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MCAT
Course: MCAT > Unit 13
Lesson 2: Demographics- Demographic characteristics and processes
- Demographic structure of society - age
- Demographic structure of society - race and ethnicity
- Demographic structure of society - immigration
- Demographic structure of society - sex, gender, and sexual orientation
- Demographic structure of society overview
- Urbanization
- What is urban growth?
- Population dynamics
- Demographic transition
- Globalization theories
- Globalization- trade and transnational corporations
- Social movements
- Overview of demographics
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Overview of demographics
Created by Sydney Brown.
Want to join the conversation?
- At, what does "#OK" represent on the Y-axis? She only mentioned 5 stages (which is the x-axis) and I don't know what the y-axis is. Is it "population" or is it "old people population" and why is it named #OK? 4:37(3 votes)
- It's actually # of people (population) on the Y axis, and it was a picture of a stick figure person, not OK.(17 votes)
- The correction atdoesn't make sense to me. The speaker is not Sal, and the "Demographic transition" video said the first stage is a high stationary population pyramid because both the birth and death rates are high so the overall population stays about the same. Why would the first stage be an expansive population pyramid if the overall population is not increasing? 4:46(3 votes)
- The speaker seems to have gotten fixed, but the expansive verses stationary population pyramid hasn't changed. I agree that it should be stationary as population pyramid doesn't expand until stage 2. Can we either remove the correction or lengthen the correction to expound why it's an expansive population pyramid and not a stationary population pyramid?(2 votes)
- "This was during the time of nautism, fascism and solonism which harmed millions of lives." What is nautism and solonism?(1 vote)
- What does solonism mean ??(1 vote)
- The growth rate equation from this video is different from the growth rate equation from the "Demographic transition" video.
The growth rate equation from the "Demographic transition" video was: growth rate = (current - initial) / initial x 100
The growth rate equation in this video is: growth rate = # initial + births + immigrants - emigrants - deaths = # now(0 votes)- Population growth rate = (current - initial) / initial x 100 is the percent change (% increase or decrease)
Total current population (# of people) = # initial + births + immigrants - emigrants - deaths(3 votes)
- What is nautism and solonism? A quick google search does not even recognize nautism as a word..Neither of these two words were mentioned in the previous videos.
I'm guessing she meant to say (or did say and the CCs are wrong): Natzism and Stalinism(0 votes) - if trans national corporations help their national middle class grow by hiring in-country and increasing wages with production and profits then everyone wins instead of only shareholders and the executives, who agrees?(0 votes)
- You're talking about an ideal Isolationist Capitalist society. Nothing is ideal, we are too global, and the problem here is that you are assuming that there are not better opportunities overseas for hiring and investment even when considering long term production/profit and/or customer satisfaction.(3 votes)
Video transcript
Voiceover: We've spent plenty of time learning about urbanization,
population dynamics, demographic transition, globalization and social movements. Now that we've had a nice
detailed look into demographics let's take a quick moment to review all the topics. To start off we have urbanization. Urbanization is the movement of people from rural areas like farms to urban areas like cities. From a functionalism perspective, cities are both good
and bad for our society. They are centers of culture and diversity but also of crime. From a conflict theory perspective, cities are sources of inequality where the elite use
resources from the poor to enrich their own lives, and the cultural diversity leads to more conflict between
different beliefs and values. Symbolic interaction you see
cities as hubs for culture with strong norms and values. People move to urban areas
for a number of reasons. Jobs, better utilities, easier access to hospitals and schools. As more and more people move
to cities and metropolises it really begins to affect
the people who live there. In order to make friends
and form connections people must seek out
small communities to join. For some people though those small communities aren't enough. They need to get away from the fast pace and often stressful [havoc] but still want something more than what a rural environment
would have to offer, so they moved to the
outskirts of the city. This creates the suburbs that extend from the urban areas. Here, people can form
communities with their neighbors while maintaining their
own individual oasis. Then beyond suburbs are the exurbs which are often very prosperous. The drive into the city for work can be rather tiresome though so some suburbs create
their own economic centers. Some people rebuild
areas of the city itself in what is called urban renewal which can lead to gentrification where the former residents are forced out because they can no longer
afford the property. Then there's rural rebound. When some people desire to get away from urban areas altogether and choose to move back to rural areas. All right, so the main
gist of urbanization is people moving to the city. Next on the list is population dynamics which looks at how population grows or shrinks over time. This includes fertility,
migration and mortality rates. We usually look at about a year's worth of population change
so we can catch trends though you can of course look at a population change
over any period of time. Fertility measures the rate at which people are born in a population. Burst increase the population. Migration consists of two factors. Immigration where people
move into a country to permanently make it their home which adds to the total population and emigration where people
move out of the country to make somewhere else
their permanent home which decreases the population. Last is mortality which measures the rate at which people are dying in a population. In case you were wondering, deaths decrease the population. People migrate for a number of reasons. Some people are seeking refuge, others are seeking work, others still just want to
live in a different country. When looking at the
population of a country it is interesting to look
at the population pyramid which divides up how many people of different ages and genders there are. Expansive pyramids means there are lots of deaths
and lots of births. The population has a bunch of young people and not so many old people. A stationary pyramid usually means birth rates and death rates are low. You have lots of everybody. A constrictive pyramid also means low birth and death rates, but there are fewer young people than old. Usually you see this constrictive pyramid in very developed countries. If you want to see how the population of a country changes also
