Part 2: Population
#84 – Population Geography – Similar to demography in its
focus on demographic rates (e.g., birth rates, death rates,
fertility, etc.) except that population geographers investigate
patterns from a spatial perspective – why patterns exist, where
they exist, and the implications of current population patterns.
– As the global total of people on this planet continues to rise,
geographers become increasingly concerned with how the
world can sustainably provide for growing populations. –
Population patterns often overlap with economic development
patterns: for example, places with the highest fertility rates are
typically less economically developed.
#85 – Factors Relating to Population Distribution – Sixty
percent of the world’s population lives within 60 miles (98
kilometers) of the ocean. – Population concentrates in areas
with high soil arability/fertility, which also tend to have mild
climates. – Increasingly, population is becoming more urban.
– Currently about 50 percent of the global population is urban
with much higher rates in highly developed regions.
#86 – Population Distribution: General Patterns – World’s
current population is estimated to be upwards of 6.5 billion
people. – China and India together comprise over one-third of
the total global population with over one billion people each. –
Major population concentrations include East Asia,
Northeastern North America, South Asia, and Western Europe.
#87 – Population Distribution: Current Growth Patterns –
See Chart.
#88 – Population Density – Crude density, also called
arithmetic density, is the total number of people divided by the
total land area. – Crude density is a “crude” number because it
does not provide a full picture of the relationship between
people and land. Issues of density provide a good example of
how demography and development can overlap: for example,
nutritional density represents the ratio between number of
people and amount of land under cultivation in a given unit of
area.
#89 – Population Data – Includes total population counts and
rates such as crude birth rate, crude death rate, and so on: from
the United Nations Statistical Office, the World Bank, the
Population Reference Bureau, and from national census. – In
developing regions, data from censuses can be unreliable as
gathering detailed figures proves complicated because
illiteracy, suspicion of governmental officials, and
accessibility issues make accurate data collection nearly
impossible. – In the United States, decennial census provides
detailed and mostly accurate information on the demographic
characteristics of the country.
#90 – CBR and CDR – Crude birth rate (CBR): number of
live births in a single year for every thousand people in a
population. – Crude death rate (CDR): number of deaths in a
single year for every thousand people in a population. Both
CBR and CDR are “crude” rates because they do not take into
account the age structure of a population. – For example,
several countries in Western Europe have relatively high death
rates because of high proportion of individuals in older-age
cohorts.
91. Crude Birth Rate
- Birth rates tend to be highest in least developed regions
where both number of women at or near reproducing age and
fertility rates are high.
- Places with high birth rates tend to be countries where
women’s access to education is low.
- Places with high birth rates tend to have a high portion of
their population engaged in agriculture; more children equal
more laborers.
- Birth rates in both the developed and developing world are
somewhat determined by religion. For example, many Roman
Catholics and Muslims forbid the use of artificial birth control
methods.
92. Natural increase and Natural Decrease
- The difference between CBR and CDR indicates natural
growth or decline within a population.
- When births outnumber deaths, natural increase is occurring;
when deaths outnumber births, a country experiences natural
decrease.
93. Infant Mortality
- Number of deaths during the first year of life per thousand
live births.
- Tends to be much higher in developing regions as it tends to
indicate a country’s access to health care services.
- Overall, rates have decreased significantly over the last fifty
years.
94. Life Expectancy
- Average number of years an infant newborn can expect to
live.
- Number varies globally with highly developed countries
experiencing much higher life expectancies than developing
countries.
- Varies within countries, within cities, among ethnicities, and
even between sexes.
95. Demographic Rates: Population Growth
- Total fertility rate (TFR) is the average number of children a
woman will have during her childbearing years (ages fifteen to
forty-nine).
- TFR provides a more accurate picture of fertility in a country
than CBR as it allows demographers to predict the birth rates
of a particular cohort over time.
- Replacement level fertility: a fertility rate typically slightly
higher than two (to account for infant/childhood mortality and
childless women).
- In some countries, where mortality rates are high,
replacement rate increases dramatically.
- For example, in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the
replacement rate is above three.
96. Demographic Accounting Equation
-Predicts population change within a particular area as a
function of natural increase/decrease and in/out migration.
- See equation.
97. Population Growth
- See graph.
98. Population Growth Rates
- A country’s growth rate is determined by its natural increase,
(birth rate minus the death rate), expressed as a percentage.
- For example, a country’s natural increase with a CBR of 22
(per 1,000 population) and a CDR of 12 (per 1,000) is 22-12
or 10 per 1,000, translating to a growth rate of 1 percent.
