Paper 2 - families + households: Topic 4

Demography

Reasons why the birth rate is declining

Change in women’s position - women have more legal equality to men and there are more women in paid employment in addition to women also having the Equal Pay Act. Women also have easier access to divorce. This was argued by Harper. - There has been an increase in educational opportunities for women and this has lead to a long term fall in birth and fertility rates. This is because women’s increased education has caused a shift in the mindset of women and a change in their attitudes towards motherhood and being a wife. Women now see other possibilities in life other than just being a mother and a wife which has resulted in women choosing to delay child bearing, or to not have children at all, in pursuit of a career.
Children are now an economic liability. - Until the late 19th century, children were economic assets to their parents because they could be sent out to work and earn an income at an early age to support the family. However, laws banning child labour and introduced compulsory schooling meant that children cannot be used for labour and so this has resulted in people having less children as they couldn’t use the children as a source of income.
Child centredness - there has been an increase in child centredness as childhood is a social construct that is deemed an important segment of a persons life. This meant that people had gone from high quantities of children to fewer children but these children’s quality of childhood would be better than if the parents had multiple children. This had lead to a decrease in family size.
Future trends in birth rates. - There has been slight increases in birth rate since 2001, despite the fertility and family size falling. A reason for this is immigration. Mothers from outside the UK have a higher fertility rate than those born in the UK. - A decline in the infant mortality rate leads to a decrease in the birth rate. This is because if many infants are dying then their parents may replace them and so increases the birth rate. But because less infants are dying, parent sdo’t need to replace dead children and so the birth rate decreases.

Effects of a changing birth rate.

Effects on the family - Women are more free to go back to work because they are caring for less children. This creates a dual earner couple which then leads to more money being available to the family and more of this money being spent on the children they have. - There will be smaller family sizes. - Families that are better off and more wealthy will experience less of this benefit however, and this is due to the fact that they would have been able to afford to have a larger family size either way and so will still likely have larger families.
The dependency ratio - the dependency ratio is the relationship between the size of the working and productive part of the economy and the size of the non-working dependent part of the population. Children make up a large number of the dependent population. However in the long term, fewer babies being born will mean fewer young adults and a smaller working population which can negatively affect the dependency ratio.
Effects on public services - Fewer schools and ‘maternity and child health’ services may be needed. Women having fewer children means that the average age of the population is rising and therefore they are more older people than young people which again would mean that there is likely to be a decline in people working and sustaining public services and so may have negative impacts on things such as the dependency ratio.

Death rate

Death rate - the number if deaths per 1000 of the population per year
Life expectancy - the number if years an individual can expect to live.
Tranter argued that the main cause of the decline in death rate from 1850 to 1970 was due to the fall in deaths from infectious diseases such as diphtheria, measles, small pox etc. More vaccinations mean that these diseases die out.
Before 1950, the main cause of death was from diseases called ‘diseases of affluence’ e.g heart disease and cancer.
The life expectancy of a boy in 1900 was 50 years or less where as the life expectancy of a boy in 2023 is 89 years which is a 38.5 years difference.

Reasons why the death rate is declining.

Improved nutrition - McKneown argues that improved nutrition accounted for up to half of the reduction in death rates. - Better nutrition increased the resistance to infection and increased the survival chances for those that were infected. - However, this still does not explain why women live longer than men despite then receiving less of the family food supply.
Smoking and diet - Harper argued that the fall in death rate is due to less people smoking. - In the 21st century, obesity has replaced smoking as the new lifestyle epidemic. - Harper suggests that we’re moving towards a more American lifestyle.
Public health measures - These are laws and polices that were put in place in order to improve the health of the population and remove any health issues that were related to poor housing. E.g better housing quality, purer drinking water, pasteurisation of milk, improved sewage systems.
Medical improvements - important innovations such as the introduction of antibiotics, immunisation, blood transfusion and the establishment of the NHS has meant that people are less likely to die of diseases and because of national health care with the NHS, everyone has access to healthcare and so less people die.
Other social changes - decline of dangerous manual job occupations such as mining, smaller families mean that there is less transmission and infection of disease, greater public knowledge about the cause of disease, higher incomes so people have a better quality of life.

