Module 5: History of World Population Growth and its Impact on Society
  Lecture 16: Demographic Transition in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
 

FALLING DEATH AND BIRTH RATES

To follow Wilcox (1985), “there is nothing in the history of the last few centuries more notable than the increase in the population of the world” the prime cause of which is the decrease in the ratio of deaths to population.

BOX 5.1 : WALTER WILCOX ON THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE AND ITS INFLUENCE OF POPULATION

Europe had more than three times as many inhabitants in 1900 as in 1750.

The persons of European stock living outside of in 1900 were three fourths as many as the entire number of inhabitants of that continent in 1750.

This vast increase of Europeans by blood in 150 years from 130,000,000 to 500,000,000 has not been secured at the cost of a decrease of other human beings.

On the contrary the native stocks reached by Europeans have usually increased in numbers.

This is true of nearly all numerous groups living mainly by agriculture in the tropical or subtropical regions of America , Africa , Asia , and Malaysia .

Where the influence of Europe has not gone and we have any clue to the facts, they indicate a stationary population, or at least a very low increase.

The enormous increase in the population of the earth from perhaps 1,000,000,000 in 1750 to 1,500,000,000 in 1900 must be ascribed mainly to the expansion of Europe .

 

In the second half of the eighteenth century the death rate in developed countries, particularly in Europe started declining (Valentey, 1977) under the impact of both economic and political factors, though the decline was slow and it took more than two centuries for death rates to come down to present levels. Since the birth rate remained high it led to an increasing rate of population growth. The birth rate fluctuated. “It reached its highest level in the period of revival after the economic crisis at the beginning of the 1870, which was to prove the most severe of the whole century. The highpoint of that climb in the birth rate was 1876, which can be regarded as the turning point in the history of the European birth rate…”

Thus in the second half of the eighteenth century the world population started growing. This growth, however, was confined to developed countries. The population in the less developed countries remained almost stationary (Misra, 1995).