Lecture Tim Dyson,iss,The Hague,The Netherlands,23 April 2009 part 4.mov — Transcript

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1. 0:00same period Nigeria's population was in
2. 0:03essentially the earliest stages of the
3. 0:05demographic transition and its
4. 0:08population increased from 37 million to
5. 0:12about 125 million however of course what
6. 0:17a demographer is interested in looking
7. 0:18at those diagrams is essentially the age
8. 0:24structure of the population and in this
9. 0:27context if you look at if you compare
10. 0:30the population of russia and the
11. 0:32population of Nigeria around the year
12. 0:342000 a very significant feature is
13. 0:37obvious that this is a very young age
14. 0:38distribution there are far more people
15. 0:41at the base of this pyramid the Nigerian
16. 0:43pyramid than are the base of the Russian
17. 0:45period pyramid even though there are
18. 0:47more people in Russia than in Nigeria
19. 0:50moreover although the decade following
20. 0:53the collapse of communism led to
21. 0:56particularly low levels of fertility in
22. 0:58Russia as you can see here even if it
23. 1:02had not there would still have been more
24. 1:04people at the base of this pyramid than
25. 1:07at the base of that pyramid so if we now
26. 1:10take these were only produced a month or
27. 1:13two ago if we now take the UN's
28. 1:15projections of these two populations out
29. 1:17to the middle of this century a period
30. 1:19of only 40 years gordana there that's
31. 1:23what we've got and you see the effects
32. 1:25of momentum um with very low fertility
33. 1:33the UN projects that russia's population
34. 1:36will fall to about a hundred and sixteen
35. 1:39million by 2050 now I should say that
36. 1:43those UN projections assume a rise in
37. 1:45Russian fertility a rise in Russian
38. 1:48fertility I would say I hope it occurs
39. 1:51fingers crossed the population of
40. 1:55Nigeria is projected to rise to about
41. 1:58289 million now population projections
42. 2:04should always be approached with caution
43. 2:06but the broad the broad relative picture
44. 2:10shown there
45. 2:11is probably inevitable okay so having
46. 2:17talked about some aspects of the
47. 2:19transition I now want to talk about the
48. 2:21effects of the transition now in many
49. 2:26respects the demographic transition has
50. 2:28been a very good thing and I can't
51. 2:30possibly go through all of the reasons
52. 2:31why but people live much longer and life
53. 2:36is much more assured very much more
54. 2:39assured and this means amongst other
55. 2:42things that it's possible for
56. 2:43populations to increasingly plan ahead
57. 2:46consider the future it makes sense for
58. 2:50them to save it makes great a sense for
59. 2:53them to save and invest not only in
60. 2:57terms of economic resources but also in
61. 3:00terms of aspects of life like education
62. 3:04with justification simon kuznets argued
63. 3:09that the phenomenon of modern economic
64. 3:11growth could never have really arisen
65. 3:14and been sustained in the absence of
66. 3:16mortality decline which obviously makes
67. 3:19it possible for us think of the future
68. 3:21and act with reasonable surety about
69. 3:24what's likely to happen very very
70. 3:26important also go Donna
71. 3:43the movement of populations from low to
72. 3:46high levels of urbanization is
73. 3:50essentially a result of the demographic
74. 3:52transition as amongst other things
75. 3:57antifreeze and other scholars have shown
76. 4:01and I need hardly tell you that
77. 4:04urbanization is essentially a global
78. 4:06trend it's occurring in every country
79. 4:08essentially in pre transitional
80. 4:13circumstances death rates varied
81. 4:16directly with population density this is
82. 4:19an absolutely crucial point or to put
83. 4:22that another way towns tended to be
84. 4:25virtual death traps in that respect I
85. 4:30wouldn't like to have lived here 250
86. 4:32years ago or in London for that matter
87. 4:37therefore there was a ceiling there was
88. 4:40a limit on how urban any society could
89. 4:44become and of course again in this
90. 4:47context the Netherlands is particularly
91. 4:49important if we go back to 1750 then the
92. 4:53level of urbanization in this country
93. 4:55was probably the highest in the world it
94. 4:58was about thirty percent more or less
95. 4:59but it couldn't get any higher unless
96. 5:03there was fundamental demographic change
97. 5:06the attainment of higher levels of
98. 5:09urbanization requires the lifting of the
99. 5:12ceiling and this only occurs as a result
100. 5:16of mortality decline particularly in the
101. 5:19urban sector consequently urban natural
102. 5:24increase and urbanization become
103. 5:27possible really for the first time in
104. 5:29history now this is an extremely
105. 5:33difficult argument to illustrate using
106. 5:37time series but yeah as often is the
107. 5:40case Sweden provides us with the data so
108. 5:46these are Swedish data and I'm it's a
109. 5:48complicated graph so I'm just going to
110. 5:50highlight the main points about it now
111. 5:52about what I want to emphasize is that
112. 5:55the world is urbanizing
113. 5:56but it wouldn't be urbanizing if the
114. 5:58demographic transition weren't occurring
115. 6:01now the bottom line here is the
116. 6:04difference between the birth rate and
117. 6:06the death rate in Sweden stalin's it's
118. 6:09the urban natural increase and what you
119. 6:12should be able to see is that until I
120. 6:14think it's about 1850 I've my glasses
121. 6:16are not that good it's negative in other
122. 6:19words in the urban sector the birth rate
123. 6:21was there sorry the death rate was much
124. 6:23higher than the birth rate so there
125. 6:26wouldn't have been any sweet Swedish
126. 6:27towns were it not for a continual
127. 6:29movement of people out of rural areas oh
128. 6:33sorry if you could go back yep oh yeah
129. 6:38now that is the natural increase in
130. 6:41Sweden's rural areas and there was
131. 6:44positive natural increase in the rural
132. 6:48areas of Sweden in the villages now one
133. 6:51other point i'll show you about this is
134. 6:53the crucial importance of the death rate
135. 6:56this is the thick line here this is the
136. 6:59death rate in the urban areas of Sweden
137. 7:03see how incredibly high it was in all of
138. 7:07this period incredibly high and in fact
139. 7:09it was only at the beginning of the 20th
140. 7:11century that the death rate in Sweden's
141. 7:14towns became lower than the death rate
142. 7:19in rural Sweden they're about there so
143. 7:22for all of that period the death rate in
144. 7:24the urban sector was incredibly high ok
145. 7:30so these data for Sweden provide a good
146. 7:33and extremely rare illustration of this
147. 7:36process you would not have urban ization
148. 7:38without the demographic transition okay
149. 7:42next one now this is a bit of me I have
150. 7:47argued in a paper which is on this sheet
151. 7:49that you have that the movement of
152. 7:52societies from autocratic systems of
153. 7:55government to democratic systems of
154. 7:57government essentially what we refer to
155. 8:00as the process of democratization is
156. 8:03ultimately heavily informed by the
157. 8:07demographic transition
158. 8:10thus in pre transitional circumstances
159. 8:14take any pre transitional society in the
160. 8:16world what you're dealing with is a
161. 8:19population that is overwhelmingly rural
162. 8:21and is spread around the place it's
163. 8:24diffusely distributed moreover a pre
164. 8:28transitional society has a very high
165. 8:30proportion of its population as children
166. 8:33and I believe that in those sorts of
167. 8:36circumstances it's relatively easy for
168. 8:38autocratic systems of government to
169. 8:41prevail but as the demographic
170. 8:45transition proceeds it does three things
171. 8:50which are very important in the context
172. 8:52I think of the emergence of modern
173. 8:55democratic systems