SOCI201 Lecture 13: Population Lecture

• School: University of Delaware
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOCI201
• Professor: Best Joel

Document Summary

The bottom line: malthus may have been wrong, but we aren"t out of the woods. Was an 18th century clergyman argued that population grows faster than food production, so inevitably, would reach the point where population would outgrow resources. Moose come there by walking over ice. Wolves eat the moose, part of their diet. Cycles in population of wolves and moose; kind of a malthusian model. The causes of population change are easy to grasp: increase or decrease based on natural changes or net migration. Their labor was needed, (esp sons, b/c they could work in the fields), and they often died in infancy. Pre-transition: very high birthrates, very high death rates: if both are very high, population is going to stay roughly stable. Stage 2: birth rate stays high, but death rate declines=gap b/t birth and death rate: led to smaller families. Stage 3: so, after some time, birth rate starts to fall too, b/c smaller families.