Population in The Victorian Era
The Victorian era was a time of unprecedented demographic increase in England. The population rose from 13.897 million in 1831 to 32.528 million in 1901. Two major factors affecting population growth are fertility rates and mortality rates. England was the first country to undergo the Demographic transition and the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions.
Many countries in the 19th century did not increase in population so rapidly and successfully throughout the Industrial Revolution. At the time, some believed this lack of growth outside Britain was due to the ‘Malthusian trap’ theory; Thomas Malthus argued before the start of the Industrial Revolution that it was the tendency of a population to expand beyond the limits of resource sustainability, at which point a crisis (such as famine, war, or epidemic) would reduce the population to a sustainable size. England escaped the ‘Malthusian trap’ because the Industrial Revolution had a positive impact on living standards. People had more money and could improve their standards; therefore, a population increase was sustainable.
Read more about this topic: Victorian Era
Famous quotes containing the words population, victorian and/or era:
“The paid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansions of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest; the luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold mine to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, the house, and the very body and feature of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Apart from letters, it is the vulgar custom of the moment to deride the thinkers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras; yet there has not been, in all history, another age ... when so much sheer mental energy was directed toward creating a fairer social order.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“It struck me that the movies had spent more than half a century saying, “They lived happily ever after” and the following quarter-century warning that they’ll be lucky to make it through the weekend. Possibly now we are now entering a third era in which the movies will be sounding a note of cautious optimism: You know it just might work.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)