CCCH9015

Lecture 2
POPULATION, SOCIETY AND SUSTAINABLE Sept 8 2021
DEVELOPMENT IN HONG KONG

CCCH9015-Week 2 1
Demographic Perspectives

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc4HxPxNrZ0
CCCH9015-Week 2 2
SYRIAN REFUGEES
Kos, Greece
 Pre-modern Population Doctrines

Ø Until about 2,500 years ago, human

societies shared a common concern
about population
Ø Reproductive power
Ø Confucius in China – move people
from overpopulated to under-
populated areas ~500 B.C.

CCCH9015-Week 2 7
 Plato (360 B.C.)
Ø Importance of population stability rather than
growth
Ø Too many people –
Ø Too few people –
Ø Control pop size
Ø Quality versus Quantity

CCCH9015-Week 2 8
 Aristotle (340 B.C.)
Ø Pop of a city-state not grow beyond the means of
the families to support themselves
Ø No. of children limited by law
Ø Echoes of one-child policy in China

CCCH9015-Week 2 9
 St. Augustine A.D. 400

St. Augustine
Ø A combination of both pro-natalist and
anti-natalist Christian doctrines
Ø A supernaturally good thing but
also an important cause of sin
Ø Abstinence
Ø Marriage

CCCH9015-Week 2 10
 St. Thomas Aquinas A.D. 1280 &
Ibn Khaldun A.D. 1380
Thomas Aquinas
Ø Marriage & family – pop growth is an
inherently good thing
Ibn Khaldun
Ø The need for specialization of
occupations – leads to higher
incomes concentrated especially in
cities
Ø The inhabitants of a more populous
city are more prosperous
CCCH9015-Week 2 11
 Mercantilism
Ø More workers you had, the more you
could produce
Ø Pop growth was essential to an
increase in national revenue
Ø Encourage births

CCCH9015-Week 2 12
 John Graunt 1662
Ø Trader, The father of demography
Ø High incidence of infant mortality and
regular patterns of death in different parts
of London, founder of statistics
Ø E.g 100 born 16 alive at 36 and only 3 at
age 66 , life table analysis.
Edmund Halley (1693), a scientist
Ø To elaborate on the probabilities of
death and to use the life-table technique
to determine LE eg. In Poland 33.5 in
1687 and 1691
CCCH9015-Week 2 13
 About 1650 to 1850
Ø Dramatic pop growth
Ø Promoting foreign trade, while inhibiting imports
and thus competition
Ø Wealth for a small elite

CCCH9015-Week 2 14
 Thomas Robert Malthus in 1798
Ø Pastor
Ø Pop grows exponentially while food supply grows
arithmetically with misery (poverty) being the result in the
absence of moral restraint
Ø Ultimate check
Ø Positive checks and preventive checks
Ø Moral restraint

CCCH9015-Week 2 18
 Upside down Adam Smith and Physiocrats

Ø Urge to reproduce always forces pop pressure to

precede the demand for labor
Ø Overpopulation
Ø A cycle

CCCH9015-Week 2 19
Ø Malthus – well-educated and rational person
Ø Should share middle-class values – to reduce
poverty
Ø The major consequence of pop growth – poverty
Ø He was opposed to the English Poor Laws (welfare
benefits for the poor)

CCCH9015-Week 2 20
 Neo-Malthusians
Ø Favor contraception
Ø Prudential restrain
Ø Break the connection between intercourse and
fertility

CCCH9015-Week 2 21
 Poverty - a poorly organized society

Ø Marx – used the labor of the working classes to

earn profits to buy machines that would replace
the laborers, in turn, would lead to unemployment
and poverty

CCCH9015-Week 2 23
 China – Marxian ideology
Ø As early as 1953, the Chinese govt. – radical
departure from Marxian ideology
Ø Great Leap Forward in 1958
Ø Chairman Mao “A large pop is a good thing. With a
pop increase of several fold we still have an
adequate solution. The solution lies in production”
Ø By 1979, introduction of the one-child policy

CCCH9015-Week 2 24
 Demographic Transition
Ø Warren Thompson – to describe the demographic
changes (from high birth and death rates to low
birth and death rates, with an interstitial spurt in
growth rates)

