CHAPTER FOUR
THE GLOBAL CONTEXT:
POPULATION AND
UNDERDEVELOPMENT
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• The U.S media tell us relatively little about
what is going on in the rest of the world.
The only countries that make it to the
“news”, are countries that the U.S. is at
war with or claims to be threatened by.
• The world media on the other hand covers
the U.S quite extensively
– What is the reason for this
• 1. Cultural hegemony 2. Domination of the media
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
• This preoccupation with being “the best”
that needs to be emulated is
ethnocentrism.
• IT goes beyond patriotism: love and loyalty
to your country or nationalism: devotion to
the interests of your nation.
• Ethnocentrism is closely related to racism
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• World Population Growth and underdevelopment:
– The life chances of people in underdeveloped nations
are severely limited by hunger starvation, disease,
high rates of infant mortality and low life expectancy.
– Population growth is a macro social problem meaning
it is linked to what? Personal decisions or structural
relationships?
– The underdeveloped nations exist in a world structure
in which a few developed nations have most of the
global wealth
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• World Population 6.7 Billion (remember
this number for the exam)
– Growing at an estimated rate of 1.5%
annually.
– Population Explosion:
•
•
•
•
•
250 years ago human populations were 250 million
Early 1800s reached 1 billion
1975- 4billion
2025 – projected at 8 billion
In 50 years 1975-2025 population doubles at the
given rate
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Total Fertility Rate
• 1. The TFR is defined as the average number of
babies born to women during their reproductive
years (in a society). A TFR of 2.1 is considered
the replacement rate; once a TFR of a
population reaches 2.1 the population will
remain stable (assuming no immigration or
emigration takes place). When the TFR is
greater than 2.1 a population will increase and
when it is less than 2.1 a population will
eventually decrease, although due to the age
structure of a population it will take years before
a low TFR is translated into lower populationalso called population momentum. World
TFR=2.9, USA= 2.1, Sierra Leone=6.2
• .
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
• Crude Birth rate— number of births each year per
1,000 people in the population.
• Total # of births/Total pop X 1000
• USA, 4.3million/304 million X1000= 14.2 births per
1000 population
• Why is it called crude? Two reasons; groups &
gender
• 1. Divides it by total pop not women, women do the
childbearing not the whole population; 2. Doesn’t
differentiate between birth differences between
groups.
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
MORTALITY
• Incidence of death in a country’s population.
• Crude death rate: Number of deaths per 1000
people in a population
• USA 2.52 mil/ 304mil X1000= 8.3 deaths per
1000 population.
• Why crude: 1. Doesn’t differentiate between
groups- different groups have different death
rates 2. Takes all of the population not
age/gender differences, more old people die
than young, more men die than women at older
ages.
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Global Population
• Infant mortality rates — number of infants who
die within the first year of life per 1,000 live births
• USA 28,000/4mil X 1000 = 7
• Life expectancy at birth — the average number
of years people born in the same year are
expected to live
• US males 74.5, Females 79.9
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
MIGRATION
• Movement of people into and out of a specified
territory
• Immigration: coming IN, emigration: going out
• In-migration rate: Number of people entering
an area per 1000 people in the population
• Out-Migration rate: Number of people leaving
an area per 1000 people in the population
• Net Migration rate: difference between in
migration rate and out migration rate
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Population Growth
• Natural growth rate: Crude birth rate minus
the crude death rate (USA 14.2 –8.3= 5.9
per 1000 ;or 5.9/1000X100 or 0.54 percent
per year
• So if the population of the US is 304
million, given only natural increase it would
be how much after one year?
• (100.54X304)/100=305.79 mil
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Total population growth
• Total population growth (in a country) is :Natural
growth + net migration
• Doubling time of a population: Rule of thumb,
divide 70 by the country’s population growth rate
that will give you the years it will take for a
population to double
• US 288 million , so doubling time is 70/0.59=
118 years, given only natural increase
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DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION
THEORY
• .
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
In the developed countries, growth rates are
low, the average growth rate for developed
nations is 0.3 percent, the underdeveloped
nations have much higher population
growth.
Over 81% of the world’s population lives in
underdeveloped nations
Over 83% of those under 25 live in
developing nations- these are people of
prime childbearing age
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Global Population
– Age dependency ratio — ratio of sum of the
population aged 0-14 and those aged 65 and older to
every 100 people in the population aged 15-64
– E.g.. If people under 14 and over 65 are 20 million
and people between 15-64 are 40 million then 20/40=
0.5x100= 50, meaning that 100 working age people
support 50 non working age people ; i.e. each 2
working age people support 1 non working age
people.
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Sex Ratio
•
•
•
•
# of males per 100 females in a population.
#males/#females X100
USA:
at birth: 105 male(s)/100female
under 15 years: 105 male(s)/100female
15-64 years: 100 male(s)/100female
65 years and over: 71 male(s)/100female
total population: 97 male(s)/100female (2003
est.)
