Managing Human Resources - Chapter 8
In 1900, there were 1.5 billion people walking
around on the earth.
Today there are over 6.5 billion people walking
around on the earth, with over 2 billion of them living in one country
- China.
The management of all this humanity has become
an entire social science in itself.
Notes on Measurement and Shifts in Population
The study of the characteristics of human population
is called Demography, with concepts such as size, growth, distribution,
density, migration and so on.
The Mortality Rate is the the number of deaths per year (usually listed by cause). The Infant Mortality Rate is the number of children who die within the first year of life (divided by the fertility rate). Mortality is influenced by factors such as disease related death, better nutrition and exercise habits, improvements in health care and preventative medicine, and better chances for babies to live past the first year.
The Divorce Rate is the number of divorces each year per 1000 married women. Migration refers to movement within a population's geographic area - such as growth in the south as a result of movement from the north. Immigration refers to movement into a population's geographic area from a place outside that area - such as the number of non-national citizens coming into the U.S. The divorce rate was less than 10% at the turn of the century, and slowly rose to 15% by the mid 1940s. After World War II there was a sharp increase in the Marriage rate and a subsequent spike (a short lived anomaly) in the Divorce rate. From the mid-to-late 1960s the divorce rate climbed from 25% in 1970 to 30% in the late 1970s to 52% in the late 1980s. Divorce has leveled off since - hovering at about 50% for all married couples.
Birth Rates on a global scale
In 61 countries around the world the fertility
rate is rapidly decreasing to the point of replacement or below it.
The threat faced by China's burgeoning population
forced that government to initiate a 1 child per family policy to begin
reducing the population. Globally while the fertility rate has been
effectively lowered, the life span has increased (from 49 years of age
in the mid 1970s to about 63 years of age). The Fertility Rate is
the number of live births per 1000 women of child-bearing age. The level
of Fecundity, on the other hand is the probability that women will
bear children (Thus a woman is fertile if she's had children, and fecund
if she probably will have children).
The current population in the U.S.A. is abut 271
million as of the 2000 census, up from 265 million in 1990.
Our lifespan is estimated at about 78 years of
age for men and 81 years of age for women. The U.S. birthrate has actually
been decreasing since about 1964 (with a small increase in the late 1980s).
A population's size is measured by the additive
impact of several factors:
Population = (birthrate)+(infant
mortality rate)+(death rate)+(life expectancy)+(in-migration)+(out-migration)
Americans are waiting longer to marry, and then waiting longer to have children. One-third of all children are now born to women over 30, making the trend toward older first time mothers a factor for the first time in our history.
Population Age and Composition
Increases in the birth rate invoke many social
problems in need of solutions. For example, the "Baby Boom". caused
by the enormous influx of husbands and boyfriends returning from World
War II and wanting to start up normal family lives, created a large "hump"
in the age distribution of the population. Beginning as infants and growing
into childhood, this large segment of the population drew enormous resources
from society.
Characteristics of Households
The number of households is increasing even as the overall birthrate
is declining. More single family households and more one person households
and nonfamily households add to the growth rate.
Mobility
Americans are highly mobile - both in terms of geographic mobility,
and in terms of socioeconomic mobility. We move around often - as a nation
from an agricultural (rural) majority early on in the century we'd moved
into the city by the middle of the 1900s - followed by moves outside the
city into the suburbs in the 1960s. A flexible and erratic economy
also contributes to mobility - the typical family will move about once
every 5-6 years - to a new house or a new city.
Change
These factors all contribute to the Changing Profile of our Society
and to changes in the way we do things. As demands are placed on one segment
of society, other aspects of our social system swing into action. Internal
changes occuring inside the family (divorce, age at marriage, number of
children) have impact and so does External change from outside the family.
A society's ability to cope with change and make necessary adjustments
is referred to as Adaptability.
Managing Change while we ourselves are changing while living in a changing world is quite a trick. An example of the complexity would be the Traditional Family Life Trajectory where we used to take as normal:
Dating->Going Steady->Engagement->Marriage->Parenting->Retirement->Widowhood
For a myriad of reasons, including invention (birth control), political upheavals (war), economic conditions (dual paycheck families), the old model has been changed beyond our ability to recognize it:
Notes on the Reality of Family Life for Some Folks
B. The Types of Families in American Culture:
C. Importance of the Family - The Family is:
The truth is -> the cause of poverty for nearly twenty-three percent of our nation's children is divorce, not being of African-American descent. Divorce is the culprit because about half of all court awarded child support goes unpaid by fathers to children.
The pie chart in the text shows 61% reponding that they feel family life is "the most important element in my life." people always respond favorably to questions like this, however, the reality of our lives is a little different. There are other indicators that tell a story that departs from the Ideal.
To decide whether or not American Values support families and children's welfare, look at the evidence.
