Kunkel Global Aging

2,000 years ago the world, in terms of population, was only the size of the United States of America, 300 million people. Today, the world’s population is at seven billion and counting. If the population rose at a steady rate from year 0, we would’ve reached 1 billion people by about 210 A.D. This, however, was not the case. We reached 1 billion people in 1800 A.D, which means that there had to be very odd growth periods for the population as a whole REWORD ME. From 0 to 1000 A.D. the population only rose about 10 million people, “and well into the second millennium, [the population] grew less than 0.1 percent each year” [1]. However, from the year 1800, with 1 billion people worldwide, to 1930, the world gained another billion people. We then reached three billion people in 1960, five billion in 1987, and 7 billion in 2013. One can clearly see that once we entered the 19th century, the world’s population started growing like a 14 year old boy going through puberty; rapidly, and without any warning. One thing that can explain this growth is called the Demographic Transition.The Demographic Transition is a theory that explains the growth.

Global population; it’s what has been mystifying and engaging our human geographers for centuries. In fact, the various stages of the demographic transition have shown what the population is acting as now, and how it will change in the future. Starting right here in the United States, we are having a very successful time maintaining a small growth population. Our 1.83 child per woman ratio is slightly below the zero growth 2.03, but our population continues to grow because of our governmental decision to approve immigration into the country. Because of this vital decision, it allows our population to continually grow. Now, back to the demographic transition stages. The United States is currently in Stage 4 along with many other Developed European

Many things like high unemployment, different cultural traits and the spread of cities have created two totally different countries. The comparison between the two countries further the accuracy of the demographic transition model because it shows the different stages of development. For instance, South Africa has a high birth and death rate while the US has low birth rates and death rates showing that the US is more developed. We can see this by looking at the difference in things like unemployment rate and life expectancy. Overall the US is more developed than South Africa shown by the differences between things like population, culture and

How have the social and demographic changes of the last century led to the increased growth and aging of the population? Be sure to discuss this in terms of the demographic transition theory.

In Chapter 15: Aging and the Elderly, the U.S. birth rate has been falling for more than a century. It happens because children are more likely to survive into adulthood, and so couple have fewer children. As more women work outside the home, they choose to have fewer children. Greater material wealth and advances in medicine have raised living standards so that people benefit from better housing and more nutrition. The oldest segment of the U.S. population, is increasing rapidly and is already forty times greater than in 1900.

The demographic transition is a three-stage model of population growth in Europe. In the first stage there is a stable population because birth and death rates are both high. The second stage happens as mortality rates begin to slowly decline, but birth rates stay high. When this stage happens, there is fast population growth. During the third stage, the population is more stable as both birth and death rates are low and are more or less balanced. In more recent years, a fourth stage as been brought on by Anti-Malthusians. During this stage, population shrinkage occurs because the deaths begin to outnumber the births. Europe provides a great example to the theory of demographic transition. After speedy population growth of stage two, Europe settled at stage three with a stable population. It is currently in stage four with a shrinking population. In most European nations there are lesser births than deaths which could ultimately create other social problems.

During the cold war era the life expectancy grew by about 15 years, however in the 1980’s the world saw a decline in life expectancy especially in the USSR falling from 70 years down to 53 years old(C&C 1040). Along with this came an uncertainty for population growth in developed and underdeveloped countries. For example, in China Emperor Deng established a one child policy, in Iran and other Islam dominate countries governments were urging families to space out their conceptions(C&C 1041).

For the past two decades a shifting pattern of diseases and health care service has been observed globally as population increase. Epidemiological transition also known as demographic transition, is a model that is used to explain how population growth rates increase and decrease with respect to time and different factors that account into it such as infectious disease, chronic disease and industrialization. “Conceptually, the theory of epidemiologic transition focuses on the complex change in patterns of health and disease and on the interactions between these patterns and their demographic, economic and sociologic determinants and consequences” (Omran, 2005). This model describes the changing patterns of population distributions in four stages: Age of pestile and famine, age of declining pandemic, age of degenerative and man-made diseases, and postindustrial age.

Demographic transition is the process by which a nation/country moves from high birth rate and high death rates to low birth and low death rates as the growth population in the interim (Weeks, 2005). Some of the nations that have gone through this transitions are; Canada, Germany, United States and England. The demographic transition to an industrialized society is harmful to the environment. Industrialized countries also have the largest ecological and carbon footprint comparative to developing/non-industrialized nations. Nevertheless, demographic transitions have some notable advantages. Countries that have gone through demographic transitions have low birth and death rates. Citizens in

A demographic transition is the transition from a populace with high conception rates and passing rates to a populace that is steady, yet with a much lower level of conception and demise rates.

In the 1900's the U.S. population growth was increasing rapidly. The diagram shows that there was an age structure of much more younger aged people than older aged people which indicated the population would grow more quickly. In the 2000's the population age structure is becoming more populated with older ages.The population has some small differences between the older generations being slightly higher in numbers than the younger generations, so the growth rate is declining slightly. In 2050, it is projecting the age structure to be very evenly distributed between the older and younger generations which will stabilize the population growth rate to largely remain the same. It shows total populations of both the younger and older generations

Demography is the study of the components of population variation and change. Death rate and birth rate are two determinants of population change. Theory of Demographic Transition is comparatively recent theory that has been accepted by several scholars throughout the world. This theory embraces the observation that all countries in the world go through different stages in the growth of population. A nation's economy and level of development is directly related to that nation's birth and death rates. Population history can be divided into different stages. Some of the scholars have divided it into three and some scholars have divided it into five stages. These stages or classifications demonstrate a

From 1970 to the year 2000, the world's over-60 population is projected to increase by more than 90 percent" . This is an astonishing number, seeming how the total population was predicted to grow by less than 75 percent . "The most prominent feature of the looming shift in the composition of the working-age population is, of course, its increasing age" . It is hard to say what will happen when suddenly there will be an abundance of older people who are preparing to retire.

However, better healthcare and protection from government result in rising age expectancy, which is a double-edged sword as on one hand, people live longer as shown in report (Friedland and Summer, 2005, Fig 1-2) and on the other hand, the proportion of aging population increases if the younger generation are not reproducing enough, and this is exactly the trend now in developed nations. In the

Demography is a social science, but especially is a political science. One of its most common uses is to arouse fears, revealing a future disaster that can only be avoided if undertaken with urgency determined demographic policies. I mentioned here the Decline of the West Oswald Spengler, an outstanding example of how demography was used, a century ago, to predict the decline and implosion of all Western civilization by the falling birth rate, aging and outside threat. The article which I now is, instead, one of the best exponents of alarmism other extreme, radically opposed, that frightens us with excess growth.