Population Review

Demography: study of population statistics

POPULATION CONCENTRATIONS Nearly 2/3 of the world’s population live in 4 main regions
REGION / Name two Countries here
East Asia / Eastern China, Japan, Korean Peninsula
People’s Republic of China – most populous
South Asia / India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka
Europe / England, Germany, Belgium
Southeast Asia / Indonesia (fourth most populous country) series of islands: Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, Philippines
What all of these places have in common:
  • Near and ocean or river with access to an ocean
  • Low-lying areas with fertile soil and temperate climate
  • Located in Northern Hemisphere (Except southeast Asia)

Ecumene: the portion of Earth’s surface occupied by permanent human settlement

Generally inhospitable lands:

1. high lands (mountains)3. Cold lands (ice, frozen)

2. dry lands (deserts)4. Wet lands (too much rain)

Arithmetic density: number of people per land area

Physiological density: number of people supported by a unit of arable land

Agricultural density: ratio of number of farmers to amount of arable land

EXAMPLES / High Density / Low Density
Arithmetic / India, Japan, Bangladesh / Canada, Australia, Russia
Physiological / Egypt, Japan (great pressure to produce enough food) / US, Canada (more arable land than people)
Arable / Egypt, Bangladesh / US (MDCs – technology allow small number of people to farm a lot of land)

Crude Birth Rate (CBR): total number of live births in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society

Crude Death Rate (CDR): total number of deaths in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society

Natural Increase Rate (NIR): percentage by which a population grows in a year (natural = excludes migration) Found by subtracting CDR from CBR after first converting to two measures from numbers. Today = 1.2%

Doubling time: which is the number of years needed to double a population, assuming a constant rate of natural increase

Total fertility rate (TFR): average number of children a woman will have throughout her childbearing years.

Infant mortality rate (IMR): annual number of deaths of infants under 1 year of age, compared with total live births

Life Expectancy: average number of years a newborn infant can expect to live at current mortality levels

Zero population growth: CBR and CDR are about equal, no growth

DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION

Stage / Describe what is happening / Current Examples
1 / High rates of CBR and CDR, little to no growth / none
2 / High CBR, low CDR. Rapid growth / Egypt, Kenya, India, African Countries,
3 / CBR and CDR falling slowly, decreasing growth / Brazil, Latin America, Mexico
4 / NIR stable, low growth / US, Britain, Australia, Canada
5 / Decreasing growth, population decline / Poland, Japan
Events that Influence Population Growth / Explanation
Agricultural Revolution / More food, sustain a bigger population
Industrial Revolution / More wealth leads to more food, more money spent on sanitary conditions in cities
Medical Revolution / Diffusion of medical technologies lower CDR

Population pyramids: a bar graph showing distribution of people by age and sex. Shape tells a lot about communities’ distinctive character

Dependency ratio:number of people who are too young or too old to work, compare to the number of people in their productive years

Sex ratio:number of males per 100 females

Expanding / Stable / Declining
Description / Birth rates high, many children and young people, elderly are dying early / Birth rate is constant / Families having fewer children, death rate higher than birth rate
Current countries / Cape Verde, Lebanon, Niger, Qatar, Libya / United States, England / Germany, Austria, Japan, Russia, Italy, China
Future Problems & issues / Need more schools and enough jobs for younger population. all economic growth goes straight to sustaining growing population. need resources, adequate health care / Not enough young people to pay pensions, could use young immigrants to work. Need better elderly care and hospitals

Overpopulation: too many people for the available resources

Thomas Malthus Theory population growth would press against available resources in every country, unless “moral restraint” produced lower CBRs or unless disease, famine, war or other disaster produced higher CDRs.

Neo-Malthusians Arguments / Critics of Malthus Arguments
Malthus failed to anticipate that poor countries would have the most rapid population growth because of transfer of medical technologies (but not wealth) from MDCs
  • Gap between population growth and resources is even wider
  • Population growth outpaced economic development, all economic growth absorbed by accommodating growing population
World’s population growth is outstripping a wide variety of resources, not just food production
  • Predict a world in which billions of people are engaged in a desperate search for food and energy
  • Clean air, suitable farmland, and fuel
/ World’s supply of resources is not fixed
  • Human action can expand the supply of food and resources
  • New technology can offset scarcity of minerals and arable lands by using existing resources more efficiently and substituting new resources for scarce ones
Larger population doesn’t produce problems
  • Can stimulate economic growth
  • More people means more brains to invent good ideas for improving life
  • Poverty, hunger and social welfare problems are a result of unjust social and economic institutions

Pronatalist: practice of encouraging the bearing of children, especially government support of a higher birthrate

Anti-natalist: policies aimed at reducing the number of children per family in an effort to curb overpopulation concerns

Factors the Influence CBR
Technology / Technologies and birth control methods can lower CBR,
Technologies that decrease CDR puts less pressure to have a lot of children
Social / In MDCs more wealth and leisure time leads to activities not suitable for children, traveling, bars, restaurants.
More people living in cities, women getting married later in life, women more educated
Cultural / Birth control methods
Women more accepted in the work force, women getting more educated
Economic / Cost of supporting a bigger family in MDCs leads to less children
LDCs more children is better for tending to farms and agriculture
Government Policies / China (One-Child Policy), India
Encouraging less children, family planning, birth controls

Epidemiology: branch of medical science concerned with incidence, distribution, and control of diseases that affect large numbers of people.

Pandemic: disease that occurs over a wide geographic area

Epidemiologic Transition / Stage 1 / Stage 2 / Stage 3 & 4 / Stage 5
What’s happening / Pestilence and famine, pandemics, infectious diseases / Sanitation, nutrition, medicine reduce disease / Chronic disorders, human-created / Because of evolution, poverty, and improved travel. Infectious, parasitic
Specific example / Black Plague / Cholera / Heart disease
Cancers / TB, Malaria, Bird flu

AIDS: most lethal epidemic, 95% from LDCs (99% new cases), 2/3 in sub-Saharan Africa (#2 India)