Demography

• Change in birth/fertility rate

  • Total fetility rate - 1.8 (2018) vs 2.95 (1694)
  • More women remain childless
  • Women having children later - avg age 30
  • Older women are less fertile with fewer fertile years remaining so produce fewer children
• Reasons for change in TFR - Women's position

  • Legal equality with men
  • Increased educational opportunity
  • Easier access to divorce
  • Access to abortion, contraception
  • Paid employment
  • Harper: education of women is the most important reason & low fertility lasts for more than 1 generation with smaller families becoming the norm and large as less acceptable
• Reasons for change in TFR - IMR

  • Harper: fall in IMR leads to fall in TFR as when infants die parents replace those who they have lost
  • 1900: IMR in UK was 154
  • Improved housing & sanitation, better nutrition, improved services
  • Mass immunisation against childhood diseases and use of antibiotics to fight infection
  • 2019: IMR was 4.6
• Reasons for change in TFR - Economic

  • Laws banning child labour and introduction of compulsory schooling mean children reamin economically dependent on parents
  • Changing norms of what a child should expect from their parents in material terms
• Reason for change in TFR - Child centredness

  • Shift from 'quantity' to 'quality'
  • Parents have fewer and lavish more attention and reources on these few
• Effect of chnages in fertility

  • Smaller families , more childless families and greater freedom for women
  • Increase in dependency ratio reducing the 'burden of dependency' on the working population
  • Fewer babies will mean fewer young adults and a smaller working population so the burden of depency may begin to increase again
• Change in death rate

  • 1900 - 19
  • 2019 -9.1
• Reasons for decline in death rate - Improved nutrition

  • Mckeown says it accounts for up to 1/2 of the reduction & has increased resistance to infection
  • Criticism: doesn't explain why women recieve a smaller share of the family food supply but live longer
• Reasons for decline in death rate - Medical

  • Advances in antibiotics, blood transfusion, maternity services
  • NHS in 1948
• Reasons for decline in death rate - Diet & smoking

  • Harper: argues smoking reduction is one of most important reasons
  • In 21stc obesity ahs replaced smoking. UK (2012) 1/4 adults were obese
  • We may be moving into an 'American' health culture where we are unhealthy but achieve a long life span by use of costly medication
• Life expectancy

  • Males in 1900 - 50 (women is 57)
  • Males in 2018 - 87 (women is 90)
  • Due to medical improvement, lifestyle changes, improvement in geriatric care
  • Led to increase in dependency ratio and ageing population
• Ageing population - Effect on family structure

  • Extended families/ beanpole families
  • Increase in one-person households
  • Women adopt expressive role and take on the burden of caring for younger or older relative
• Ageing population - Positive effects

  • Supporting dual worker families (40% provide regualr childcare) due to greater health
  • Volunteerism benefits society with 1/3 volunteering
  • Increased retirement period with spending power (benefitting the economy)
• Ageing population - Negative effects

  • Strugglee to meet cost demands
  • Burden on NHS
  • Increased dependency ratio -older retirement age
  • Incraesed burden on women - beanpole families
• Migration

  • Immigration - movement into society
  • Emmigration - movement out
  • Net migration - difference between numbers of immigrants and emigrants
• Reasons to migrate

  Push factors

  • Conflict e.g political
  • Lack of employment
  • Lack of resources/ Poverty
  • Political situation
• Reasons to migrate

  Pull factors

  • Education
  • Employment
  • Standard of living
  • Family
  • Climate
• Impact of globalisation on migration

  • Greater co-operation between nations has led to free movement agreements for work & leisure - EU
  • Global conflicts has led to accelaration of migration - refugees and asylum seekers
  • Global nature of employment - spread of Western companies overseas
• Impact of migration

  • Change to demography of UK - ethnic and age diveristy
  • Multiculturalism - greater diversity in UK
  • Impact on social policies - citizenship tests encourage migrants to become part of British life
  • Hybridity - hybrid cultures (Britain & Asian)
• Negative impacts of migration

  • A political issue
  • Informed debates on Brexit
  • Rise in nationalism and racially-motivated hate crimes