Gardiner V., Matthews H. The changing geography of the United Kingdom
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
JAMIE PECK AND ADAM TICKELL
166
redistribution. It also has to be said, however, that Labour’s simultaneous embrace of
the goals of labour market flexibility and social inclusion—‘flexibility plus’ —exposes
in a more explicit way than before the tensions and contradictions between these two
quite distinctive policy objectives.
New Labour regard Britain’s deregulated, flexible labour market as a major source of
competitive strength. As the Prime Minister has (favourably) observed, the UK now has the
most ‘lightly regulated labour market of any leading economy in the world’ (Tony Blair,
quoted in Guardian, 25 May 1998:17). Yet how far it will be possible to reconcile flexible
deregulation with Labour’s wider social and economic goals—such as tackling poverty and
raising levels of investment in human capital—must remain to be seen. Certainly, a range of
new policy measures are likely to bring about modest forms of redistribution in favour of
poorer parts of the country, but it is equally clear that there will be no return to the kind of
investment-driven, reflationary programme that many would argue is necessary for lagging
regions to catch up with the south-eastern core. Patterns of spatial inequality in the labour
market may therefore be ameliorated, but the basic rules of the game—premised as they are
on short-term competitive advantage—are likely to remain essentially the same. Given the
UK economy’s established proneness to deep inequality, cyclical volatility and uneven
development, the challenge of marrying social justice with flexible labour markets is likely
to be a daunting one.
References
Allen, J., Massey, D., Cochrane, A., Charlesworth, J., Court, G., Henry, N. and Sarre, P. (1998)
Rethinking the Region, London: Routledge.
Cairncross, A. (1994) ‘Economic policy and performance, 1964–1990’, in R.Floud and D.McCloskey
(eds) The Economic History of Britain since 1700, Volume 3: 1939–1992 (2nd edn), Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Dunford, M. (1997) ‘Divergence, instability and exclusion: regional dynamics in Great Britain’, in
R.Lee and J.Wills (eds) Geographies of Economies, London: Arnold.
Durand, J.P. and Stewart, P. (1998) ‘Manufacturing dissent? Burawoy in a Franco-Japanese workshop’,
Work, Employment and Society 12(1): 145–59.
Gamble, A. (1988) The Free Economy and the Strong State, London: Macmillan.
Green, A. (1996) ‘Aspects of the changing geography of poverty and wealth’, in J.Hills (ed.) New
Inequalities, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Green, A.E. and Hasluck, C. (1998) ‘ (Non)Participation in the labour market: alternative indicators
and estimates of labour reserve in UK regions’, Environment and Planning A 30(3): 543–58.
Hamnett, C. (1997) ‘A stroke of the Chancellor’s pen: the social and regional impact of the
Conservative’s 1988 higher rate tax cuts’, Environment and Planning A 29(1): 129–47.
Jessop, B. (1994) ‘Post-Fordism and the state’, in A.Amin (ed.) Post-Fordism: a Reader, Oxford:
Blackwell.
Jones, M.R. (1999) New Institutional Spaces: TECs and the Remaking of Economic Governance,
London: Jessica Kingsley.
Kavanagh, D. (1987) Thatcherism and British Politics: the End of Consensus?, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
King, D.S. (1993) ‘The Conservatives and training policy 1979–1992: from a tripartite to a neoliberal
regime’, Political Studies 41: 214–35.
McDowell, L. (1991) ‘Life without father and Ford: the new gender order of postfordism’, Transactions
of the Institute of British Geographers 16: 400–19.
Mandelson, P. (1997) ‘A lifeline for youth’, Guardian, 15 August: 17.
LABOUR MARKETS
167
Marshall, J.N., Wood, P., Daniels, P.W., McKinnon, A., Bachtler, J., Damesick, P., Thrift, N.J., Gillespie,
A., Green, A.E. and Leyshon, A. (1988) Services and Uneven Development, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Martin, R. and Rowthorn, B. (eds) (1986) The Geography of Deindustrialisation, London: Macmillan.
Martin, R. and Sunley, P. (1997) ‘The post-Keynesian state and the space economy’, in R.Lee and
J.Wills (eds) Geographies of Economies, London: Arnold.