known as the growth rate, you take the initial population plus the number of births, plus the number of immigrants, minus the number of emigrants, minus the number of deaths, and you get the new population. If this number is bigger
than the initial population, obviously, the population grew so the growth rate is positive. If this number is smaller
than the initial population the population has shrunk and the growth rate is negative. Right now most countries are growing though a few like Bulgaria and Czech Republic are shrinking. This equation here wraps up
population dynamics nicely. Fertility and immigration
increase a population. Death and emigration
decrease the population and right now most populations just keep getting bigger. This leads nicely into the concept of demographic transition. Demographic transition is the model of the changes in the
country's population. At some time in the not so distant future, the high birth rates and
high death rates of the past will transition to low birth
rates and low death rates. There are five stages to
demographic transition. One, there are high birth
rates and high death rates with a stable population, modeled by a high stationary
population pyramid. Two, death rates begin to decline because of better
sanitation and food supply and the population of
older people increases. Modeled by an early
expanding population pyramid. Three, birth rates also begin to decline because of access to contraception and changing social values, and the population stops
growing quite as fast which is modeled by a late
expanding population pyramid. Four, the birth rates and
death rates balance out so the population stabilizes, but there are a lot of people because the population has been growing up until this point, which is modeled by a
low stationary pyramid. Stage five is only speculative right now. The population could remain stable or increase or decrease which would be modeled by a constrictive population pyramid, and it all depends on the
external and internal pressures of the individual society and the world. Here is as simple as it gets. Demographic transition models
the changing population of a country or the world. Now that we're looking at the world let's check out globalization. Globalization is the sharing of ideas, cultures, services and products across national borders due to the interdependence
of different countries, the progress of technology and advancements to
communication technology. People migrating to different countries or working in different countries bring their native customs with them. There are many theories of globalization. World systems theory states that the world
is a single social unit divided into three regions. Core countries which are industrialized and relatively independent
of outside control. Periphery countries which
are greatly influenced by coronations and
transnational corporations, and depend on one type
of economic activity. And semi-periphery countries which are the middle ground
between core and periphery consisting of either
declining core countries or rising periphery countries. Then you have modernization theory which states that every country follows a similar path in development from traditional to modern, and that today's third world countries can reach the same state of development of today's first world countries with help over time. Dependency theory which is a reaction to modernization theory states that the third world countries have their own unique structures and are poor and will remain so because of their unfavorable
economic position in the world economy. Other theories look at
culture or social networking or economy or politics or goods. There are different perspectives
of globalization as well. Hyperglobalist believe
that individual countries will become less important as countries become interdependent and the global society takes presence. Skeptics believe that countries
are still very important and rather than becoming globalized the world is become regionalized, which you can see exemplified by transnational corporations. Despite their role on the global economy they are still tied to their home country. Finally, transformationalist
take a middle ground and simply state that the importance of national governments is changing, as is the design of the world order. Though they're unspecific as to what it all is changing into. I've used the term
transnational corporations a few times already so, let's take a look at what that means. Many corporations have grown to the point that they are looking
across national borders for cheaper materials and labor. Some of these transnational corporations make more money in a year than entire countries do. Isn't that crazy? All of these means that countries are no longer
solely self-dependent. They look to other countries for some of their necessities. Sometimes the effects
of globalization are bad like the negative effects
due to countries competing to provide cheapest labor to
transnational corporations, but there are also
benefits to globalization. All these interdependence causes foreign nations
to become interconnected. Today, globalization is facilitated by the ease of communication
and transportation of ideas, money and
people across the world. It affects the cultures
as well as the economies of every country with foreign ties. In short, globalization
is the sharing of ideas, products and cultures
across national borders that change those nation's
economies and cultures. Last but not the least, we have social movements. Activist social movements seek to change something about society while regressive or
reactionary social movements resist social change. When we think of social movements we can think of the
environmental movement. This is a good example. A group of people with a shared idea who have the resources and leadership to organize members to
achieve a shared goal. Social movements either encourage change in their society or they resist change. Either way they will have
an impact on their society and forever leave it altered. In the early 20th century social movements were seen as negative calls for attention by people seeking meaning in their lives. This was during the time of nautism, fascism and solonism which harmed millions of lives. Today though, social
movements are observed to be an instrumental part of the evolution of a society. According to relative deprivation theory, people who perceive some sort of deprivation or inequality will band together to try
and change that in society. But according to resource
mobilization theory they must have the resources
to fund the movement, to publicize it, to recruit members, to make an impact. Rational choice theory states that the patterns
of behavior in society depend on the choices of people who weigh different actions and choose the one that
benefits them the most. Social movements can
cause widespread effects by creating panics where people are unreasonably
fearful and act hastily or crazist where something
is incredible popular for a short period of time. In the end, social movements
only have two options. They either fail and fade away or they succeed and become integrated into this society becoming the new norm. To wrap it up, social movements are groups of people with a shared idea, a strong leadership and the resource to make
an impact on society. There we have it. The bird's eye view of demographics.