Effects of a declining death rate

One person households - the number of pensioners living aloe has increased and one person pensioner households account fro 12.5% of all households in the UK. Most of these are females due to women living longer than their husbands, Among people over 75, Hirsch says that there are twice as many females as there are men. This is called the “feminisation of later life”.
Increase in ageism - ageism is the negative stereotyping and unequal treatment of people on the basis of their age. - Ageism towards older people can be seen in things such as discrimination in employment. The way of speaking and thinking about old age is that it is spoken about it old age is that it is spoken about as if it is a problem.
The dependency ratio. - the non-working older population are an economically dependent group who need to be there to provided for nay those who are of working age e.g. through taxation. As the number of retired people rises, this increases the dependency ratio. However, old does not necessarily mean economically dependent.
Public services - older people consume a larger proportion of services such as healthy social care than other age group such as health and social care than other age groups. An ageing population may mean changes to policies and provision of holding, transport etc.

Modern society and old age

Structured of dependency - old people are largely excluded from paid work, leaving him there economically on their family or the street.
How doe marxists view old age in capitalist society? Phillipson argues that the old are already of no use to capitalism because they are no longer productive. As a result the state is unwilling to support them and iso the family often helps them.
How does age determine peoples roles in modern society? Age determines peoples roles in modern society as it has become an important factor in role allocation, which has created fixed life stages and age identities such as worker and pensioner. The old are thus excluded from a role in the labour force and are made dependent and powerless.
How do people use consumption to create their identities in postmodern society? What does this mean for old people’s identities and ageist stereotypes? Consumption has becoem the key to peoples identities as people define themselves based on what they consume. Hunt (2005) argues that this means that we can choose a lifestyle and identiity regardless of age: our age no longer determines who we are. Old people become a market for rejuvenation goods in which can create their identity. This means that the ageist stereotypes become broken down.

Migration

Migration - movement in and out of a country
Immigration - movement into a society
Emigration - movement out of a society
Net Migration - the difference between the number of immigrants and the number of emigrants.
Economic push factors - economic reasons to leave a country e.g. poor working conditions, poor schools
Economic pull factors - economic reasons to move into a country e.g. better job opportunities, better working conditions
Other reasons - better standard of living, escape war

Impact of migration on family life

population size is increasing - because the net migration is increasing. If it were not for high net migration, the UK population would be shrinking due to low birth rates.
The age structure changes - immigration lowers the average age of the population both directly and indirectly. Directly because immigrants tend to be 10 years younger than the British born population. Indirectly because immigrant women have a higher fertility ratio - they have more babies.
The dependency ratio - 2 effects

immigrants are more likely to be of working age and this helps lower the dependency ratio.
However, because they are younger, immigrants have more children and so increase the dependency ratio.

Globalisation and migration

Feminisation of migration - in the past, most migrants have been male. However, today, half of all global migrants are female. - Barbara had found that care work, domestic work, and sex work in western countries like the UK and the USA is increasingly being done by women from poorer countries. This is a result of several trends:
1. western men remain unwilling to perform domestic labour
2. the failure of the state to provide adequate child care
3. the western women have joined the labour force and so are less willing or able to perform domestic labour.

40% of nurses in the UK are migrants, most of which are female.

The politicisation of migration - due to the increased flow of migrants, migration has become more of a political issue. Immigration has become linked to national security and anti-terrorism. - Assimilation: the first state policy aimed at immigration that encourages the immigrants to adopt the language, culture and values of the host country. - Multiculturalism: acknowledges that migrants may wish to retain a separate cultural identity. However, multiculturalism is linked to more superficial aspects of cultural diversity. Shallow diversity may be things such as regarding a cultural dish as Britain’s dish which is accepted by the state. Deep diversity may be things such as the veiling of women which is not accepted by the state.
Differentiation. - There are lots of different types of migrants, some enter the UK with legal entitlement and others enter illegally. - In 2014, there were more Chinese born post graduates than UK born. 26% and 23%. - Before the 1990s, immigration in the UK came from a small number of former British colonies. - Since the 1990s globalisation has lead to what Steven calls “super diversity”. Migrants are now from a wider range of countries. - Cohen: 3 types of migrants:
1. Citizens - with full citizenship and rights
2. Denizens - privileged foreign nationals who are welcomed by the state and are paid highly.

3. Helots - most exploited group and employers see them as ‘disposable units of labour power’.

Migrant identities. - For migrants, their country or origin may provide a source of identity. - Many immigrants have developed second hybrid identities. John had found that second generation Bangladeshi muslims saw themselves as muslim, then Bangladeshi, then British.