Martin, R., Sunley, P. and Wills, J. (1996) Union Retreat and the Regions: the Shrinking Landscape of
Organised Labour, London: Jessica Kingsley.
Massey, D. (1987) ‘The shape of things to come’, in R.Peet (ed.) International Capitalism and Industrial
Restructuring: a Critical Analysis, London: Allen and Unwin.
Munday, M., Morris, J. and Wilkinson, B. (1995) ‘Factories or warehouses? A Welsh perspective on
Japanese transplants’, Regional Studies 29: 1–17.
Peck, J. (1996) Work-Place: the Social Regulation of Labor Markets, New York: Guilford.
Peck, J. and Jones, M. (1995) ‘Training and Enterprise Councils: Schumpeterian workfare state, or
what?’, Environment and Planning A 27(9): 1361–96.
Peck, J. and Tickell, A. (1994) ‘Searching for a new institutional fix: the after Fordist crisis and global-
local disorder’, in A.Amin (ed.) Post-Fordism: a Reader, Oxford: Blackwell.
Peck, J. and Tickell, A. (1995) ‘The social regulation of uneven development: “regulatory deficit”,
England’s South East and the collapse of Thatcherism’, Environment and Planning A 27(1): 15–
40.
Peck, J. and Tickell, A. (1997) ‘Manchester’s job gap’, Manchester Economy Group Working Paper 1,
Manchester Economy Group, University of Manchester.
Robertson, D.B. (1986) ‘Mrs Thatcher’s employment prescription: an active neoliberal labour market
policy’, Journal of Public Policy 6: 275–96.
Rubery, J. (1994) ‘The British production regime: a societal-specific system?’, Economy and Society
23: 335–54.
Sunley, P. (1990) ‘Striking parallels: a comparison of the geographies of the 1926 and 1984–85
coalmining disputes’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 8: 35–53.
Tickell, A. (1998) ‘A tax on success? Privatisation, employment and windfall tax’, Area 30: 83–90.
Treasury (1984) ‘Helping markets work better’, Economic Progress Report 173: 1–5.
Further reading
Particularly useful general accounts of economic restructuring in the UK, which locate
the processes of labour-market change in their wider social, political and institutional
contexts, can be found in: R.L. Martin (1988) ‘The political economy of Britain’s North-
South divide’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 13: 389–418; R.Hudson
(1989) ‘Labour-market changes and new forms of work in old industrial regions: maybe
flexibility for some but not flexible accumulation’, Environment and Planning D: Society
and Space 7: 5–30; and M.Dunford (1997) ‘Divergence, instability and exclusion: regional
dynamics in Great Britain’, in R.Lee and J.Wills (eds) Geographies of Economies (London:
Arnold).
For considerations of the theoretical and conceptual issues in labour-market
analysis, with reference to developments in the UK, see J.Rubery (1996) ‘The labour
market outlook and the outlook for labour market analysis’, in R.Crompton, D.Gallie
and K.Purcell (eds) Changing Forms of Employment: Organisations, Skills and Gender
(London: Routledge); J.Peck (1996) Work-Place: the Social Regulation of Labor
Markets (New York: Guilford); and Labour Studies Group (1985) ‘Economic, social
and political factors in the operation of the labour market’, in B.Roberts, R. Finnegan
and D.Gallie (eds) New Approaches to Economic Life (Manchester: Manchester
University Press).
JAMIE PECK AND ADAM TICKELL
168
Discussion of contemporary policy issues around the labour market can be found in
journals such as Renewal, Work, Employment & Society and Regional Studies. Examples of
work which explore the policy and politics of labour-market restructuring in a spatially
sensitive fashion are: J.Peck (1999) ‘New Labourers? Making a New Deal for the “workless
class”’, Environment and Planning C 17(3): 345–72; M.R.Jones (1999) New Institutional
Spaces: TECs and the Remaking of Economic Governance (London: Jessica Kingsley); and
R.Martin, P.Sunley and J.Wills (1996) Union Retreat and the Regions: the Shrinking
Landscape of Organised Labour (London: Jessica Kingsley).
