Demographic Theory Research Articles

Planning for the Realization of the Demographic Dividend and Leveraging Iran's Demographic Dividend Window in the Health Sector

Background: Iran's economy is among those experiencing a "demographic dividend window," a period extending to the next two decades (2040). Capitalizing on this golden opportunity plays a crucial role in the country's economic and social development. This study aims to identify strategies and solutions, and propose implementable health sector programs to realize this demographic dividend. Methods: This qualitative study employed structured interviews with 11 health experts, purposively sampled in 2021. Following a presentation of demographic theory, experts were asked to explain strategies and solutions for achieving demographic dividend in the health sector. Interview content was analyzed using axial coding with MaxQDA 2018 software. Results: Based on research conducted in the field of health policy, including expert interviews and a review of World Health Organization documents, 4 key areas for achieving demographic dividend in health are: "reducing premature mortality," "reducing disability caused by diseases and accidents," "increasing the quantity and quality of births," and "improving the quality of life for the elderly." Target setting and monitoring for achieving the demographic dividend are facilitated by 11 indicators across the following areas: monitoring of leading causes of death (2 indicators), reproductive and maternal health (2 indicators), health financing (3 indicators), public health and sanitation (2 indicators), and access to healthcare (2 indicators). Conclusion: Achieving and sustaining demographic dividend gains requires developing a preventive system based on policies for "active disease detection and monitoring of risk factors," "population-based nutritional policies," and "health education and health promotion." Simultaneously, it necessitates strengthening health system infrastructure, including "transforming the role and status of health insurance," "improving equity in access to health services," "reforming health financing structures," and "developing health services based on demographic needs."

Why right-wing governments restrict market competition: a demographic theory

Abstract Recent scholarship on the evolution of neoliberalism points out that, despite free market discourse, right-wing rule has often resulted in re-regulation and further market concentration, to the advantage of large corporations. This article argues that such an outcome is not an inevitable result of right-wing incumbency. Instead, I identify an exogenous, demographic, change that prompts right-wing governments to increasingly embrace market concentration: the aging of the workforce, which has intensified the substitution of capital for labor, and as a result, somewhat paradoxically, reduced the amount of pure profits that can be distributed to wealthy households. In response, right-wing governments restrict competition to shore up pure profits. Drawing on data from 14 to 20 OECD countries, I show that as workforce aging intensifies, right partisanship becomes increasingly associated with more regulatory restrictions on competition, greater market concentration, and a greater pure profit share of income.

The Potential Impact of Demographic Changes in Geopolitical Landscape

In an era marked by swift demographic changes, the population of a country emerges as a crucial source of power and progress, shaping the future geopolitical landscape. This paper explores the dynamic interplay between evolving demographic elements and their intricate relationship with geopolitics. Through a synthesis of compelling cases and data-driven analysis, the paper provides fresh perspectives on the geopolitical ramifications of demographic transitions. The research incorporates a literature review, establishing the significance of population as a determinant of national power, offering a comprehensive overview of global demographic changes, and presenting an empirical analysis that underscores the role of demographic shifts as catalysts for geopolitical consequences. The study, grounded in political demography theory, integrates demographic aspects with geopolitical implications. Employing qualitative analysis, the research utilizes both numerical and non-numerical data from secondary sources to establish connections among variables. Overall, the discussion underscores that demographic shifts, ranging from declining population growth in certain nations to youth bulges in others, will exert profound impacts on the worldwide geopolitical landscape. It emphasises the necessity for nations to proactively address demographic challenges, through strategic policies that prioritize workforce development, social welfare, and international alliances. This proactive approach is deemed essential for ensuring sustained economic and military capabilities amidst the evolving geopolitical scenario.

Analytical Overview of the Established Demographic Theories of Fertility: Agenda for Further Advancement

Abstract: The demographic theory of fertility has interested prominent scholars for more than a century. Most recently and notably, Greenhalgh (1994), Van de Kaa (1995), de Bruijn (2006) and Leridon (2015) have dedicated their works to the analysis of the established demographic theories. They have provided a typology and analysis of demographic theories of fertility and illuminated many components of the latter, including the logic of theories’ development and evolution, their multidisciplinary nature and their “anchors” in the existing body of knowledge in their respective broader fields. Still, scholars acknowledge … “we still have no universally accepted explanation for why the Western post-war baby boom occurred, and why it ended. Nor do we have any clear idea of how fertility will evolve in countries where it is currently below replacement level. Homo demographicus is yet to be born…” (Leridon, 2015). The proposed agenda for advancing demographic theories include linking them to their predecessors in social sciences, analyzing them from the theory construction standpoint, providing distinctions between several branches of each of these theories, and outlining a strategy for the integration of compatible parts of these theories.

Trusting and Working with Robots: A Relational Demography Theory of Preference for Robotic over Human Co-Workers

Organizations are facing the new challenge of integrating humans and robots into one cohesive workforce. Relational demography theory (RDT) explains the impact of dissimilarities on when and why humans trust and prefer to work with others. This paper proposes that RDT would be a useful lens to help organizations understand how to integrate humans and robots into a cohesive workforce. We proposed a research model based on RDT and examined dissimilarities in gender and co-worker type (human vs. robot) along with dissimilarities in work style and personality. To empirically examine the research model, two experiments were conducted with 347 and 422 warehouse workers. Results show that the negative impacts of gender, work style, and personality dissimilarities on swift trust depended on the co-worker type. Gender dissimilarity had a stronger negative impact on swift trust in a robot co-worker, while work style and personality had a weaker negative impact on swift trust in a robot co-worker. Also, swift trust in a robot co-worker increased the preference for a robot co-worker over a human co-worker, while swift trust in a human co-worker decreased such preferences. Overall, this research contributes to our current understanding of human–robot collaboration by identifying the importance of dissimilarity from the perspective of RDT.

SOLVING THE UKRAINIAN DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER: A POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVE

This paper explores the demographic crisis in Ukraine through the innovative lens of postmodern theory. Departing from traditional approaches, the authors argue that solving the country's pressing issues of low birth rates and high mortality, especially among the elderly, requires a comprehensive, interdisciplinary strategy grounded in postmodern principles. The analysis first situates Ukraine's demographic woes within the broader global context of climate change, socioeconomic inequality, mass migration, and technological disruption - factors that heighten the complexity of the challenge. It then delves into the specific demographic data, examining not only the statistical trends, but also the sociocultural shifts impacting family formation and reproductive behaviors. Drawing on postmodern concepts of complexity, diversity, anti-universalism, and emphasis on inclusion, the paper proposes a multi-faceted set of solutions. These range from promoting individual expression and creativity, to developing targeted policies supporting young families, revamping migration frameworks, combating discrimination, and even exploring the potential of reproductive technologies. Importantly, the authors frame these interventions within the context of a new national idea centered on preserving and strengthening Ukrainian identity. Ultimately, this study represents a bold, unconventional approach to the demographic crisis, challenging conventional demographic theories and offering a fresh, contextual perspective rooted in postmodern thought. Its findings hold significant implications for policymakers, academics, and civil society stakeholders seeking innovative pathways to address Ukraine's pressing demographic challenges.

Squeezed from the top: "Social Outburst" (2019) and elite overproduction. A study of the dynamics of Chilean political instability from the approach of Structural Demographic Theory.

On October 18, 2019, Chile experienced the most important social upheaval since the country regained democracy in the late 1980s. The "Social Outbreak" surprised economic and political elites and seemed paradoxical to the international community who had often praised Chile as a model of successful development. In this paper, we used structural-demographic theory to analyze the interaction between the overproduction of elites and the stagnation in the relative income of the population as the underlying structural cause of Chilean political instability. This theory was able to predict the three most significant instances of political tension in the recent history of Chile: the crisis of the late 1960s that culminated in the coup d'état of 1973, popular mobilizations during the 1980s, and the recent student mobilizations and social upheaval. Our results suggest that, at least during the period 1938-2019, Chilean sociopolitical dynamics is determined by the same structural drivers.

The structural-demographic theory revisited: An empirical test for industrialized societies.

The structural demographic theory for industrialized societies generates three testable predictions. The first prediction is that labor oversupply leads to declining (relative) wages. The second prediction is that labor oversupply leads to elite overproduction: as relative wages fall, elite incomes display a hump-shaped pattern while elite numbers increase. The third prediction is that elite overproduction leads to political instability. I test these predictions on US data by combining evidence from existing studies with empirical proxies for elite numbers and elite income. The predictions are not supported by the data. First, labor oversupply cannot explain the polarization of wages and the decline in relative wages. The largest share in wage variance is explained by automation. Second, the data shows that as relative wages fall, elite incomes increase, in contrast to the hump-shaped pattern displayed by the model. Third, elite overproduction did not predict political instability in the last decades. Political instability is modelled by the Political Stress Index (PSI). The reviewed evidence shows that the increase in the model based PSI in the last decades is driven by the increase in inequality. The rise in inequality was caused by technological change, globalisation and to a lesser extent by the erosion of labor market institutions. Attributing the rise in inequality and the resulting increase in political instability to labor oversupply rather than to the lost race between education and technology may weaken incentives to design effective policies addressing the inefficiencies in the US education system.

