This chapter argues that (1) explosive population growth is a major factor in the transition to the Anthropocene and (2) the control of infectious disease was the proximate cause of modern population growth. Thus, the changing patterns of mortality should be integrated into narratives of humanity’s takeover of planet earth. It also argues that human expansion (in both pre-modern and modern times) creates the ecological conditions for the emergence of new infectious diseases, and therefore the evolution of novel threats is likely to remain a dimension of life in the Anthropocene for the planet’s dominant species.

This chapter examines relationships between demographic change and economic growth in the period 1700–1870. Traditional models of the demographic transition assumed that economic growth drove declines in mortality and fertility. However, such models cannot account for some of the main features of the transition. These include the early onset of initial mortality declines, widespread rises in fertility, and the weak correspondence between mortality levels and individual or national income at the beginning of the transition. Examination of pre-transitional demographic regimes indicates that mortality often rose with increasing urbanization and globalization, even as famine disappeared, and that social status gradients in survival were rare. Moreover, fertility was regulated, either within marriage or by limitations on marriage, in most societies, in contrast to the Malthusian view that mortality was the dominant form of population regulation. Early declines in major epidemic diseases allowed more modern gradients of health for wealth to emerge, and we argue that the causal relationships between economic growth and human capital were bi-directional, and driven in the early stages by mortality improvements. However, early gains in longevity were generally accompanied by rising fertility, leading to unprecedented population growth and unfavourable dependency ratios during the early phases of economic development.