Population Pyramid Project

You will use data from the following website to analyze population trends:

http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/informationGateway.php

Select 5 regions of the world to analyze. You will then find two countries from each region that have dissimilar pyramids.

· You will see several pull-down menu boxes:

1. Select Report Type: Pop Pyramid

2. Select Country

3. Select 4 Years at least 10 years apart no earlier than 1990 (Hold down CTRL button to get multiple years) Yes that means you will go into future years

4. Press submit (you might need to play with the years to get data because some countries do not have data from every year.

· Print out the Pyramids for the countries you have selected

· Repeat for another country in the same geographic or cultural region

· Do for 5 different regions (Geographic: Middle East, SE Asia, South Asia or Cultural: The Commonwealth, Core Nations, and Christian Nations etc.)

· Look around at pyramids for different countries within a region until you can find two from each region that are different from each other. (There may not be a huge difference, but you should be able to find two pyramids that show some variations from each other.)

· You will have a total of 10 countries and 40 different printed pyramids

ANALYSIS QUESTIONS: Do for each region!

1) For each pyramid, what does the shape most closely resemble (e.g., a classic “pyramid” or “Christmas tree”, a barrel, a rectangle, an inverted “Christmas tree”)?

2) What does the shape of a pyramid indicate about its patterns of fertility and mortality?

3) What are the differences between the two pyramids that you have selected from each region? Please discuss each region under a different letter heading (example- a) Europe, b) South Asia, etc.) and be sure to comment on age/gender differences.

4) What do you think accounts for the different pyramids from these regions? In other words, regions are supposed to be areas of some uniformity- why are there such differences between the population pyramids of these two countries? Again, please discuss each region under a different letter heading.

Due Date: ______________________

This assignment is worth 60 points. Late work will receive half credit.

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