Structural-demographic analysis of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) collapse in China.

This paper analyzes the collapse of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) through the lens of the Structural Demographic Theory (SDT), a general framework for understanding the drivers of socio-political instability in state-level societies. Although a number of competing ideas for the collapse have been proposed, none provide a comprehensive explanation that incorporates the interaction of all the multiple drivers involved. We argue that the four-fold population explosion peaking in the 19th century, the growing competition for a stagnant number of elite positions, and increasing state fiscal stress combined to produce an increasingly disgruntled populace and elite, leading to significant internal rebellions. We find that while neither the ecological disasters nor the foreign incursions during the 19th century were sufficient on their own to bring down the Qing, when coupled with the rising internal socio-political stresses, they produced a rapid succession of triggering events that culminated in the Qing collapse.

Trusting and Working with Robots: A Relational Demography Theory of Preference for Robotic over Human Co-Workers

Trusting and Working with Robots: A Relational Demography Theory of Preference for Robotic over Human Co-Workers

The inception of demographic theory in Serbia

This text contains an account of the first work on theoretical demography in Serbia, which was written in 1862 by Kosta Cukic, a doctor of philosophy from Heidelberg and the first widely recognised Serbian economist. He dealt with this topic in the second volume of his State Economy textbook, the title of which was Economic Policy. Writing about population problems in economic textbooks was a common European practice at that time. Although he wrote for a textbook, his work was not a retelling of generally accepted theories, but a critical discussion of issues that had not been resolved in contemporary science. Therefore, his work can be considered original in the full sense of the word. In the theoretical sense, Cukic relied on Malthus, but also provided significantly different perspectives on many issues. He accepted Malthus?s position that the amount of food is a limiting factor in population growth and that natural fertility is very high due to people?s strong sexual drive. But there were also important differences: in Cukic?s theoretical framework, the iron law of wages does not apply, i.e. wages do not always strive for the existential minimum, as Malthus argued. Cukic also argues that capital affects fertility, since it affects the amount of available resources. Cukic was not a pessimist like Malthus, and instead observed a significant population growth in Europe at the time, without mass famine and pestilence. As we can see, Cukic dealt a lot with Malthus and his theory. This is understandable considering that Malthus was the preeminent theoretician whose work focused on the population problem in those decades, and therefore determination according to his theory and discussion with him was inevitable for anyone who intended to write about population problems. Cukic also dealt with population policy and those aspects of it that were available to the governments of the time: immigration, emigration, and marriage. The basis of his views was strong and consistent liberalism in every respect. Cukic advocated for expanding personal freedoms, such as free decision-making about marriage, and free immigration to the country and emigration from it. In some places he would set minimum technical conditions. ?Personal freedom... is the ideal of the political consciousness of the present time?. Accordingly, he claimed that ?citizens are not just means for governmental purposes?, but on the contrary, it is the government?s duty to ?facilitate and support the aspirations of citizens to particular and general happiness?, thus repeating John Locke?s idea that the state exists for the sake of citizens, and not citizens for the sake of the state. Cukic belonged to a wide circle of authors in the mid-19th century who fundamentally rejected Malthus?s theory: on the one hand, economists who claimed that technological progress and a deepened division of labour would lead to economic progress that would forever postpone the existential crisis that Malthus feared; and on the other, demographers who believed that workers would control their fertility to preserve living standards to a greater extent than Malthus thought possible. Towards the end of the 19th century, the decline of fertility in Western countries provided strong evidence in favour of the latter.

Population decline: Towards a rational, scientific research agenda

While the global population continues to rise, many regions are experiencing population decline due to low fertility, outmigration or, most often, a combination of the two trends – and many more are forecast to do so in the future. Economic and demographic theories have so far been unable to offer an unambiguous prediction regarding the consequences of population decline. The 2023 volume of the Vienna Yearbook, “The causes and consequences of depopulation”, provides a wide variety of perspectives on population decline, illustrating that it is a highly multifaceted issue, and that there are no simple theoretical or empirical applications for understanding its causes and consequences, or the potential responses to it. The Debate contributions provide a broader viewof and reflections on population decline, while also highlighting the benefits and opportunities associated with it, and ways to manage population changes globally. In contrast, the research articles tend to focus on the challenges of shrinking population that are experienced at a local level. This Introduction gives an overview of the contributions in this volume and the different perspectives they offer.

AN INVESTIGATIVE RESEARCH INTO THE EMPLOYABILITY OF HIJAB WEARING WOMEN IN KAZAKHSTAN

This article examines the employability of the hijab wearing women in Kazakhstan. The aim of this investigation is to analyze how hijab wearing and religious identity influence on women’s work prospects and the negotiation around her appearance as a symbol of culture and religion. Despite the plethora of research exploring the meanings and functions of hijab in society, very little research on discrimination towards hijabis in the workplace could be found. The importance of this topic is revealed by the fact that many Kazakh hijabis encounter difficulties finding a job in Kazakhstan owing to their appearance, despite the general understanding that work discrimination based on religion is unfair. The first section of the study is dedicated to the theoretical framework discussing the hijab and its relation to employment from relational demography theory of Ghumman and the concept of Hebl in identifying what kind of discrimination hijabis encounter. This will be complemented by a survey that examines the case of four Kazakh hijab-wearing women. The final section will interpret the findings, concluding that religious attire puts hijab wearing women into a dilemma between work and faith in Kazakhstan.

Person-environment fit: a luxury good for those who can afford it?

PurposeThe study integrates organizational demography theory into person-environment fit theories to question the assumption that all employees can afford to strive for person-environment fit. The ethnic/racial diversity in organizations is investigated as a boundary condition in order to develop implications to mitigate the challenges of employees with precarious jobs, especially persons of color (POCs), in the society.Design/methodology/approachPublicly accessible and objective data from organizations in the S&P 1500 index were collected through Compustat, ExecuComp, the Bloomberg Terminal and the websites of Fortune, the United States Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Labor. A path analysis of time-lagged data was performed to support causal relationships between the examined constructs while controlling for alternative explanations.FindingsUnsafe working conditions moderate the U-shaped relationship between ethnic/racial diversity and turnover and turn it into an inverted U-shaped relationship because employees in precarious jobs, especially POCs, cannot afford to leave unsafe working conditions. Organizations with unsafe working conditions are more likely to invest in sustainability initiatives. However, organizations' financial performance does not benefit from this investment.Originality/valueThe circumstance that not all employees can afford person-environment fit and its organizational outcomes are identified and empirically tested. Scholars can integrate this boundary condition in future research. Implications for practice and policy are also derived.

Application of protection motivation theory (PMT) on skin cancer preventive behaviors amongst primary school students in rural areas of Fasa city-Iran

BackgroundConsidering that exposure to sunlight in childhood and adolescence has an important role in skin cancer, so it seems that training protective behaviors in this period is more effective.ObjectivesTo survey the application of protection motivation theory (PMT) on skin cancer preventive behaviors among students in rural areas of Fasa city, Iran.MethodsThis study was done in two stages: Phase I of this study, the descriptive-analytic and cross-sectional study was conducted in 2018 to investigate the predictive value of the protection motivation theory on skin cancer preventive behaviors. In the second stage, a quasi-experimental interventional study was conducted on 400 primary school students in 2019. The educational intervention was performed in the experimental group for 8 sessions. Data were collected using a demographic information questionnaire and protection motivation theory before and six months after the intervention.ResultsThe constructs of protection motivation theory predicted 58.6% of skin cancer preventive behaviors. The results indicated that there was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of knowledge, perceived sensitivity, perceived severity, reward, fear, protection motivation, response efficacy, self-efficacy, response costs, and the skin cancer preventive behaviors in before the intervention (p > 0.05). However, six months after the intervention, the experimental group showed a significant increase in each of the mentioned constructs and skin cancer protective behaviors (p < 0.05).ConclusionThis study showed the effectiveness of the intervention based on the PMT constructs in adoption of skin cancer preventive behaviors in 6 months’ post intervention in primary school students.