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Global Population
• The Graying of the Core and the Youth
Explosion of the Periphery
– U.S. population has more people in the older
age groups than in the younger age groups.
– Counties in the periphery have far more
people in the youngest age groups than in the
older age groups.
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
• Life Chances and Underdevelopment:
– 4/5ths of humanity live in underdeveloped nations of the
world in a state of chronic malnutrition or under nutrition.
– The average person in those nations consumes 2/3rd of
the U.S. caloric intake and one half of the U.S. protein
intake per person
– Almost 1/3rd of children in the developing countries suffer
from malnutrition- creating learning and other disabilities.
– The death rate among children in the first year of life in the
U.S. is 1 in 100 in many African nations it is 1 in 4
– Shortage of food results in greater susceptibility to disease
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Population and Poverty
• Does population growth produce poverty?
– Malthusian logic (Malthus and English
clergyman living in the early 1800s): food
grows in arithmetic proportion, populations in
geographic proportion- resulting in famine,
wars and disease.
• Modern day Malthusians say that family planning is
the key to controlling populations. Is this a private
solution or an institutional restructuring solution to
this problem and is the population explosion a
personal trouble or public/global issue?
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• Myth 1: People are hungry because of
scarcity:
– Relative versus absolute scarcity
– Role of power structure in distribution of
resources
– Using food as a political weapon
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
• Myth 2: Hunger results from overpopulation:
– Rather the truth is that overpopulation results from
hunger– Land resources of many nations under or malutilized
– Production for exports
– Capitalization of small farmers due to rising fuel costs
and overpopulation in the cities
– Poverty forces women into traditional family roles,
children become only asset to work and provide
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
• Economic security and reduction in family
size:
– Birth control only has limited success without
changing the structure that produces high
population growth
– Where such policies are strictly enforced it
might have other consequences giving rise to
social problems like altering the gender ratio,
lack of mates for males, lack of care for the
elderly
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
• The Indian state of Kerala, which is socialistically run
even though it has low per capita income compared to
the rest of India has managed a fairer distribution of
resources resulting in only 1.9 births per woman
compared to 4 births per woman in the rest of India. Sex
ratio 104 females per 100 males, in the rest of India 93
females per 100 males
• Social development leads to a voluntary adoption of birth
control that is more effective
– Note there is interrelationship between: 1) economic
development and health 2) status of women 3) family planning to
lower fertility rates in developing nations.
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Development, Underdevelopment, and the Colonial Legacy
• In 2000 the per capita income for people In the
United States $34100, Mexico $5070, India
$450, Ethiopia $100
• Until World War1 most of the inhabitants of the
globe were colonized based on racial
characteristics, the colonizers being Western
Europeans in most cases, many nations just
gained ‘independence’ in the last 5 decades
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
• Colonization was direct- explicit, neocolonization
that emerged after the ‘independence’ of these
nations maintained the colonial setup from a
distance, through export processing/dependent
development, military dependency, debt
dependency and political subordination based
on subordinate status in the global capitalist
system.
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Social Structures
World systems
Macro
Societies
Institutions
Networks
Groups
Roles
Statuses
Micro
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
The World-System
• International social system of, economic,
political, and military relations organized
around the exchange of goods and
services
– Most complete macro-level social structure
encompassing all other levels of social
structure
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
The World-System
– Global division of labor —work required
to produce the world’s goods and
services is broken into separate tasks,
each performed largely by different
groups of nations
– Core nations — countries in which
production is based on technology that
relies more on machinery than on human
labor and human labor is relatively skilled
and highly paid
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
The World-System
– Peripheral nations — countries in which
production is based on technology that relies
more on inexpensive human labor than on
expensive machinery
– Semiperipheral nations — countries in which
production is based on a mixture of intermediate
levels of machinery and human labor and human
labor is semiskilled and paid intermediate levels
of wages
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
MIDDLE AGES (5th to 15th
Centuries)
• In the late middle ages, different regions of
the world were almost equally developed.
• The difference in world development we
see today is the result of a few hundred
years of colonial domination.
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
WALLERSTEIN
(section not in book)
• Wallerstein, whose name is associated with
the World Systems Theory (1974), suggested
that since the 16th century, with the rise of
capitalism, the world market was
purposefully transformed into a group of
core countries (those who were former
colonizers and who control capital and
material wealth in the world) and a set of
peripheral countries (the rest of the world).
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Core-Periphery Relationship
• The core exploits the periphery for cheap
resources, which are exchanged for either
expensive military goods or overpriced capital.
