CHAPTER FOUR

Neubeck, Social Problems: A Critical Approach. © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE GLOBAL CONTEXT: POPULATION AND

UNDERDEVELOPMENT


• 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


• 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


• 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


• 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


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 population- also called population momentum. World TFR=2.9, USA= 2.1, Sierra Leone=6.2

• .


• 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.


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.


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


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


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


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


DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION THEORY

• .


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


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.


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.)


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.


• 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


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?


• 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


• 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


• 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


• 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.


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


• 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.


Social Structures

World systems

Societies

Institutions

Networks

Groups

Roles

Statuses

Macro

Micro


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


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


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


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.


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).


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”


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


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


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.



– Underdeveloped nations — peripheral nations that experienced historically disadvantageous relationships with more powerful industrialized or core nations and thus have been limited in development opportunities



• 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.


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



• 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


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.


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


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


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?

Documents

CHAPTER FOUR