Demographic Transition Theory & Wealth Flows: Understanding Population Dynamics

1. Lecture GEOG 270 Fall 2007 October 8, 2007 Joe Hannah, PhD Department of Geography University of Washington

2. GEOG 270Geography of Development and Environmental Change Demographic Transition and Wealth Flows Two more Population Theories

3. Recap Last Lecture Unchecked population growth always exceeds the growth of means of subsistence • Film: Future in the Cradle – the factual and the rhetorical messages

4. Population (geometric) / Food Production Population Food Production (arithmetic) Time Recap Last Lecture

5. Today: • Demographic Transition • Wealth Flows Theory

6. Demographic Transition Theory Developed in the 1940s to explain the historic shifts in birth and death rates that accompanied shifts from “traditional” to “modern” society (at least in industrial countries)

7. The Demographic Transition Model • Pre-industrialization: LOW GROWTH • high birth rates, high mortality rates • During industrialization: HIGH GROWTH • – declining mortality rates (due to improved health and living conditions) plus • Birth rates start to decline after a time lag • “Modern” industrial society: LOW GROWTH • low birth rates and low mortality rates

8. The Classic Demographic Transition Graph / Birth Rate Death Rate Time

9. Age Structure Changes High growth rates Low growth rates

10. Applicable to Developing Countries? • Demographic Transition Theory was developed to explain historical phenomena in the West • Dem. Transition vs. Malthusian theory: • Both link population growth with economic develoment • Malthus: dev’t requires lower fertility • Dem. Transition: dev’t results in lower fertility

11. Ethnocentric Assumptions(according to Robbins) • Assumes historically that fertility rates always and everywhere have been high, in order to balance high death rates • Assume that pre-industrial societies would not/could not control their own fertility • Assumes that the only way to control fertility rates is Western medical & contraceptive model • Therefore, resistance to adopt contraception is irrational, religious, traditional or fatalistic. Contraception is rational and modern.

12. Chicken or Egg? • Marxist theorists maintain that capitalist expansion causes increased populations, in part to create a labor surplus enabling access to a large and cheap labor supply; • Demographic transition theorists say that the people themselves are the cause of overpopulation because they persist in “traditional” approaches to their own fertility.

13. “Traditional” Fertility Management “… human populations have consistently adjusted fertility rates to local economic and social conditions… That is, high fertility rates are not the result of ignorance, outmoded religious values, or lack of education but the result of social or economic factors that people, largely women, react to in order to adjust the size of their families…” (Robbins, p. 147)

14. Critiques of “Standard” Approaches to Population and Development “Traditional demographic theory, and most public policy and government analysts, suggest that the rapid rise in population in poor countries is due to… the importation of Western medical technology and public health measures.” (Robbins, p. 147)

15. The alternative explanation:Capitalism Causes Overpopulation • When the poor work for wages, it makes sense to have more children • Increase the number of wage-earners • Children take on domestic work, freeing adults (esp. women) to work for wages • In fact, population in many parts of the periphery began growing rapidly under colonialism, before the introduction of “modern” health care (e.g., Java 1800s, Sudan 1920s)

16. II. Wealth Flows Theory • Children can still contribute to economy of the household (extended family); • Family security: providing for the elderly; security in times of need (by increasing the number of cooperating individuals) • Increase political allies/clans  All rational reasons based on the ability of children to contribute positively to an extended family household.

17. Nuclear Family Flows • Children in Western nuclear family model “consume wealth” rather than “produce wealth”: For 2004, the newest data available, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that families making $70,200 a year or more will spend a whopping $269,520 to raise a child from birth through age 17. Higher-income families in urban areas in the West spend the most, $284,460. (MSM Money central)

18. What changes are necessary? • Are contraceptive measures enough? • Do Third World Societies “need” to restructure the fundamental family unit along Western lines in order to have the incentives to reduce fertility? • What unforeseen effects will changes to family structure have on the rest of society, on emotional, social and economic ties?