demography✅

Demography

The study of population, including size, age structure and factors affecting change

Birth rate

• Long term decline in BR since 1900

• UK BR fell from 28.7 in 1900 to 12.2 in 2014

• ‘Baby booms’ - Post world war 1 and 2 and 1960s

Total fertility rate

Average number of children a woman’s has in her lifetime

TFR trends

• 1.63 (2001) - 1.83 (2014), low compared to 2.95 (1960s)

• Fewer woman of childbearing age and woman having less children later in life, 30s

• This means smaller family size, affects structure, dependency ratio, vanishing children vs child centeredness

Reasons for the decline in birth rate

1. Changes in women’s position

2. Child centeredness

3. Future trends

4. Decline in infant mortality rate

5. Children are now an economic liability

Infant mortality rate

• Number of deaths of infants under 1 year per 100 live births

• Decreasing 154 (1900) to 4 (2012)

Death rates

• Number of deaths per 1000 per year

• Declined from 19 (1900) to 8.9 (2012)

Reasons for the decline in death rates

1. Improved nutrition

2. Public health measures

3. Smoking and diet

4. Medical improvements

5. Other social changes

Life expectancy

• How long on average a person born in a given year can expect to live, as death rates have fallen, life expectancy has increased

• 1900: men - 50, women - 57

• 2013: men - 90, women - 94

• Class, gender, region affect life expectancy

Ageing population

Average age of a population increases and the proportion of older people grow while the proportion of younger people decreases

Reasons for an ageing population

1. Increased life expectancy

2. Declining infant mortality

3. Declining fertility

Effects of an ageing population

• Public services (higher demand on healthcare, housing, transport)

• One person pensioner households (mainly women, ‘feminisation of later life’)

• Dependency ratio

Ageism, modernity and postmodernity

• In post modern society (Hunt), your age is less determinant of identity, ‘choose your lifestyle’, there is a rise of a ‘grey market’, consumption by the elderly

• Compared to modern society where old age meant you were dependent, and your identity was tied to production (Philipson)

Inequality among the old

• M/C - higher pensions and savings

• W/C - lower incomes, shorter life expectancy

• Women subject to sexist and ageist stereotypes

Policy implications (Hirsch)

• Need to change housing, retirement age, and social policies

• Encourage later retirement and smaller homes

Migration

• Movement in/out of a society

• Caused by push (economic recessions, unemployment at home) and pull (higher wages, better opportunities abroad) factors

• Immigration increases population size, age structure, dependency ratio rises in the short term but in the long term creates a balancing effect

Globalisation

Idea that barriers between societies are disappearing and people are becoming increasingly interconnected across national boundaries

Super-diversity

Vertovec:

• Migrants now come from a much wider range of countries and differ significantly

Class differences among migrants

Cohen:

• Citizens (full citizenship rights)

• Denizens (privileged foreign nationals)

• Helots (literally slaves, a reserve army of labour)

Feminisation of migration (Hochschild)

• ½ global migrants now female

• Care work, domestic work and sex work in western countries is increasingly done by women from poor countries

• Shutes - 40% of adult care nurses are migrants

• A global transfer of women’s emotional labour

Migrant identities - Eade

• Hybrid identities

• Hierarchical identities

• Face challenges from others, ‘your are not really one of us’

Migrant identities - Eriksen

• Transnational identities - ‘neither/nor identities, globalisation has allowed back and forth movements of people across networks rather than permanent settlement

Assimilation

Policies aimed to encourage immigrants to adopt the language, values and customs of the host culture to make them ‘like us’

Multiculturalism

Accepts migrants may wish to retain a separate cultural identity, however in practice this acceptance may be limited to more superficial aspects of cultural diversity

Multiculturalism - Eriksen

1. Shallow diversity (chicken tikka masala as Britain’s national dish is acceptable)

2. Deep diversity (arranged marriage or the veiling of women is not acceptable)

Assimilation - Castles

• Assimilation policies are counter-productive because they mark out minority groups as ‘other’ or culturally backwards

• Transnational migrants with hybrid identities may not be willing to abandon their culture or to see themselves as belonging to just one nation-state