Demographic Change

• Malthusianism


  The classic Malthusian idea of relating to population growth, articulated by Thomas Malthus in 1798, in his Essay on the Principle of Population
• Malthusian idea


  • The population was growing faster than it was possible to feed itself
  • The population grew at a "geometric rate" while food production grew at an "arithmetic rate"
  • Decline in the natural checks and balances-that came to be known as Malthusian checks-that had, in the past, kept populations relatively stable (famines, diseases, natural disasters, high infant mortality rates)
  • Technological and scientific advancement was seen to be good, especially the decline in infant mortality rates, but this led to a problem with no solution
• Neo-Malthusianism


  A perspective that particularly focused on the problem of population growth in the developing world
• Neo-Malthusians


  • Advocated the urgent need for population control in the developing world
  • Shared the perspective of modernisation theorists and saw rapid population growth as the most urgent internal barrier to development
  • Attributed this to "backward" norms and values and a lack of birth control in the developing world
• Paul Ehrlich


  A key figure in the revival of neo-Malthusian ideas who wrote The Population Bomb
• Ehrlich's views


  • The population was growing too fast to be able to feed itself
  • Predicted hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 1970s
  • Concerned about the environment and the planet's resources not being able to sustain the rapidly growing population
  • Proposed controversial suggestions like withholding food aid from countries with rapidly growing populations
• Overpopulation can cause problems in the developing world, such as lack of affordable housing leading to shanty towns with poor sanitation and the spread of communicable diseases
• Overpopulation can also cause a drain on resources and lead to conflict, such as crime and gang violence as unemployed men look for ways to support their families
• The biggest problem with overpopulation, according to neo-Malthusians, is the environmental cost and the threat of climate change
• Demographic transition model


  Puts a period of rapid population growth into the context of different periods of economic growth, where initially death rates fall but birth rates remain high, leading to a cultural lag and population increase before birth rates stabilise
• The demographic transition model suggests neo-Malthusians misunderstand the cause of population growth, which is not high birth rates but rather low death rates
• Many of Ehrlich's predictions in The Population Bomb have not come true, such as a significant increase in the death rate
• Boserup's view


  Necessity is the mother of invention: innovation to increase agricultural production is fuelled and supported by the pressure put on it by population growth
• Marxists argue that rather than overpopulation causing poverty, poverty causes overpopulation, and that the real threat is overconsumption in the developed world, not population growth in the developing world
• Marxists criticise population control programmes in the developing world as diverting attention from the need to reduce consumption in the developed world