169
Chapter 9
Demography
Tony Champion
Introduction
Demography provides an important backcloth to the developments taking place in the
UK, but it is neither unchanging in its nature nor neutral in its effects. The term is used
here to refer to the size, distribution and composition of the population and the patterns of
life-course events which maintain or alter these, notably the three basic components of
change in population numbers (births, deaths and migration), but also the many factors
that affect household formation and family building. The demography of the UK has
undergone some major changes over the past three decades, including greater longevity,
lower fertility, higher divorce rate, accelerating cohabitation, later marriage and
childbearing, increasing lone parenthood, larger numbers living alone, a fluctuating exodus
from large cities, a switch from net emigration to substantial international migration gain
and the rise of the UK’s non-white population. Each of these raises policy issues for
society, most of them immediate and obvious in their implications but some with major
long-term impacts such as the continuing passage of the 1960s/1970s baby boom and
bust through the age structure. The significance of these trends is evident in many other
parts of this book, including changes in labour supply (Chapter 8), increasing ethnic
diversity of urban areas (Chapters 10, 14), growing pressures on the countryside (Chapter
11), altered lifestyles and patterns of consumption (Chapters 12, 13) and the greying of
the electorate (Chapter 16). At the same time, a wide range of factors influences the
course of population change itself, prompting demographers to stress that their attempts
at looking into the future are essentially projections and not predictions. Some examples
of uncertainty will become apparent in highlighting developments since Compton’s (1991)
review for a previous edition of this book.
TONY CHAMPION
170
National trends
The estimated population of the United Kingdom in mid-1996 was 58.8 million. Amongst
the rest of the Developed World, this is considerably smaller than the USA’s 265 million,
the Russian Federation’s 148 million, Japan’s 125 million and unified Germany’s 81.7
million, while on the worldwide scale it comprises barely 1 per cent of the planet’s
population. It is, however, on a par with France’s 58.4 million and Italy’s 57.4 million, is
significantly larger than Ukraine’s 51.4 million, Spain’s 39.3 million, Poland’s 38.4 million
and Canada’s 30 million, and is at least five times the size of all other European countries
besides Romania and the Netherlands. Moreover, within the fifteen-country European
Union as comprised in 1996, it accounted for 15.8 per cent, or almost one-sixth, of the
population.
Between 1961 and 1996 the population of the UK increased by 6 million, up by 11
per cent on the 52.8 million level of just over a third of a century ago (Table 9.1). The rate
of growth, however, has not been uniform across this period. It was at its highest in the early
1960s, when the annual increment averaged 367,000 or 0.69 per cent, and fell progressively
TABLE 9.1 Population of the United Kingdom, 1961–2021
Sources: Population Trends 92, Table 5; Shaw (1998) Table 3, p. 46; data supplied directly by the
Office for National Statistics.
Note: ‘Other changes’ refers to changes in number of armed forces and adjustments to reconcile
population change between mid-year estimates with estimates of natural change and net civilian
migration. Numbers may not sum because of rounding.
DEMOGRAPHY
171
until the second half of the 1970s, when the average gain was only 27,000 or 0.05 per cent.
Subsequently, the growth rate has recovered somewhat, with the annual average for both
the late 1980s and the first half of the 1990s running at 0.34 per cent, not quite half the rate
of 1961–6. According to the 1996-based projections, the future trend is once again towards
lower rates of increase, stabilising at around 0.22 per cent a year from the turn of the century
(Table 9.1).
These fluctuations in overall numbers, however, mask a longer-term shift in the
components of population change (Table 9.1). The strong growth in the early 1960s was
almost entirely due to natural change, with a large surplus of births over deaths at that time.
