Family and households

• Reasons for the fall in the IMR include improved housing, sanitation, nutrition, including that of mothers, knowledge of hygiene and child health, and health services for mothers and children
• Medical factors did not play much part until the 1950s, when the IMR began to fall due to mass immunisation, antibiotics, and improved midwifery and obstetrics
• Dependency ratio


  The relationship between the size of the working population and the size of the non-working dependent population
• Fewer children reduces the 'burden of dependency' on the working population
• The number of deaths has been fairly stable since 1900 (about 600,000 per year) but there have been fluctuations, eg the two world wars and the 1918 flu epidemic
• Death rate


  The number of deaths per thousand of the population per year
• The death rate halved from 19 in 1900, down to 9.1 in 2019
• Up to 1970, but free-quotes of the decline was due to a fall in deaths from infection such as measles, smallpox, diarrhoea and typhoid. This was brought about by changing social factors, including improved nutrition
• Medical improvements before the 1950s played almost no part in reducing deaths from infection. From the 1950s, the death rate fell partly due to medical factors such as vaccination, antibiotics, blood transfusion, and better maternity services
• Public health improvements, such as better housing, cleaner air, laws against the adulteration of food and improved sewage disposal, also reduced the death rate
• Life expectancy


  How long on average a person born in a given year can expect to live
• Life expectancy has greatly increased since 1900 - for babies born in 1900 it was 50 years for males, 57 for females, while for babies born in 2018 it was 79 years for males, 82 for females
• The low life expectancy in 1900 was mainly due to the high infant mortality rate pulling down the average life expectancy of the population as a whole
• The UK population is ageing - in 1971, the median age was 34 years, it is now nearly 40, and by 2031 it will reach 42.6
• The number of over-65s equalled the number of under-15s for the first time ever in 2014
• Reasons for the ageing population

  • Increasing life expectancy
  • Low infant mortality
  • Declining fertility
• An ageing population has several social and economic effects, including increased demand for public services, more one-person pensioner households, and a rising dependency ratio
• Old age is often socially constructed as a problem, with negative stereotyping portraying the old as incompetent and burdensome
• Policies to address an ageing population could include paying more in taxes or raising the retirement age
• Types of migration


  • Internal (within a country)
  • International
• Until the 1980s, more people left the UK than entered it
• From 1900 to the 1940s, the largest immigrant groups in the UK were the Irish, European Jews and people of British descent from Canada and the USA. Very few immigrants were non-white and non-white
• During the 1950s-70s, non-white immigrants began to come from the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia. By 2021, minority ethnic groups accounted for 14% of the population
• Immigration and nationality acts from 1962 to 1990 placed severe restrictions on non-white immigration
• By the 1980s, non-white immigrants accounted for little more than a quarter of immigrants, with the mainly white countries of the European Union becoming the chief source
• Reasons for emigration


  • Push factors (e.g. unemployment, economic recession)
  • Pull factors (e.g. higher wages, better opportunities)
• Globalisation is producing increased migration - the number of international migrants increased from 221 to 272 million between 2010 and 2019
• Types of migrants


  • Permanent settlers
  • Temporary workers
  • Spouses
  • Asylum seekers
• There are class differences among migrants - Cohen (2006) distinguishes between citizens with full rights, denizens who are privileged foreign nationals, and helots who are disposable labour power
• Almost half of all global migrants are now female, resulting in the globalisation of the gender division of labour with female migrants given stereotyped roles as carers or providers of sexual services
• Migrants may develop hybrid identities from two or more different sources, or transnational identities where they see themselves as belonging to multiple countries
• States have policies to control immigration and deal with cultural diversity, such as assimilationism and multiculturalism
• Assimilationist policies are seen as counter-productive as they can encourage the working class to blame migrants for problems, dividing the working class
• 40% of marriages now end in divorce, six times more than 50 years ago
• Reasons for the increase in divorce

  • Legal changes
  • Less stigma
  • Secularisation
  • Higher expectations of marriage
• In the 19th century, divorce was almost impossible, but legal changes in the 20th century made divorce easier
• The stigma around divorce has declined rapidly since the 1960s, making it more acceptable
• Secularisation, the decline in the influence of religion on society, has also contributed to the rise in divorce
• Higher expectations of marriage today, linked to the ideology of romantic love, are leading to higher divorce rates
• Divorce


  Legal changes made divorce easier: equalising the grounds between the sexes (1923); widening the grounds, e.g. 1969 'irretrievable breakdown', and cheaper divorce, e.g. 1949 legal aid was introduced