Exam #2 Flashcards
Agricultural density
The reporting of the number of rural residents per unit of agricultural land
Boserup Thesis
The theory that population growth creates pressure for agricultural change, particularly the switch from extensive to intensive subsistence agriculture.
Carrying Capacity
The numbers of any population that can be adequately supported by the available resources on which that population subsists; for humans, the numbers are supportable by the known and utilized resources—usually agricultural—of an area.
Crude Birth Rate (CBR)
The rate of annual live births per 1000 population. It is considered “crude” because it relates birth to total population with no regard to sex or gender
What is the birth rate of a country strongly influenced by?
Age and sex structure of the population, family size expectations, customs, and and by population policies
Crude Death Rate
AKA mortality rate is the annual number of events per 1000 population
Crude density
The number of people per unit area of land
Demographic Dividend
A brief period when countries have the potential for rapid economic growth as they transition from high to low fertility and have a large workforce and few dependents.
Population Geography
The branch of human geography dealing with the number, composition, and distribution of humans in relation to variations in earth-space conditions
Demographic Equation
A mathematical expression that summarizes the contribution of different demographic processes to the population change of a given area during a specified time period: P2 = P1 + B − D + IM − OM, where P2 is population at time 2; P1 is population at beginning date; B is the number of births between times 1 and 2; D is the number of deaths during that period; and IM is the number of in-migrants and OM the number of out-migrants between times 1 and 2.
Demographic Transition
A model that traces the changing levels of human fertility and mortality associated with industrialization, health care improvements, urbanization, and changing attitudes towards child bearing.
Demography
The scientific study of population, with particular emphasis on quantitative aspects.
Dependency ratio
The number of dependents, old or young, that each 100 persons in the productive years must, on average, support.
Doubling time
The time period required for any beginning total, experiencing a compounding growth, to double in size.
Ecumene
The permanently inhabited areas of the Earth
Food Security
The condition where all people have access to safe and nutritious food of sufficient quantity for an active and healthy lifestyle.
Homeostatic Plateau
The equilibrium level of population that can be supported adequately by available resources; equivalent to carrying capacity.
J-Curve
A curve shaped like the letter J, depicting exponential, or geometric, growth (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, . . .).
Malthus
Thomas R. Malthus (1766–1834), English economist, demographer, and cleric, suggested that, unless checked by self-control, war, or natural disaster, population will inevitably increase faster than will the food supplies needed to sustain it.
Neo-Malthusianism
The advocacy of population control programs to preserve and improve general national prosperity and well-being.
Nonecumene
The portion of the earth’s surface that is uninhabited or only temporarily or intermittently inhabited.
Overpopulation
A value judgment that the resources of an area are insufficient to sustain adequately its present population numbers.
Physiological density
The number of persons per unit area of agricultural land
Population density
A measurement of the numbers of persons per unit area of land within predetermined limits, usually political or census boundaries.
Population (demographic) momentum
The tendency for population growth to continue despite stringent family planning programs because of a relatively high concentration of people in the childbearing years.
Population projection
A report of future size, age, and sex composition of a population based on assumptions applied to current data.
Population pyramid
A graphic depiction of the age and sex composition of a (usually national) population
Rate
The frequency of occurrence of an event during a specified time period.
Rate of Natural Increase
The birth rate minus the death rate, suggesting the annual rate of population growth without considering net migration.
S-Curve
The horizontal bending, or leveling, of an exponential J-curve
Total Fertility Rate
The average number of children that would be born to each woman if, during her childbearing years, she bore children at the current year’s rate for women that age.
Zero Population Growth
A situation in which a population is not changing in size from year to year, as a result of the combination of births, deaths, and migration.
Acculturation
The cultural modification or change resulting from one culture group or individual adopting traits of a more advanced or dominant society; cultural development through “borrowing.”
Amalgamation theory
In human geography, the concept that multiethnic societies become a merger of the culture traits of their member groups.
Assimilation
The social process of merging into a composite culture, losing separate ethnic or social identity, and becoming culturally homogenized.
Creole
The ability to acquire a more complex grammatical structure with enhanced vocabulary
Cultural ecology
The study of the interactions between societies and the natural environments they occupy.
Cultural integration
The interconnectedness of all aspects of a culture; no part can be altered without impact upon other culture traits.
Cultural landscape
The natural landscape as modified by human activities and bearing the imprint of a culture group or society; the built environment.
Culture
A society’s collective beliefs, symbols, values, forms of behavior, and social organizations, together with its tools, structures, and artifacts; transmitted as a heritage to succeeding generations and undergoing adoptions, modifications, and changes in the process.
Culture complex
An integrated assemblage of culture traits descriptive of one aspect of a society’s behavior or activity.
Culture hearth
A nuclear area within which an advanced and distinctive set of culture traits develops and from which there is diffusion of distinctive technologies and ways of life.
