Social Class Fertility In Post Demographic Transition America

This book has a strong theoretical focus and is unique in addressing both mortality and fertility over the full span of human history. It examines the demographic transition in the change in the human condition from high mortality and high fertility to low mortality and low fertility. It asks if fluctuating populations is a new phenomenon, or if there has long been an inherent tendency in Man to maximize survival and to control family size.

This is the first book to fully examine, from an evolutionary point of view, the association of social status and fertility in human societies before, during, and after the demographic transition. In most nonhuman social species, social status or relative rank in a social group is positively associated with the number of offspring, with high-status individuals typically having more offspring than low-status individuals. However, humans appear to be different. As societies have gotten richer, fertility has dipped to unprecedented lows, with some developed societies now at or below replacement fertility. Within rich societies, women in higher-income families often have fewer children than women in lower-income families. Evolutionary theory suggests that the relationship between social status and fertility is likely to be somewhat different for men and women, so it is important to examine this relationship for men and women separately. When this is done, the positive association between individual social status and fertility is often clear in less-developed, pre-transitional societies, particularly for men. Once the demographic transition begins, it is elite families, particularly the women of elite families, who lead the way in fertility decline. Post-transition, the evidence from a variety of developed societies in Europe, North America and East Asia is that high-status men (particularly men with high personal income) do have more children on average than lower-status men. The reverse is often true of women, although there is evidence that this is changing in Nordic countries. The implications of these observations for evolutionary theory are also discussed. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in the social sciences with an interest in evolutionary sociology, evolutionary anthropology, evolutionary psychology, demography, and fertility.

There is long-standing debate on how population growth affects national economies. A new report from Population Matters examines the history of this debate and synthesizes current research on the topic. The authors, led by Harvard economist David Bloom, conclude that population age structure, more than size or growth per se, affects economic development, and that reducing high fertility can create opportunities for economic growth if the right kinds of educational, health, and labor-market policies are in place. The report also examines specific regions of the world and how their differing policy environments have affected the relationship between population change and economic development.

Demographic transition constitutes one of the most fundamental modern historical changes; people live much longer, have fewer children, and experience higher mobility. This book examines the basic mechanisms behind the modernisation of demographic behaviour. The author has marshalled an impressive array of statistical material relating to sixty-seven countries, half of them less developed countries. Most of the tables are time-series, covering many decades and sometimes go back to the nineteenth, and even eighteenth centuries. The whole sweep of western experience is dealt with here impartially. Though technically sophisticated, the book also covers issues of interpretation and analysis. The author puts forward a number of challenging propositions: mortality decrease is shown to necessarily precede fertility and decline, so-called execptions being simply false exceptions. He shows how the decline of fertility is dependent on important and manifold social transformations. The strong connections between international migration and the course of demographic transition are demonstrated, as is the fact that less developed countries are following the same general patterns as MDCs. There is also discussion of why the theory of demographic transition must include the effect of population changes on the economic progress of society.

Look around you and think for a minute: Is America too crowded? For years, we have been warned about the looming danger of overpopulation: people jostling for space on a planet that’s busting at the seams and running out of oil and food and land and everything else. It’s all bunk. The “population bomb” never exploded. Instead, statistics from around the world make clear that since the 1970s, we’ve been facing exactly the opposite problem: people are having too few babies. Population growth has been slowing for two generations. The world’s population will peak, and then begin shrinking, within the next fifty years. In some countries, it’s already started. Japan, for instance, will be half its current size by the end of the century. In Italy, there are already more deaths than births every year. China’s One-Child Policy has left that country without enough women to marry its men, not enough young people to support the country’s elderly, and an impending population contraction that has the ruling class terrified. And all of this is coming to America, too. In fact, it’s already here. Middle-class Americans have their own, informal one-child policy these days. And an alarming number of upscale professionals don’t even go that far—they have dogs, not kids. In fact, if it weren’t for the wave of immigration we experienced over the last thirty years, the United States would be on the verge of shrinking, too. What happened? Everything about modern life—from Bugaboo strollers to insane college tuition to government regulations—has pushed Americans in a single direction, making it harder to have children. And making the people who do still want to have children feel like second-class citizens. What to Expect When No One’s Expecting explains why the population implosion happened and how it is remaking culture, the economy, and politics both at home and around the world. Because if America wants to continue to lead the world, we need to have more babies.

