Inhoud
Hoorcollege 2: Demographic theories....................................................................................................2
Hoorcollege 3: Demographic data..........................................................................................................8
Hoorcollege 4: The Health and Mortality Transition.............................................................................13
Hoorcollege 5: The fertility transition...................................................................................................14
Hoorcollege 6: the family and household transition.............................................................................20
Hoorcollege 7: the migration transition...............................................................................................25
Hoorcollege 8: The age transition.........................................................................................................30
Hoorcollege 9: Population growth and sustainability...........................................................................35
,Hoorcollege 2: Demographic theories
Question 1
C: prospects that number of children worldwide is not going to rise
Question 2
B: one of the development goals
Question 3
B: 1.7 on average
C: 2.1 on average; a bit lower than we might expect. Country did a lot already to reduce fertility
A: 5.5 on average; one of the highest fertility averages worldwide
What is demography?
About causes and consequences of population change
Very broad topic; studies everything that is remotely related to populations
Today’s relevance
Nigeria: still quite high fertility rate
Worries about what will happen in Africa is it keeping Africa poor, will there be enough food
available; consequences for migration
Article
Climate change consequences in relation to population changes
- limit fertility, because having children is biggest pollution
Article 2
Consequences e.g. in Japan (low fertility): ageing population, consequences for economy
Course outline: summary
Modules help to prepare for group assignment
Part of HC1
Global population trends
From modern times (1800’s) onwards we have started studying demography
Changes in mortality and fertility
Basic equation
Birth and deaths this changes the world population
Inmigration and outmigration is interesting per country, not for world population
Annual growth
From 60’s increase started to slow down
Expected to stabilise at the end of this century
Important question: why did it rise so quickly first, what happened in second half of 20 th century
which resulted in decline?
World map
Differences in how populations are divided
China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan densed populations
,World population
In Africa a lot of change going on
- Population still increases
Which countries are growing now?
Population in NL is also declining, excluding migration
HC2
Main questions
- Demographic theories= how can we look at the world from demographic perspectives
Pre-modern doctrines
Difference between doctrines= set of beliefs about demography, not really tested and ...
In ancient times, mortality very high, fertility as blessing; necessary to keep population stable
Many Gods for fertility amongst populations
Confucius maybe if high fertility would rise to quickly, it could lead to problems in economic and
political stability. Could lead to problems for scarcity of resources. Maybe forced migration to less
populated regions.
Plato if a population becomes to big you can’t make democratic decisions; also leads to more
anonymity. Too small population: problems in labour market and defence of society. Family planning
necessary to keep population stable.
Romans fertility good thing, necessity to deal with high mortality rates.
Middle Ages
Two opposing views
- Pronatalists: pro fertility influenced by Christian beliefs.
- Sexuality considered as a sin, otherwise marriage as second best to have offspring
Khaldun population increase important for economic increase; more demand for products, need
for specialisation economic growth
Mercantilism
From 16th century onwards
Mainly from 1600-1800
Wealth in certain country depends on number of availability of precious metals (silver, gold)
Important to have a lot of export makes rich
Need to produce a lot to sell a lot of products on the market
Standard amount of wealth in the world; need to acquire the biggest piece of this wealth. You can’t
increase the available amount of wealth so you need to get the biggest part.
High fertility, population increase needed for this
Scientific Revolution
17th century
Major developments in scientific subjects
, Graunt Hfather of demography’; studied demographic make-up of London. First time to make this
type of calculations.
Halley studied births and deaths in Poland. Life table technique study probability of death; how
old will people probably become. Calculated life expectancy.
Start of demographic analysis; gives insights in historical demographics as well
Enlightenment
Optimism about demographic change no limit to population growth; no worries about availability
of food; there would be enough technological progress to feed everyone. Fertility not seen as a
problem. Also optimistic about adaptation to fast growth
First economic doctrine: physiocracy= argued that when there is more wealth, there will be more
people (other way around than Mercantilism)
Malthusianism
First demographic theory
Previously, high fertility was seen as preferable; later (Middle Ages) fertility control wasn’t allowed;
fertility seen as mean to increase wealth
- Always seen as necessity, unproblematic this changes here with pessimistic idea of
Malthus
Malthus’ argument
Populations will grow exponentially; populations will always increase faster than food production.
Always crisis (Malthusian trap)
Food scarcity, food price increase, mortality rates
increases
Positive checks: if people don’t do anything, there will be
famines, wars increase mortality rates, decline
population enough food available
- Positive relation between that this is going to
happen and graph: it will definitely happen if people don’t do anything
Preventive checks: reduce birth rates, impact on fertility rates
- Better if people prevent Malthusian trap from happening
Graph Leipzig
Rye prices increased very fast (peak) mortality rates increased very fast, fertility rates decreased
quite soon as well
Linked to availability of food
Rye food for poor people
More than 70% of house budget was spent on food
Malthus was wrong – reason 1
No linear rise of food production
Important historical development:
