Population And Society: Historical Trends And Future Prospects
Calhoun-3267-22.qxd5/24/20053:40 PMPage 381Charles Hirschman. 2005. “Population and Society: Historical Trends and Future Prospects.” InCraig Calhoun, Chris Rojek, and Bryan S. Turner, eds. The Sage Handbook of Sociology, pp.381-402. London: Sage Publications.22Population and Society: HistoricalTrends and Future ProspectsCHARLES HIRSCHMANThe statistics of population behavior in the massare a dry topic treated in isolation, though theypossess their own fascination and rational structure. But they measure events, which are centralto the life of men and women in all ages. Onceattention is turned outward from the eventsthemselves to the social and economic environment in which they occur, the appeal andimportance of demography is apparent. Thepressures of hard times and the opportunities ofhappier periods are reflected in historical demography like images in a camera obscura. The picture always needs interpretation and may lackthe polychrome fullness of historical reality butit forms a clear and dependable outline to whichcolor may be added as the population characteristics are related to their setting. (Wrigley,1969: 28)INTRODUCTIONThe population of the world grew by 50 percent from 1900 to 1950, and then increasedby 200 per cent over the next 50 years to reach6 billion just before the turn of the twenty-firstcentury. Even with fertility declining and aslower rate of population growth in mostcountries, the United Nations predicts a globalpopulation of about 9 billion in 2050 – eventuallystabilizing at about 10 billion by the end of thecentury. Large numbers, such as these, tend todull the senses and elicit little response fromsociologists or the public at large. Yet, thesebare demographic facts reveal the absolutelyamazing progress of humankind during thetwentieth century.After a century with two world wars, theHolocaust, a Cold War that legitimated thetheory of mutually assured destruction, the failedexperiment of communist regimes, and thespread of HIV/AIDS – to name only a few of thetwentieth-century horrors, it may seem counterintuitive to speak of progress in modern times.In general, sociological accounts and theoriesoffer little respite from the general tendency topoint to the many failings of the modern world.As a discipline, sociology often focuses on thestudy of social problems, and there is a thin linebetween the sociological perspective and socialcriticism. Yet, a critical awareness of the manyshortcomings of the contemporary world mustbe balanced with an historical awareness thatmost present-day societies are much less dangerous, stratified and autocratic than the agrarian world (and the early industrial world) ofprevious generations.Perhaps the best evidence of improvement inthe human condition is the demographic changethat has taken place over the past two-and-a-halfcenturies. For all species, population growth isthe best measure of adaptation to local ecological
Calhoun-3267-22.qxd3825/24/20053:40 PMPage 382THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SOCIOLOGYniches. Throughout human history, the size of alocal population was considered an indexof prosperity (Livi-Bacci, 1997: 1). At the eve ofthe first industrial revolution around 1750, theworld’s population was about 770 million, reflecting an average growth rate of only slightly abovezero for the entire course of human history.From 1750 to 1950, the growth rate of the world’spopulation ‘took off’, with an annual averagerate of 0.7 per cent and reached a level of 2.5billion by 1950 (Livi-Bacci, 1997: 31). Then, theworld’s population literally exploded from 1950to 2000, with a growth rate of over 1.8 per centper year, and humanity now numbers more than6 billion souls.How did this happen? The most proximateanswer is that mortality began to decline inpoor countries as well as rich ones with thecontrol of infectious diseases through the diffusion of public heath programs and modernantibiotics. But there is a longer story thatincludes the expansion of agricultural production and economic growth in many countries,the development of local and long-distancecommunications and transportation systems,and a world system that included the WorldHealth Organization and international assistance to head off epidemics and famines.Compared to what they should be or couldbe, social and economic conditions around theworld are deplorable, but relative to past times,the twentieth century, and especially the secondhalf of it, looks pretty good.Population growth is a two-edge sword. Inthe short term, growth reflects good times, butif maintained for any period of time, increasingnumbers put pressure on resources, especiallyfood production. In the world of nature, rapidgrowth in the numbers of any species soon leadsto a population implosion, as the carrying capacity of the local environment is exceeded. Homosapiens has had, on occasion, a few ways outof the Malthusian trap of a population growingfaster than its subsistence. The first is migration,and much of human history has taken theform of expansive societies spilling outwards tonearby and distant lands. The second means istechnological and organizational change, whichhas allowed human societies to extract moresubsistence and energy from natural resources.A spectacular growth in knowledge, and theorganizational and technological means to applyit, has been the engine that has allowed contemporary populations to far exceed any historicallimits on subsistence.Can this continue? Even with renewablesources of energy and materials, there wouldbe an eventual collision between continuedpopulation growth and a finite world. But thecollision may be averted because populationgrowth has been slowing