Configuring the World Lecture 2

9/15/2015

Population
One of the basics way of configuring the world. How many and where and how is
this changing? (This is also called demography, demo, people graphy population).
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Administration: Quantify, Everyone uses resources so how much is the

demand? Want is the amount of service required?
Per capita: per head. Per person.

Demography: the science of measuring population: absolute numbers, rate of

change, amongst whom.
Birth rate: Per 1000 population per year in a given area/country
Sex ratio: males to females
Factors affecting demographic growth:
Birth rate: Contraception, marriage age, education, income, sex/age distribution
Death rate: health care, environment, poverty, sex/age distribution.
Migration: pull factors, push factors, chain migration, Cost
Transition theory
How the science of demography had evolved and is going to evolve (poorer
countries)
4 different stages with one future stage.
Stage 1: First high birth/death rate keeps population low
Stage 2: During the industrial phases 2 and 3 the death rate first goes down
(probable during 19th century with good medicins, and birth rate stays same
because there is no contraception). same birth rate, lower death rate. so total
population goes up
Stage 3: The birth rate starts to decline. So 48 percent of the world is now below 2.1
because of the contraceptives replacement rate is 2.1. So that means in 100
years everyone is going to be dead. (However we forget the migration)
What decreases birth rate: Divorce, women working, !the pill!, delayed marriage,
education. Parents rationalize and invest in few childrens human capital.
Now the pyramid gets fat and people get older and older.

The Malthusian trap: Before industrialization population would always mirro food
supply. Just like animals There were negative and positive chechks to control
population. Negative will limit age of marriage: lower birth rate. Positive checks:
disease, infanticide raise death rate.
19th century food supply growing. But
The hockeystick graph presentation . In 100 year from 1.5 billion to 8 billion. How
many can the world sustain?
News reluctatant to call huge world growth a crisis. Economic benefits, markets
keep growing.
Human wealth:
Suddenly 18th century industrial revolution wealth levels increased rapidly.
So population regimes: economic regimes.
Most of human history impossible to create massive population or massive health.
Most of history hunters and gatherers. Nomadic moved around, but were a bit more

densely populated. But they were nothing as thickly populated as the agriculture
regime. Now they could start to create massive civilization e.g in the nile.
Effects of industrialization: We go to supermarket to buy our food. Mechanical
agriculture: 1990 people could live in cities. Will the environment sustain this? Most
find work in factories/service industry. Very high population density.
Why is the population divided over the world as it is?
Simple economic reason: How many resources per acre can you get? In india for
example they eat rice. Rice is much more efficient than wheat. But climate also
matters: Most populous countries tend to be in the temperate zone. Just like china.
Dynamics:
In Africa there was a curve upwards but now its going down. What happens in
developing world in 19th century. Wealthier, educated less kids.
Simple and compound figures: simple growth means you add 2 percent to figure.
Compound growth rate of 2 percent per year. Compound means you dont have
reliable year figures, such as in developing countries. Divide two annual figures to
come up with rate of change. FORMULA SEE POWERPOINT!!
Defintions:
National rate of change
Crude birth rate
Crude death rate
Growth rate per 1000
The general perception along businesselites. Current population growth is great.
Sustains economic growth. If market is expending more and more people will buy
your product. Your share value increases over time. Shareholders love this. Stock
prices, pension plans must keep increasing. Less people: less tax. So government
also puts pressure on demographics. Problem with overpopulation: CO2.
Environmental contaminance goes up.

Case study: chinas one child policy:

Popultation time bomb: World biggest population. Drastic measurement to eliminate
population, without doing genocide. So they introduced the one kid policy. It
changes age distributions. There was a global movement 1950 for birth control.
Should this be voluntarily or compulsory? In 1974 UN conference in Bucharest,
World population congress. At china at first the population growth was regarded as a
good thing. You can defeat capitalism by population growth. Russia looked really
good at the time and communism actually seemed to be winning. Despite family
planning campaign there was a huge population growth. 1979 the one child policy
was adopted. Even though there were some exceptions.

Effects: the results were that the nationwide population growth rate declines.
Growth rate decreases so the rule must have been a great success. But the birth
rates fall below replacement. Total fertility rate is falling again, so the policy must be
working. Looks as though 400 million birth have been averted. Decline birth rate
compared with number of birth that actually acured. So you can calculate that there
are missing births.
Another result is that the age distribution starts to change. This means that
population will age and the amount of 80+ will increase. What happens is that
economists get scared because theres a bulb of people old aged.
Urban/Rural distribution: Mostly populated in the cities in the east. 94 percent lives
in the red area line. China tried to modernize by moving people to cities by for
example giving them an apartment in the city. To produce more consumers,
because on a farm you dont have an income so youre not buying anything.
One of the additional effects of the policy is gender distribution. Theres a tendency
towards boys. Sex ratio has increased whiles total fertility rate has fallen. Sex ratio
is 120. This is way too high so these policies can have unforeseen facts that are eye
openers. From a UN perspective it is against human rights.