Political instability and poverty is concentrated in
the periphery to keep this global order intact. This
ensures that the periphery remains in its
subordinate position. In short, this was the reason
for the birth of a few affluent nations, surrounded
by a poverty-stricken “Third World”
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
The Semi Periphery
• In the past few decades with the rise of the so-called
Asian Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan etc.) and the oil rich
countries of the Middle East (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia
etc.), a new group, the “semi-peripheral” countries have
entered the World System. These countries are linked
to the core but have loose (mostly labor) connections
with the majority “peripheral” world. Similar to what
Marx would call the petty bourgeoisie, they serve the core
in keeping the periphery poor, having aspirations of
entering the "core" status by such service
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
The World-System
• Global Patterns and Their Consequences
for Individual’s Life Chances
– Life chances — one’s ability to experience
life and all its beneficial offerings
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Modernization, Development, and
Underdevelopment
• How to measure development?
• Traditional measures: KW hrs of electricity used
per capita or GDP per capita- links
industrialization with urbanization
– Definition of Basic Needs based measurement
• What a country’s population requires for survival, including
health (LE & IM), education (literacy), food, water, and
sanitation. If we use these measures even the so called
developed countries have large undeveloped sectors.
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Modernization, Development, and
Underdevelopment
– Underdeveloped nations — peripheral
nations that experienced historically
disadvantageous relationships with more
powerful industrialized or core nations and
thus have been limited in development
opportunities
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Modernization, Development, and
Underdevelopment
• Dependency and Development
– Trade Dependency — relationship between nations
characterized by limited numbers of core trade partners for
peripheral countries, and specialization in raw materials that are
subject to massive price fluctuations
– The “development of underdevelopment”: Destruction of infant
industries during colonization- periphery industry was designed to
concentrate on mineral and raw material production and supply to
the core which are susceptible to price fluctuations and low prices
because of many sellers, and a few buyers
– Cash crops- Argentina 5th largest exporter of ag products but half
of its population is under nourished.
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Import Substitution
• Dependent Development: is Import substitution
plus Export processing
– Import substitution — strategy developed by peripheral
nations of substituting locally produced goods for imported
goods- inviting multinationals (same as Wal-Mart moving
into a community and the effect on mom and pop stores)
– Chase Dunn- short run/long run
– Marshall Aid after WW2 to Europe $13 billion; From 1982 to
1990 transfer from periphery to core six times that amount.
Six times the Marshall Aid amount transferred from the poor
to the rich countries (Alexander, Titus 1996), yet no
comparable “development”- what has happened is the exit
of wealth and capital from the poor nations to the rich, and
even in those rich nations to a small minority at the top,
most of the rest live from paycheck to paycheck
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Modernization, Development, and
Underdevelopment
• Export processing — strategy adopted by
peripheral nations of specializing in products for
sale abroad, cash crops etc, and not for local
consumption (to get foreign exchange)- land
owned by a few elites, that devote it to what is
most profitable, as against what is needed by a
society.
• Dependent development — dual strategy
combining import substitution and export
processing adopted by peripheral nations
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Debt dependency
• Debt dependency — strategy of development based on
reliance on aid and loans from other countries,
international aid agencies, and banks, many countries
spend over a third of their GNP on interest payment.
• By 1999, Argentina’s Debt rose to $140 billion, so that
70% of the government budget was being devoted to debt
service payments that translated into huge profits for
Citibank and other IFIs. Debt service payments are like
minimum payment required by your credit card
companies. They mostly include interest for that period,
wind fall profit for banks i.e. money made on lent money,
which is not linked to any kind of physical production or
transfer of goods.
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
IMF/WB DEBT FOR
SOVERIGNITY PLANS
• The names and terms of the loans given by the IMF
and WB explicitly suggest the objectives. They are
called “structural adjustment loans (SAL),” or
“Sector adjustment loans.” The IMF calls part of its
loaning facilities “Systematic Transformation Facility
(STF)”. The changes that these institutions require are
not based on the implementation of an investment
program or project; they are “policy” changes that
affect the entire economic structure of a nation and
affects the majority population in these countries
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Structural Adjustment required by the
IMF/World Bank
• 1. Currency Devaluation: causes inflation in the local economy, makes
items cheaper for export abroad, but locals have to spend more now for
same items, imports from abroad become more expensive.
• 2. Reduce expenditure on social welfare, laying off public employees,
water and health and sanitation suffers (PER)
• 3.Control labor unions, resulting in reduced protection for labor used by
multinationals
• 4. Privatize national industry: most profitable ones are sold to core
multinationals. Citibank bought many profitable banks in the “Third
World”
• 5. Remove quotas on imports, to create a profitable market for core
country products- allowing them to flood in, killing the local industry
• 6. Project Approval: All public infrastructure projects to be approved by
the IMF- usually contracts given to “core country” corporations
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.
Control through War and Control via World
Bank and IMF serves the same purpose
• Economic/military/political link
• "Once you understand the process of corporate
globalization, you will see that what happened in
Argentina, the devastation of Argentina by the IMF, is
part of the same machine that is destroying Iraq. Both are
efforts to break open and to control markets…”
• (Arundhati Roy, The Checkbook & the Cruise Missile,
2004:31)
• Who is Paul Wolfowitz?
Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.