Unit II

This section of the book presents contemporary understanding of the demographic processes unfolding in the world today and how these demographic processes inform our understanding of economic processes, human settlement processes, and the environmental systems upon which our very civilization fundamentally depends. Chapter 4 looks at the demographic transition. The observed pattern is high birth and death rates, dropping death rates followed by dropping birth rates, and then low birth and death rates. We explore a variety of explanations for this pattern—processes of secularization, processes of urbanization, processes of improved status of women, and processes of increasing levels of economic development are all presented as explanations. Chapter 5 looks at economic development and changing patterns of human settlement. As our economy develops, we live in an increasingly urbanized world that produces lived human experiences that are increasingly alienated from the natural world on which we depend. Chapter 6 explores how human presence depends on and changes natural environmental processes such as the climate, soil formation and loss, biogeochemical cycles, and the loss of biodiversity. Unit II summarizes our current understanding of the processes that drive demographic change and how those changes mutually interact with social, economic, and environmental forces.