Demography

Key terms

• Birth rate: The number of live births per 1000 of the population per year

• Fertility rate: The average number of children that a woman has in her fertile years

• Death rate: The number of deaths per 1000 of the population per year

• Infant mortality rate: The number of babies who do not survive to the age of 1 per 1000 live births

Birth rate

• The general picture is one of an overall decline in UK births since 1900

• The 1st and 2nd World Wars wsaw baby booms. Mid-1960s was post-war baby boom

Reasons for falling birth rate

• Changes in attitudes to women’s role. Harper: Education is main reason - change in mindset

• Contraception

• Fall in IMR - medical factors

• Children have become economic liabilities

  • Child-centredness

  • Childlessness increasing (career women, expensive, a risk, childcare costs

Effects of falling birth rate

• Dual earner couples due to small families

• Dependency ratio - savings/taxes of workers must support the dependent

• Effect on public services and policies - fewer schools needed

• Ageing population

Reasons for falling death rate

• Tranter: Decline is due to fall in infectious diseases. Now we have ‘diseases of affluence’ e.g. obesity

• Fewer deaths from infectious diseases due to availability of antibiotics, immunisations and bypass surgery

• NHS - Raised living standards, parents can better look after children

• McKeown - Improved nutrition accounts for up to half the reduction in death rates

• Lifestyle changes e.g. smoking, less overcrowded accom

Ageing population trends

• Fewer young people and many more old people in the population

• Important gender and regional differences e.g. Scotland lower life expectancy than those in the south

• Average age rising the result of decline in birth and death rate

Reasons/effects of ageing population

• Increasing due to:

  • Falling birth rate

  • Falling fertility rate

  • Falling IMF rate

  • Falling death rate

  • Increasing life expectancy

• Effects:

  • Pressure on public services

  • More one person pensioner households

  • Increased burden on the working population of the dependency ratio

  • Social construct of ageing as a problem

  • Policy implications

Dependency ratio

• The proportion of workers (who pay tax for services such as the NHS and pensions) in relation to those dependent on such (e.g. the elderly, children, the sick)

• Working population pay for dependents through taxes and working (e.g. to pay for dependents to have state pension, NHS provision etc.)

Ageism and modernity

• Some argue ageism is a result of ‘structured dependency’ - those excluded from production by compulsory retirement have a dependent status and stigmatised identity

• Marxists: The old are of no use to capitalism because they are no longer productive

• Pilcher: Inequalites amongst the old remain

• Hirsch: Social policies need to change to tackle new problems posed by ageing pop. e.g. pensions retirement, housing policy to encourage older people to trade down into smaller accom - Bedroom Tax

Ageing population

• Postmodernists argue the fixed stages of the life course have been broken down - boundaries between the life stages

• A greater choice of lifestyle, whatever age. Postmodernists: We can now define our identity through consumption (what we engage with/buy) rather than production (our employment status)

• Media now portrays more positive aspects of lifestyle

Immigration key terms

• Emigration: movement out of an area

• Immigration: movement into an area

• Net migration: difference between numbers immigrating and the numbers emigrating

Emigration

• Until the 1980s, more people were emigrating (to USA, Australia, NZ) than immigrating

• Economic reasons - push due to a recession, pull due to better economic opportunities

• Labour shortages in destination countries

• Assisted passage schemes - paying for costs of migration 

Internal migration

• During IR, people moved north

• During 20th C, people moved south/Midlands for growing motor care and electric industries

• More recently, people moving to London and South East due to service industries based there

Effects of increased immigration

• Size of population increases

• Age of population decreases (more of working age)

• Decreases burden on dependency ratio on the working population (eventually)

Effects of globalisation

• Acceleration of migration: increase of international migration (easier to travel etc)

• Differentiation: increase in diversity, and of types of migrants (e.g. temporary workers, asylum seekers, students etc.)

• Vertovec = we have ‘super diversity now

• Feminisation of igration

• Migrant identities formed

Feminisation of migration - Ehrenreich & Hochschild

• In past, men migrated more, but now almost 50% women

• More women now migrating for work

• Increasing number of poorer women migrating to the UK  to working as carers, domestic workers and sex workers

Migrant identities

• Hybrid identities

  • Migrants may develop identity made up of 2+ different sources (e.g. Polish, then British)

  • Eade: 2nd gen Bangladeshi migrants saw themselves as Muslim, Bengali and British

• Eriksen

  • Continual movement, do not feel belong completely to any one culture or country

  • Instead develop transnational ‘neither/nor’ identities

Politicisation of migration

• Assimilation 

  •  First state policy, aim to encourage migrants to speak the language and adopt the values, culture and customs of their host society. E.g. British citizenship test

  • C: Castles - Assimilation policies marginalise minority cultures, rejecting their culture (marginalisation can also lead to terrorism, hostile to cultures)

• Multiculturalism

  • Policies accepting migrants may wish to return to their separate cultural identity and allow this e.g. Dual citizenship

• Eriksen - Government only accepts superficial aspects of diversity e.g. accepting chicken tikka masala as British national dish. Deep diversity would be accepting other aspects of culture ssuch as the veiling of women and arranged marriages.