Wizarding Population

[Robert Shaw]

No: HPFGUIDX 83034


> Robert Shaw wrote:
>> All this means we can't deduce much from the population of
>> Hogwarts. (because there can have been major changes
>> in demographics.)

mikaelraaterova wrote:

> I have to disagree. Populations don't change overnight. The only
> population-affecting event in recent history that we know about 
> is Voldemort's reign of terror.

For these purposes, the 1890's are recent history.

The muggle population structure is still showing the effects of
WWII, fifty years later.

Given their longer lifespans, the wizarding population will
be directly affected by events as far back as 1875-1900.

Furthermore, since a significant proportion (currently about
25%) of wizards are muggle born, any change in muggle
demographics will have a knock-on effect on wizard
demographics.

Fewer muggles born in 1914-19 means fewer muggle-born
wizards, hence fewer wizards in total, and so on.

> If JKR says that
> the number of students at Hogwarts around the time of GoF is 
> about 1000, we can deduce quite a lot.
>
> I can't see the WW having wildly changing fertility rates, given 
> that the population explosion in the RW depended on decreased 
> mortality with unchanged, high fertility. When fertility started 
> dropping, the growth stopped,

After a time lag. It takes a few decades for people to notice the
infant death rates have dropped.

The wizardly birth rate fall may be within wizardly living memory.
The muggle birth rate fall certainly is, which has consequences.

There will have been a period when muggles had larger families
than wizards. If say, between 1850 and 1920, the average muggle
had four children to a wizard's two, then there will have been 
twice the number of wizards born to muggles during those seventy 
years than you'd expect from extrapolating the current Hogwarts 
demographics, and almost all those wizards would still be alive 
today.

This scenario alone could easily produce 10-30% more adult
wizards than implied by the size of Hogwarts.

An increase in wizard life expectancy over the same period would
further boost the adult wizard population.

Quite simply, deductions from the student population of Hogwarts
are only valid if nothing has changed for an entire wizardly
lifespan, but we know the muggle-born wizard population must
have changed significantly in just the last fifty years, a 
comparatively short period.

Of course, this does have other consequences. In the 60's, when
the muggle baby boom reached Hogwarts age, the fraction of
muggle-borns will have surged, increasing the resentment of
the pure-blood snobs, and helping create the right climate for
Voldemort's first rise to power.

--
Robert