Global demographic theory
Abstract
We develop a mathematical theory of a global demographic process covering the stages both of demographic growth and of the demographic transition.
For most of its history, the population of Homo sapiens has grown explosively. However, in the last few decades growth has slowed down, and world population is tending to stabilize. A quantitative description of our population dynamics, an explanation of its fundamental differences from the population dynamics of other species, and a global demographic forecast are the primary tasks of theoretical demography. To solve them, we introduce the concept of life-saving technologies, the development of which is considered the driving force of history, and formulate the principle of the technological imperative, which directly binds the number of living people to the level of technological development.
Life-saving technologies are created in the course of people’s everyday activity, based on earlier developed technologies. On the one hand, their improvement reduces mortality, whose changing coefficient determines the level of technological development, and on the other, it increases the number of people required for the new technologies, thus accelerating demographic growth. However, the lower bound of the mortality coefficient also limits the size of the population, causing a demographic transition, which from the biological point of view is a crisis.
As the technological level approaches its limit, a reorganization of the age structure takes place. Taking formal account of both these factors allows us to construct a phenomenological model of the demographic transition. To determine its parameters, we develop a methodology for processing demographic data pertaining to the stage of growth. The model proposed shows much better agreement with reality than classical models of global demography.
The key effect of the demographic transition model is an increase in the technological niche of mankind, i.e. the ratio of the human population to the level of life-saving technologies. In combination with the growth of the share of adults in the population, this is fraught with developmental instabilities which could lead to global population decline.
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