The reduction in the rate of growth over the next fifteen years was principally the result of
a sharp reduction in the number of births but was reinforced by a rise in the number of
deaths and the acceleration of net emigration. Since the late 1970s the number of births has
risen again, but managed to recover less than a third of its previous decline by the late 1980s
before falling back again somewhat in the period 1991–6 and is projected to drop below its
1976–81 low point after 2001. Equally important in the upswing in overall growth after
1976–81, however, was the shift in the UK’s international migration balance from strong
net loss in the early 1970s to equally strong net gain in the late 1980s—a boost to population
numbers which, unlike for births, accelerated further in the 1990s. By this time, natural
change was responsible for less than three-fifths of overall growth and appears destined to
become even less important, with the projections showing natural change and net immigration
being rather evenly matched in their contributions to national growth after the year 2001
(Table 9.1).
Fertility rate
Fluctuation over time in the number of births has played a crucial role in influencing the
national population growth rate. The annual pattern for the past half-century (Figure 9.1)
shows clearly the twin peaks of just over 1 million births in 1947 and 1965, separated by a
trough of around 0.8 million births in
the early 1950s. After the 1965 peak,
there was an even more sustained fall
in births, lasting twelve years and
involving a reduction by one-third in
numbers. Since 1977 the number of
births has rebounded again, but to
nowhere near the level of the early
1960s, indeed barely reaching that of
the early 1950s trough.
Because of the uncertainty which
this scale of fluctuation causes for
projecting future population trends,
these trends have been the focus of a
great deal of research. The patterning
of births over time is a function of three
direct factors: the number of women of
childbearing age (which is itself largely
FIGURE 9.1 Deaths, births and fertility, 1945–96,
United Kingdom
Sources: Annual Abstract of Statistics, various years;
Armitage and Babb (1996).
Note: Total period fertility rate (TPFR) before 1960 is
estimated.
TONY CHAMPION
172
determined by births patterns a generation previously); the fertility rate of each birth cohort
of women (referring to the number of children ultimately produced by women born in a
particular year), and the timing of these births within their childbearing years.
The 1947 peak is readily explainable in terms of the effect of demobilisation of the
armed forces after the Second World War, with the subsequent trough being interpreted as
a return to the lower fertility rates reached at the end of the UK’s passage through the
demographic transition in the 1930s. It was the subsequent ‘baby boom’ and ‘baby bust’
that took the experts by surprise. With the benefit of hindsight, the rise in births in the late
1950s and early 1960s is seen to have arisen partly from an increase in desired family size,
prompted largely by improved economic conditions and expectations, and partly from a
bunching of births, caused both by the overlapping of births delayed by the poorer economic
conditions of the early 1950s and a shift towards earlier marriage and childbearing of the
next birth cohort of mothers (the latter mainly due to the improved job and promotion
prospects of male breadwinners).
The ‘baby bust’ of 1965–77, however, has proved to have been more than the
effects of birth timing and economic downturn, instead introducing a significantly
different—and seemingly relatively stable—regime which has been hailed variously as
a ‘second demographic transition’ and ‘the demographic revolution’. This is illustrated
most clearly by reference to the total period fertility rate (TPFR), which indicates the
average number of live-born children which women would have if they experienced the
age-specific fertility rate of that year throughout their childbearing lives and is unaffected
by changes over time in the age distribution of fertile women. As shown in Figure 9.1,
the TPFR fell by over 40 per cent from its peak of 2.95 in 1964 to 1.69 in 1977. Various
factors have been put forward for this precipitous fall, including an increase in the
proportion of women receiving higher education, greater female participation in the
workforce, and greater control over fertility made possible by the contraceptive pill.
These are long-term societal developments and their power is reflected in the fact that
the TPFR has remained consistently at these lower levels for around twenty years, moving
only little around the 1.80 mark during the 1980s. This is well below the rate of around
2.1 needed for the long-term replacement of one generation by another and explains
why the rise in actual numbers of births in the 1980s was only a pale shadow of the
‘echo effect’ that would otherwise have been expected from the large numbers of mothers
born in the ‘baby boom’ years.
On the other hand, the unprecedented stable level of the TPFR in recent years hides
some important changes that would appear to be consolidating the low fertility regime and
may indeed herald further reductions in the future. Fitting in with the main causes of fertility
rate decline mentioned above has been an increase in the mean age of mother at live childbirth.
