Chapter 1

Validity

An indicator, such as a demographic measure, is intended to accurately represent some underlying concept. The validity of a measure is the extent to which it accurately represents the underlying concept.

Eugenics

Eugenics is a science that deals with the improvement, through breeding, of hereditary qualities of humans or other animals.

Positive check

This concept was formulated by Thomas Malthus. Increased mortality, whether from famine, disease, or war, is a positive check to population growth. Malthus thought that if preventive checks were not employed in a population, then positive checks would emerge to counter a high rate of population growth.

Preventive check/ Moral restraint

This concept was formulated by Thomas Malthus. Postponement of marriage and celibacy among the unmarried are preventive checks to population growth. Preventive checks are also called moral restraint.

Mercantilism

This economic doctrine contends that government control of foreign trade and a positive balance of trade is of paramount importance for a state's prosperity and safety. This view was dominant in Western Europe from the sixteenth to late eighteenth centuries. Mercantilism was a major rationale for colonialism and related occurrences, such as the triangle trade.

Fundamental causes of disease approach

This is an approach developed by Link and Phelan. In this framework, an individual's or household's resources operate both by affecting whether people engage in healthful behaviors, such as not smoking or not consuming excessive alcohol, and by affecting the kinds of neighborhoods and other environments in which a person functions. Residence in less polluted neighborhoods and working in less hazardous occupations lead to lower death rates and a lower chance of becoming disabled.

Social epidemiology

This is the branch of epidemiology that studies the social determinants of health.

Population health

This is the health outcomes of a group of people, including the distribution of these outcomes within the group.

Social Darwinism

This is the position that underlying, and largely irresistible, forces act in societies like the natural forces that operate in animal and plant communities. These social forces produce evolutionary progress through natural conflicts between social groups. The best-adapted and most successful social groups survive these conflicts, raising the evolutionary level of society generally (the "survival of the fittest").

Demography

This is the study of the growth, structure, and composition of human populations and the study of the determinants and consequences of these aspects of population.

Theory of Demographic Change and Response

This is the view that when there is population increase due to mortality decline, people have a variety of options as to how to respond in addition to voluntary fertility limitation. Some of the other options include migration, abortion, and infanticide.

Pronatalist

This refers to policies or positions favoring high or higher fertility.