Voiceover: There's a lot to consider when looking at
the demographic structure of society.
Overall, the demographic structure is the different
ways you can look at a population of people.
The different groups you can break a society into
so that you can look at trends and statistics.
You can compare the statistics like death rates
or education levels for different age groups
or different races and ethnicities
or the statistics of the people who are immigrant
compared to people who are native born.
Or even people of different sexes, genders,
or sexual orientations.
All of these factors affect the demographics of a society.
When we compare different groups,
we look at the statistics for jobs or income
or education or quality of life, access to healthcare,
we split the population into groups
and compare their lives.
And beyond the group, all of these factors
affect the individual.
Their health, their education, job opportunities,
discrimination, expectations.
But remember, these are just trends.
There are always exceptions to every trend.
When it comes to age, job, and health opportunities
can be different depending on how old you are.
Populations are broken down into
different cohorts based on their age.
The people of each generation all live through
similar events and similar time periods
that affected their lives.
Elderly people have more difficulty
getting health insurance
because they are more likely to get sick
or to have pre-existing conditions.
They're more likely to need the services
of health care facilities than younger people.
The number of people over the age of 64
is rapidly growing as the baby boom population gets older.
By 2025, the percentage of people over 64
in North America is expected to double.
This means more strain on the healthcare system.
But the standard quality of life
has gotten better over the years.
So people are living healthy lives longer
and are able to work for more years
to continue contributing to the economy,
and potentially relieve some of the strain on society.
There are many theories as to
the social significance of aging.
Aging has become more than just a number for many people
which has forced the social assumptions of age to change.
Perhaps age regulates the behavior
of different generational cohorts or groups of people.
You also have to consider how
a loss of activity affects the older population
and how they can replace that social interaction.
Or perhaps the older generation is separating from society
so they can have more time for self-reflection.
Or maybe they're making decisions that preserve
that same basic structure of their lives
that they have always lived.
No matter the theory, improvements in global health
have enabled the older generation
to continue to be a valuable resource in society.
When looking at statistics,
we more commonly categorize people
into races and ethnicities.
Race is a social construction that puts people into groups
based on observed or perceived
differences in physical traits.
Racial formation theory looks at
the economic, social, and political factors
that result in socially constructed races.
In the United States we group people into
white, Latin American, African American,
and Asian groups.
In other countries there are different divisions
of people based on other characteristics.
For example, in South America
what we would consider Latin American
is broken down into many other groups.
Ethnicity is also socially defined,
but instead groups people based on
a shared language, or history, or nationality.
The definitions of specific racial and ethnic groups
can change over time as the values of a society changes.
And sometimes racial identities
can actually be ascribed to a minority group.
A process known as racialization.
There are statistical differences between
different racial and ethnic groups.
Racial and ethnic minorities, except for Asian Americans,
statistically tend to have bigger families,
less access to healthcare, higher incarceration rates,
lower paying jobs, and higher school dropout rates.
Most of these differences come from
the differences in education and easy opportunities
afforded to different racial and ethnic groups.
Immigrants often face discrimination
in their host countries.
Discrimination is the unjust treatment
of a category of people simply because
they belong to that category.
Though some discrimination is based on race
or ethnicity, the immigration process in many countries
is easier for some ethnicities than it is for others.
Much of the discrimination is based on
an innate fear of anything different.
The citizens of the host country
fear the change that immigrants bring with them.
Sometimes immigrants can over tax
social services in certain areas
if too many people move at the same time,
and sometimes they can cause job shortages.
But they can also help the host country
by providing labor in fields
the native citizens don't want to do.
People who immigrate looking
for better jobs and better lives
are often not as picky as the native citizens.
Most of the people moving to a different country
are immigrating into the industrialized countries
of North America, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.
The fear of something different
can cause discrimination between men and women
or discrimination of people's lives in general.
Sex, gender, and sexual orientation
are all an essential part of any society.
Sex is a biological determination of male or female.
Though the sexual binary falls apart a bit
when it comes to intersex people
who could have one, three, or more sex chromosomes
instead of the usual two.
Gender on the other hand,
is a social construction of how a person
of a specific sex should behave.
Every person has the gender they identify as
and then the gender they present to society.
There are assumed roles and attitudes that
men and women have in society.
And when people don't follow those rules they get noticed.
It is expected for females to identify as women
and behave as women,
and the same is true for males acting as men.
Sexual orientation is also a socially constructed grouping.
There are two parts of sexual orientation.
The gender you attracted to,
and the gender you have sex with.
Traditionally, men are supposed to be attracted to women,
and women are supposed to be attracted to men.
But people in today's society
do not always follow those so-called rules,
sparking fear in many people.
It is often this fear of change
that causes discrimination of minority groups.
A minority group makes up
less than half of the total population.
And more importantly, it is treated differently
because of some physical or cultural characteristic.
Ironically, even though women make up
more than half the population numbers wise,
they are treated as a minority
with lower paying jobs and lower expectations than men.
Men however, don't have it easy either.
Because they have a very narrow definition of masculinity
that they are allowed to be in society.
Discrimination based on sexual orientation
is also abundant in jobs and healthcare.
Socially constructed expectations
of whom a person should be limits every individual
by prohibiting certain behaviors or ways of life.
Demographic structures exist to provide
a frame work from which we can view a society
and observe the trends that shape individuals
and society itself.