- Currently, high growth rates are in developing regions such
as El Salvador, Mozambique, and Oman, where growth rates
are above 2 percent.
-In some countries the dependency ratio includes only makes
the economically productive cohort if the local culture
prohibits women’s participation in the workforce.
99. Factors Determining a Population’s Rate of Natural
Increase
- Economic development has profound implications on health
care, available employment opportunities, and nutrition among
other factors contributing to growth.
- Populations with better education tend to have lower rates of
natural increase.
- Gender empowerment: when women have more economic
and political access, power, and education, fertility rates drop.
- Some cultural traditions prohibit women from working
outside the home and some traditions prohibit use of
contraception.
- Certain public policies can encourage or discourage couples
to reproduce and can dramatically affect a country’s rate of
natural increase.
106. Baby Boomers
-Consist of individuals born post World War II (between 1946
and 1964)
-Largest population cohort in the United States demographic
history.
-As this large generation of individuals enters retirement, the
burden will be felt on the economically productive members
of the country.
107. Baby Bust
-Following the Baby Boom, the Baby Bust was a period of
time during the 1960s and 1970s when fertility rates in the
United States dropped.
-Drop is attributed to large numbers of women from the Baby
Boom generation who sought higher levels of education and
more competitive jobs, causing them to marry later in life,
causing them to have fewer children than the previous
generation.
108. Demographic Momentum
-Tendency of a population to continue to grow in spite of
stringent population policies because of the large number of
individuals in their childbearing years.
-Plays a much more dramatic role in population growth in
developing countries where a significant portion of the
population is at or near childbearing years.
-In countries that implement policies encouraging or enforcing
replacement-level fertility rates, it takes several generations
before stable growth is achieved because of demographic
momentum.
109. Carrying Capacity
-Essentially the number of people in an area can sustain
without critically straining its resource base.
-Depends on both level of technology and determining an
appropriate standard of living for the Earth’s population.
-Advanced technologies can typically sustain many more
people than more primitive technologies.
-On a global scale, if people in developing regions begin to
consume at a rate comparable to the developed world’s
consumption rates, the globe has certainly exceeded carrying
capacity. If, however, the people of the Earth live more
modestly, the number of people the earth can sustain will
increase.
110. Overpopulation and Underpopulation
-Overpopulation is essentially a value judgment reflecting an
opinion that an area does not have adequate resources to
support the existing population: If an area is overpopulated, it
has exceeded its carrying capacity.
-Underpopulation describes scenarios in which areas or
regions do not have enough people to fully exploit the local
resource base.
100. Global Population Growth
- Doubling time is derived from the growth rate; it is the
amount of time it will take a particular population to double in
size.
- Countries with growth rates of 1 percent take approximately
70 years to double their population, whereas countries with 2
percent growth rates take only 35 years to double.
- When this growth rate is graphed, a J-curve represents
exponential growth, and, globally, J-curve growth began in the
1950s.
- In the last couple of decades, growth rates have declined and
population follows more of an S-curve, meaning greater
stability.
101. Doubling Time
-See Chart
102. Population Pyramids
-See Chart
103. Population Pyramids: What Are They?
-Population pyramids are also often called age-sex pyramids.
-In general pyramids come in four different shapes
-Rapid growth, distinguished by wide base
-Stability, characterized by a rectangular shape
indication stable growth
-Decline, in which the base is similar than previous
cohorts
-Disrupted growth, which shows significant gaps in
the pyramid, usually as a result of war, strict population
policies, or other drastic events
104. Population Pyramids: What Are They Used For?
-Population pyramids provide a good indication of the
dependency ratio within a country; in addition they are often
used to predict population growth
In general, countries in the developing world tend to
have pyramids predicting rapid growth, whereas highly
developed countries’ pyramids are stable or even declining
105. Dependency Ratio
-A measure of the economic impact of younger and older
cohorts on the economically productive members of a
population.
-Younger cohorts are typically children under the age of
fifteen (ineligible to work); older cohorts are over the age of
sixty-four (retired members of a population).
111. Problems with Growth: Thomas Malthus
- According to Thomas Malthus (1798), carrying capacity is
limited by food availability. Food production grows
arithmetically, whereas population grows geometrically or
exponentially, meaning eventually food supplies cannot
support an ever-increasing population. In reality, Malthus is
somewhat accurate: Eventually population growth does reach
a carrying capacity called homeostatic plateau that extends
with each technological revolution. For example, the industrial
revolution allowed for tremendous advancements in food
production, greatly expanding the globe’s carrying capacity.
112. Malthus’s Proposition
-See chart.
