DEMOGRAPHY, KEY CONCEPTS: (Anthony Giddens p.

566)

Demography is the statistical study of human populations. It includes the study of the size, structure, and
distributions of different populations and changes in them in response to birth, migration, aging, and
death.

Birth rate is the demographic measure of the rate at which children are born. The most well-known is the
crude birth rate, which is the number of births that occur each year per 1,000 people in the population.
Crude birth rates of more than 30 per 1,000 are considered high, and rates of less than 18 per 1,000 are
considered low. The global crude birth rate in 2016 was 19 per 1,000.

The crude death rate measures the rate of deaths for every 1,000 people in a given population. Crude
death rates of below 10 are considered low, while crude death rates above 20 per 1,000 are considered
high. A particularly important specific death rate is the infant mortality rate: the number of babies per
1,000 births in any year who die before reaching their first birthday One of the key factors underlying the
population explosion has been reductions in infant mortality rates.

Declining rates of infant mortality are the most important influence on increasing life expectancy - that
is, the number of years the average person can expect to live.

Life expectancy has to be distinguished from life span, which is the maximum number of years that an
individual could live. While life expectancy has increased in most societies in the world , life span has
remained unaltered.

Migration: The movement of people in or out of a specific area. It includes both immigration movement
of people into an area) and emigration (movement of people out of an area. Immigration minus
emigration gives the net migration rate.

Fertility rate: the number of live born children an average woman has.

Fecundity rate: the potential number of children that women are biologically capable of bearing.

I. MALTHUSIAN THEORY OF POPULATION GROWTH

Thomas Malthus, in his text ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’ (1798) argued that because of the
natural human urge to reproduce human population increases geometrically (1, 2, 4, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256,
etc.). However, food supply, at most, can only increase arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc.).
Therefore, since food is an essential component to human life, population growth in any area or on the
planet, if unchecked, would lead to starvation. However, Malthus also argued that there are preventative
checks and positive checks on the population that slow its growth and keep the population from rising
exponentially for too long, but still, poverty is inescapable and will continue.

According to Thomas Malthus, preventative checks are those that affect the birth rate and include
marrying at a later age (moral restraint), abstaining from procreation, birth control, and homosexuality.
Malthus, a religious person (he worked as a clergyman in the Church of England), considered birth
control and homosexuality to be vices and inappropriate (but nonetheless practiced).

Positive checks are those, according to Thomas Malthus, that increase the death rate. These include
disease, war, disaster, and finally when other checks don't reduce population, famine. Malthus felt that the
fear of famine or the development of famine was also a major impetus to reduce the birth rate. He
indicates that potential parents are less likely to have children when they know that their children are
likely to starve.

The ideas that Thomas Malthus developed came before the industrial revolution and focuses on plants,
animals, and grains as the key components of diet. Therefore, for Malthus, available productive farmland
was a limiting factor in population growth. With the industrial revolution and increase in agricultural
production, land has become a less important factor than it was during the 18th century.

II. THEORY OF DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION:

This theory was first outlined by Warren S. Thompson who described a three-stage process in which one
type of population stability would be eventually replaced by another, as a society reached an advanced
level of economic development.

Demographic transition is a model used to represent the movement of high birth and death rates to low
birth and death rates as a country develops from a pre-industrial to an industrialized economic system. It
works on the premise that birth and death rates are connected to and correlate with stages of industrial
development. The demographic transition model is sometimes referred to as "DTM" and is based on
historical data and trends. 

The model is based on the change in crude birth rate (CBR) and crude death rate (CDR) over time. Each
is expressed per thousand population.

Stage I: Death rates and birth rates are high and are roughly in balance, a common condition of a pre-
industrial society. Population growth is very slow, influenced in part by the availability of food. Prior to
the Industrial Revolution, countries in Western Europe had a high CBR and CDR. Births were high
because more children meant more workers on the farm and with the high death rate, families needed
more children to ensure the survival of the family. Death rates were high due to disease and a lack of
hygiene. The high CBR and CDR were somewhat stable and meant the slow growth of a population.
Occasional epidemics would dramatically increase the CDR for a few years.

Stage II: This is the "developing country" phase. Death rates drop rapidly due to improvements in food
supply and sanitation, which increases life spans and reduces disease. Without a corresponding fall in
birth rates, countries in this stage experience a large increase in population. In the mid-18th century, the
death rate in Western European countries dropped due to improvement in sanitation and medicine. Out of
tradition and practice, the birth rate remained high. This dropping death rate but the stable birth rate in the
beginning of Stage II contributed to skyrocketing population growth rates. Over time, children became an
added expense and were less able to contribute to the wealth of a family. For this reason, along with
advances in birth control, the CBR was reduced through the 20th century in developed countries.
Populations still grew rapidly but this growth began to slow down.

Stage III: Birth rates fall due to access to contraception, increases in wages, urbanization, an increase in
the status and education of women, and other social changes. Population growth begins to level off. In the
late 20th century, the CBR and CDR in developed countries both leveled off at a low rate. In some cases,
the CBR is slightly higher than the CDR (as in the U.S. 14 versus 9) while in other countries the CBR is
less than the CDR (as in Germany, 9 versus 11). Immigration from less developed countries now accounts
for much of the population growth in developed countries that are in Stage III of the transition.

Criticisms:

As with all models, the demographic transition model has its problems. The model does not provide
"guidelines" as to how long it takes a country to get from Stage I to III. Western European countries took
centuries through some rapidly developing countries are transforming in mere decades. The model also
does not predict that all countries will reach Stage III and have stable low birth and death rates. There are
factors such as religion that keep some countries' birth rate from dropping.