in recent decades, notfrom rising mortality, but because of voluntarycontrols on fertility. Fertility declines beganin several rapidly modernizing countries in thelate nineteenth century and spread to mostWestern countries in the early decades in thetwentieth century. Then quite unexpectedly,fertility declines began in several Asian countries in the 1960s and then spread to manydeveloping countries in Latin America andAfrica in the last two decades of the century. Ifcurrent trends continue, the world’s population will grow by only 50 per cent from 2000to 2050 and then gradually level off at about10 billion. Although public policies may helpto speed the process, fertility transitionsappear, in ways not fully understood, to be endogenous to the process of socio-economic development and improvements in the humancondition.Although much of the sociological interest inpopulation trends relates to the consequences ofcurrent and future population trends (forexample, Can the world sustain a populationof 10 billion? Do population growth anddensity affect state formation and politicalintegration? What are the effects of populationgrowth and age composition on savings ratesand economic growth?), most demographicresearch has focused on the somewhat lesscomplicated questions of the determinants ofpopulation trends, and in particular on mortality, fertility, migration and urbanization.Demographers, most of whom are sociologists,have accumulated a substantial reservoir ofempirical generalizations on all of these topicsand have also generated several theoretical interpretations of demographic transformations thathave accompanied the creation of the modernworld. This chapter is a preliminary overviewof some of the major research findings, empirical generalizations and theoretical debates
Calhoun-3267-22.qxd5/24/20053:40 PMPage 383POPULATION AND SOCIETY: HISTORICAL TRENDS AND FUTURE PROSPECTSon the relationship between social change andpopulation trends, with a primary focus on thetwentieth century, which witnessed the mostdramatic demographic changes in humanhistory.POPULATION GROWTH ANDMIGRATION IN HUMAN HISTORYModern human beings (Homo sapiens) arethe most recent branch of the hominids thatemerged in Africa around 100,000 years ago(Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994; Diamond, 1993).The development of language (which wasdependent on the human ability to speak)allowed human beings to accumulate andshare knowledge and to coordinate groupactions in order to collect and hunt for foodmore effectively than any other large animal.The ability to communicate through languageallowed humans to rise to the top of the foodchain and created the first population explosion, or ‘great leap forward’, with early humansspreading to all corners of the globe, beginningaround 50,000–60,000 years ago.McEvedy and Jones (1978: 14) estimate thatthe average density of hunting and gatheringhuman populations was about 1 person per 10square kilometers, though it could have beensomewhat higher in bountiful environments.Even with modest levels of population growth,most Paleolithic bands could have begun toexceed the carrying capacity of their local environment within a few generations. Migration isprobably the first human response to population pressure (Davis, 1974). As families movedto new areas, they had to learn how to adaptto new climatic zones and to survive on different flora and fauna. But human societies haveproved extraordinarily adaptable, and within afew tens of thousands of years, human settlements had spread to most of the major regionsof the world (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994; Davis,1974; McNeill, 1984). Although archeologicalevidence is sketchy, human societies reachedAsia around 60,000 years ago, the Americasbetween 15,000 and 30,000 years ago, and finallyspread to some of the small Pacific Islands onlywithin the last millennium (Cavalli-Sforza and383Cavalli-Sforza, 1995: 122; Diamond, 1997: 341).This early population explosion, though modestby modern standards, revealed the potentialreproductive capacity of human beings and theflexibility of human societies to respond to population pressure by developing varied culturesadapted to local ecosystems.The most consequential response to population pressure in prehistory was the domestication of plants and animals about 10,000 yearsago (Harris, 1977: ch. 3). Although settled agricultural communities created the conditionsfor an expansion of population growth and thegreat civilizations of antiquity, the shift frommigratory foragers to farmers was probablyinvoluntary, and the last resort when populationshad run out of all other options for survival.Even today, hunting and gathering populationsgenerally resist efforts by states and missionariesto settle them in permanent villages and adoptfarming. Agricultural populations generally worklonger hours and consume less than huntingand-gathering populations, in addition to enduring the oppression from the ruling class thatinevitably arises in societies with agriculture(Harris, 1977; Boserup, 1981).Population pressures (perhaps accompaniedby coercion from elites) led to the independent‘invention’ of agriculture in numerous placesfrom around 8500 to 3000 BC, includingSouthwest Asia (the ‘Fertile Crescent’), China,New Guinea and multiple locations in theAmericas and Africa (Diamond, 1997: 100). Fora few generations, agriculture can provide asafety valve for population growth. For the sameunit of land, agricultural production can support a much denser population than huntingand foraging. Agriculture also changes the conditions affecting fertility and mortality dynamics, including the motivation for children.Fertility levels in hunting and gatheringsocieties were probably lower than in agricultural populations. Most pre-agricultural populations are (were) migratory and mothers hadto carry small children for long distances. Sincea woman could carry only a single child at atime, the optimal fertility pattern would be onewith long inter-birth intervals. Infanticidewas a common cultural practice in such populations if one birth followed too soon afteranother. The availability of edible plants and
