Demographic Diversity

Types of demographic diversity

There are 4 types of demographic diversity: internal, external, organisational and worldview. Our diverse population definition mainly focused on internal demographic diversity, but it is important to consider all 4 types:

• Internal diversity refers to differences in natural characteristics/factors, e.g. gender, ethnicity, age, and nationality at birth.
• External diversity also refers to differences in people's characteristics, but ones that can be controlled and changed. Examples of external diversity include religious beliefs, socioeconomic status and education.
• Organisational diversity refers to differences in characteristics that are given to people by organisations. This can be things like employment status, how high up you are in a company or even where you work.
• Worldview diversity literally refers to differences in people's views of the world. These views can change over time, and as a result of and in response to many different factors. An example of worldview diversity is differences in political beliefs.

From this, it is clear that there are many ways in which a population can be classified as a diverse population. When we divide a population up in different ways to look at the demographics, we can see this diversity.

What causes demographic diversity?

There are many different factors which can contribute to or even reduce the diversity of a population, including:

• Migration
• Birth rates and death rates
• Development
• Globalisation

Fig. 1 - The Mexican diaspora celebrating El Día de México in Germany, Jurgen/ Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-2.0

Migration

The movement and resettling of people within and between countries is a key driver of changes in demographic diversity. Our article on Migration explains that people move for many reasons. One type of migration is economic migration. This involves the movement of people to allow them to take economic opportunities, like new jobs. If lots of people move from one country to another to look for work, this impacts the demographic diversity of both the origin country and the host (or new) country. This is because the original country might lose a significant part of their economically active, adult population, whereas the host country may gain many economically active people of different beliefs, religions and ethnicities.

Birth rates and death rates

As you probably know, birth rates and death rates significantly affect the size of a population. What might be less obvious is that these rates can also influence demographic diversity. If the birth rate is low and the death rate is high, the population can be classed as an ageing population. Eventually, this will reduce the demographic diversity of that population in terms of age.

Development

When a country undergoes development, it often develops greater demographic diversity. Development encourages migration, a wider variety of job titles, differing educational opportunities and disposable income to allow for changes in socioeconomic circumstances. As we discussed earlier, differences between people related to all of these factors result in diversity. Therefore, the development of a country often coincides with increased demographic diversity.

Globalisation

The world is becoming increasingly interconnected because of the globalisation process. The increased flows of people (by migration) are encouraging the emergence of a 'world village', in which cultures are becoming connected. While this increases demographic diversity across the world, some would argue that globalisation could also be causing a reduction in demographic diversity. Why? Globalisation is responsible for creating uniformity across the world. Cultural erosion is seen to be a common side effect of a globalising world as people begin to adopt global cultural norms. Therefore, globalisation can be argued to both increase and decrease demographic diversity depending on which metrics/factors are being considered.

You can read all about globalisation, its causes and its implications in our Globalising World article.

Fig. 2 - Globalisation increases the interconnectedness of the world

Workforce demographics and diversity

While in geography we tend to focus on the study of the demographic diversity of places, the diverse demographics of workforces can also be studied. Diverse demographics in the workplace are important to encourage innovation, creativity and adequate representation of the wider population. This is important in making sure that companies perform to the best of their ability. Nowadays, there is more public pressure to have a diverse workforce demographic. If you take a look at most companies, there are policies in place to ensure that people of different genders, races, sexual orientations and classes are included in the workforce.