Population Flashcards
A study of population is the basis for understanding a wide variety of issues in human geography. To study the challenge of increasing the food supply, reducing pollution, and encouraging economic growth, geographers must ask ____________.
Where and why a region’s population is distributed as it is.
In demography, what does demos and graphy mean?
Demos = people. Graphy = writing.
What is demography defined as?
The study of human populations: their size, composition, and distribution, as well as the causes and consequences of changes in these characteristics.
Populations are never ______. They _____ or _______ through the interplay of three demographic processes: ______, _______, and _________. If some groups within a population grow or decline faster than others, the _______is altered.
Static.
Grow or decline.
Birth, death, and migration.
Composition of the whole.
The world’s human population at the end of the most recent ice age, about 10,000 years ago, was somewhere between ___ and _______ people. It had taken perhaps 1 to 2 million years for the population to grow to this size.
2-10 million
From 8000 B.C. to A.D. 1 the population doubled almost ______ times, to between _______.
Six
200-400 million
Between A.D. 1 and 1750, growth continued at about the same rate, ultimately reaching _______ by 1750.
550 million
The world population reached: 1 billion in \_\_\_\_\_\_ 2 billion in \_\_\_\_\_\_ 3 billion in \_\_\_\_\_\_ 4 billion in \_\_\_\_\_\_ 5 billion in \_\_\_\_\_\_ 6 billion in \_\_\_\_\_\_ 7 billion in \_\_\_\_\_\_
1804 1927 1960 1974 1987 1999 2013
The world population may reach:
8 billion in ____
9 billion in ____
10 billion in ___
2028
2054
2183
Currently the worlds population is _____. _______ are in more developed countries and ________are in less developed countries.
7,238,184,000
1,248,958,000
5,989,225,000
The natural increase per year for the entire world is ______. For developed countries its ______. For less developed countries its ______.
86,582,000
1,466,000
85,115,000
What are the top ten countries with the highest population?
- China
- India
- United States
- Indonesia
- Brazil
- Pakistan
- Nigeria
- Bangladesh
- Russia
- Japan
What percent of the world’s total population is in:
- Africa
- Asia
- Oceania
- Europe
- North America
- Latin America and Caribbean?
- 14%
- 60.5%
- 0.5
- 11.5%
- 5%
- 8.5%
What ten countries have the highest population growth rate in 2014?
- Lebanon
- Zimbabwe
- South Sudan
- Jordan
- Qatar
- Malawi
- Niger
- Burundi
- Uganda
- Libya
What is the Laurentian Shield? What does it explain?
A large area of exposed precambrian igneous and high-grade metamorphic rocks that form the ancient geological core of the North American continent covered by a thin layer of of soil.
It explains why more Canadians live near the border.
The Laurentian Shield is _____.
One of the world’s richest areas in terms of mineral ores.
Who was Thomas Malthus?
An economist and English orason
What did Malthus’ essay “An Essay on the Principle of Population” (1798) theorize? What was it a response to?
A theory on population dynamics and its relationship with the availability of resources. It was a response to positivist theorists that praised the “perfectibility of man” and claimed that human knowledge would act as a source of welfare and freedom for future generations.
What did “An Essay on the Principle of Population” postulate (two of them)?
- Food is necessary to the existence of man
2. The passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain nearly in its present state
What is the Malthusian Trap?
Malthus argued that the difference between geometric and arithmetic growth caused a tension between the growth of population and that of the means of subsistence. He believed that this gap could not persist indefinitely. He offered the gloomy prediction that in a short period of time, scarce resources will have to be shared among an increasing number of individuals.
What were Malthus’ eight population predictions?
- Subsistence severely limits population-level
- When the means of subsistence increases, population increases
- Population-pressures stimulate increases in productivity
- Increases in productivity stimulate further population-growth (i.e. rise in real wages)
- Since this productivity can not keep up with the potential of population growth for long, population requires strong checks to keep it in line with carrying-capacity
- Individual cost/benefit decisions regarding sex, work, and children determine the expansion or contraction of population and production
- Checks will come into operation as population exceeds subsistence-level (i.e. real wages cannot keep pace with inflating prices for food)
- The nature of these checks will have a significant effect on the rest of the sociocultural system — Malthus points specifically to misery, vice, and poverty
What are the positive checks to controlling population (Vice and Misery)?
- War
- Famine
- Disease/Pestilence/
Plague - Infanticide (bad nursing of children)
What are the preventive check for controlling population (Moral restraint)
- Celibacy
- Non-procreative sex
- Contraception (Malthus opposed artificial birth control methods on moral grounds)
- Homosexuality
What is the point of crisis in Malthus’ theory?
When the population passes the threshold of resources
Has the Malthusian Crisis occurred?
No
Malthus has been criticized on several accounts during the last couple of centuries. What are the three criticisms?
- Religious view (Protestantism), racist and elitist
- Failed to account for improvements in technology
- Enabled food production to increase at rates greater than arithmetic, often at rates exceeding those of population growth.
- Enabled access to larger amounts of resources.
- Enabled forms of contraception - Did not foresee the demographic transition
What is the demographic transition?
- The history of population growth and food production since Malthus’ time has been very different from what Malthus predicted
- Population has indeed grown rapidly, but food production has grown even faster
We maximize yields in ways that Malthus couldn’t/ didn’t imagine. What are some of those ways?
- soil chemistry and crop agronomy
- synthesis of ammonia from its elements
-use of nitrogen (1909+)
3.Organic fertilizers - Mendel (the laws of genetic
Inheritance) genetic crop improvement - The breakthrough in wheat and rice production in Asia in the mid-1960s,
which came to be known as the Green Revolution
6.Specialization, Simplification, Concentration
What are some concerns with human population growth?
extreme poverty, poor soils, uncertain rainfall, increasing population pressures, changing ownership patterns for land and cattle, political and social turmoil, shortages of trained agriculturalists, and weaknesses in research and technology delivery systems, all make the task of agricultural development more difficult.
We have many fragile ecological systems, where deeply weathered, acidic soils lose fertility rapidly under repeated cultivation.
‘Revolutions’ may just be temporary successes if the frightening power of human reproduction isn’t curbed.
What will cause the extraordinary burst in population between 1950 and 2050?
Transfers of successful death control measures (public health, nutrition, medicine)
- Before 1914, effective public health systems existed only in a few regions
- After 1950, vaccinations, antibiotics, sanitation measures and the fruits of other scientific research cut death rates everywhere
World wide, most progress in death control took place between _____ and ______.
1945 and 1965
What was the world's life expectancy for: 1800 1900 1950 2000
less than 35
about 35
about 45
67
Between 2000-2005, what five countries had the lowest life expectancy at birth?
Zambia Zimbabwe Sierra Leone Swaziland Lesotho
Between 2000-2005, what countries had the highest life expectancy at birth?
Japan Sweden Hong Kong SAR Iceland Canada
What are the leading causes of death in the United States?
- Heart disease
- Cancer
- Stoke
- Chronic lower respiratory disease
- Accidents (unintended injuries)
What is the first reason population growth is slowing down?
- First contraceptive pill became available in 1960.
- Other population controls (mandatory sterilization attempts in India, one-child quota in China, free contraceptives, legalized abortion, infanticide, abstinence, immigration laws)
What is the second reason population growth is slowing down?
Exuberant growth of cities. We have a 13 fold increase in the number of city dwellers in 100 years. This basic change in the human condition affected everything: morals, religion, identity, politics, ambitions, education, health, recreation.
What percent of the world’s population resided in cities in 2001?
50% (3 billion people)
What do cities historically mean?
Falling fertility rates
Why would population growth begin to slow after 1970?
Children are considered less economically useful in cities
Where cities predominate, people within a generation or two abandoned the normal agrarian emphasis on fertility and have fewer children
If this pattern persists, cities may once again resume their historic role as demographic black holes
The disease of affluence (overeating, lack of exercise, substance abuse, social isolation)
Children remain economically dependent on their parents for longer (well into their child bearing years) because it takes longer to acquire technical skills, credentials, social understanding, personal maturity that more and more jobs require
What is the third reason population growth is slowing down?
Fertility rates and death rates decrease.
What is fertility?
The number of births that occur to an individual or population
What is fecundity?
The physiological ability of individuals or couples to have children (max fecundity for women is around 15 children)
in 2006, The World Fertility Rate average was ____ or ________ babies
2.7 or 136 million
Women worldwide are having _____ children in their lifetimes, from an average of ____children born per woman in the 1950s to _______ in 2000.
All of the most recent projections put forth by the UN assume that levels of childbearing will continue to ______ in the next century.
Fewer
Five to 3
Decline
What is crude birth rate (CBR)?
The total number of live births in a year for every 1,000 people (i.e., a CBR of 20 means that 20 babies are born per 1000 people over a one year period)
What is the crude death rate (CDR)?
Total number of deaths in a year for every 1,000 people
What is natural increase (NIR)?
The percent by which a population grows in a year. You subtract the CDR from the CBR to get NIR (i.e. if your CBR is 20 and your CDR is 5 then you have NIR of 15 per 1,000 or 1.5%)
For world population growth rates, what is stage 1?
- Low growth
- High birth and death rates
- Poor health, harsh living conditions
- Low life expectancy
- The cultures in these societies tend to encourage high birth rates (through religious teachings and social pressures)
- Large families tend to perform a practical function (i.e. labor)
- The NIR is essentially zero (most of humanity’s occupancy of the Earth was characterized by Stage 1)