Dramatic fertility swings over the last 100 years have been the subject of large literatures in demography and economics. Recent research has claimed that the post-1960 fertility decline is exceptional enough to constitute a "Second Demographic Transition." The empirical case for a Second Demographic Transition, however, rests largely on comparisons of the post-1960 period with the baby boom era, which was itself exceptional in many ways. Our analysis of the U.S. instead compares the fertility decline in the 1960s and 1970s to the earlier twentieth century fertility decline, especially the 1920s and 1930s. Our findings affirm that both periods experienced similar declines in fertility rates and that the affected cohorts averaged the same number of children born over their lifetimes. In contrast to conventional wisdom, the mean age of household formation (by marriage or non-marital cohabitation) and first birth are almost identical for women reaching childbearing age in the 1920s and 1930s and today. Three features, however, distinguish the post-1960 period: (1) the convergence in the distribution of completed childbearing around a two-child mode and a decrease in childlessness; (2) the decoupling of marriage and motherhood; and (3) a transformation in the relationship between the educational attainment of mothers and childbearing outcomes. These three features of the twentieth century fertility decline have implications for children's opportunities, children's educational achievement, and widening inequality in U.S. labor markets.

Population change and population forecasts are receiving considerable attention from governmental planners and policy-makers, as well as from the private sector. Old patterns of population redistribution, industrial location, labor-force participation, household formation, and fertility are changing. The resulting uncertainty has increased interest in forecasting because mere extrapolations of past trends are proving inadequate. In the United States of America popUlation forecasts received even more attention after federal agencies began distributing funds for capital infrastructure to state and local governments on the basis of projected future populations. If the national government had based those funding decisions on locally prepared projections, the optimism of local officials would have resulted in billions of dollars worth of excess capacity in sewage treatment plants alone. Cabinet-level inquiries concluded that the U. S. Department of Commerce should (1) assume the responsibility for developing a single set of projections for use whenever future population was a consideration in federal spending decisions and (2) develop methods which incorporate both economic and demographic factors causing population change. Neither the projections prepared by economists at the Bureau of Economic Analysis nor those prepared by demographers at the Bureau of the Census were considered satisfactory because neither method adequately recognized the intertwined nature of demographic and economic change. Against this background, the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the U. S.

This book focuses on the future of the global population and proposes revising Malthus’ Law. The United Nations estimates that the global population will top 11 billion by 2100, at which point its growth will be near an end: it will find a new ‎equilibrium in a long demographic transition from high birth and death rates to low ones. However, the author reviews the fertility developments reported in the World Population Prospects 2017, which are near or below the replacement level in most regions, with the important exception of Sub-Saharan Africa, and warns of a possible scenario of the extinction of human society. Returning to Malthus, his Essay on the Principle of Population is critically reconsidered. Simple simulations show that exponential growth and decay are unsustainable beyond the narrow ranges of the net reproduction rate. In addition, the length of reproduction periods, which depends on women’s lifespans, plays a pivotal role. The limits of growth are given in any case, to the extent that time and space will permit. From this perspective, teleological conditions such as instinct, passion, or even natural reproductive tendencies are irrelevant and unnecessary. When the population deviates too far from the replacement level, either its shrinking or massive growth will overshoot the limits of its existence. This principle of sustainable population indicates that the demographic transition must follow a logistic curve. Using a system dynamics approach, the author constructs a simulation model based on four major loops: fertility, reproduction timing, social capital accumulation, and lifespan. Using only endogenous variables, this model successfully reproduces the historical process of the demographic transition in Japan. Thereby, it shows that the timing and periods of reproduction, maximum fertility, and maximum lifespan hold the key to sustainability. Based on these findings, the author subsequently discusses recovering replacement fertility, extending lifespans, and the demographic future of the human race.