113. Problems with Growth: Neo-Malthusians
- Neo-Malthusians, following in Malthus’s footsteps, believe
population growth to be a problem and provide the foundation
for many antinatalist population policies. Many NeoMalthusians advocate “zero population growth” (ZPG) in
which number of deaths and emigrants. While ZPG may limit
environmental repercussions of an expanding population, it
does have social and economic consequences in the long-term
as a young population base does not exist to support both the
local economy and an ever-increasing elderly population.
114. “Cornucopians” or Opposers to Malthus and NeoMalthusians
- In the 1980’s, when many argued that stricter population
controls needed to be placed with high TFR in order to
stimulate development, many economists argued that
increasing population stimulate rather than hinder economic
development. “Cornucopians” believe that with increasing
populations come increasing opportunities for innovation.
Current global totals have not proven to have dire
consequences predicted by Malthus and his followers. While
many across the globe die of starvation on a daily basis, this is
more an issue of food distribution than food availability.
115. The Cairo Plan
In 1194, the United Nations, at the UN International
on Population and Development, endorsed a strategy to
stabilize global population at 7.27 billion no later than 2015.
Instead of focusing on top-down programs that limited
reproduction in certain regions of the world, policies focused
on giving women greater social and economic control of their
lives. Many argue that global drops in fertility are a result of
women, particularly in developing regions, assuming greater
control over their economic and reproductive lives.
116. Population and Sustainability
- Sustainability is simply defined as using resources in a
manner that supplies existing populations while not
comprising availability of resources for future generations.
While limiting populations’ growth relieves pressure of future
generations’ resource needs, the bigger and thornier problem
in thinking about sustainability is global consumption patterns,
which are geographically very uneven. During the 1994 UN
meeting on Population and Development in Cairo, developing
countries criticized the disproportionate focus on limiting
population growth in developing regions, arguing that core
nations needed to curb their consumption rates.
117. Demographic Transition Model
- See Graph.
118. Demographic Transition Model
- Describes population growth stabilization as a function of
economic development. In Stage 1(pre industrialization), a
country is characterized by high birth and death rates and
little-to-no growth. In Stage 2, as a country industrializes,
birth rates remain high, death rates drop, and population
growth is rapid. In Stage , birth rates being to drop as a
country becomes fully industrialized. Stages 4 and 5 describe
highly developed countries across the globe where population
growth is stable or negative (as is the case in Stage 3).
119. Downfalls of the Demographic Transition Model
- The model was developed to describe the demographic
history of Europe; it does not necessarily work outside of this
region. Unlike European countries, where decreasing death
rates ( Stage 2) occurred gradually, countries in developing
countries in developing regions experienced a dramatic drop
in death rates in the 1950’s as a result of exportation of
medical technology and public health policies from the
developed world. The developing world, however, did not see
a corresponding reduction in birth rates. Instead the population
explosion, which began in the 1950’s, is attributed to high
rates of natural increase in the developing world.
120. Pronatalist Population Policies
- Typically exist in countries where population is declining,
providing incentives for women to have children. In Europe,
where negative population growth is common, countries have
instituted programs that encourage births through subsidized
child care costs, offering generous maternity leave packages
and other services to reproducing women. Some countries
outside of Europe, for example Singapore, are instituting
pronatalist population policies in response to dramatic results
of aninatalist policies in previous decades.
121 Antinatalist Population Policies
Encourage couples to limit the number of children they have.
Most often, these policies discourage growth through the
provision of contraception or abortion establishment of
specific incentives, such as steep penalties for couples bearing
more children than allowed by the state. China is famous for
its one-child policy population from the 1980s in which many
drastic measures (e.g. Forced sterilization for couples with one
child or infanticide of female babies), ensured decreasing
population growth.
122 HIV/AIDS
Major and dramatic exception to recent population growth
trends, particularly in the developing world, where epidemic is
having dramatic effects on birth rates, death rates, and life
expectancy. Currently, the fourth most common cause of death
worldwide and expected to surpass Black Death of the
fourteenth as history’s worst-ever epidemic.
124 Migration
Defined as movement to a new activity space (e.g. schools,
grocery stores, and other everyday activities change as a result
of the move) or movement from one administrative unit to
another. International migration involves movement over
country borders. Emigration is movement out of a particular
place, whereas immigration describes movement to a specific
location. Migratory movement within a country is called
internal migration.
125 Voluntary migration and Push and Pull Factors
Voluntary migration is when an individual chooses to move,
typically based on various push and pull factors. Pull factors
are characteristics at a destination that draw a migrant
educational opportunities, and employment opportunities.
Push factors are characteristics at an individual‘s current
location that make him or her want to leave. Push factors
include negative environmental characteristics, unemployment,
lack of goods, and high cost of living among other things.
126 Internal Migration History of the United States
The most significant migration movements in the United
States can be characterized in three waves:
Wave 1: beginning with colonization, a movement of the
population westward and movement from rural to urban areas
as places become increasingly industrialized. Wave 2: from
the early 1940s through the 1970s a massive movement of
African Americans forms the rural south to cities in the south,
North, and West. Wave 3: World War II to the present day
movement to the Sun Belt states.
127 Rust Belt and Sun Belt Migration Patterns
In 1960s and 1970s, large numbers of white, middle class
Americans moved from older northeastern and Midwestern
cities to the South and to the West Coast. The area people
were moving from in the upper Midwest became known as the
rust belt. These previous industrial powerhouse lost much of
their economic base to other parts of the country and other
parts of the world The states in the South and West Coast that
people were migrating to became known as the sun belt(the
fifteen states from North Carolina to Southern California and
all states below that line).
128 The Effect of Sun Belt Migration
Movement of the U.S population in the last several decades to
the sun belt states has dramatically altered the balance of
political and economic power as California, Florida, and
Texas ( all sun belt states), are now three of the four most
populous states in the country They carry a disproportionate
number of electoral votes, have large congressional
delegations, and are dominant in many economic sectors such
as technology, energy production, and agriculture.
129 Population Centroid of the United States
The geographic center of the United States : especially the
balancing point of the U.S population if the country is
conceived of as a plane. Historically, has been on the East
Coast, with continued migration west and south, the center is
progressively moving and is currently thought to be
somewhere in mid-Missouri.
130 Guest Workers
Individuals who migrate temporarily to take advantage pf job
opportunities in other countries. Send a significant portion of
their pay, called remittances, back home to support friends and
family. World Bank estimates that in 2006, 260 billion dollars
in remittances were sent home, that becomes much larger if
untraceable money is included. In many developing countries,
remittances comprise a significant part of the country’s
national income (up to 20 percent).
131 Ravenstein’s Migration Laws
Describe voluntary migration patterns; the laws that still prove
true today are:
Every migration flow generates a counterflow
The majority of migrants move a short distance
Migrants who move long distances tend to choose big city
destinations
Urban residents are less migratory than inhabitants of rural
areas
Families are less likely to make international moves than
young adults
132 Chain Migration
Describes migrant flows from a common origin to the same
destination. Family or friends move first and get established
within an area, paving the way for more friends and family to
follow the same path
As number of migrants from a similar area congregate in one
place, services specific to that population (both cultural and
social) begin to accrue in that area
133 Channelized Migration
With channelized migration streams, the flows between a
particular origin and destination are larger than would
normally be the case, but are not the result of family or kinship
ties as is the case with chain migration
For example, channelized migration occurs between Texas
and California; in other words, a significantly larger number
of people from Texas to California and vice versa than
migration models predict
134 Reluctant and Forced Migration
In forced migration, and individual migrates against his or her
will
Somewhere between voluntary and forced migration is
reluctant migration where an individual reluctantly chooses to
move because factors at the current location prohibit him or
her from remaining there
A common example of an internal forced migration event in
the United States is the Trail of Tears in the 1830s during
which Native Americans from numerous eastern tribes had to
migrate west (to what is now Oklahoma)
A common example of an international forced migration of
millions of Africans to North and South America during the
slave trade beginning in the 1500s
135 Illegal Immigration
Can be characterized as involuntary but unforced migrants
These individuals choose to risk their lives in the migration
decision, but that decision is motivated by dire economic
situations within their own country
136 Refugees
Individuals who cross national boundaries to seek safety and
asylum
Typically reluctant or forced migrants who leave their country
because of war, famine, environmental catastrophes, or
religious persecution
In 2005 it was estimated that 13.5 million people were
international refugees
137 Global Refugee Patterns
Post 9/11 because of security issues, many countries in the
core countries of the world, particularly Western Europe and
North America, have tightened their borders to individuals
seeking asylum
In many African countries, borders are open to refugees such
that countries in which refugees are fleeing from also host
significant refugee populations
For example, several million refugees have fled Sudan as a
result of civil war, but Sudan also hosts upwards of 75
thousand refugees from neighboring countries
138 Internally Displaced Persons
People who have to leave their home because of conflict,
human rights abuse, war, or environmental catastrophes, but
do not leave their country to seek safety
Total is increasing globally; United Nations estimates that
approx. 25 million people in 40 countries are currently
internally displaced (total does not include people displaced
by environmental disasters)
A good example in the United States is the individuals whose
homes were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005