Children in the 1960s compared to the 1990s
A. Children's Potential Effect on the Couple's Satisfaction with their marriage:
The Midlife Squeeze:
According to the age continuum by which many of us live:
-Last Child Born------------- Last Child Leaves --------Retirement
------ by 30----------------------by 48---------------------by 65-------80
Erikson's Epigenetic Principle states the stages of adult development to be:
Into midlife by 50, successful crisis resolution includes:
The female climacteric (menopause defined as: the discontinuance of menses - loss of estrogen - Symptoms: hot flashes, dizziness, aches & pains, fatigue, sleeplessness, anxiety, intolerance, lack of concentration), was once thought to be the signal of the end of sexuality. The good news is that while the symptoms can be a real bother, sexuality is a couple thing right to the end (if the couple wants it).
Reasons for decline in interest in sex, for women and men as they get older :
IV. Adapting to late life
15% of the U.S. population (30 million) is 65 years old - 75% of the pop. will live past age 65.
But getting old in a youth oriented culture is not enjoyable.
B. Stereotypes of elderly - due to youth culture's influence, there are negative images of old pople who have been defined as outliving their usefulness. Maintaining a high level of self-esteem is difficult with bad jokes, hatred, and intolerance at every turn.
The keys to happiness in late life:
Widowhood
While most Americans believe that the poor are people who are unemployed, O'Hare finds that there were 5.6 million children living below the poverty line ($15,141) with at least one parent who worked for pay at least 50 weeks in 1994. This number falls within the overall number of children living in poverty in the U.S. (increasing from approximately 15% in 1974 to 24% in 1996).
Accoding to O'Hare, 47% of the increase was accounted for by children in working-poor families. Further, 75% of the increase was among children whose parents had some kind of job.
While the stereotype of the poor may conjure up images of big city minority single parent families, living on public assistance, the reality is that most are white, about half are married couples, and almost half live in the South. They are almost equally distributed among cities, suburbs, and rural areas.
The No. 1 factor in the growth of the working poor is declining job opportunities for non-college graduates.
Summary of "What can Minimum Wage Buy?"
by Paula Mergenhagen - January 1996 American Demographics
Most households in America spend more than they earn.
This is distinctive of the nation's poorest. with low-income Americans falling into three groups:
Minimum-wage-level households spend less than better-off households on virtually everything. But they spend a higher-than-average share of total spending on many things because necessity rather than impulse dictates their purchase behavior.
The working poor make do with rented homes, used cars, and secondhand
clothing.
The older poor have greater expenses and the working poor are underinsured
- leaving them with no choice but wait until health conditions warrant
a costly trip to the medical facility.
"Health care gobbles up 6 percent of the average household's out-of-pocket dollars, but those with incomes of $5,000 to $14,999 spend 8 percent. Many low-income households contain older people with high health-care expenses, and these households are less likely to have employer-provided health insurance." And recent changes in the law allow low-income wages to be attached in the event of unpaid medical bills (emphasis mine).
Regarding financial security:
A majority of poor children under six (58 percent) had parents who worked full-time or part-time in 1992.
The report, Young Children in Poverty: A Statistical Update, illuminates a national crisis and focuses on several interrelated factors that affect the lives of children under six living in poverty.
The new analyses reveal demographic patterns that are not consistent with public myths about poor children and their families--and need to be understood during a time of national debate about welfare reform.
For example, as many as 38 percent of poor children under six in 1992 had parents who supported their families with earnings only--and no cash public assistance.
Less than one-third of poor children under six lived with parents who relied exclusively on cash public assistance for their incomes. (In 1992, the poverty line was $9,137 for a family of two, $11,186 for a family of three, and $14,335 for a family of four.)
J. Lawrence Aber, a leading expert in child development and social policy who is director of the Center, cautioned that the large number of poor young children reflects a two-decade trend that is having devastating consequences on young children today whether they are toddlers or teenagers.
The number of poor children under six grew from 3.4 million in 1972 to 6 million in 1992. The significance of these figures for society's social landscape cannot be overstated because the costs of these poverty rates will be paid for over the next two decades.
Poverty gives rise to many types of deprivation, and many of the youngest, poorest children suffer severe consequences concerning their physical and mental health and their psychological development.
Poor young children are not very visible to the rest of us, Aber said. They live in isolated neighborhoods and are rarely noticed until they reach first grade and fail, become adolescents and get in trouble, or reach adulthood and can't find jobs.
The country's lack of attention to them has created a serious situation of growing proportions. These numbers and rates are not just statistics. They represent innocent babies and little children, Aber noted.
The report's 16 graphs and tables were based largely on analyses of the Census Bureau's 1993 March Supplement to the Current Population Survey. Demographers Jiali Li, and Neil G. Bennett analyzed the data and prepared the report.
Just over one-sixth, or 18 percent, of all poor children under six in 1992 lived with unmarried mothers who worked full-time or with married parents at least one of whom held a full-time job. (The federal minimum wage was $4.25 per hour in 1992. If a person were employed full-time year-round and worked 1,750 hours, the income generated would be only $7,438, just 66 percent of the poverty line for a family of three and 52 percent of the poverty line for a family of four. Even the maximum Earned Income Tax Credit would not lift these families out of poverty: 1992 income in a two-child family, for example, with one parent earning the minimum wage, would reach only $9,648, 14 percent below the poverty line for a family of three and 33 percent below the line for a family of four.)
It doesn't take a feasibility study to conclude that increasing the
number of children reared in poverty will necessarily increase the number
of people living out on the fringes of American society -
people who will: