Undergraduate - Comparative Demographic Systems
Appropriate for Which Degrees:
- Optional Finals Course for PPE, E&M, H&E
Introduction
Convenor: Professor David Coleman
Department of Social Policy and Social Work
Candidates will be expected to show knowledge of controversies in demographic theory (Malthus and his critics, Easterlin, Caldwell, the New Home Economics school and others) and to illustrate their answers with varied and specific examples. The paper will contain essay questions and questions involving computation. Candidates will be required to answer three questions, two of the former and one of the latter.
- Demographic analysis and techniques: data sources, adequacy and remedies. Statistical analysis of fertility, mortality, and other demographic phenomena. The life table, stable population, and other models of population structure and growth. Population dynamics, projections and simulations.
- Limits to fertility and the lifespan. Contrasts between stable and transitional population systems in historical European and current non-European societies: the decline of mortality, fertility patterns in relation to systems of household formation, kin organization and risk environments, marital fertility decline and the current status of transition theory. Social, economic, and political consequences of rapid population growth at the national level and the local level. Demographic systems in post-transitional societies (modern Europe and other industrial areas): low fertility, trends in health and survival, and age structure change; their economic and social causes and consequences. New patterns of marriage and family, women in the workforce, labour migration and the demography of ethnic minorities, population policies.
Further Information
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