Topic 4: Demography.

Question 1

What is net migration?

Answer 1

The difference between the number of immigrants entering a country and the number of emigrants leaving it.

Question 2

What is birth rate?

Answer 2

The number of live births per thousand of the population per year.
- In 1900, England/Wales had a birth rate of 28.7, but by 2014, it had fallen to an estimated 12.2. In 2020, it has fallen to 11.4.
- Have been fluctuations in births with three baby booms in the 20th century:
1. After the two world wars (1914-1918, 1939-1945).
2. 1960s/1970s.
3. 1990s.

Question 3

Reasons for the decline in the birth rate:

Answer 3

• Changes in women’s position.
• Decline in infant mortality rate.
• Children are now an economic liability.
• Child centredness.

Question 4

Major changes to women’s position in the 20th century:

Answer 4

• Legal equality with men, including right to vote.
• Increased educational opportunities - girls now do better at school than boys.
• More women in paid employment, plus laws outlawing unequal pay and sex discrimination.
• Changes in attitudes to family life and women’s role.
• Easier access to divorce.
• Access to abortion and reliable contraception, giving women more control over their fertility.

Question 5

(birth rates) Changes in women’s position:

Answer 5

Harper (2012) argues education of women is most important reason for long-term fall in birth and fertility rates. It has led to a change in a mind-set among women, resulting in fewer children.
- Educated women more likely to use family planning.
- Other possibilities in life apart from traditional role of housewife and mother.
- Women pursue careers.
- Women delaying childbirth.

Question 6

Changes in women’s position (AO2):

Answer 6

• In 2012, 1 in 5 women aged 45 was childless double the number of 25 years earlier.
• Although, fertility rates decreased in all age groups, for women aged 40 years and over it increased.
• Harper also notes that, once a pattern of low fertility lasts for more than one generation, cultural norms about family size change. Smaller families become the norm and large ones come to be seen as deviant or less acceptable.

Question 7

Voluntary childlessness.

Answer 7

• Women’s control over their own fertility has seen an increasing number of women voluntarily choosing to reject childbearing altogether.
• Hakim (2010) argues this is a relatively new lifestyle choice which was only brought about by the contraception revolution.
• However, attitudes in favour of procreation are still quite powerful - the social disapproval from family and wider community can be a strong influence. Women’s fertility status is still very much considered public property.

Question 8

Voluntary childlessness. Gillespie (2003) identifies two factors for voluntary childlessness:

Answer 8

1. Pull factor - they are attracted by the pull of being child free, especially the increased freedom and better relationships with partners that it affords. Married couples without children have more disposable income.
2. Push factors - they may experience a push away from motherhood. Park (2005) found that women who tended to see parenting as conflicting with their leisure or career interests. These women were disinterested in children.

Question 9

What is the total fertility rate?

Answer 9

The average number of children women will have during the fertile years.
- Factors that determine the TFR are:
1. Proportion of women who are of childbearing age.
2. How fertile they are e.g. how many children they have.
- The UK’s TFR has risen in recent years, but still much lower than in the past: 1960s = 2.95 children per man, 2001 = 1.63 children per woman, 2019 = 1.65 children per woman.

Question 10

Reasons why there has been an increase in the average age at which women give birth:

Answer 10

• Women are more likely to concentrate on careers.
• Women spend longer in full-time education.
• More widespread access to contraception.
• More socially acceptable to give birth later.
• More reproductive technology available to older women.

Question 11

What is the infant morality rate?

Answer 11

Measures the number of infants who die before their first birthday, per thousand babies born alive per year.
- Harper argues a fall in the IMR leads to a fall in the birth rate.

Question 12

During the first half of 20th century, the UK’s IMR began to fall. Was due to several reasons:

Answer 12

• Improved housing and better sanitation.
• Better nutrition, including that of mothers.
• Better knowledge of hygiene, child health and welfare, often spread via women’s magazines.
• A fall in the number of married women working may have improved their health and that of their babies.
• Improved services for mother and children, such as parenting class and baby clinics.
• Rise in mass immunisation and medicine both contributed to a continuing fall in the IMR.

Question 13

Effects of changing in fertility: The Dependency Ratio.

Answer 13

• Dependency ratio = proportion of the population who are of working age compared with the proportion who are not working and therefore dependent others (children and the retired).
• However, in long-term, fewer babies being born will mean fewer young adults and a smaller working population thus increasing the dependency ratio.
• How might fewer babies being born impact the dependency ratio? Reduces the ‘burden of dependency’.

Question 14

Effects of changes in fertility:

Answer 14

• The effect of fewer babies being born in family has led to smaller family sizes. Means women are freer to go out and work - dual earner couple.
• In contrast, high dual earner couples can afford to have large family and outsource childcare.
• Effect of fewer babies being born in the family has impacted public services and policies in several ways. For instance, fewer schools, maternity and child health services may be needed. Cost of maternity and paternity leave and housing is impacted. Lastly, rise in ageing population.

Question 15

What are death rates?

Answer 15

The number of deaths per thousand of the population per year.
- In 1900, death rate stood at 19, whereas by 2012 it had more than halved; 8.9.
- Death rate already begun falling from 1870 and continued until 1930. Rose slightly during 1930s-1940s - the period of the great economic depression, followed by WW2, but since 1950s it has declined slightly.
- Tranter (1996) - 3/4 of decline rate from about 1850 to 1970 was due to fall in number of deaths from infectious diseases.
- By 1950s, ‘diseases of affluence’ (wealth) such as heart disease and cancers had replaced infectious diseases as the main cause of death.

Question 16

Reasons for the decline in the death rate:

Answer 16

• Improved nutrition - Mckeown (1972) - better nutrition increased survival change, reduce death rates. However, doesn’t explain why women outlive men when they have smaller food supply and why some infectious diseases rose at time of improving nutrition.
• Medical improvements - Before 1950s, medical improvements played no role in reduction of deaths from infectious diseases. After 1950s it did. Advances included: antibiotics, blood transfusions and NHS (1948).
• Smoking and diet - Harper - decline in death rates due to less people smoking. But in 21st century, obesity has replaced smoking. Despite this, drug therapies have kept death rates low.
• Public health measures - 20thC saw rise of effective central and local gov with power to enforce and create laws and improved health and quality of environment: improvements in housing, purer drinking water, improved sewage disposal methods.
• Other social changes - help reduce death rate during 20thC: decline in dangerous manual occupation jobs, smaller families reducing transmission rate of infections, greater public knowledge, lifestyle change, higher income.

Question 17

What is life expectancy?

Answer 17

Refers to how long on average a person born in a given year can expect to live.
- As death rates increase, life expectancy increases.
- Males born in England in 1900 had life expectancy of 50; 2013 they had life expectancy of 90.7.
- Harper predict we will soon achieve ‘radical longevity’ with many more centenarians (people over 100). Currently there are 10,000 in UK.

Question 18

Life expectancy: class, gender and regional differences.

Answer 18

• Women live longer than men, but because of changes in employment and lifestyles this gap was narrowed e.g. smoking.
• Those living in North and Scotland have lower life expectancy than those in South.
• WC men in manual jobs are nearly 3x as likely to die before 65 compared to MC professional men.
• Walker (2011) - those living in poorest areas of England die on average 7 years earlier than those in richest areas.

Question 19

What is the ageing population?

Answer 19

• There are fewer young people are more older people in the population. Number of people aged 65 or over equalised to number of under-15s in 2014.
• Average age of UK is rising: 1971 - 34.1 years, 2020 - 40.5 years, 2031 - predicted to be 42.6 years.

Question 20

The ageing of the population is caused by 3 factors:

Answer 20

1. Increasing life expectancy
2. Declining infant mortality
3. Declining fertility.

Question 21

Effects of an ageing population: 1. Public services.

Answer 21

• Older people consume larger proportion of services e.g. health and social care.
• However, should be aware of overgeneralising, since many people remain in relatively good health well into old age.
• Also means changes to policies and provision of housing, transport or other services.

Question 22

Effects of an ageing population: 2. One-person pensioner households.

Answer 22

• Number of pensioners living alone has increased and one-person pensioner households now account for 14% of all households.
• Most are female because women generally live longer than men and they are usually younger than their husbands.
• ‘Feminisation of later life’ - among over 75s, 2x as many women as men.

Question 23

Effects of an ageing population: 3. The dependency ratio.

Answer 23

• Non-working old are economically dependent group who need to be provided or by those of working age.
• As number of retired people rises, this increases dependency ratio and burden on working population.
• However, would be wrong to assume that ‘old’ necessarily equals ‘economically dependent’.
• e.g. 2020 - both men and women have to wait till they’re 66 to access the state pension.
• Others carry working into their 70s. Also, while increase in number of old people raises dependency ratio, in ageing population this is offset by declining number of dependent children.

Question 24

(AO3) Ageing population: Grandparenting.

Answer 24

• Chambers notes there’s growing recognition that families benefit from presence of grandparents and that interaction between grandparents and grandchildren is more meaningful than in past.
• Because grandparents today live longer as more healthy and active compared to previous generations.
• Consequently, they make significant contribution to parenting and socialisation process.
• Rias (2012) - grandparents provide free childcare on average 10 hours per week.
• Statham (2011) - found in families in which mother are in work/education, 71% receive help from grandparents and 35% rely on grandparents as main providers of childcare.

Question 25

Ageism, modernity and postmodernity:

Answer 25

• One consequence of ageing population in modern society is growth or ageism.
• Ageism = negative stereotyping and unequal treatment of older people on basis of their age.
• Social construction of ageing seen as ‘problem’. Age statuses socially constructed.
• The Griffiths Report (1988) on care of elderly saw society as facing problem of meeting the escalating costs of health and social care for growing numbers of old people.
• Recently, there have been concerns about how ‘pensions time bomb’, with fears about how society will meet the cost of providing pensions for the elderly.
• Townsend (1981) - reason for negative attitudes to elderly is old age is socially constructed as period of dependency by creating statutory retirement age at which most people are expected/required to stop working and forced to rely on inadequate benefits that push many into poverty.

Question 26

Modern society and old age:

Answer 26

• Sociologists argue ageism is result of structured dependency. When individuals are excluded from paid work leaving them economically dependent on families and state. Have dependent status and stigmatized identity.
• Phillipson (1982) argues the old are of no use to capitalism, they aren’t seen as productive citizens. Life structured into fixed series of stages such as childhood.
• Ages become important in society due to role allocation, creating fixed life stages and creating age-related identities. Thus, exclusion from workforce elderly powerless and dependent.

Question 27

Postmodernity and old age.

Answer 27

• Fixed orderly stages of life course have broken down. Recent trends in clothing, later marriage and early retirement blur boundaries between life stages.
• Can now define ourselves by what we consume.
• Hunt (2005) - we can choose lifestyle and identity regardless of our age. Our age no longer defines who we are e.g. plastic surgery.
• Two features of society that undermine old age as stigmatized life style:
  1. Centrality of the media - portrays positive aspects of lifestyles of the elderly.
  2. Emphasis on surface features - body becomes surface on which we write our identities. New anti-ageing products and services allow the old to write different identities for themselves.

Question 28

Positive effects of the ageing population:

Answer 28

• Grandparents can help with childcare.
• MC have good disposable income from pensions.
• Postmodernism argues our age no longer defines us - older people can choose lifestyles if they have money.

Question 29

Negative effects of an ageing population:

Answer 29

• Burden on public services.
• One-person households.
• Dependency ratio.

Question 30

Inequality among the old:

Answer 30

Pilcher (1995) argues inequalities such as class and gender remain important. Many of these are related to individuals previous occupation.
- Class: MC have better occupational pensions and greater savings from higher salaries. In comparison to poorer old people who have a shorter life expectancy.
- Gender: women’s lower earnings and career breaks mean lower pensions. Also subjected to ageist stereotypes as ‘old hags’, while men are praised and if they try to maintain a youthful self-identity ‘mutton dressed as lamb’.

Question 31

Policy implications of ageing population:

Answer 31

Hirsch (2005) argues a number of important social policies will need to change to tackle new problems posed by an ageing population.
- Need to finance a longer period of old age by paying more from our savings and taxes.
- Housing policy will need to change to encourage older people to ‘trade down’ to smaller accommodation.
- Policy changes also require cultural change in our attitudes towards old age.

Question 32

Effects of ageing population on family and individuals: Application to the family.

Answer 32

• Numbers of extended families grow as elderly relatives move into homes of their children as they don’t have the economic resources to go into care homes.
• Grandparents can assist in raising their grandchildren. May result in more positive experiences of socialisation as grandparents pass on life lessons.
• Feminists argue the elderly living with their family may increase domestic burden on women.

Question 33

What is migration?

Answer 33

Refers to the movement of people from place-to-place. It can be internal within a society or international.
- Immigration = refers to movement into society.
- Emigration = refers to movement out.
- Net migration = difference between immigrants and emigrants.

Question 34

Immigration:

Answer 34

• From 1900-WW2, largest immigrant group were Irish, mainly for economic reasons.
• 1950s - Black immigrants from the Caribbean.
• 1960s/70s - South Asian immigrants and East African Asians.
• Consequence is a more ethnically diverse society. By 2011, ethnic minority groups accounted for 14% of population, which ultimately led to greater diversity of family patterns.

Question 35

Emigration:

Answer 35

• Mid-16thC until 1980s, the UK was almost always net exporter of people: more emigrated to live elsewhere than came to settle in the UK.
• Since 1900 emigrants have gone to USA, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
• Main reasons for emigration are economic:
  > Push factors (pushing them to leave UK) - economic recession and unemployment at home.
  > Pull factors (attracting them to leave UK) - higher wages or better opportunities abroad.

Question 36

Impact of migration on UK population structure:

Answer 36

Recent years have seen increase in both immigration and emigration. Trends affect size of UK population, its age structure and dependency ratio.
- Population size: the UK population is currently growing, partly as result of immigration.
1. Without net migration, UK’s population would be shrinking.
2. Natural increase, with births exceeding deaths. However, births to UK born mothers remain low compared to non-UK born mothers (account for 25% of all UK births).
- Age structure: immigration lowers average age of population both directly and indirectly:
> Directly: immigrants are generally younger.
> Indirectly: being younger, immigrants are more fertile and thus produce more babies.

Question 37

Dependency ratio: Immigrations has 3 effects:

Answer 37

1. Immigrants tend to be of working age and this helps lower dependency ratio. In addition, many older migrants return to their country of origin to retire.
2. However, because they are younger, immigrants have more children, thereby increasing the ratio. Over time, these children will join the labour force and help to lower the ratio once again.
3. Finally, longer a group is settled in the country, the closer their fertility rate comes to national average, reducing their overall impact on dependency ratio.

Question 38

What is globalisation?

Answer 38

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

Question 39

Cohen (2006) identifies three types of migrants:

Answer 39

1. Citizens - with full citizenships rights. Since 1970s, UK state has made it harder for immigrants to acquire these rights.
2. Denizens - privileged foreign nationals welcomed by the state e.g. billionaire.
3. Helots - (slaves) are most exploited groups. States and employers regard them as ‘disposable units of labour power’, a reserve army of labour.

Question 40

Migration and gender:

Answer 40

• Almost 1/2 of all global migrants are female.
• Female migrants find they’re fitted into patriarchal stereotypes about women’s role as carers or providers of sexual services.
• Also a global transfer of women’s emotional labour. Migrant nannies perform the expressive role for their employers children whilst their children are left behind in their country of origin.

Question 41

Globalisation and migration: Dual-heritage or mixed-race families.

Answer 41

• Platt (2009) indicated African Caribbean’s more likely than any other minority group to intermarry with members of another ethnic group, especially white people.
• Ali (2002) notes such marriages result in inter-ethnic families and mixed raced sometimes called ‘dual-heritage’ children.
• Platt found the number of mixed-race children have grown considerably in years.
• Young people aged 18 and under are 6x more likely to be mixed-race than people 30 and over.
• Sociologists suggested these types of families have their own unique problems, such as facing prejudice and discrimination from both white and black communities.

