1. Demographic Perspectives
Chapter 3
Demographic Perspectives

2. Developing a Demographic Perspective
Two Questions:
What are the causes of population growth (or, at least, population change)?
What are the consequences of population growth or change?

3. Chapter Outline
Premodern Population Doctrines

4. Terms demographic perspective (p. 67)
a way of relating basic information to theories about how the world operates demographically
Doctrine (p. 67)
a principle laid down as true and beyond dispute
Theory (p. 67)
a system of assumptions, accepted principles, and rules of procedure devised to analyze, predict, or otherwise explain a set of phenomena

5. Premodern Doctrines Date Demographic Perspective ~1,300 bc
Genesis—“Be fruitful and multiply.”
~500 bc
Confucius—Governments should maintain balance between population and resources.
~360 bc
Plato—population quality more important than quantity
~340 bc
Aristotle—population should be limited; abortion might be appropriate.

6. Premodern Doctrines Date Demographic Perspective ~100 bc
Cicero—population growth necessary to maintain the Roman Empire.
~400 a.d.
St. Augustine—abstinence is preferred way to deal with sexuality; second best is to marry and procreate.

7. The Renaissance in Europe began with
Trade with the Muslim Ottoman Empire
The receding of the Black Plague
Growth of cities

8. Premodern Doctrines
~1280 a.d.
St. Thomas Aquinas—celibacy is not better than marriage and procreation.
~1380 a.d.
Ibn Khaldun—population growth increases occupational specialization and raises incomes.
Procreation stimulated by high hopes and heightening of animal energies.

9. Columbian Exchange (p. 72)
the exchange of food, products, people, and diseases between Europe and the Americas as a result of explorations by Columbus and others
Mercantilism (p. 72)
the view that a nation’s wealth depended on its store of precious metals and that generating this kind of wealth was facilitated by population growth
Physiocratic (p. 73)
the philosophy that the real wealth of a nation is in the land, not in the number of people

10. Premodern Doctrines Date Demographic Perspective ~1500– 1800
Mercantilism—increasing national wealth depends on a growing population that can stimulate trade.
~1700– 1800
Physiocrats—population size depends upon the wealth of the land, which is stimulated by free trade.

11. Mercantilism
Supported by the demographic analysis of John Graunt, William Petty and Edmund Halley.
Graunt’s work was based on the Bills of Mortality that became the first know statistical analysis of demographic data.
Sussmilch – Improvements in agriculture and industry would postpone overpopulation into the future.

12. Chapter Outline The Prelude To Malthus
Major Events/periods preceding the publication of Malthus’s book on population
Columbian Exchange
Enlightenment
French Revolution

13. Modern Theories Date Demographic Perspective 1798
Malthus—population grows exponentially, food supply grows arithmetically; poverty is the result in the absence of moral restraint.
~1800
Neo-Malthusian—birth control measures are appropriate checks to population growth.
~1844
Marxian—each society has its own law of population that determines consequences of population growth; poverty is not the natural result of population growth.

14. Influences on Malthus
The writings of the Marquis de Condorcet were an important precursor to Malthus’s Essay on Population.
William Godwin – Scientific progress would increase the amount of food far beyond what was possible at the time.

15. Malthus’s Principle of Population
The essential element was that population grew geometrically while food increased arithmetically

16. Malthus’s Principle of Population

17. checks to growth Factors that have kept population growth from reaching its biological potential for covering the earth with human bodies.

18. Checks to growth
positive checks Causes of mortality. – War, pestilence, famine
preventive checks All possible means of birth control, including abstinence, contraception, and abortion.

19. Malthus’s Principle of Population
moral restraint According to Malthus, the only acceptable means of preventing a birth: postpone marriage, remaining chaste in the meantime.
Means of subsistence – Ultimate check to growth

20. Malthus’s idea about moral restraint
Postpone marriage
Marry only when you can afford children

21. Chapter Outline The Prelude To The Demographic Transition Theory
The Theory Of The Demographic Transition
The Demographic Transition Is Really A Set Of Transitions

22. The Malthusian Perspective
Malthus argued that people have a natural urge to reproduce, and the increase in the food supply cannot keep up with population growth.
The major consequence of population growth, according to Malthus, is poverty.
Within that poverty is the stimulus for action that can lift people out of misery.

23. Critiques of Malthus
Assertion that food production could not keep up with population growth.
Conclusion that poverty was an inevitable result of population growth.
Belief that moral restraint was the only acceptable preventive check.

24. The Marxian Perspective
Each society at each point in history has its own law of population that determines population growth.
For capitalism, the consequences are overpopulation and poverty.
For socialism, population growth is readily absorbed by the economy with no side effects.

25. Marx on Malthus
Marx
Malthus's "natural law of population” only natural in capitalist societies
Poverty is the result of the evils off social organization.

26. John Stuart Mill
Basic thesis was that the standard of living is a major determinant of fertility levels.
The ideal state is that in which all members of a society are economically comfortable.
Fear of slipping socially was a motivation to limit fertility
People do not “Propagate like Swine”87

27. Arsène Dumont
Late 19th century French demographer who felt he discovered a new principle of population called “social capillarity”.
The desire of people to rise on the social scale, to increase their individuality as well as their personal wealth.
To ascend the social hierarchy requires that sacrifices be made.

28. Émile Durkheim
Based an entire social theory on the consequences of population growth.
Population growth leads to greater societal specialization, because the struggle for existence is more acute when there are more people.
View of population growth similar to Khaldun.

29. Modern Theories Date Demographic Perspective 1945
Demographic transition in its original form—the process where a country moves from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates.
1962
Earliest studies suggesting the need to reformulate demographic transition theory.
1963
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.

30. Demographic change and response
First response people will likely make to the population growth resulting from a decline in mortality is to work harder.
Second response would be to migrate.

31. Theory of the Demographic Transition
Emphasizes the importance of economic and social development.
Leads first to a decline in mortality and then to a commensurate decline in fertility.
Based on the experience of the developed nations, and derived from the modernization theory.

32. 1928 – Warren Thompson
Group C Group B Group A

33. Frank Notestein
High Potential Growth Transitional Incipient Decline

34. Modern Theories Date Demographic Perspective 1968
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.
1971– present
Decomposition of the demographic transition into its separate transitions—mortality, fertility, age, migration, urbanization, and family and household.

35. Easterlin Relative Cohort Size Hypothesis
The standard of living you experience in late childhood is the base from which you evaluate your chances as an adult.
If you can improve your income as an adult compared to your childhood level, you are more likely to marry early and have several children.

36. Modernization Theory
Macro-level theory that sees human actors as being buffeted by changing social institutions.
Individuals did not deliberately lower their risk of death to precipitate the modern decline in mortality.
Society wide increases in income and improved public health infrastructure brought about this change.

37. Demographic Transition: A Set of Transitions
Mortality transition -shift from deaths at younger ages due to disease to deaths at older ages due to degenerative diseases.
Fertility transition- the shift from natural (and high) to controlled (and low) fertility.

38. Demographic Transition: A Set of Transitions
Age transition- social and economic reactions as societies adjust to constantly changing age distributions.
Migration transition - Growth in the number of young people in rural areas will lead to an oversupply of young people looking for jobs, which encourages people to leave in search of economic opportunity.

39. Demographic Transition: A Set of Transitions
Urban transition - begins with migration from rural to urban areas and morphs into urban “evolution” as most humans are born in, live in, and die in cities.
Family and household transition - brought about by structural changes that accompany longer life, lower fertility, an older age structure, and urban instead of rural residence.