Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

1 Introduction

2 Measuring Populations

Demography: the accessible social science
We don’t know as much as we might like to think we do
A short history of error in demography
The use (and abuse) of the measurements we use
Baby booms and baby slumps
Conclusion
Notes

3 Destiny and Determination

Projections versus forecasts
The dented crystal ball
The failure to foresee falls in fertility
From ‘showing’ the future to ‘shaping’ the future
Building uncertainly into the model
Live and let live, and famine
Adding education to population forecasts
Conclusion

4 Population ‘Explosion’

The overwhelming narrative
Malaria and the good news that is so often ignored
The algae bloom of human beings, 1800–2000
Censuses, surveys and scenarios
Demographic transition or population explosion?
Conclusion
Notes

5 Why No Children?

A polarized world
The low fertility world
Pushing parents, supporting parents
Who’s to ‘blame’?
Conclusion
Notes

6 Population Ageing

Help the aged?
What causes population ageing?
The demographic dividend
Measuring population ageing
Beyond numbers: the real challenges of the ageing population
Conclusion: challenges and opportunities
Notes

7 Population and the Global Economy

‘Too many there, too few here’
The demand for labour
Rural to urban migration
Emerging markets, fading markets
The mysterious vanishing act of the global labour pool
Family planning and peak working-age population
Alternative projections
Conclusion: no such thing as destiny
Notes

8 Population and Politics

Politics, demography and history
The danger of demography
Schools, politics and demography
Cultural identity, nationalism and population decline
Net lifetime cohort migration
Notes

9 Conclusion: Understanding Ourselves, Understanding Each Other

Notes

Bibliography

Index

End User License Agreement

Figures

Figure 2.1. Alternative measures of mortality decline in Afghanistan, 1950–2010

Figure 2.2. Alternative fertility rate estimates for China, 1980–2010

Figure 2.3. Alternative fertility rate estimates for Nigeria, 1970–2015

Figure 2.4. Period total fertility rates and cohort total fertility rates at age 40 in Sweden

Figure 2.5. Cohort and period total fertility rates, Russian Federation, 1985–2013

Figure 3.1. ‘Broken limits to life expectancy’

Figure 3.2. Past projections of female life expectancy at birth, total fertility rates and actual figures, UK, 1980–2030

Figure 3.3. Past projections of total fertility rate in Austria

Figure 3.4. Singapore projections of births versus reality

Figure 3.5. Alternative UK population projections to 2039

Figure 3.6. Population pyramid with education, Somalia

Figure 3.7. Alternative futures for Somalia, males and females aged 20–29, 2050

Figure 4.1. Nigel Farage, then leader of the UK Independence Party, and the launch of his ‘Breaking Point’ campaign poster in June 2016 in the run-up to the UK’s referendum on membership of the European Union

Figure 4.2. The world reshaped according to the 1 million malaria deaths recorded in the year 2000

Figure 4.3. The world reshaped according to the 133 million births recorded in the year 2000

Figure 4.4. Distribution of humans alive in the world in the last 2000 years

Figure 4.5. World annual population growth, 1821–2015

Figure 4.6. How changes in fertility rates might impact on future population growth

Figure 4.7. Population growth by more or less developed countries (in billions)

Figure 4.8. Total fertility by continent, 1950–2100

Figure 5.1. Number of countries with total fertility rate below 1.30, 1990–2008

Figure 5.2. Recent trends in period total fertility rates in Europe and other selected low fertility countries

Figure 5.3. Cohort fertility rates (and forecasts): thirty-seven countries divided into six groups

Figure 5.4. Mean social-ideal, intended and actual family sizes by gender and age, EU-27, 2011

Figure 5.5. Mean intended number of children, and mean personal-ideal number of children, males and females, Greece, 2006–11

Figure 5.6. Variations in the number of paid and unpaid hours spent working a day, India, Japan and the UK, 2015

Figure 6.1. Population pyramids of ‘young’ populations: Iran, Yemen and Uganda

Figure 6.2. Population pyramid of some older populations: France, UK, Singapore

Figure 6.3. Alternative population pyramids for Taiwan by variant of fertility

Figure 6.4. Illustrative effect of adding internal migrants to Beijing’s population

Figure 6.5. Population pyramids for the Republic of Korea: the coming and passing of the demographic dividend

