P2: Describe recent demographic changes in home country

Maria Dowling Barbara Agyemang

M2: Explain recent demographic changes in home country

Birth and death rates

The birth and death rates in the UK has fallen to an all-time low. It states that one in five pregnancies ends in an abortion, sometimes one in three in some areas. The average number of children per woman is just 1.64 which has been recorded as the lowest since records began in 1924. The highest birth rate was recorded in 1964, when the average woman had 2.93 children. Some women say they are waiting until the age of 27 before starting a family because they want to experience life before they start taking care of another life.

Statistics show that there was 2% drop in the number of live births in 2001; in the year 2000 were 604,000, last year it was 595,000. The falling birth rate has been linked to more women opting for a career, work pressures and the higher rate of relationship breakdown. Women in London are most likely to abort a pregnancy. Almost a third (32.5%) of all conceptions in the capital are terminated, compared with fewer than a fifth (19.1%) in the east of England. Under-25s had the highest number of births outside marriage - almost 90% of births to teenagers and 63% of births to women aged 20 to 24. There was a drop in the rate of pregnancies of ages 15 to 17-year-olds, which was at 43.8 per 1,000 conceptions in 2000 and has gone down 3% since 1999.

Decreases in birth and death rates are down to better medical attention and the introduction of NHS. Since introducing contraception, it has had a big impact on women controlling their fertility and more open to discuss sexual issues gaining more of independence. Also having opening local GP for patients to attend instead of attending hospital if the cause isn’t major, having local support groups will help to identify and work on the problem before if not help by local support can be taken to hospital.

Immigration, Emigration and Migration

Immigration ...

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Immigration, Emigration and Migration

Immigration is the arrival in a country of people who have left their home country and who wish to make the new country their permanent place of residence. Emigration is the movement of people from their home country to make a permanent residence in a different country. In 2001 census, the number of people in the UK from ethnic backgrounds was up 8% of the UK population. People emigrated to escape from wars, religion, political persecution/stability, to marry, work and better education and standard of living. In mid-twentieth century, former Commonwealth nations were offered the chance to emigrate to the UK to help solve labour shortages in the health services, textiles and public transport. Since the 1930s, there has been more emigrations starting new lives in the UK than immigrates; there has been more people entering the country than leaving. Since the expansion of the European Union in 2004, there has been an increase of migrates from Eastern Europe. An estimate of 185, 000 more people have entered the UK than left.

Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism is the acceptance or promotion of multiple , applied to the of a specific place, usually at the organisational level, for example , , , or . Multiculturalists advocate extending equitable status to distinct ethnic and groups without promoting any specific , , and/or cultural community as central. Multiculturalism can be interpreted in many ways. One being that is every culture has the right to exist and there is no over-arching thread that holds them together. That is the multiculturalism we think is so destructive because there's no thread to hold society together. In this sense multiculturalism requires that all cultures should be open, self-critical, and interactive in their relations with other each other.

Changes in life expectancy

Life expectancy has risen since the mid-nineteenth century. They have improved by nearly 25 per cent as people live longer lives. Over the last 50 years life expectancy has been transformed by better medicine and a huge range of material benefits that have helped improve health. These range from the universal spread of decent housing and central heating, cheap and good quality food, child immunisation programmes and a general increase in the standard of living. Jobs requiring heavy lifting and risky manual work have been replaced for comfortable office jobs, leading to less disease and longer lives. A boy born now can expect to live to 77.7 and a girl to 81.9. The increase in health and life means that 30 years ago more than a quarter of men died before they were 65, now fewer than one in six fails to reach the state retirement age. This is also due to the fact that when people retire, they are still use to their routines, that they keep it going by replacing it with cycling, running, going for walks, going to centres to keep interactive and have company and also the use of family always being around; i.e. grandchildren keep them running after them.

Implications of an ageing population

Ageing of population is a summary term for shifts in the age structure of a population toward older ages. Population aging is progressing rapidly in many industrialised countries, but those developing countries whose fertility declines began relatively early also are experiencing rapid increases in their proportion of elderly people. Population aging has many important socio-economic and health consequences, including the increase in the old-age dependency ratio. People aged 65 and over are more likely to depend on practical care and support from family, friends and neighbours because they are not as should and also because their income is at a budget especially if they are to survive to live independently. Services for the elderly are costly and include big financial responsibilities for the working population. Retirement pension has to be met at least partly from those who work taxes.

It presents challenges for public health as well as for economic development. The definition of retirement ages may vary but a typical cutoff is 65 years, and nowadays a society is considered relatively old when the fraction of the population aged 65 and over exceeds 8-10%. The current level and pace of population aging vary widely by geographic region, and usually within regions as well, but virtually all nations are now experiencing growth in their numbers of elderly residents. The percentage of world population aged 65 and over only increased from 5.2% in 1950 to 6.9% in 2000. Peter Townsend carried out a survey for old people in care institutions. He found out that they were isolated, lacked power over their own lives, had little say in personal choices and where there because of poverty and homelessness and not old age sake. It was recommended that care was provided in people homes and that residential homes should be positive and not as a last resort. This is when the NHS and Community Care Act 1960 took place; to ensure that legislative framework and financial support for planned care in the community.

Implications of demographic change

Demographic change is used to describe the study of changes in the size and structure of the population. The changes in the size and make up of the population are studied by social scientists, commercial institutions, governments and other policy makers. They were concerned with measuring the natural changes in the population-changes in the birth rates and death rates and also changes in migration (emigration and immigration). Now they are studying wider changes such as educational achievements, employments, spending patterns and the use of leisure time.

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