Documentary records of population
Demographics are far
easier to reconstruct from the historical records and a brief tutorial about
the history of the census can be found here
To give you a greater
understanding of how much our population demographics have changed in just the
last three hundred year, you should now examine the ‘Demographics’ pdf
containing the 1638-9 parish records for Upton Church, Nottinghamshire.
Complete the exercise and then return to the presentation and continue.
We in the developed world
have been relatively uninfluenced by these factors in recent times (although
remember back to the Upton Church records). Yet a glance at the fertility rates
of various countries shows that the rate is actually lowest among the
developed countries.
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=398496§ion=1.1
Of course, the situation
in the real world is a long way removed from this hypothetical ideal. Some
people have no offspring; others have one, or two, or several. The United
Nations suggests that, based on current trends, the world population will reach
between 10.4 billion and 14 billion before levelling off, and eventually
declining, due to famine and disease. To put this into a more understandable
context, 10 billion people are twice the number who were alive in 1987.
What factors affect the
death rate of a population? Broadly speaking, the main factors are the biblical
favourites: war, disease and famine. These were famously invoked by the 19th-century
demographer Thomas Malthus.
We in the developed world
have been relatively uninfluenced by these factors in recent times (although
remember back to the Upton Church records). Yet a glance at the fertility rates
of various countries shows that the rate is actually lowest among the
developed countries.