The fertility rate of women aged 20–24 fell by over a quarter between 1981 and 1996, while
that of those aged 30–34 rose by nearly 30 per cent and that of those aged 35–39 rose by
some 70 per cent. The mean age of mothers for all live births in England and Wales was
28.6 years in 1996, 1.8 years above that in 1981 and the highest since records of mothers’
ages were first compiled in 1938. Only teenagers have stood out against this trend of older
motherhood, with their fertility rate even rising somewhat in the late 1980s. Accompanying
this trend, the proportion of larger families has fallen and there has been an increase in
childlessness, with the proportion of women aged 35 who have never had a child rising
from 12 to 23 per cent between 1980 and 1994.
DEMOGRAPHY
173
Other changes relating to fertility rates concern live births outside marriage and
abortions. Despite the later occurrence of motherhood, the proportion of out-of-wedlock
births has soared to over one-third (35.5 per cent in 1996), up from 12.5 per cent in 1981.
As only one-fifth of these births was registered solely by the mother, this growth primarily
reflects changing patterns of marriage and cohabitation. As regards abortions, the proportion
of conceptions not leading to live births has almost doubled in the quarter of a century to
1996, when records for England and Wales indicate 166,400 abortions, or 1 in 5 of all
conceptions that year. Further details about fertility-rate trends can be found most readily in
the review paper by Armitage and Babb (1996).
Mortality rate
By comparison with births, the number of deaths in the UK has been running at a
remarkably consistent level of around 650,000 for several decades, rising somewhat above
this in the 1970s and early 1980s and falling below it since (Table 9.1 and Figure 9.1).
The recent reduction has come about because the growth in the size of the population,
particularly in the numbers of older people with their higher chances of dying, has been
more than offset by improvements in people’s survival chances at virtually all ages.
Projections indicate a continuation of this decline, with the anticipation of further gains
in life expectancy combined with a slowdown in the growth of the elderly population
because of the low birth rate of the inter-war period, but the number is expected to rise
again substantially from 2016 onwards as the first members of the baby boom generation
reach retirement age (Table 9.1).
Life expectancy has improved consistently ever since deaths began to be recorded
centrally in 1836, rising from barely 40 years then to around 50 in 1911, 60 in 1939 and 70
in 1960, and with the margin between men and women widening progressively over time.
Life expectancy at birth has continued to increase over the past quarter of a century: for
males, up from 68.8 to 74.6 between 1971 and 1996 and, for females, up from 75.0 to 79.5.
Even at the age 70, life expectancy has increased by two years over this period. Thus men
aged 70 now expect to live a further 11.5 years on average, compared with only 9.5 in 1971,
and women a further 14.6 compared with 12.5 in 1971. With mortality rates currently falling
by about 0.5 per cent a year, the 1996-based population projections assume that by 2021
life expectancy at birth will have gained a further three years for both sexes, putting men at
77.8 and women at 82.5 years (Shaw 1998, and see Chapter 12).
Mortality rate reductions have been occurring for most age and sex groups in recent
years, but the improvements have not been evenly spread. According to an analysis of changes
between 1984 and 1994 by Dunnell (1995), improvements in mortality rates were greatest
for infants under one year old, with the infant mortality rate in 1994 being 65 per cent of
that ten years before. Reductions of a quarter or more were also recorded by all five-year
age groups of men under 20 years old and between 45 and 64 and by most groups of women
in these age spans. Among the retirement-age groups, reductions of between 10 and 20 per
cent were found. The weakest performance was in the range 20–44 years old, especially for
men, for whom mortality rates for 30–34 year olds increased by 7 per cent and fell by less
than 10 per cent for other groups.
Causes of death have altered greatly over the century, shifting away from infectious
diseases towards degenerative illnesses. Even now, the picture varies greatly between age
TONY CHAMPION
174
and sex. Three-fifths of childhood deaths result from accidents, neoplasms and congenital
anomalies, while injuries and suicides are among the leading causes of death for young adults.
For adults as a whole, approximately a quarter of all deaths is now due to cancer, a quarter to
heart disease and a further one-eighth to cerebro-vascular disease (mainly strokes). While
deaths from circulatory diseases have been falling, rates of cancer deaths have shown little
reduction. Lung cancer accounts for almost one-third of all cancer deaths for males, though
this proportion is now falling, and after breast cancer it is the second most important cause of
cancer deaths for women and has been getting more important until recently (Dunnell 1995).
