DEMOGRAPHY Flashcards
Sarah Harper (Births, changing in woman’s position)-
There was a third baby boom in the 1960s, after which the birth rate fell sharply during the 1970s. The rate rose during the 1980s, before falling again after the early 1990s, with some increase in 2011. There were major changes in the position of woman during the 20th century. These include legal equality with men including the right to vote, increased educational opportunities like how girls now do better at school than boys, more woman in paid employment (plus laws outlawing unequal pay and sex discrimination), changes in attitudes to family life and woman’s role, easier access to divorce, and access to abortion and reliable contraception which gave woman more control over fertility. According to Harper, the education of woman is the most important reason for the long-term fall in birth and fertility rates. It has led to a change in mind-set among woman, resulting in fewer children. Not only are educated woman more likely to use family planning, they now see other possibilities in life appear from the traditional role of housewife and mothers. Many are choosing to delay childbearing , or not to have children at all, in order to pursue a career. For example, in 2012, one in five woman aged 45 was childless- double the number of 25 years earlier. 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.
Eval (Children are now an economic liability)-
- Until the late 19th century, children were economic assets to their parents because they could be sent out to work from an early age to earn an income.
- However, since the late 19th century children have gradually become an economic liability. Laws banning child labour, introducing compulsory schooling and raising the school leaving age mean that children remain economically dependant on their parents for longer and longer.
- There are also changing norms about what children have a right to expect from their parents in material terms mean that the cost of bringing up children has risen. * As a result of these financial pressures, parents now feel less able or willing than in the past to have a large family.
Thomas (Deaths, improved nutrition)-
- The death rate in the number of deaths per thousand of the population per year.
- In 1900, the death rate stood at 19, whereas by 2012 it had halved, to 8.9.
- The death rate has already begun falling from about 1870 and continued to do so until 1930.
- It rose slightly during the 1930s and 1940s, but since the 1950s it has declined slightly.
- McKeown argued that improved nutrition accounted for up to half the reduction in death rates, and was particularly important in reducing the number of deaths from TB.
- Better nutrition increased resistance to infection and increased the survival chances of those who did become infected.
Eval (Public health measures)
- In the 20th century, more effective central and local government with the necessary power to pass and enforce laws led to a range of improvements in public health and the quality of the environment.
- These included things like the Clean Air Acts, which reduced air pollution, such as the smog that led to 4,000 deaths in five days in 1952.
Stephan Hunt (Ageing population, postmodern society and old age)-
The average age of the UK population is rising. In 1971, it was 34.1 years. By 2013, it stood at 40.3. By 2037, it is projected to reach 42.8. There are fewer young people and more old people. The number aged 65 or over equalled the number of under-15s for the first time ever in 2014. Postmodern sociologists argue that in todays society, the fixed, orderly stages of the life course have broken down. For example, trends such as children dressing in adult styles, later marriage and early retirement all began to blur the boundaries between the life stages. This gives individuals a greater choice of lifestyle, whatever their age. Unlike in modern society, consumption, not production, becomes the key to our identities. We can now define ourselves by what we consume. As Hunt argues, this means we can choose a lifestyle and identity regardless of age: our age no longer determines who we are or how we live. As a result, the old become a market for a vast range of ‘body maintenance’ or ‘rejuvenation’ goods and services through which they can create their identities. These include cosmetic surgery, exercise equipment, gym memberships and anti-ageing products. These trends begin to break down the ageist stereotypes found in modern society. Two other features of postmodern society also undermine old age as a stigmatised life stage: the centrality of the media (media images now portray positive aspects of the lifestyle of the elderly), and the emphasis on surface features (the body becomes a surface on which we can write out identities, anti-ageing products enable the old to write different identities for themselves).
Eval (Jane Pilcher, inequality amongst the old)-
Argued that inequalities such as class (the middle class have better occupational pensions and greater savings from higher salaries, poorer old people have a shorter life expectancy and suffer more infirmity, making it more difficult to maintain a youthful self-identity), and gender (woman’s lower earnings and career breaks as carers mean lower pensions, they also subject to sexist as well as ageist stereotyping, for example being described as ‘old hags’), remain important.
Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild (Globalisation and Migration, the feminisation of migration)-
- In the past, most migrants were men.
- Today, however, almost half of all global migrants are female.
- This has been called the globalisation of the gender division of labour, where female migrants find that they are fitted into patriarchal stereotypes about woman’s roles as carers or providers of sexual services.
- Ehrenreich and Hochschild both observe that care work, domestic work and sex work in western countries like the UK and USA is increasingly done by woman from poor countries.
- This is a result of several trends: the expansion of service occupations (which traditionally employ woman) in western countries has led to an increasing demand for female labour, western woman have joined the labour force and are less willing or able to perform domestic labour, western men remain unwilling to perform domestic labour, and the failure of the state to provide adequate childcare.
- The resulting gap has been partly filled by woman from poor countries.
- There is also a global transfer of woman’s emotional labour.
- For example, migrant nannies provide care and affection for their employers’ children at the expense of their own children left behind in their country.
Eval (Steven Vertovec, differentiation)-
Not all migrant woman are forced into this gender division of labour. Amongst migrants, there’s this ‘super-diversity’, whereby migrants now come from a much wider range of countries. Even within a single ethnic group, individuals differ in terms of their legal status, or class etc.
