V1003 Science & Society Homework #1
Due Monday Sept. 18, 2013 in class
As with all homework assignments, the work must be your own. Please use this Word document to submit your answers.
I. Population and Demographic Transitions
1. Showing your calculations, calculate the population growth rates for the following countries and time intervals:
a.Uganda: 7,470,000 (1960) to 57,900,000 (2004)
b.Sweden: 7,480,000 (1960) to 8,960,000 (2004)
c.Pakistan: 45,850,000 (1960) to 152,060,000 (2004)
d.China: 667,070,000 (1960) to 1,296,000,000 (2004)
2. Using the “Rule of 70” estimate the year from now when the population will double for each country in Question 3 based on the average growth rate you calculated.
3. Using the modern global 1.1% population growth rate and the current population of 7 billion, what would the global population be in 2060, and why won’t this happen? (Show calculations).
4. Now we’ll explore global development trends over the last 200 years using the online “Gapminder” application (
Afghanistan, Yemen, South Korea, and Sweden present three very different demographic histories that illustrate the various stages of development for different countries. Using the GapMinder software on your favorite browser ( inspect some of the major demographic trends that distinguish each country.
a. Change the x-axis (horizontal) to “time” and the y-axis to “life expectancy”. Select Afghanistan, Yemen, South Korea, and Sweden from the right hand country list. Sweden has the longest demographic records in the world and so they provide a useful longer history to compare to other countries. Then hit the “play” button on the lower left side (may need to do it twice).
In one sentence per country, comment on the life expectancy trends for each country. How do the trends compare?
b. Now change the y-axis (vertical) from “life expectancy” to “children per woman (fertility)” and press the play button again.
In a few lines, comment on the demographic transition stage for each country based on the lecture notes on this topic. When did each country pass through Stages 2-3 transition?
c. try changing the x-axis from “time” to other variables that are well correlated with “Children per woman (fertility)”. Identify these two different variables and provide a one sentence description of why you think this variable is so important to determining Fertility rates.
5. Now, pick any two very different countries of your choosing by checking them on the right-side list. (remove China, India, and US from the checked list). Change the x-axis to “Income per capita” and change the y-axis to “child mortality” and press “Run”. Also examine the y-axis data for these countries for “child mortality”, “fertility”, and “life expectancy”.
a.In one short paragraph please, compare and contrast their demographic evolution over the 1975-2004 period. Specifically, address when the major demographic changes took place and what happened in terms of child fertility and mortality trends.
b.Do you know of any specific socioeconomic events in each country that underlie the observed changes ? (you can research this online).
c.In what demographic stage would you place each country and why?
6. Many African countries have not participated in the recent demographic shift over past decades, when many once-developing countries shifted to wealthy, developed-nation status. Using three countries - Sweden, Korea, and Zimbabwe – explore the impact of the HIV/AIDS crisis on populations, development, and future growth.
Make the following three plots (using the “trace” feature to show the time evolution of these countries from 1950-2007): (use your computer’s image or screen capture tool to copy this plot and paste onto this homework Word file.)
a) Comment briefly on: income (x-axis) versus life expectancy (y-axis)
b) Comment briefly on: income (x-axis) vs. children per woman (fertility, y-axis)
7. The plot below shows Greenhouse gas pollution (in tons of CO2 per person per year) for various nations of the world.
a) What are the current emission rates for the USA, Germany, China, and India?
b) how will the populations of these countries to change from today to 2050, when the world’s population will be around 9 billion people? Specifically, comment on whether the population will be higher, lower or about the same and why. Comment on how you expect the demographic status of each of these countries to change by 2050. (i.e. Industrial post-industrial stage)
c) the carbon emissions from an entire nation is the product of the number of people times the average carbon release per person. (Note in the figure that the size of each square depicts the amount of carbon emissions and the population size for each country). Use this principle to suggest how the carbon emissions from each country will change by the year 2050.
d) what does this tell you about the changes in population and pollution in the decades ahead relative to today? (Until recently, the US was the largest carbon emitter in the world even though we’re just 4% of the global population)