AP HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
CH. 7 CLASS NOTES
Policy Responses to
Demographic Changes
National Population Policies
• 1. EXPANSIVE POPULATION POLICIES-
• Raise Natural Increase Rate
• Encourage larger families
• BABY BOOM – Individuals born in USA
1946-1964.
• Peace, Stability, Education, Jobs
(Men)
• BABY BUST – In 1960s & 70s fertility
rates dropped as women from Baby
Boom Generation sought higher
education & competitive jobs

2. EUGENIC POPULATION
POLICIES –
Favor one racial / cultural sector
of population
 Nazi Germany – “The Final
Solution”

3. Restrictive Population Policies
• Legislation / programs to reduce
Natural Increase Rate
• Restrict large families
• Restrict gov’t services
CHINA
• Under Mao Zedong, Communist
Chinese Society encouraged large
families (until 1976)
• 1979 – China’s One Child Policy
Some Rules
• Forced families to register births
• After 1 child – forced to use
contraception
• If 2nd child born – one parent had
to be sterilized
Reactions
• PEOPLE (farming families need
bodies to farm, so they defy the
gov’t)
• Kept pregnant women out of sight
• Did not register births
• Dodged gov’t inspectors
• GOV’T ( harsh consequences on
people who violated rules )
• Fired from jobs
• Land taken away
• Women arrested and under forced
abortion
• In first 6 years – 70 million abortions
• In 1980s – 20 million people sterilized
annually (3:1 women to men)
USA Immigration Laws
• USA 1882 – Chinese Exclusion Act
• Designed to restrict Chinese immigrants to USA
• 1924 – National Origins Act
• European Immigration shifts from N. Europe to
SE Europe
• Act set up QUOTA SYSTEM limiting number of
immigrants per country
Paul Ehrlich – USA
The Population Bomb (1968)
• “A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the
population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of
people. Treating only the symptoms of cancer may make the
victim more comfortable at first, but eventually he dies often horribly. A similar fate awaits a world with a
population explosion if only the symptoms are treated. We
must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the
cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many
apparent brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be
intense. But the disease is so far advanced that only with
radical surgery does the patient have a chance to survive.”
International POP Policies
• Difficult to reach Agreement on
• Religious Ideologies
• Gov’t goals / relations