Тема 14. Demography

I. Read and translate the text.

Demography. Demography is the study of human population dy­namics. It encompasses the study of the size, structure and distribution of populations, and how populations change over time due to births, deaths, migration, and ageing. Demographic analysis can relate to whole societies or to smaller groups defined by criteria such as education, religion, or ethnicity.

Before proposing complex theories to explain sociological pheno­mena (e.g., World Systems Theory), especially at the macro and/or so­cietal levels, sociologists should first turn to demographic indicators for possible explanations. Demographic analysis is a powerful tool that can explain a number of sociological phenomena.

For instance, in examining the elements that led to the First World War, most people turn to political and diplomatic conflicts but fail to con­sider the implications of expanding populations in the European countries involved. Expanding populations will result in increased competition for resources (i.e., food, land, access to trade routes and ports, etc.) Expanding populations may not be the primary cause of World War I, but it may have played a role in the increased hostilities leading up to the war. In this fashion, demographic indicators are often informative in explaining world events and should be turned to first as explanations.

Demographic Indicators. Because demography is interested in changes in human populations, demographers focus on specific indicators of change. Two of the most important indicators are birth and death rates, which are also referred to as fertility (see also fecundity) and mortality. Addi­tionally, demographers are interested in migration trends or the move­ment of people from one location to another.

The demographic transition is a model and theory describing the transition from high birth rates and death rates to low birth and death rates that occurs as part of the economic development of a country. In pre-industrial societies, population growth is relatively slow because both birth and death rates are high. In most post-industrial societies, birth and death rates are both low. The transition from high rates to low rates is referred to as the demographic transition.

Population Growth and Overpopulation. Overpopulation indicates a scenario in which the population of a living species exceeds the carry­ing capacity of its ecological niche. If a given environment has a popu­lation of 10, but there is food and drinking water enough for only 9 people, then that environment is overpopulated, while if the population is 100 individuals but there are food and water enough for 200, then it is not overpopulated.

Resources to be taken into account when estimating if an ecolo­gical niche is overpopulated include clean water, food, shelter, warmth, etc. In the case of human beings, there are others such as arable land and, for all but tribes with' primitive lifestyles, lesser resources such as jobs, money, education, fuel, electricity, medicine, proper sewage and garbage management, and transportation.

Presently, every year the world’s human population grows by ap­proximately 80 million. About half the world lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility and population growth in those countries is due to immigration. The majority of world population growth today is occur­ring in less developed countries.

The United Nations projects that the world human population will stabilize in 2075 at nine billion due to declining fertility rates source.

Taking a Closer Look