Question 42

The Politicization of migrants:

Answer 42

• With increased global flow of migrants, migration has become important political issue.
• States now have policies that seek to control immigration, absorb migrants into society and deal with increased ethnic and cultural diversity.
• Immigration policies also become linked to national security and anti-terrorism policies.
• Assimilationism: aim to encourage immigrants to adopt language, values and customs of host culture to ‘make them like us’.
• Multiculturalism: accepts migrants may wish to retain a separate cultural identity.
• However, Castles see assimilationist policies as counter-productive as they mark out minority group as culturally ‘other’ or backward which can lead to extremism and fundamentalism.

Question 43

Two main factors impacted by migration in the UK population structure:

Answer 43

1. Population size
2. Age structure.

Question 44

(migration) Population structure:

Answer 44

• UK population is growing, partly due to immigration.
• e.g. net migration is high. Means there are more immigrants than emigrants. In 2014, there were 583,000 immigration and 323,000 emigrants.
• Also due to natural occurrence of there being more births compared to deaths.
• However, births the UK born mothers are still low, so if not for net migration, the UK population would be decreasing.

Question 45

(migration) Age structure:

Answer 45

• Immigration lowers the population’s average in 2 ways:
  > Directly: immigrants coming into the UK tend to be younger.
  > Indirectly: due to immigrants being younger, they are more fertile and more likely to have more children.
• Between 2008 and 2014, 781,269 immigrants aged 20-24 entered the UK, with the next leading age group being aged 25-29, with drop to 384,845.
• In 2011, average age of UK passport holder was 41, whereas the average age of non-UK passport holders living in Britain was 31.

Question 46

(migration) There are three further affects on the dependency ratio:

Answer 46

1. As migrants are younger and more fertile, they are likely to have more children, thus creating the ratio. However over time, the children will join the labour force which helps decrease the ratio.
2. Dependency ratio is lowered by majority of immigrants being of working age; furthermore, many ageing migrants return to their country of origin to retire.
3. The longer a group is settled in a country, the closer their fertility rate comes to the national average, reducing their overall impact on dependency ratio.

Question 47

(migration) Differentiation:

Answer 47

• Different types of migrants: permanent settlers, temporary workers, spouses, forced migrants.
• Some may have legal entitlement while others don’t. Asylum seekers - these are people who has left their country and is seeking protection from from persecution and serious rights violations in their country, but who hasn’t yet been legally recognised as refugee and is waiting to receive a decision on asylum seeking.

Question 48

The feminisation of migration:

Answer 48

• In past, most migrants were men, however today, almost 1/2 of migrants are female.
• Ehrenreich and Hochschild observed domestic work and sex workers in UK and US is increasingly done by women from poor countries. This is result of several factors:
  > Expansion of service occupation.
  > Western women have joined labour force.
  > Western men remain unwilling to perform domestic labour.
  > Failure of the state to provide adequate childcare.
• Resulting gap has been filled by women from poor countries. Shutes reports 40% of adult care nurses in UK are migrants.
• Women migrations also enter UK as illegally trafficked sex workers, often kept in condition amounting to slavery.

Question 49

Migrant identities.

Answer 49

We have multiple sources of identity, including: family, friends, neighbourhood, ethnicity, religion etc.
- As for migrants, their country origin may provide an additional or alternative source of identity.
- John Eade (1994) found:
> 2nd gen Bangladeshi Muslims in Britain created hierarchal identities: Muslim first, then Bengali, then British.
> Those with hybrid identities may find others may challenge their identity, claiming they don’t ‘fit in’.

Question 50

(migrants) Transnational identities:

Answer 50

• Hylland-Eriksen (2007) - globalisation has created more diverse migration patterns with people moving through networks rather than permanent settlement in another country.
• As result, Erkisen thinks migrants are less likely to see themselves belonging to one country or culture. They may develop transitional identities and loyalties.
• Globalised economy means migrants may have more links to other migrants around the world to either their country of origin or place of settlement.