GLOBAL DEMOGRAPHY

Demography provides the necessary concepts and basic understanding of issues

related to population and the consequences it entails for a highly integrated and
interconnected world. Demography is defined as the quantitative or statistical study of
populations. Hauser and Duncan in 1959 define demography as the study of the size,
territorial distribution and composition of a population, changes therein, and
components of such changes, which may be identified as natality, mortality, territorial
movement (migration), and social mobility (change of social status). According to
Anderson, this definition situates demography as the basis for all the social sciences.
American demographer Frank Notestein first coined the term in the mid-twentieth
century. Notestein’s work would become the foundation of other scholar’s work on the
matter. According to Anderson, demography studies the following:

1. Population Size – the number of people in a country, a state, a city, a region, or

the world at a given time.
2. Population Growth or Decline – changes in the number of people in a given
geographic area over time.
3. Population Processes – fertility, mortality, and migration.
4. Factors Related to Population Processes – diseases and socioeconomic
characteristics related to mortality, family formation, labor force participation,
government policies related to fertility, the difference in income and opportunities
in various areas, war and immigration policies, and economic conditions
motivating migration.
5. Population Distribution – geographic distribution, such as among states or
between rural and urban areas.
6. Population Structure – age and sex composition, the growing proportion of the
population at advanced ages, the sex ratio at birth, and the increasing proportion
of the population that is female with increasing age.
7. Population Characteristics – education, income, labor force participation,
marital status, and race or an ethnic group membership – anything that has a
value for each member of the population and does not have the same value for
everyone.
Much of today’s works on demography focus on estimates and projections of the size
and characteristics of the population and the components of population change.
According to Anderson, there are two ways of thinking about population change:
Aggregate and Causal or Micro-behavioral Approach.

The Aggregate Approach looks at the components of population change. This is where
the importance of population processes comes in. The components of population
change, such as the roles of births, deaths, and migration in population size, are dealt
with in this approach. It deals with macrosocial demographic processes. It studies how
the levels of child-bearing, mortality, and population movement impact the growth or
decline of a population. Anderson explains that this perspective alerted the world to the
rapid population growth of developing countries in the 1960s and 1970s due to high
birth rates and low death rates. This scientific knowledge would lead scientists and
concerned agencies to deal with the situation by developing what we know today as
contraceptives.

The Causal or Micro-behavioral Approach asks the following questions: What are the
causal factors or behavioral mechanisms that lead to people's decisions? What
behaviors do individuals adopt to implement their decisions? This approach investigates
why people have children, their motivations, or the factors that led them to such a
decision. Could it be cultural or social factors such as expectations from family or the
ability to project manhood or womanhood? In the same manner, this approach
acknowledges that behavior not only influences decisions leading to natality or birth
rates, the number of annual births per one thousand people; it also affects mortality or
death rates, the number of annual deaths per one thousand people. Anderson argues
that although most of us would wish to live longer, decisions to cultivate habits that tend
to shorten human life explain why the mortality rate is sometimes high. Vices such as
cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, and drug addiction have a telling impact on
one’s mortality.

THEORIES ON DEMOGRAPHY AND POPULATION GROWTH

View on population had already been developed in the early history of humanity.
Confucius in 500 BC explained that when the population was too small, there were very
few to till the land and taxes were not paid. To Confucius, a large population is helpful
for a productive society. A society that would work well if the people were educated and
trusted their rulers. He added that when the population was too large, poverty and
hardships followed. He recommended that the government maintain a balance between
the population and resources through government-enforced migration.

The ancient Greeks also had their views on demographics. Plato, in 400 BC, argued
that the population should not grow or shrink rapidly, as the rapid population could lead
to social disruption. He suggested that the population's quality is more important than its
quantity and recommended that only fit men should have children. Another Greek
philosopher, Aristotle, suggested that the population should be limited and have
moderate growth. If the population is too large, it could disrupt democratic governance.
To Aristotle, infanticide and abortion could be necessary to limit population growth.

