RURAL FOOD DESERTS

Population change in the countryside has led to the growth in rural food deserts

Population change in the countryside has led to the growth in rural food deserts

Introduction

Appreciating the “population” part of population policy is an important place to begin. Population scholars often distinguish between formal perspectives on population, or formal demography, and population studies or social demography, which would generally include population geography. The former, that is, formal perspectives, consider the components of population change (fertility, mortality, and migration) in relationship to population characteristics (population size, growth, age-gender structure, and spatial distribution) conceptually a closed system. Population studies, in significant contrast, consider population processes, patterns, and characteristics in relationship to, and within the context of, other sectors of human society, economy, polity, environment, and landscape. Population geographers are particularly good at integrating across sectors of both population impacts (e.g., the effect of population growth on the environment), as well as determinants of population processes (e.g., the effect of the economy on the level of fertility or timing of births). Population policies vary depending on whether goals are specified in terms of population outcomes (e.g., an optimum population size or zero population growth) or as a means to another end (e.g., increased migration, emphasizing immigration, as a strategy to stimulate economic growth).

Paul Demeny (2003) offers the following definition of the concept, which specifies a “public” or governmental dimension: “Population policy may be defined as deliberately constructed or modified institutional arrangements and/or specific programs through which governments influence, directly or indirectly, demographic change” (p. 752). Demeny traces the emergence of national population policies within the context of modernity and the role of the state in serving public goals to promote human progress and welfare.

John Weeks (2008) defines population policy broadly to allow for a range of policy forms. Population policy is “a strategy for achieving a particular pattern of population change. The strategy may consist of only one specific component—a single-purpose goal—such as to reduce fertility to replacement level by a specific date. Or it may be multifaceted, such as an attempt to improve the reproductive health of women” (p. 489). Weeks goes on to make the distinction between “direct population policy,” aimed specifically at altering demographic behaviour such as fertility or migration, and “indirect population policy,” which addresses population processes or issues in relationship to other goals such as status of women, educational attainment, or land use patterns (p. 489).

The range of ways of thinking about population policy is inherent in the approach of the United Nations to monitoring and, hence, measuring trends as a result of national population policies. The UN Population Division periodically collects and organizes information on national population in terms of three operational domains of policy: (1) “government views on population size and growth, population age structure and spatial distribution, and on the demographic components—fertility, mortality and migration—that affect them;” (2) “government objectives with respect to each variable;” and (3) “government policies concerning intervention to influence each variable” (United Nations, 2009a, ...