3.4

• Vision: A globally competitive university for science, technology, and environmental conservation
• Mission: Development of a highly competitive human resource, cutting-edge scientific knowledge and innovative technologies for sustainable communities and environment
• Lesson 3.4: A Demographic Transition Can Lead to Stable Population Size and the Future We Are Creating Now
• Learning Outcomes: At the end of this lesson, the students are expected to explain the demographic transition model
• Motivation Question: As a learner, how is it essential to understand the demographic transition model?
• Frank Notestein: 'In 1945, a demographer pointed out that a typical pattern of falling death rates and birth rates due to improved living conditions usually accompanies economic development. He called this pattern the demographic transition from high birth and death rates to lower birth and death rates'
• Figure 1 illustrates an idealized model of a demographic transition, often used to explain connections between population growth and economic development
• Economic and social conditions change mortality and births

  Stage I represents conditions in a pre-modern society with death rates around 30 per 1,000 people. Stage II brings better jobs, sanitation, medical care, and improved living standards, leading to rapid decrease in death rates. Populations overgrow during Stages II and III when death rates have fallen but birth rates remain high. In Stage IV, both birth and death rates are low, often a third or less than those in the predevelopment era in developed countries
• The population comes into a new equilibrium in Stage IV of the demographic transition, but at a much larger size than before
• The inequality between people in their most productive years and retired or declining years can be a considerable challenge for some countries
• The continuing debate in the Philippine Congress about funding the Social Security system is due to the demographic transition, with many young people relative to older people. In the future, there will be more older people living longer and fewer younger workers
• Factors that help stabilize populations include growing prosperity, urbanization, and social reforms reducing the need for large families, technology advancements, and historical patterns in less-developed countries
• Technology is available to bring advances to the developing world much more rapidly than was the case a century ago
• Less-developed countries can benefit from the mistakes of more-developed countries and chart a course to stability relatively quickly
• Modern communications (especially television and the Internet) provide information about the benefits and methods for social change
• The United Nations Population Division projects four population scenarios
• The optimistic (low) projection recommends that the world population stabilize just below 8 billion by 2050 and then drop back below current levels by the end of the century
• The medium projection shows a population of about 9.4 billion in 35 years
• The high forecast would reach nearly 12 billion by midcentury
• Recent progress in family planning and economic development have led to significantly reduced estimates compared to a few years ago
• Important societal changes for successful family planning programs

  • Improved social, educational, and economic status
  • Improved status for children
  • Acceptance of calculated choice as a valid element in life
  • Social security and political stability
  • Knowledge, availability, and use of effective and acceptable means of birth control
• Family planning permits couples to determine the number and spacing of their children
• People can use family planning to have the maximum number of children possible
• As the desire for smaller families becomes more prevalent, birth control often becomes an essential part of family planning
• More than 100 new contraceptive methods are now being studied, and some appear to have great promise
• Nearly all new contraceptive methods are biologically based rather than mechanical
• Vaccines for women are being developed to reject the chorionic hormone gonadotropin or cause an immune reaction against sperm
• The contemporary couple has access to many more birth control options than their grandparents had
• Vision: A globally competitive university for science, technology, and environmental conservation
• Mission: Development of a highly competitive human resource, cutting-edge scientific knowledge and innovative technologies for sustainable communities and environment
• Lesson 3.3: Fertility is Influenced by Culture
• Many social and economic pressures affect decisions about family size, which affects the population at large
• Lesson Summary

  We will examine both positive and negative pressures on reproduction
• Learning Outcomes


  Students are expected to learn how culture influences fertility
• People want children for many reasons
• Factors that increase people’s desire to have babies are called pronatalist pressures
• In much of the developing world, parental desire for children may be the most crucial factor in population growth
• Society needs to replace members who die or become incapacitated, often codified in cultural or religious values that encourage bearing and raising children
• Some societies look upon families with few or no children with pity or contempt, and the idea of deliberately controlling fertility may be shocking or taboo
• Education and income affect the desire for children