International migration
As noted above, the significance of international migration has altered dramatically over
the past quarter of a century, with its overall balance switching from loss to gain in the early
1980s and its contribution to national population growth rising to well over one-third in the
first half of the 1990s (Champion 1996). More detailed information for 1986–95, however,
TABLE 9.2 Net international migration, by citizenship, UK, 1986–95 (thousands)
Source: International Migration: Migrants entering or leaving the United Kingdom and England and
Wales, 1995, Office for National Statistics Series MN 22, Table A, p. ix, and Table 2.1, p. 4 (London:
The Stationery Office).
Notes: IPS = International Passenger Survey. All but the IPS-based data include adjustments for persons
admitted as short-term visitors who are subsequently granted an extension, and estimates of migration
between the UK and the Irish Republic. It is assumed that most of the latter are Irish and they have
been treated as EU citizens. Numbers may not sum because of rounding.
DEMOGRAPHY
175
reveals how greatly the migration balance can vary from year to year, with the net inflow for
1992 and 1993 being less than half that for the two previous years but then tripling for the
next two years (Table 9.2). Part of the explanation for this lies in the fact that the net flow is
the difference between two much larger gross flows which themselves can fluctuate
substantially over time; for instance, between 1991 and 1995 annual recorded departures
from the UK ranged between 191,000 and 239,000 and estimated arrivals between 251,000
and 300,000. At the same time, it must be recognised that, since there is no compulsory
registration system of the type used for recording births and deaths, these migration statistics
are based on estimates compiled from several different sources, the main one of which—the
International Passenger Survey (IPS) —has a 95 per cent confidence interval of ±30,000 in
its net migration figure.
The overall net figures hide some important differences in flows for separate
groups of people (Table 9.2). The established pattern is of a net exodus of British
passport holders and a net gain of non-British citizens. Over the ten years to 1995 the
net loss of the former averaged 25,000 a year and the net gain of non-British citizens
averaged some 90,000. Between the later 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, the
overall upward shift in the annual average level of net immigration was produced
fairly equally by a reduction in the net emigration of British citizens and a rise in the
net arrivals of foreigners. The more detailed breakdown of foreigners reveals a marked
slippage in the contribution of European Union passport holders but strong growth
for the two other main contributors, with people from the New Commonwealth up by
around 10,000 a year between the two five-year periods shown and ‘other foreign’ up
by 14,000 (Table 9.2).
Considerable information is available about the characteristics of people
interviewed by the IPS, allowing some insight into their impacts on the UK population.
For instance, in 1995 four out of every five immigrants were aged 15–44, indicating a
strong loading on the economically active and household-heading age groups. Emigrants
also had a 15 to 44-year old peak, while the proportion of 15 to 24-year-olds was
significantly lower than for immigrants and those for children and the elderly were
larger, leading to net emigration for these two groups. Employed people made up around
55 per cent of both inflow and outflow, with professional/managerial personnel
dominating both but being relatively more significant among the immigrants. Students
were considerably more strongly represented among the inflows, while a higher
proportion of the outflow was work-related. Over half the emigrants were UK-born,
but only just over a quarter of immigrants were returners, with the largest net gains
being of those born in New Commonwealth and ‘other foreign’ countries. While the
IPS collects no data on ethnicity, these figures suggest a sizeable net boost to the UK’s
non-white population (see pp. 183–5).
Unfortunately, however, the IPS covers barely one-third of the UK’s estimated net
migration gains, as can be seen from comparing the IPS-based and overall five-year averages
in Table 9.2. The biggest single change for the UK’s migration balance since the early
1980s has been the growth in the number of asylum-seekers and ‘visitor switchers’, the
latter being people who enter as temporary visitors but subsequently apply for permanent
residence. These account for the majority of net gains that are not recorded by the IPS and,
as can be deduced from Table 9.2, come almost entirely from the New Commonwealth and
‘other foreign’ countries.