Demography

Question 1

Define birth rate

Answer 1

The number of live births per thousand of the population per year

Question 2

What is the difference in birth rate from 1900 - 2020?

Answer 2

In 1900, the birth rate was 28.7 but by 2020 it fell to 11.4

Question 3

Define the total fertility rate?

Answer 3

The average number of children women will have during their fertile years.

Question 4

How low has the fertility rate been and for how long?

Answer 4

Below 2.0 since 1973 per woman and it fell to a low of 1.58 in 2020

Question 5

What do changes in fertility and birth rate reflect?

Answer 5

More women are remaining childless and women are postponing having children - the average age for giving birth is now 30.7 years while fertility rates for women in their 40s are now on the increase.

Question 6

Explain how a change in women’s position causes a decline in the birth rate according to Harper

Answer 6

Harper - the education of women is the most important reason for the long term fall in birth and fertility rates. It has led to a change in mind-set among women, resulting in a change of mindset among women, resulting in fewer children. They are more likely to use family planning and see other possibilities in life aside from the traditional role of housewife and mother.

Question 7

Define infant mortality rate

Answer 7

The number of infants who die before their first birthday, per thousand babies born alive, per year.

Question 8

What were the five reasons for the decline in infant mortality rate?

Answer 8

Improved housing and better sanitation such as flush toilets and clean drinking water, better nutrition including that of mothers, better knowledge of hygiene, child health and welfare, often spread via women’s magazines, improved services for mothers and babies.

Question 9

How have children become an economic liability?

Answer 9

Laws banning child labour, introducing compulsory schooling and raising the school leaving age means that children remain economically dependent for longer. Changing norms about what children have a right to expect from their parents in terms of material possessions. These changes mean that parents now feel less able or willing to have a large family.

Question 10

What has child-centeredness caused in terms of family sizes?

Answer 10

Shift from quantity to quality - parents now have fewer children and lavish more attention and resources on the few

Question 11

What do falling fertility rates mean in terms of childhood experience?

Answer 11

Children will become a lonelier experience as fewer children will have siblings and more childless parents may mean fewer voices speaking up in support of children’s interests.

Question 12

How does falling fertility rates mean in terms of the overall age of a population?

Answer 12

The average age of the population is rising - there are more old people relative to young people.

Question 13

Define the death rate

Answer 13

The death rate is the number of deaths per thousand of the population per year.

Question 14

What does Mckeown argue about nutrition?

Answer 14

Improved nutrition accounted for up to half the reduction in the death rate and was particularly important in reducing the the number of deaths from TB. Better nutrition increased resistance to infection and increased survival chances of those who did become infected.

Question 15

Give a criticism of Mckeown

Answer 15

He does not explain why women, who often have a smaller share of the family food supply, live longer than males. He also fails to explain how deaths from infectious diseases such as measles and infant diarrhoea, actually rose at a time of improving nutrition.

Question 16

Give examples of medical improvements that may have helped to lower the death rate

Answer 16

Introduction of antibiotics, immunisation, blood transfusion, improved maternity services, national health services 1948 (NHS),

Question 17

What does Harper say about smoking and diet?

Answer 17

In the 21st century, obesity has replaced smoking as the new lifestyle epidemic. Harper argues that we may be moving to an ‘american health culture where lifestyles are unhealthy but where a long lifespan is achieved by use of costly medication.

Question 18

Define life expectancy

Answer 18

How long, on average, a person born in a year can expect to live

Question 19

What does harper predict will happen if the life expectancy continues to increase?

Answer 19

Radical longevity

Question 20

What does Hirsch argue about the pattern / overview of the ageing population?

Answer 20

The traditional age pyramid is disappearing and being replaced by more or less equal sized blocks representing different age groups.

Question 21

How does the ageing population affect policies and services?

Answer 21

The ‘old old’ (people aged 75 or over) consume a larger proportion of services such as health and social care. There may also be changes to policies and provision of housing, transport and other services.

Question 22

How does the ageing population cause a growth in a particular type of household?

Answer 22

One person pensioner households - 15% / 1/7 of all households. Most of these are women as they usually live longer than men leading to the feminisation of later life.

Question 23

How does the ageing population affect the dependency ratio?

Answer 23

The non working old are an economically dependent group who need to be provided for by those of working age. In 2022 there were 3.5 people of working age for every one pensioner. This number is predicted to fall to 2.7 to one by 2041. While an increase in the number of old people raises the dependency ratio, in an ageing population this is offset by a declining number of dependent children.

Question 24

How does modern society view old age?

Answer 24

Ageism is the result of structured dependency - old people are largely excluded from paid work making them economically dependent on families or the state. Our identity and status are largely determined by our role in production.

Question 25

How does postmodern society view old age?

Answer 25

The fixed orderly stages of the life course have broken down. Consumption rather than production becomes the key to our identities. The old become the market for a range of body maintenance and rejuvenation goods and services through which they can create their identities.

Question 26

How are there class inequalities amongst the old?

Answer 26

The middle class have better occupational pensions and greater savings, from higher salaries. Poorer old people have a shorter life expectancy and suffer more infirmity (making it difficult to maintain youthful identity)

Question 27

How are there gender inequalities amongst the old?

Answer 27

Women’s lower earnings and career breaks as carers mean lower pensions. They are also subject to sexist and ageist stereotypes such as being described as old hags.

Question 28

What is Hirsch’s policy recommendation?

Answer 28

A number of important social policies will need to change to tackle the new problems posed by an ageing population. We need to pay more from our savings and taxes while we are working or we need to work longer or both.

Question 29

Give a brief timeline of immigration into the Uk

Answer 29

From 1900 until the second world war, the largest immigrant group were the irish for economic reasons, followed by eastern and central european jews who were often refugees fleeing persecution, followed by people of british descent from canada and the USA (very few were non-white). During the 1950s, black immigrants from the carribean followed by, during the 1960s and 70s, south asian immigrants from india, pakistan, bangladesh and sri-lanka.

Question 30

What is an effect of immigration?

Answer 30

A more ethnically diverse country. By 2021, minority ethnic groups accounted for 14.4% of population causing a diversity of family patterns.

Question 31

How has population size changed due to migration?

Answer 31

Net migration to the UK estimated to be 270,000 in 2019 down from a peak of 331,000 in 2015. There is a natural increase with british exceeding deaths. Births to non-uk mothers account for 28% of all births.

Question 32

How has the age structure changed due to migration?

Answer 32

Immigrants are generally younger and immigrate for employment opportunities. They are also more fertile as they are younger and will produce more babies.

Question 33

How has the dependency ratio changed due to migration?

Answer 33

Immigrants are younger and therefore help to lower the dependency ratio, immigrants have more children increasing the ratio, these children will join the labour force and help to lower the ratio again, the longer a group is settled in the country, the closer their fertility rate comes to the national average helping to reduce the dependency ratio.

Question 34

Define globalisation

Answer 34

The idea that barriers between societies are disappearing and people are becoming increasingly interconnected across national boundaries.

Question 35

Explain the trend in acceleration

Answer 35

The rate of migration has sped up. According to the UN (2020) in 2019l the number of international migrants was almost 272 million globally - 51 million more than 2010.

Question 36

Explain the trend in differentiation

Answer 36

Since the 1990s, globalisation has led to what Vertovec calls ‘super-diversity’. Migrants now come from a much wider range of countries compared to pre-1990 when immigration to the Uk came from a narrow range of former British colonies.

Question 37

What are Cohen's three types of migrant?

Answer 37

Citizens with full citizenship rights. Since the 1970s, the Uk state has made it harder for immigrants to acquire these rights. Denizens are privileged foreign nationals welcomed by the state such as billionaire oligarchs. Helots are the most exploited group - states and employers regard them as disposable units of labour power and are found in low skilled, poorly paid work.

Question 38

What did Ehrenreich and Hochschild find about women’s occupation after migration and what are the reasons for this?

Answer 38

Care work, domestic work and sex work in western countries like the UK and the USA is increasingly done by women from poor countries. This is because of the expansion of the service occupations in western countries leading to a demand in female labour, western women joining the labour force and being less willing to perform domestic labour, western men being unwilling to perform domestic labour and the failure of the state to perform adequate childcare.

Question 39

Give evidence to support Erenreich and Hochschild? (AO3)

Answer 39

40% of adult care nurses in the Uk are migrants. Most of these are female.

Question 40

What did Eade fine about migrant identities?

Answer 40

Second generation bangladeshi muslims in britain created hierarchical identities - they saw themselves as muslim first, then bangali, then british.

Question 41

What did Erikson find transnational identities?

Answer 41

Globalisation has created more diverse migration patterns with back and forth movements of people through networks. Migrants are less likely to see themselves as belonging completely to one culture or country. Instead, they may develop a transnational neither nor identity and loyalties.

Question 42

What is the assimilationist policy and what does Erikson say about it?

Answer 42

Aimed to encourage immigrants to adopt the language, values and customs of the host culture to make them ‘like us’. However, Erikson notes that assimilationist policies face the problem that transnational migrants with hybrid identities may not be willing to abandon their culture or to see themselves as belonging to just one nation state.