CCCH9015-Week 2 25
 Demographic Transition
Ø The world population – Early demographic
equilibrium, demographic transition, the future
population: explosion, implosion or equilibrium
Ø Present and future of population:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZrmYp4US
Wo 13:05 (starting 15 minutes)

CCCH9015-Week 2 26
 Demographic Transition
Frank Notestein (1945)
Ø Group A – incipient decline
Ø Group B – transitional growth
Ø Group C – high growth potential
Kingsley Davis (1945)
Ø Demographic transition – a process of moving
from high birth and death rates to low birth and
death rates, from high growth potential to
incipient decline
Ø New universal law of population growth
CCCH9015-Week 2 27
 Modernization
Ø The concept of modernization - In traditional
societies fertility and mortality are high. In
modern societies fertility and mortality are low. In
between, there is demographic transition (Paul
Demeny)
Ø Behavior has changed and the world has been
permanently transformed

CCCH9015-Week 2 28
 Modernization
Ø Macro-level theory – society-wide increase in the
standard of living and improved public health
infrastructure brought about this change
Ø Economic changes took place that created those
higher-wage urban jobs

CCCH9015-Week 2 29
 Modernization
Ø Death rates declined and birth rates almost always
declined a few decades later
Ø Birth rates eventually declines - the importance of
family life was diminished

CCCH9015-Week 2 30
 Modernization
Ø Large families
Ø Transforming into an urban industrial state

CCCH9015-Week 2 31
 Modernization
Ø Decline in fertility occurred in different levels of
urbanization and economic development
Ø Economic development is a sufficient cause of
fertility decline, but NOT a necessary one
Ø Secularization undergoing fertility declines
Ø Industrialization and economic development

CCCH9015-Week 2 32
Current stages of OBOR countries in demographic
transition:

l 3rd stage l 4th stage l 5th countries (post-

transitional)
Timor-Leste Kuwait Nepal Lebanon Singapore Belarus
Iraq Maldives Turkmenistan Qatar Armenia Moldova
Afghanistan Syria Brunei Myanmar Thailand Estonia
Yemen, Rep. Oman Darussalam United Arab Hong Kong SAR, Bosnia and
Tajikistan Philippines Iran Emirates China Herzegovina
Jordan Saudi Arabia Indonesia Sri Lanka Georgia Croatia

Pakistan Israel India Albania Macedonia Lithuania

Egypt, Arab Kazakhstan Bahrain China Montenegro Hungary
Rep. Azerbaijan Slovenia Latvia
Bangladesh
Kyrgyz Malaysia Slovakia Romania
Republic Bhutan Ukraine
Czech Republic
Lao PDR Vietnam Russian Federation Serbia
Uzbekistan Turkey Poland Bulgaria
Cambodia
Mongolia
 Share of Population size
In OBOR countries to world: 2014
Vietnam, 1%
Philippines, 1%
Russia, 2.0%
Bangladesh,
2.2%
others(non- Pakistan, 2.5%
B&R), 37.7% Indonesia,
3.5%

India, 17.8%
China, 18.8%
l World population in 2014:
7.261 billion
l B&R countries in 2014: 4.524
billion
l Share of B&R in the world in
2014: 62.3%
 SHARE OF GDP IN OBOR COUNTRIES
rest OBOR
SHARE OF GDP IN OBOR countries,
all OBOR
COUNTRIES
countries, TO THE WORLD 8.34%
31.37%
Saudi
Arabia,
rest of the
Turkey,
0.89%
world , 0.99%
68.63% Russian
Federation,
1.88% China,
Indonesia, 15.22%
1.19% India,
2.87%
The tornados of population aging: 1960-2050
 Year

1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020
2030
2040
2050
2060
Latvia
Croatia
Czech Republic
began
Ukraine
Singapore
peak

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Slovenia
Macedonia, FYR
Bahrain
Thailand
China
Estonia
Brunei Darussalam
Sri Lanka
Azerbaijan
Mongolia
Vietnam
Albania
Saudi Arabia
Bhutan
Myanmar
Demographic window of opportunity

Bangladesh
Nepal
Syrian Arab Republic
Yemen, Rep.
Year 2015
 Challenging issue in Population
dynamics in belt and road
countries
• Substantial projected declines in fertility
• Increasing longevity
• In short-term, some countries still young
• countries with a relatively high ration of working to
dependent populations have chance to benefit from
demographic dividend