Understanding Demography

• Migration is a controversial demographic process with political implications for both migrants and local populations
• Demographic theory explains migration causes (push and pull factors), assesses consequences, and predicts population flows

Demographic Change

• Is linked with every social, political, and economic issue
• The rise in life expectancy since WWII is a major historical phenomenon
• Rapid population growth results from a birth rate that is not decreasing coupled with a declining death rate
• Demography is the scientific study of human populations; it is destiny

What is Demography?

• Originates from the Greek word "demos," denoting "description of the people"
• Term coined by Achille Guillard in 1855
• It involves studying the mathematical knowledge of populations, their movements, and their state
• Modern definition includes studying population change determinants and consequences and socio-economic factors
• It covers population size, growth, decline, processes (fertility, mortality, migration), distribution, structure, and characteristics

Demographic Composition

• Includes aspects like age, sex, birthplace and year
• Also includes socioeconomics, occupation, culture, ethnicity, and immigration status, among others

Determinants of Population Structure/Change

• Encompasses births, deaths, and migration
• Also encompasses related factors like morbidity, family, war, climate change, and religion

Consequences of Population Change

• Includes economics, sociology, public health, political science, anthropology, geography, epidemiology, biology, ecology and environmental science
• Institutions and the environment link to the population's fertility, mortality, migration, and age

Fertility and Education

• Educated women tend to postpone and reduce births
• Allows parents to invest more in their children’s education

Demography's Connection with Social Movements:

• Technological revolution (the pill)
• The baby boom of the 1950s resulted in unequal sex ratios at marriageable age, leading to a "marriage squeeze"

Demographic Drivers of Unrest:

• Rapid demographic changes are a key determinant of political instability
• Changes in cohort sizes, migration, family structures, fertility, or mortality
• Large youth-age bulges exacerbate government challenges regarding unemployment and job creation
• Insufficient housing, education, and medical care is a challenge

Relationship of People with Resources

• Lack of food, water, and energy have an impact on less developed countries
• Water scarcity affects one in three people

Energy

• Every additional person requires energy for food, clothing, and shelter
• Living standards are tied to increasing energy use

Housing and infrastructure

• Poses challenges in developing countries as mechanization forces people to cities in search of jobs

Environmental Degradation

• Potential to disrupt the earth's biosphere increases with population

Relationship of Population and Political Dynamics

• Citizens may accept or reject changes from younger populations
• In the MENA region, a large population of unemployed youth can lead to conflict

Globalization

• Involves increasing connectedness and is related to population growth

Immigration

• Globalization broadens the relationship between jobs and geography
• The U.S. has accepted many immigrants, especially from Mexico, leading to demographic balance

New Wave Debate

• Concerns how countries will finance retirement and healthcare for aging populations
• Solutions include immigration, delaying retirement, increased self-reliance, or company/educational support for immigrants

Relationship of Demography with Women's Rights

• Women’s rights are a key element to societal wellbeing
• Oppressing women leads to unfavorable demographic profiles

Demography's Focus

• Focuses on population as an enduring collectivity and understanding aggregate processes

Demographic Balancing Equation:

• Summarizes the basic formula for population change
• The main formula is Pt+1 = Pt + Bt,t+1 – Dt,t+1 + INt,t+1 - OUTt,t+1, where Pt is the base year
• Births minus deaths equal natural change
• Immigrants minus migrants are net migration

Population Processes in Spain

• Greatest population expansion occurred during the 1960s baby boom
• During war periods deaths overcame births
• Net migration was mostly positive until a crisis hit
• This produced a decline in general population

Global Population Trends

• The current world population is 8,013,248,869
• It reached 8 billion on November 15, 2022

History of Population Growth

• Population is growing by 80 million people per year
• 50 years ago the population was 3.4 billion
• Recent population growth has intensified
• Population growth was stable for a long time and then increased
• Humans have existed for 200,000 years
• For 95% of human existence, all humans were hunter-gatherers
• The world population was constant at 4 million people
• The world population on the eve of the Agricultural Revolution (8,000 B.C.) is estimated at four million

Agricultural Revolution

• Occurred slowly, because hunting-gathering populations pushed the limit of the way of life
• Involved extensive use of resources with nomadic life
• Involved moving after land reached limits of capacity

Timeline of Population History Since Then

• Around 10000 years ago, humans started settling
• Led to the Neolithic revolution
• Sedentary and agricultural life led to a modest growth
• Hunter-gatherer populations pushed the limit of the way of life

Carrying Capacity

• The number of people that can be supported indefinitely in an area is given by the available physical resources
• From 500 B.C., major civilizations in China, India, and Greece started growing
• From 300 A.D. stagnant growth
• Between 1650-18000 population doubled until reaching one billion in 1804
• In the past 200 years, there has been a sevenfold increase ("population explosion")

