Question

Short answers:

1- What are the reasons for immigration – impacts on US population and society?

2- What is the role of industrialization in the demographic transition?

3- What is the Role of culture in demographic transition?

Answer 1

1.      In the late 1800s, people in many parts of the world decided to leave their homes and immigrate to the United States. Fleeing crop failure, land and job shortages, rising taxes, and famine, many came to the U. S. because it was perceived as the land of economic opportunity. Others came seeking personal freedom or relief from political and religious persecution. With hope for a brighter future, nearly 12 million immigrants arrived in the United States between 1870 and 1900. Once settled, immigrants looked for work. There were never enough jobs, and employers often took advantage of the immigrants. Men were generally paid less than other workers, and women less than men. Social tensions were also part of the immigrant experience. Often stereotyped and discriminated against, many immigrants suffered verbal and physical abuse because they were "different." While large-scale immigration created many social tensions, it also produced a new vitality in the cities and states in which the immigrants settled. Therefore, what this essentially led to was social tensions including ones arising from discrimination and voicing against the same. It also led to challenges in job seeking since too many people had now settled in.

2.      The death rate decreased dramatically due to industrialization, increased food production, improved health care and birth rates such that the population grew rapidly. Moreover government sponsored family planning was brought in, legal sanctions against illegitimate births were introduced along with other policy alterations. In the third stage of the demographic transition, the population becomes more stable and eventually begins to decline. This decline occurs through the reduction of birth rates, leading to a changed population structure in which there are fewer young people and more old people. However, before the population of old people rises, there is a period of economic opportunity and expansion as more individuals are of working age and fewer are either in childhood or old age.

1. Demography and culture have had a long but ambivalent relationship. Cultural influences are widely recognized as important for demographic outcomes, but are often “backgrounded” in demographic research. A change in sexual customs was seen which was largely to do with cultural norms. Women unwilling to use the new measures to prevent pregnancy and birth had to extract a promise of marriage from their partners in exchange for sex – insurance to cover the risk of a pregnancy. Women willing to use contraception and abortion could offer men sex at a lower cost, without the promise. As the proportion of women able to provide sex at the lower cost increased, women who needed to charge more found fewer buyers, pressuring them to agree to the lower price if they wanted to stay in the relationship business. As a result, fewer premarital pregnancies were legitimated, and rates of premarital birth went up. It was established that exposure to new cultural models and ideas permitted by literacy, communication, and transportation were playing a significant role in non-Western fertility declines. These accounts emphasized exogenous drivers of cultural change in the form of ideas that were exported from other cultures