Chapter 3 Flashcards
demographers, experts who study population change, use at least 3 measures of ____ ______: (1) the number of older people in a population; (2) the median age of a population; (3) the proportion of older people in a population
population aging
half the population is older and half is younger than the median age
median age
comprise all of Europe and North America, plus Australia, Japan, and New Zealand
More developed regions:
developing regions and counties (China, India, Vietnam)
Less developed regions
consist of 49 countries with especially low incomes, high economic vulnerability, and poor human development indicators (Haiti, Bangladesh, Ethiopia)
Least developed regions
the number of births per 1,000 women in a population
birth rate
the average number of children that would be born alive to a woman during her lifetime if she were to pass through all her childbearing years conforming to the age-specific fertility rates of a given year
fertility rate
the number of deaths per 1,000 people in a population
death rate
the death rate of children less than one year old
Infant mortality rate
when a population changes from a high birth rate/high death rate condition to a low birth rate/death rate condition
Demographic transition
the sharp rise in the fertility rate in Canada from about 1946 to the early 1960s
baby boom
the sharp drop in the fertility rate from the mid-1960s on
baby bust
the number of births in a given age group per 1,000 women in that age group
age-specific birth rate
allows demographers to compare populations with different life expectancies; it also allows them to compare one society at different points in time as life expectancy increases; one measure uses a number of years of “remaining life expectancy” (RLF) as the start of old age
Prospective aging
Canada’s basic retirement income program, which supplements the income of nearly all of the country’s older people
Old age security
an income security program for the poorest older people
Guaranteed income supplement
an income security program for spouses of pensioners who receive only Old Age Security Income
allowance
the use of demographic facts (such as the aging of the population) to project the high cost of an aging population to predict that population aging will lead to economic and social crisis
Apocalyptic demography
the combined total number of people under age 19 and people aged 65 and over divided by the number of people aged 20 to 64
Overall dependency ratio (or rate)
a rate based solely on the number of people in each age group
Crude dependency rate
the number of people aged 65 and older divided by the population aged 20 to 64
Elderly dependency ratio
the number of people aged 0 to 19 years divided by the population aged 20 to 64
Youth dependency ratio
the assumption that population dynamics determine the future of social relations and social institutions (e.g., the amount of dependency of the old on the youth)
Demographic determinism