Demographic Changes in the Cities of Lower Silesia in the Perspective of Sustainable Development

The article discusses and evaluates, against the background of selected issues in the theory of urban demography concerning sustainable development, changes in the number of inhabitants in Lower Silesian cities, and to indicate possible development paths for individual categories of cities. All Lower Silesian cities are the subject of the study. The research covered the period 2000-2020. The cities are categorised into small, medium, and large, and their specific characteristics are primarily related to their location. The article uses a descriptive method, simple statistical methods, comparative analysis, and an expert method. The latter proposed the division of cities into categories in terms of demographic changes and sustainable development paths for individual city categories. The results show that Lower Silesian cities (as a group) are ageing, regardless of their size, yet a detailed case study indicated a relatively large group of cities (mainly small) with a growing population and growth potential.

Early resources lead to persistent benefits for bumble bee colony dynamics.

Conditions experienced early in development can affect the future performance of individuals and populations. Demographic theories predict persistent population impacts of past resources, but few studies have experimentally tested such carry-over effects across generations or cohorts. We used bumble bees to test whether resource timing had persistent effects on within-colony dynamics over sequential cohorts of workers. We simulated a resource pulse for field colonies either early or late in their development and estimated colony growth rates during pulse- and non-pulse periods. During periods when resources were not supplemented, early-pulse colonies grew faster than late-pulse colonies; early-pulse colonies grew larger as a result. These results revealed persistent effects of past resources on current growth and support the importance of transient dynamics in natural ecological systems. Early-pulse colonies also produced more queen offspring, highlighting the critical nature of resource timing for the population, as well as colony, dynamics of a key pollinator.

American Demographers and Global Population Policy in the Postwar World

The twentieth century saw unprecedented efforts to measure, analyze, and control the world's population. Particularly after World War II, population control and demography—the social science of human population dynamics—developed in tandem and largely through the impetus of U.S.-based philanthropies. This article explains how U.S. actors exercised power over population in sovereign nations throughout the Global South and how demographic theory came to shape population policy worldwide. It contends that U.S.-based philanthropies gained global traction for their population control projects by developing demography as an ally and then leveraging its scientific authority to put population control on the foreign policy agenda of the U.S. government and on the nation-building and economic development agendas of countries in the Global South.

Women's Experience of Child Death Over the Life Course: A Global Demographic Perspective.

The death of a child affects the well-being of parents and families worldwide, but little is known about the scale of this phenomenon. Using a novel methodology from formal demography applied to data from the 2019 Revision of the United Nations World Population Prospects, we provide the first global overview of parental bereavement, its magnitude, prevalence, and distribution over age for the 1950-2000 annual birth cohorts of women. We project that the global burden of parental bereavement will be 1.6 times lower for women born in 2000 than for women born in 1955. Accounting for compositional effects, we anticipate the largest improvements in regions of the Global South, where offspring mortality continues to be a common life event. This study quantifies an unprecedented shift in the timing of parental bereavement from reproductive to retirement ages. Women in the 1985 cohort and subsequent cohorts will be more likely to lose an adult child after age 65 than to lose a young child before age 50, reversing a long-standing global trend. "Child death" will increasingly come to mean the death of adult offspring. We project persisting regional inequalities in offspring mortality and in the availability of children in later life, a particular concern for parents dependent on support from their children after retirement. Nevertheless, our analyses suggest a progressive narrowing of the historical gap between the Global North and South in the near future. These developments have profound implications for demographic theory and highlight the need for policies to support bereaved older parents.

Demographics of the Modern World: Comments on Theories

The article is devoted to the consideration of the key causes and factors of changing trends in the demographic development of the countries of the North and South in the context of fundamental demographic theories. The mechanisms of adjustment of reproductive behavior and their impact on the dynamics of fertility in the regions of the world are analyzed. The features of the demographic transition in the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America are considered, as well as the author’s forecasts about the likely dynamics of the population in these regions are given. In sub-Saharan Africa, rapid population growth continues and will continue at least until the end of the century. If the trajectory of fertility in Africa repeats its decline in other regions of the world, then by the end of the century the average total fertility rate will fall to the level of simple reproduction there, and the population will grow from the current 1 billion to 2.1 billion people in the middle of the century and 3.8 billion people at the end of the century. The critical analysis of the first and second theories of demographic transition in the conditions of modern society and specific national characteristics of the countries of the world is carried out. The conclusion provides a theoretical and practical analysis of family and demographic policies, as well as their prospects in modern conditions.