Module 11

• Demography


  is the statistical study of human populations.
• Demographers


  use census data, surveys, and statistical models to analyze the size, movement, and structure of populations.
• Thomas Robert Malthus


  was interested in everything about populations. He accumulated figures on births, deaths, age of marriage and child-bearing and economic factors contributing to longevity. His main contribution was to highlight the relationship between food supply and population.
• Essay on the Principle of Population


  illustrative side-by-side comparison of arithmetic and a geometric series—food increases more slowly than population—that it was often taken out of context and highlighted as his main observation.
• Thomas Malthus


  He argued that because of the natural human urge to reproduce human population increases geometrically while food supply is arithmetically if unchecked, would lead to starvation.
• preventative checks


  are those that affect the birth rate and include marrying at a later age (moral restraint), abstaining from procreation, birth control, and homosexuality.
• Positive checks


  are those that increase the death rate. These include disease, war, disaster, and finally when other checks don't reduce the population, famine. Malthus felt that the fear of famine or the development of famine was also a major impetus to reduce the birth rate.
• Malthusian Population Theory


  viewed poverty, hunger and lack of sufficient food production to feed all of the world's people as an inevitable part of the human experience.