Nations and American Revolution

• The world's population did not reach one billion until after the American Revolution
• The United Nations fixes the year at 1804
• The rate of population growth peaked in the early 1960s
• Population will grow until reaching 10 billion people in 2061
• Expected to keep increasing until the end of the century

Declining Fertility Rates

• Slow population growth relates to declining fertility rates
• In the past, it was mainly due to high mortality rates

Average Age of Death

• In the hunting-gathering phases, life expectancy was on average 20 years
• Research suggests that a premodern woman might have deliberately limited the number of children born
• More than half of children born died before reaching 5 years old

Sedentary Life

• Raised death rates, by creating sanitation problems and exposure to communicable diseases
• Improvements helped lower exposure to disease and build up resistance

Urbanization

• Brought other causes to be the source of most deaths
• Diseases spread due to contact to animals

Mortality Decline

• Began in West
• From the 17th century, diseases were combatted and new food crops were introduced
• The Agricultural and Industrial Revolution (that took place in 1750 in Britain and afterwards spread around Europe and the US) brought important advances Improvements in medical knowledge and public health became very important, which led to improved vaccinations from the 1900s
• Population growth accelerated in the rest of the world after WWII
• Fertility did not immediately decline
• Future world population growth will originate in developing countries

Global Distribution Of Population

• Some of the largest countries are located in Asia
• Population increased enormously during the latest years

European Population

• Increased in the 19th century because of sanitary advances

Distribution Of World Population

• In the past, increasing density in a region forced people to move to less populated areas

World Population Shift

• Between 1840s and 1940s (Age of Mass Migration), around 55 million Europeans left for the Americas

Europeans

• Represented 18% of the world's population before expansion
• Represented the 35% of the world's population
• guns and diseases decimated native populations
• Enslaved Africans replaced decimated native populations

European Immigration

• known as the mass migration that happened when Europe started to industrialize

South to North Migration

• the less-developed areas now have the most rapidly growing populations

European Migration

• People moved from rural to urban areas that occurred earliest and most markedly in the industrialized nations
• Urbanization was associated with a commercial response to industrialization It is mainly the result of industrialization and the establishment of trade relations

Rising Urban Population

• More than half of the world now lives in cities that are of a 100000 size or more in population
• Rural population growth was not absorbable by the rural economy, due to raising mechanization which made rural sectors less labor intensive.
• More than 80% of the population will live in Africa and Asia.

Global Population Trends Now

• Fast growing countries such as Nigeria or Zambia

Asia

• Almost 60% of the world population: 4.3 billion
• Low fertility rate: has already reached the point of replacement
• Most populous country (1/5 of world population) is China
• India is the world’s second highest nation in population

Declining Mortality Rates

• Japan has a low level of mortality in the world

Moment Of Momentum

• The population growth that comes as a result of a past high fertility rate

Africa

• 15% of the world's population
• the explosive size and rate of increase
• very high fertility rates

Sub-Saharan Africa

• contributed to a decline in population. This area of the world has long had higher death rates that anywhere else

Americas

• at the replacement rate
• growth due to immigrants

Europe

• population growing at very slow pace; natural increase and immigration not compensating

The Western nations

• Tend slow, if at all grow, and are richer, older, and politically more stable

Declining Population

• High death rates kept population from growing rapidly until approximately the Industrial Revolution
• there is decreasing mortality in developing countries
• There is considerable world variation between death rates, birth rates, and population growth
• There is aging, which is a challenge for low fertility with an older population
• Several countries in these areas are either already declining in population

Oceanic Nations

• Have very low birth and death rates

Demographic Theories

• Theories include, Doctrine, which is a set of beliefs that is without the need of analysis; and Theories, with analysis and hypothesis tested
• Ancient societies used to value reproduction due to high morality
• The School of Confucius in China in 500 B.C. stated the importance of the population but that the government control the relocation of over-populated to under-populated zones
• Plato believed that reproduction should be done with quality, with less or more children, but the focus must be that the “qualified” reproduce more often.
• Roman Empires was clear to encourage pro-nalist birth
• Enligthenment philosophers believed in the importance of a "hands off" regulation of population/births

Malthus

• Believed that food only increases arithmetically. Malthus suggested the well-educated, rational person would perceive in advance of the pain of having hungry children or being in debt and would postpone marriage and sexual intercourse until he was sure that he could avoid that pain.
• Neo-Malthusians believed that the main effect of population growths comes from poverty and conflict.
• Malthus thought of checks with responsible behavior such as moral restraint, by high class citizens.
• Wages come from the relation of demands or populations, from birth and marriages