Part 5: Model Category: Demography

As we’ve noted, intent on “telling the story,” traditional history books usually fail to point out the subtle but nevertheless history-shaping role played by the “setting“ where the action occurs—the first component of our four-part Model. Much the same can be said about this second component of the Model. Demographics deals with the information about the “actors” within the setting—how many there are, where they’re located, how rapidly their numbers are increasing or decreasing, their average life expectancy, and so on. These all have important effects on human action and history.

A large region with low population density and available land—the frontier—was obviously important in the development of America from its beginning as European colonies. Consider how different American history would have been if early explorers had been met on America’s shores by thousands or millions of natives, as they were in Asia, rather than by dozens or hundreds.

To make good sense of something that once happened, is happening now, or might happen in the future, much people-related information is needed. How large is the population within which the event or situation occurred? How dense is it? What are infant mortality rates? Average life expectancies? The number of people in various age groups? The rates of population growth or decline? Male/female ratios?

Consider, for example, this observation about colonial Pennsylvania:

…I shall add another Reason why Women’s Wages are so exorbitant; they are not yet very numerous, which makes them stand upon high Terms for their several Services...[1]

Male/female ratios have consequences, and the frontier was often lacking in marriage-age women. Even more obvious are the consequences of birth rate and rates for migration, both in and out. In the second half of the 20th century, the age distribution in many small towns in the central states shifted toward the elderly, as the young left to seek a living elsewhere. America’s culture has also been changed by the influx of people from Mexico and elsewhere. The growth of suburbs after World War II has also transformed American society in important ways.

Any investigation of the past must take demography into account.


[1] Gabriel Thomas, An Historical Description of the Province and Country of West-New-Jersey in America (London, 1698) (Includes description of Pennsylvania.).