Demographic Change and Social Structure (original) (raw)
Demography, 1983
This paper explores some theoretical and empirical aspects related to the theory of change and multiple response. The empirical analysis focuses on 600 relatively small and homogeneous geographical units of England and Wales for the period 1851-1910. These units are classified into six identifiable socioeconomic types and the analysis is made for each of them. Two interrelated issues are studied. First, a set of explanatory variables, connected either with strain or with factors relieving strain, is constructed. The effects of these explanatory variables on nuptiality, marital fertility, and migration responses are examined for each socioeconomic type, with respect to their significance, intensity, and direction. The patterns of these effects show general consistency with multiphasic response considerations for all socioeconomic types. A significant finding in this part is that migration affects very strongly the intensity of the marital fertility decline response. The second issue deals with theoretically expected patterns of interrelationships among responses in terms of substitutability and complementarity. The theoretical interrelationships are compared with the empirical for each socioeconomic type; and in general, consistency is established. Moreover, these interrelationships can be interpreted for each socioeconomic type in a way that appears to be consistent with multiphasic response considerations. An important finding in this part is that emigration and marital fertility decline are substitute responses in agricultural-based districts. Implications of the findings are discussed.
Population Growth in the UK: An Issue for Political Debate and Policy Intervention?
Politics, 2012
Although population growth in the UK is currently arousing widespread popular concern, political scientists have tended to ignore the issue while political elites are manifestly reluctant to address it. In this article I consider a number of recent reports that both recognise the challenges posed by increasing numbers and ignore or reject the possibility of including a population dimension in policy responses. In particular, the article offers a detailed analysis of a recent Royal Commission's report on the environmental impact of demographic change in order to explore the reasons for this antipathy.
Was Malthus Right? Economic Growth and Population Dynamics
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
This paper studies the relationship between population dynamics and economic growth. Prior to the Industrial Revolution increases in total output were roughly matched by increases in population. In contrast, during the last 150 years, increments in per capita income have coexisted with slow population growth. Why are income and population growth no longer positively correlated? This paper presents a new answer, based on the role of capital-specific technological change, that provides a unifying account of lower population growth and sustained economic growth. An overlapping generations model with capital-skill complementarity and endogenous fertility, mortality and education is constructed and parametrized to match English data. The key finding is that the observed fall in the relative price of capital accounts for more than 60% of the fall in fertility and over 50% of the increase in income per capita in England occurred during the demographic transition. Additional experiments show that neutral technological change or the reduction in mortality cannot account for the fall in fertility.
Political Myth and Malthus Re-evaluating an Essay on the Principle of Population
Hamilton Historical, 2023
Robert Malthus’ 1803 Essay perpetuated multiple political myths about indigenous peoples, not because Malthus had malicious intent to speak about these people negatively, but because his views aligned comfortably with his greater society in metropolitan England. Whether the myth at hand was indigenous indolence, infanticide, or cannibalism, Mathus unconsciously supported them in his aim to create a universal human history where population was the solely important variable, similar to how his contemporary stadial theorists wrote their histories. Because his sources on indigenous peoples were popular, accepted, and respected in his society, Malthus’ discourse on indigenous peoples did not divert from his society’s norm. While Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus’ An Essay on the Principle of Population is no longer a reputable work of demography, it instead offers insight into how English society around the turn of the nineteenth-century viewed far-off people who lived in distant worlds.