Zed Books Population and Development: The Demographic Transition

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Population and development The Demographic TransitionBy Tim DysonZed Books LtdCopyright © 2010 Tim DysonAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-84277-959-0ContentsFigures and tables, vi, Preface, viii, Glossary, xiii, PART ONE Introduction, 1 Introduction, 3, 2 The demographic transition – origins, processes, effects, 8, 3 World population and the transition, 50, PART TWO The processes of the demographic transition, 4 The demographic transition – facts and theory, 83, 5 Urbanization and the transition, 125, PART THREE The effects of the demographic transition, 6 Social effects of the transition, 159, 7 Economic and political effects, 188, PART FOUR Conclusion, 8 Conclusions, discussion, the future, 215, Appendix: remarks on data and approach, 229, Notes, 231, Bibliography, 245, Index, 262, CHAPTER 1IntroductionThis book addresses the central role of the demographic transition in the creation of the modern world. It considers how the major processes involved in this transition have unfolded during the modern era. And it examines the immense – and often unrecognized – impact that these processes have had on many key aspects of life.At the start of the twenty-first century, every country in the world is being affected by the demographic transition. Indeed, most countries are still experiencing it to varying degrees. The transition is a phenomenon that will continue to transform human society for many decades to come. So an appreciation of its major causal processes, and their principal societal effects, is important.The demographic transition is a global phenomenon – one that, at its heart, involves the movement of all human populations from experiencing high death and birth rates to experiencing very much lower death and birth rates. Essentially, these are the processes of mortality decline and fertility decline respectively. As populations go through the transition, they always increase in size. That is, they experience a period of population growth due to natural increase. And they always undergo two fundamental changes in composition: they move from being predominantly rural to being predominantly urban (i.e. the process of urbanization); and they move from having young age structures to having old age structures (i.e. the process of population ageing). These are the five main processes of the transition.These demographic processes are causally related to each other. As a result, they always occur in a similar order. In brief: mortality decline is the crucial initiating process – it causes population growth; in turn, population growth leads to stresses and strains in society which eventually bring about fertility decline; urbanization is in large part the result of mortality decline; and fertility decline is the main cause of population ageing.These five processes usually unfold over very long periods. Indeed, even in its swiftest manifestations the movement of a society from having high death and birth rates to having low death and birth rates can take almost a century to occur. And because they involve changes in population composition, the processes of urbanization and population ageing are usually even slower. Therefore, viewed from the perspective of our own individual lives, the transition's constituent processes happen very slowly. In fact, they may be so gradual that they go virtually unseen. This helps to explain why their wider effects are often missed by social scientists – in favour of more immediate, but often shallower, explanations.Viewed in historical terms, however, the demographic transition is a phenomenon that has occurred – and is occurring – with remarkable speed. The changes involved are huge, and so are their societal effects. But to appreciate this it is necessary to stand back and examine how the processes unfold over the very long run. It is also important to realize that the transition's processes affect other dimensions of life in remote (i.e.