Econ 115 :: The World Economy in the 20th Century :: Lecture 4 :: The Demographic Transition
The slides from the fourth lecture of my first post-big book excursion through the economic history of the 20th century; a very quick & inadequate take on the demographic transition…
2024-01-25 Th: The Demographic Transition
Readings:
Lee, Ronald. 2003. “The Demographic Transition: Three Centuries of Fundamental Change.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 17 (4): 167–190 <https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/089533003772034943>
Lecture Highlights:
Courtesy of Sub-Turing BradBot: This lecture discusses the demographic transition, the population explosion, and their magnitudes and impacts on both the pre-1870 and the post-1870 economy. The slowly arriving population explosion meant that, despite slow albeit accelerating technological advancements, humanity in 1870 was largely still living a life of drudgery and imprisonment. Post-1870, however, the population explosion, while significant, was insufficient to offset technological progress—leading to the relatively affluent world we have today.
This class’s required reading is from Ronald Lees of our demography and economics departments. His article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives on the demographic transition is very insightful. The Journal is known for being policy and society oriented, more so than typical economics journals, and for being well-written and accessible, a very unusual thing for an economics journal. The Journal’s concept initiated by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz. Iit has been a great success. I was lucky enough to have spent six years as an assistant editor on it.
The Journal of Economic Perspectives is an excellent starting point for understanding economics topics. It is particularly useful for sounding knowledgeable in class discussions in seminars, especially if you’re short on time to actually do all the reading..
Ron Lee champions the demographic transition as a truly significant change in human life, particularly for women.
In pre-modern societies, women generally held little social power. Consider the unfortunate six wives of Henry VIII. Consider a woman even as socially powerful as John Adams’s wife, Abigail Smith Adams. In a very privileged position for a woman, she still navigated through a world with very limited female social power and autonomy.
Since 1700 life expectancy has tripled. Total fertility rates have dropped by 2/3, from 6 to 2 children per potential mother. Together these make up the demographic transition. The rise in life expectancy came first. The decline in fertility rates came second. The result was a population explosion. Human populations:
grew from 50 million in the year -1000 to 500 million in 1500—tenfold in 100 generations, a growth rate of 2.3% per generation.
grew from 500 million in 1500 to 1.3 billion in 1870—2.5-fold in 15 generations, a growth rate of 6.4% per generation.
grew from 1.3 billion in 1870 to 8 billion in 2022—sixfold in 6 generations, a growth rate of 30% per generation.
Population growth peaked around 1975, worldwide, at 2% per year—65% per generation—before falling back almost as rapidly as it had grown. We are now approaching zero population growth, marking the end of both the demographic transition and the population explosion.
This demographic shift is a result of increased wealth, improved public health, greatly reduced infant mortality, greatly increased life expectancy, resulting reductions in the fear of winding up without surviving sons, plus additional and reinforcing cultural and sociological changes in societal attitudes toward family planning and women’s roles.