The industrial revolution and the democratic transition

The industrial revolution and the democratic transition. -- Aubhik Khan

In the 19th century, the United Kingdom began a period of economic transformation known as the Industrial Revolution. It’s commonly believed that this era opened as new inventions improved the technologies used to produce goods and provide services. However, we now know that such improvements affected only a relatively small part of the economy. Nonetheless, output rose during the first stage of the Industrial Revolution because of capital accumulation. One explanation for this increase in capital may be that another revolution occurred in Britain around the same time: the demographic transition. In this article, Aubhik Khan outlines some evidence on the Industrial Revolution and the demographic transition, then presents two economic theories that link the two phenomena.

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There was also a sharp generational break in support of the two candidates. Mr. Obama was backed by 60 percent of voters under 25 while Mrs. Clinton was supported by about 45 percent of voters over 65.

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Ivy Education

Harvard turned down 1,100 student applicants with perfect 800 scores on the SAT math exam. Yale rejected several applicants with perfect 2400 scores on the three-part SAT, and Princeton turned away thousands of high school applicants with 4.0 grade point averages. Needless to say, high school valedictorians were a dime a dozen...

The brutally low acceptance rates this year were a result of an avalanche of applications to top schools, which college admissions officials attributed to three factors. First, a demographic bulge is working through the nation’s population — the children of the baby boomers are graduating from high school in record numbers. The federal Department of Education projects that 3.2 million students will graduate from high school this spring, compared with 3.1 million last year and 2.4 million in 1993. (The statistics project that the number of high school graduates will peak in 2008.) Another factor is that more high school students are enrolling in college immediately after high school. In the 1970s, less than half of all high school graduates went directly to college, compared with more than 60 percent today, said David Hawkins, a director at the National Association of College Admission Counseling.

The third trend driving the frantic competition is that the average college applicant applies to many more colleges than in past decades. In the 1960s, fewer than 2 percent of college freshmen had applied to six or more colleges, whereas in 2006 more than 2 percent reported having applied to 11 or more, according to The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 2006, an annual report on a continuing long-term study published by the University of California, Los Angeles.

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Arab and African Fertility Explosion

Chart of the Day- from The Economist;



See also demography matters blog, State of the World Population, A Longer, Healthier (?) Life