topic 2.8 Women and Demographic Change & Ravenstein's Laws of Migration

Women and Education

• Education empowers women to:

  • Improve childcare practices.

  • Increase infant survival rates, leading to fewer births as women gain confidence in their children's survival.

  • Delay childbearing to pursue education.

  • Utilize their education in the workforce, opting to have fewer children or delay childbirth.

• There is a direct inverse correlation between the number of years women spend in school and the number of children they have.

Women and Employment

• Employment provides women with financial resources to support their children's health and education.

• It enables them to take on more significant roles in society and contribute to a country's economic advancement by increasing the working-age population that contributes to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

• Examples of women's employment include:

  • Teaching (tertiary sector job).

  • Participating in cooperative ventures like coffee roasting, which provides additional income for families.

    • This can further allow them to purchase necessities such as food and school uniforms for their children.

• Whether in the formal or informal economy, women's employment benefits families and countries.

Women and Healthcare

• Women face specific health risks, especially related to childbearing that can affect population size and structure.

• Maternal Mortality Rate: This metric assesses women's health by measuring the annual number of female deaths per 100,000 live births due to pregnancy-related causes.

  • A lower rate indicates a better healthcare system.

  • More developed countries typically have lower rates of maternal mortality due to better access to doctors and healthcare facilities, aligning with observations from the Demographic Transition Model.

Women and Contraception

• Increased access to contraception leads to lower birth rates.

• Contraception enables women to:

  • Stay in school longer.

  • Participate in the workforce for extended periods.

  • Reduce concerns about unplanned pregnancies and managing large families while working.

• Greater access to contraception causes shifts in social dynamics as more women participate in education and the workforce, which means fewer women stay at home to care for large families.

Ravenstein's Laws of Migration

• E.G. Ravenstein's Laws of Migration outline demographic patterns related to migration, including gender and family status.

• Changing social, economic, and political roles for females have influenced fertility, mortality, and migration patterns, as illustrated by Ravenstein's laws.

Gender Patterns

• Women are more likely to move internally within a country.

• Most international migrants are generally young males.

• This trend was historically accurate when males were the primary income source.

• However, an increase in women in the workforce has led to a rise in female migrants, including international migrants.

• Example: The Gulf States have a large influx of male workers for construction, impacting the demographics of those countries, illustrating that Ravenstein's laws still hold true in many parts of the world.

Age and Employment

• Most migrants are young adults seeking employment because they are more mobile and less established.

• Older migrants moving internationally typically come from more developed areas.

Distance

• Typically, people move only as far as they must. Therefore, most migrants move short distances.

• This relates to the concept of distance decay which states that interaction decreases with distance.

• Migrants escaping natural disasters are more likely to move short distances to get out of harm's way.

Step Migration

• When migrants travel far distances, they typically take steps along the way.

• Example: A migrant moving from rural China to Beijing would likely move to a town and then a medium-sized city before moving to Beijing.

Counter Migration

• Each migration flow in one direction produces a counter flow in another direction.

• Example: Young workers in Spain move to England for work, while older English people move to Spain to retire.

• These laws or models provide a way to understand the world, but they are just one perspective and may not always hold true in reality.

Rural to Urban Migration

• Most migration historically and currently, globally, is from rural to urban areas.

• The most common reason for this migration is economic: People move to cities in search of work.

• Globally, this trend holds true. However, in some American cities, counter-urbanization is occurring, where people are moving out of cities to suburbs or rural areas.

• Recently, there has been a global shift to having more people living in cities than in rural areas, which is unprecedented in human history.

Cities and Economic Opportunity

• Cities are places of opportunity

• Migrants moving long distances typically go to large urban areas due to the perception of more opportunities and services.

Gravity Model

• It is the hypothesis that more people will be attracted to large cities even if they're farther away.

• Larger urban areas have a greater pull on migrants.

• Applying the concept of gravity:

  • Larger planets or stars have more gravitational pull.

  • Larger cities like New York or London have a strong pull on people from far distances.

  • People are more likely to move short distances to closer places, while long-distance moves are typically to large cities because of the gravity model.

Practice Question

• Question: Which of the following profiles characterizes the population group that is most likely to migrate?

  • A. Married, twenty-five years old

  • B. Single, twenty-five years old

  • C. Married, fifty years old

  • D. Single, fifty years old

  • E. Married, sixty-five years old

• Answer: B. Single, twenty-five years old

  • Younger people are more likely to move (Ravenstein's laws).

  • People with fewer ties to their current situation are more likely to move.