Calhoun-3267-22.qxd3845/24/20053:40 PMPage 384THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SOCIOLOGYanimals usually set an upper limit on thepopulation that could survive in a local environment. If the population of a band exceededthe carrying capacity of the local environment,the welfare of the community would be endangered until some persons died or left the band.A stable population size was more adaptive formost hunting and gathering populations thana growing population.The higher level of fertility in agriculturalsocieties was fundamentally a response to thehigher incidence of mortality in the largedensely settled agrarian populations. Thisstructural necessity (high fertility needed tooffset high mortality) was accompanied by avariety of economic and social incentives forhigh levels of childbearing at the householdlevel (Cavalli-Sforza and Cavalli-Sforza, 1995:134). Children were a primary source of laborin agricultural communities. On farms, evensmall children can provide productive hands bywatching over farm animals or doing routinechores. An increase in the population of anagricultural community could generally beabsorbed through expansion as nearby landswere cleared and brought into production.The tendency of agrarian populations tospread to new areas, coincident with the displacement of hunting and gathering peoples,reveals the close parallels between demographic and social change. Analyses of the geneticheritage of the contemporary populations ofEurope reveals that outward migration of agriculturalists from the Middle East graduallypopulated most of Europe from about 9000 to6000 years ago (Cavalli-Sforza and CavalliSforza, 1995: ch. 5). Although there were certainly admixtures from both the indigenousMesolithic hunter–gatherers and Neolithicfarmers, the higher densities of agriculturalpopulations gave them a demographic edgethat probably led to military dominance andgreater contributions to the gene pool of subsequent generations. This process has beenrepeated in modern times with the expansionof Europeans to Australia and the Americas,Russians to Siberia, and Chinese to their southernfrontiers.Population data for ancient times arecrude estimates based on limited informationand extrapolations (Coale, 1974; Durand,1977; Livi-Bacci, 1997: 31; United Nations, 1973:ch. 2). From the origins of humankind around100,000 years ago to the dawn of agriculture(about 10,000 BC), the human populationof the world increased to about 6 million.Although this figure may seem tiny, it includedtens of thousands of hunting and gatheringsocieties, whose presence had spread to virtuallyall corners of Europe, Africa, Asia, Australiaand the Americas. As more and more populations became dependent on agriculture, humanpopulation densities increased in most regions:the world’s population grew to approximately250 million by the year 1 AD. About two-thirdsof this population lived in Asia (including theMiddle East, China and South Asia), but therewere about 30 million in Europe, 25 million inAfrica and perhaps 12 million in the Americas.The growth from 6 to 250 million over 10,000years represents an average rate of less than0.04 per cent per year.Just as the world had probably reached its carrying capacity for hunting and gathering populations at about 6 million (or 5–10 million)around 10,000 BC, agricultural populationsprobably oscillated with years of expansionfollowed by contractions caused by famine,epidemics and wars. The estimated world population growth rate over the next 1000 yearsof approximately zero does not mean thatagricultural societies maintained a sustainablebalance with their environments. Indeed,many early civilizations in the Middle East,Asia and the Americas experienced demographicimplosions as precarious irrigation systemsor trade networks were destroyed because ofinvasions, plagues, or breakdowns in socialsystems.The population on all continents increasedfrom the year 1000 to 1750 at an average annualrate of about 0.01 per cent – about doublethe estimated growth rate from 10,000 BC tothe year 1 AD. Again, the historical trends areuneven, with decades or even centuries ofpopulation decline followed by periods ofexpansion as ascendant empires developedtrade networks and lessened local warfare. Somescholars have speculated that the diffusion ofcrops from the New World (potato, maize,
Calhoun-3267-22.qxd5/24/20053:40 PMPage 385POPULATION AND SOCIETY: HISTORICAL TRENDS AND FUTURE PROSPECTSmanioc) contributed to the expanded foodproduction in Asia, Europe and Africa after 1500(Durand, 1977). European expansion, however,had deadly consequences for the peoples of theNew World. The indigenous American peoples,estimated to number over 40 million in 1500, weredecimated by European diseases and conquest.The next major turning point in worlddemographic history is the industrial revolution, which is usually dated with its originsaround 1750. It is more realistic to considerindustrialization as a process, which began ineighteenth-century England and spread throughout much of the world over the next two-and-ahalf centuries. Indeed, the full weight of theindustrial and urban revolutions in Asia, Africaand Latin America is still in the future. Thebreath-taking changes in scientific knowledge,transportation and