individuals or groups

population spatial distribution

where people are located and why

Rights of Women affected by Population

women have higher life expectancy than men They can reproduce "any group that oppresses women and suppresses their contributions will have a distinctively unfavorable demographic profile and will almost certainly suffer in terms of overall well-being"