IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/thpobi/v76y2009i3p179-188.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Population and prehistory III: Food-dependent demography in variable environments

Author

Listed:
  • Lee, Charlotte T.
  • Puleston, Cedric O.
  • Tuljapurkar, Shripad

Abstract

The population dynamics of preindustrial societies depend intimately on their surroundings, and food is a primary means through which environment influences population size and individual well-being. Food production requires labor; thus, dependence of survival and fertility on food involves dependence of a population’s future on its current state. We use a perturbation approach to analyze the effects of random environmental variation on this nonlinear, age-structured system. We show that in expanding populations, direct environmental effects dominate induced population fluctuations, so environmental variability has little effect on mean hunger levels, although it does decrease population growth. The growth rate determines the time until population is limited by space. This limitation introduces a tradeoff between population density and well-being, so population effects become more important than the direct effects of the environment: environmental fluctuation increases mortality, releasing density dependence and raising average well-being for survivors. We discuss the social implications of these findings for the long-term fate of populations as they transition from expansion into limitation, given that conditions leading to high well-being during growth depress well-being during limitation.

Suggested Citation

  • Lee, Charlotte T. & Puleston, Cedric O. & Tuljapurkar, Shripad, 2009. "Population and prehistory III: Food-dependent demography in variable environments," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 179-188.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:76:y:2009:i:3:p:179-188
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tpb.2009.06.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040580909000835
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tpb.2009.06.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lee Ronald, 1993. "Accidental and Systematic Change in Population History: Homeostasis in a Stochastic Setting," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 1-30, January.
    2. Tommy Bengtsson & Cameron Campbell & James Z. Lee, 2004. "Life Under Pressure: Mortality and Living Standards in Europe and Asia, 1700-1900," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262025515, December.
    3. Lee, Charlotte T. & Tuljapurkar, Shripad, 2008. "Population and prehistory I: Food-dependent population growth in constant environments," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 73(4), pages 473-482.
    4. Puleston, Cedric O. & Tuljapurkar, Shripad, 2008. "Population and prehistory II: Space-limited human populations in constant environments," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 147-160.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Barraquand, Frédéric & Yoccoz, Nigel G., 2013. "When can environmental variability benefit population growth? Counterintuitive effects of nonlinearities in vital rates," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 1-11.
    2. Clement Tisdell & Serge Svizzero, 2020. "The Ability in Antiquity of Some Agrarian Societies to Avoid the Malthusian Trap and Develop," Forum for Social Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(2), pages 202-227, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kirch, P.V. & Asner, G. & Chadwick, O.A. & Field, J. & Ladefoged, T. & Lee, C. & Puleston, C. & Tuljapurkar, S. & Vitousek, P.M., 2012. "Reprint: Building and testing models of long-term agricultural intensification and population dynamics: A case study from the Leeward Kohala Field System, Hawai’i," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 241(C), pages 54-64.
    2. Kirch, P.V. & Asner, G. & Chadwick, O.A. & Field, J. & Ladefoged, T. & Lee, C. & Puleston, C. & Tuljapurkar, S. & Vitousek, P.M., 2012. "Building and testing models of long-term agricultural intensification and population dynamics: A case study from the Leeward Kohala Field System, Hawai’i," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 227(C), pages 18-28.
    3. Clement Tisdell & Serge Svizzero, 2020. "The Ability in Antiquity of Some Agrarian Societies to Avoid the Malthusian Trap and Develop," Forum for Social Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(2), pages 202-227, April.
    4. Barraquand, Frédéric & Yoccoz, Nigel G., 2013. "When can environmental variability benefit population growth? Counterintuitive effects of nonlinearities in vital rates," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 1-11.
    5. Lee, Charlotte T. & Tuljapurkar, Shripad, 2008. "Population and prehistory I: Food-dependent population growth in constant environments," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 73(4), pages 473-482.
    6. Hedefalk, Finn & Quaranta, Luciana & Bengtsson, Tommy, 2016. "Unequal lands: Soil type, nutrition and child mortality in southern Sweden, 1850-1914," Lund Papers in Economic History 148, Lund University, Department of Economic History.
    7. Gauthier, Nicolas, 2019. "Multilevel Simulation of Demography and Food Production in Ancient Agrarian Societies: A Case Study from Roman North Africa," SocArXiv 5be6a, Center for Open Science.
    8. Finn Hedefalk & Luciana Quaranta & Tommy Bengtsson, 2017. "Unequal lands: Soil type, nutrition, and child mortality in southern Sweden, 1850-1914," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 36(36), pages 1039-1080.
    9. James Foreman-Peck & Peng Zhou, 2021. "Fertility versus productivity: a model of growth with evolutionary equilibria," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(3), pages 1073-1104, July.
    10. Timothy W. Guinnane & Sheilagh C. Ogilvie, 2013. "A Two-Tiered Demographic System: "Insiders" and "Outsiders" in Three Swabian Communities, 1558-1914," Working Papers 1021, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    11. Joseph Molitoris & Martin Dribe, 2016. "Industrialization and inequality revisited: mortality differentials and vulnerability to economic stress in Stockholm, 1878–1926," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 20(2), pages 176-197.
    12. José Joaquín García-Gómez & Juan Diego Pérez-Cebada, 2020. "A Socio-Environmental History of a Copper Mining Company: Rio-Tinto Company Limited (1874–1930)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-17, June.
    13. Bengtsson, Tommy & Broström, Göran, 2009. "Do conditions in early life affect old-age mortality directly and indirectly? Evidence from 19th-century rural Sweden," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(9), pages 1583-1590, May.
    14. Chris Wilson, 2013. "Thinking about post-transitional demographic regimes," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 28(46), pages 1373-1388.
    15. Arnaud Deseau, 2023. "Speed of Convergence in a Malthusian World: Weak or Strong Homeostasis?," AMSE Working Papers 2326, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    16. Peura, Pekka, 2013. "From Malthus to sustainable energy—Theoretical orientations to reforming the energy sector," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 19(C), pages 309-327.
    17. van den Berg, Gerard J. & Doblhammer, Gabriele & Christensen, Kaare, 2009. "Exogenous determinants of early-life conditions, and mortality later in life," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(9), pages 1591-1598, May.
    18. Marina E. Adshade, 2009. "The Rich Are Different From The Rest Of Us," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(4), pages 959-967, December.
    19. Quaranta, Luciana, 2014. "Early life effects across the life course: The impact of individually defined exogenous measures of disease exposure on mortality by sex in 19th- and 20th-century Southern Sweden," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 266-273.
    20. Julia A. Jennings & Luciana Quaranta & Tommy Bengtsson, 2017. "Inequality and demographic response to short-term economic stress in North Orkney, Scotland, 1855–1910: Sector differences," Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 71(3), pages 313-328, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:76:y:2009:i:3:p:179-188. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/intelligence .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.