Figure 6.6. Population size over age 65 (indexed, 1950 = 1), sample of countries

Figure 6.7. Old age dependency ratios in a sample of countries

Figure 6.8. Age where remaining life expectancy is fifteen years, 2010–65 projections; twenty countries

Figure 7.1. The growth of the city of Oxford, 1750–2021, population and physical extent

Figure 7.2. Recent trends and the ‘medium variant’ assumptions for fertility in selected emerging markets

Figure 7.3. Relative size of total population aged 25–45 to 2065–70 according to medium and low variant of fertility, selected emerging markets, indexed to 2015–20

Figure 7.4. Acceleration and deceleration of global population, 1950–2050, UN estimates made in 2011 and 2015

Figure 7.5. UN-predicted annual change in global population projections, 1950–2090, UN estimates made in 2011 and 2015

Figure 7.6. Alternative predictions of change in change, 1950–2100, based on UN estimates made in 2011 and 2015

Figure 7.7. UN-predicted annual change in global population projections, 1950–2100, UN estimates made in 2011 and 2015

Figure 7.8. The population of the world by human development, 1990–2014 (billions)

Figure 8.1. Basic biology

Figure 8.2. Infant mortality rates versus income inequality in affluent countries

Figure 8.3. The geography of the UK 2016 referendum vote

Figure 8.4. Trends in self-reported health used by ONS in annual well-being reporting, 2009–13

Figure 8.5. Ability in mathematics as measured in the most affluent countries of the world in 2012, at ages 15 and then 16–24

Figure 8.6. Areas of the world drawn in proportion to natural population decline in the year 2002

Figure 8.7. Annual births and net emigration, England and Wales, 1840–2000

Figure 8.8. Annual births and net cohort emigration, England and Wales, 1840–2000

Figure 8.9. Births in, by net-cohort-emigration from, England and Wales, 1840–1975

Figure 8.10. Annual births and net emigration, Sweden, 1800–2000

Figure 8.11. Annual births and net cohort emigration, Sweden, 1800–2000

Figure 8.12. Annual births versus net cohort emigration, Sweden, 1800–1975

Figure 9.1. Change in age-specific mortality rates in the UK, 2014 to 2015

Figure 9.2. The strange and unknown unreal world that so many fear

Figure 9.3. People at a 2015 country fair in the UK, worrying about migration

Figure 9.4. The regional geography of foreigners in Europe in 2014 (% population)

Figure 9.5. The spoils of empire – extent of the British Empire in 1897

Figure 9.6. One boy, a migrant, on an island in the Mediterranean in 2016

Tables

Table 4.1. The largest cities in the world, 1950, 2015, 2030

Table 4.2. World population, year 1–2011 (in billions)

Table 4.3. Changes in overall population share (%) by region

Table 6.1. Comparing the old age dependency ratio with the projected old age dependency ratio, selected European Countries and emerging markets

Table 8.1. World population summary, 1500–1820

Table 8.2. Countries with the lowest and highest early neonatal mortality in the world in the year 2000

Table 9.1 Comparing total fertility rates with ideal family size (number of children) for young people

The right of Danny Dorling and Stuart Gietel-Basten to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2018 by Polity Press

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-9844-1

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dorling, Daniel, author. | Gietel-Basten, Stuart, author.
Title: Why demography matters / Danny Dorling, Stuart Gietel-Basten. Description: Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017019477 (print) | LCCN 2017035266 (ebook) | ISBN 9780745698434 (Mobi) | ISBN 9780745698441 (Epub) | ISBN 9780745698403 (hardback) | ISBN 9780745698410 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Demography.
Classification: LCC HB871 (ebook) | LCC HB871 .D67 2017 (print) | DDC 304.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019477

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Jonathan Skerrett at Polity for all his encouragement to produce, revise and finish this book on time, and to two anonymous reviewers for many very useful comments on an earlier draft. Mark Fransham and David Dorling very kindly commented on the entire later manuscript, and Adam Keefe redrew all our diagrams to a common standard. Many thanks are also due to Clare Ansell and Rachel Moore at Polity, who worked on the production of this book so efficiently, and to Tim Clark, who proofread the book extremely diligently. All errors remain our responsibility. Demographers know that there are always errors.