communications, economicproductivity and the structure and role of governments have few precedents in human history.In turn, these social, economic and politicalchanges have transformed the conditions underwhich human communities live, with revolutionary consequences for health and well-being.Initially, the impact on human mortality wasmodest, with perhaps less frequent periods ofcrisis mortality in the nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries than in earlier eras. Themajor real gains in life expectancy occurred inthe twentieth century, especially during thesecond half of the century.It is difficult to fully understand the enormity of the demographic consequences of thedeclines in mortality as the world’s populationgrew from 1 billion shortly after 1800 to 6 billion shortly before 2000. Livi-Bacci (1997:32–3), drawing upon the work by BourgeoisPichat, helps to convey these almost unfathomable magnitudes by interpreting currentpopulation numbers as fractions of the humanpopulation that has ever lived on Earth. Forexample, the population alive in the year 2000represents almost 8 per cent of the estimated82 billion humans ever born. If we were toweight each birth by longevity, then the estimated person-years lived by those alive in 2000represent almost one-fifth of the person-yearslived since the origins of the species. Whateverthe human potential for good or evil, more385possibilities are present today than ever beforein history.POPULATION CHANGE IN THETWENTIETH CENTURYAlthough world population size began to slopeupward in the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies, the major drama of world population growth is a twentieth-century phenomenon. The basic facts of twentieth-centurypopulation growth are presented in Table 22.1,with figures of the estimated population of themajor world regions for 1900, 1950 and 2000,and the medium variant projections for 2050.The 1950, 2000 and 2050 figures are from themost recent edition of the United Nations’sWorld Population Prospects, and the estimatesfor 1900 are based on the medium value of theestimated range reported by John Durand(cited in United Nations, 1973: 21).The three top panels in Table 22.1 show theestimated populations, the percentage distribution by major world regions, and theestimated rates of annual population growth.Trends in population growth over the twentieth century reveal the impact of varied social,economic and political changes across majorworld regions as well as the diffusion of ideasand institutions designed to reduce mortalityand morbidity.In 1900, Europe and North America wereascendant. Although comprising less thanone-third of the world’s population, Europeannations had, through their military might andindustrial economies, colonized much of Asiaand Africa and organized a world economicsystem that directed a disproportionate shareof the profits of global production (from plantations, mines
Population and Society: Historical Trends and Future Prospects CHARLES HIRSCHMAN Calhoun-3267-22.qxd 5/24/2005 3:40 PM Page 381. Charles Hirschman. 2005. Population and Society: Historical Trends and Future Prospects. In Craig Calhoun, Chris Rojek, and Bryan S. Turner, eds. The Sage Handbook of Sociology, pp. 381-402. London: Sage Publications.
Coloring book Kansas Historical Society Historical Society. American Buffalo The American buffalo was recognized as the animal symbol of Kansas in 1955. A male bison can weigh over 1800 pounds! Kansas Historical Society 2012 Historical Society. Ornate Box Turtle
Recent Demographic Trends in Louisiana: A State Population Profile Tim Slack Professor of Sociology Louisiana State University. Overview Description of current state population Trends in state population change Components of state population change Census 2020 and beyond. Total Population, 2018 U.S. total pop.: 327,167,434
Effective Population Size Census population size often inappropriate for population genetics calculations Breeding population size often smaller For genetic drift, historical events or nonrandom mating patterns might reduce EFFECTIVE size of the population Effective Population Size is an ideal population of size N in which all parents have an equal probability of being
14. Greater Kent Historical Society 13 1,000 15. Highline Historical Society 5,8, 13 1,500 16. History House of Greater Seattle 2 1,000 17. Issaquah Historical Society 12 4,000 18. Kirkland Heritage Society 11 3,000 19. Maple Valley Historical Society 9, 12 2,500 20. Neely Mansion Association 9 1,000 21.
Population growth rate Data from Population Reference Bureau. 2009. 2009 World population data sheet. Human Population 231 Growth Rate Has Slowed For much of the twentieth century, the human population growth rate rose from year to year. Growth rate refers to how a population
6th Grade Social Studies: World Geography and Global Issues SS60301 Unit 3: Population and Migration Lesson 1 Michigan Citizenship Collaborative Curriculum Page 1 of 11 Oakland Schools November 9, 2012 Graphic Organizer Population Patterns Population Growth Population Distribution Population Density . 6th Grade Social Studies: World Geography and Global Issues SS60301 Unit 3: Population and .
Every population of organisms is founded by some initial population. This portion of the module will examine how characteristics of the initial population can impact how quickly the population can grow. In sexually reproducing organisms, at least one male and one female must be present in the founding population for the population to ever grow.
DEPARTMENT OF BOTANY Telangana University Dichpally, Nizamabad -503322 (A State University Established under the Act No. 28 of 2006, A.P. Recognized by UGC under 2(f) and 12 (B) of UGC Act 1956)