Mercantilism was an economic doctrine that was popular during the 16th until the 18th
century in Europe. Mercantilism was informed by an economic principle influenced by
the actions of kingdoms, later powerful nation-states, competing to consolidate colonies
to their regional power centers through warfare. European kingdoms and nation-states
were also reliant on foreign trade and economic growth that favored European countries
by exploiting its colonies’ resources and monopolizing their economies. From this
economic theory came the belief that countries needed to increase their population if
they would have enough soldiers and colonists. Therefore, mercantilism considered a
high population growth rate as vital.
 1. Malthusian Approaches to Population Growth – refer to Thomas Malthus, an
18th-century minister, who maintained that although the population grows
exponentially, food supply grows linearly. Malthus explains that poverty results
from population growth outstripping the availability of resources, especially food.
He believes that the source of high population growth was the lack of moral
restraint due to man’s natural tendency to reproduce. He argued that the only
acceptable ways to limit fertility was refraining from premarital sex and
postponing marriage until the couple can support their offspring, referring to
these as preventive checks to population growth, otherwise known as moral
restraint. Malthus added that if preventive checks were not observed, positive
checks or increased mortality could be employed. Positive checks refer to
phenomena or events that lead to premature deaths such as epidemics or
pandemics, famine, war, natural calamities, etc. The Malthusian standpoint has
influenced many societies in terms of their marriage and child-rearing practices
until today.
2. Neo-Malthusianism – considered a belief system and movement in favor of
population control programs to ensure resources for future generations. Contrary
to Malthus’ focus on poverty. Neo-Malthusians, who are informed by a
heightened sense of environmentalism, are more concerned with widespread
famine and environmental degradation, such as greenhouse accumulation due to
production in favor of a growing population’s needs results of uncontrolled
population growth. Aside from influencing birth control and family planning
programs, Malthus also inspired the development of eugenics, a science that
deals with the improvement of hereditary qualities of a breed or a race, for
example, through the control of human mating or human sexual activities.
DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION THEORY

Frank Notestein developed the Demographic Transition Theory, which discusses the
history of demographic change globally. It is based on repeated observations of
consistently similar population growth patterns in various countries as their economies
developed. The demographic transition theory is a generalized description of the
changing patterns of mortality, fertility, and growth rates as societies or groups of people
move from one demographic stage to another across historical periods. The
demographic transition model identifies four, sometimes five, stages in studying
demographic trends. The stages of the demographic transition model (DTM) are the
following:

1. Pre-Industrial Society – The death and birth rates are very high and are
imbalanced. In this stage, when the levels of technology and medicine are still
low, the population growth is kept in check through preventive and positive
checks. Several factors explain the short life expectancy of people in this stage.
The death rates are high due to a poor diet, poor sanitation and hygiene, and
lack of appropriate medical care.
 2. Early Transition – During this period, death rates are significantly reduced.
Modern medicine and an improved food supply, specifically for children, and
better education reduce the number of deaths caused by diseases and
malnutrition. At the same time, the high birth rate is maintained due to lack of
contraception, which causes rapid population growth. At this stage, people have
a longer life expectancy.
3. Late Transition – At this stage, birth rates start to fall with advances in medicine
and contraception methods and increased awareness through health education.
While birth rate decline is attributed mainly to the use of contraceptives, changes
in values and motivations surrounding childbirth are beginning to shift. Women
begin to assume roles beyond the raising of children and maintenance of
households. Women are educated and eventually assume economic and social
roles.
4. Post-Transition – At this stage, the birth and death rates are both low. Wealthier
societies tend to achieve this phenomenon resulting in a more stable society.
Countries with prosperous economies, family planning, better healthcare
systems, high levels of education, and higher social and economic
enfranchisement for women tend to maintain low birth and death rates. However,
when birth rates drop to a level that limits society’s ability to supply future
workers and leaders for society's economic and political survival, there are
alarming economic and political consequences.
Other political scientists have argued that the assumptions of the first model of
Demographic Transition did not really predict the present demographic status of the
world. The authors of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT), Ron Lesthaege and
Dirk van de Kaa argue that the projected equilibrium in death and birth rates under
Stage 4 of the DTM did not take place and that fertility decline to a sub-fertility level or
the level below the expected number of births that can sustain activities necessary for
the survival of society. Van de Kaa argues that these shifts have been broadly linked to
the following changes:

 Structural Changes – modernization, the growth of the service economy and

the welfare state, the expansion of higher education.
 Cultural Changes – secularization, the rise of individualistic values, the
importance of self-expression, and self-fulfillment.
 Technological Changes – the adoption of modern contraception, the advances
in assisted reproduction, the explosion of new information technologies.
Lesthaege and Van de Kaa discussed that fertility decline was influenced by advances
in healthcare and contraception and the weakening of traditional heterosexual marriage
and family structure. Traditional marriage and family structures have given way to
pluralistic forms characterized by the following:

1. increasing age at first marriage

2. increases in pre-marital cohabitation (live-in)
3. increases in instances of divorce
4. practice and acceptance of same-sex marriages
5. increase in the rate of childbirth outside marriage
All of these contribute to a greater decline in the rate of childbirth. Further, couples or
individuals have moved from preventive contraception to self-fulfilling contraception.
According to Lesthaege and Van de Kaa, during the first demographic transition, the
issue was to adopt contraception to avoid pregnancy. However, in SDT, an individual
decides to stop taking contraceptives to start a pregnancy. Lesthaege states that the
different phases of SDT are characterized as follows:

 Phase I (1955-1970) – characterized by increasing divorce rates, a decline in

fertility, older age of marriage, and the contraceptive revolution, meaning more
effective contraceptives and change in use.
 Phase II (1971-1985) – features a rise in premarital cohabitation (live-in) and
non-marital childbirth (single parents or childbirth during live-in).
 Phase III (1985-present) – shows a stagnating divorce rate, fewer remarriages,
and a rise in fertility rate.