Changing population - Population change Flashcards
What is the crude birth or death rate?
Number of live births or deaths/1000/year
What is the fertility rate?
Total number of births/woman
What is the replacement level?
The total fertility rate at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to another.
What is the infant mortality rate?
The number of deaths of children in their first year /1000
What is immigration/emigration?
The movements of people into a country/from a country
What is the natural change?
The balance between births and deaths in a population
- can be described as:
~ natural increase/decrease
~ stable
What is the net migration?
The balance between emigration and immigration
What is demographic change?
The change in the population
- caused by variations in inputs (births + immigration) and outputs (death + emigration
What are the factors that affect fertility?
- Education + access to contraception - status of women
- Infant mortality
- Regulations (e.g. 1 child policy, political incentives, abortion)
- Religion + cultures
- Household income
- Quality of healthcare + availability to maternity
- Poverty - children to work
How to reduce fertility rates?
- Improve status of women (education + career opportunities)
- Reduce poverty (children not needed for work)
- Improve child survival (healthcare)
- Access to fertility planning (access to contraception + abortion)
What is and was the average global fertility rate?
- 1970 = 5.0
- 2016 = 2.4
- However global population is still growing
What is population momentum?
The tendency for population to grow despite falls in the birth rate
Why does population momentum happen, although fertility rates may have declined?
- Previous high fertility rates mean there will be a high number of people in early and pre-childbearing ages
- As they move through the reproductive ages births will continue to exceed deaths
- Populations continue to grow for approximately 50 years after they reach the replacement rate
- Population momentum will happen even if the total fertility rate drops beneath the replacement rate (e.g. Canada)
What are factors that affect mortality?
- Improvements in food supply (quality + diversity + lack of calories + better diets) and agriculture
- Immunisation + healthcare
- Hygiene + sanitation
- Clean water supplies
- Education (public - does every community understand bacteria + how they spread? - how important hand-washing is?
(epidemics/pandemics (HIV/AIDS) + conflicts)
What is the population structure?
- It varies between places over time
- Refers to a number of measurable characteristics of a population
- Can include: age, gender, ethnicity, language, socio-economic status, occupation, etc.
What structures of a population can be displayed on a population pyramid?
Age + sex
What do population pyramids show?
Trends in:
- Birth rate
- Death rate
- IMR (infant mortality rate)
- Life expectancy
How can population pyramids be useful?
- As a tool to help countries plan for the future (schools, services + facilities for the elderly)
- Identify the proportion of the population who are economically active or dependent (dependency ratio)
- Identify effects of immigration/emigration
What do concave slopes of population pyramids suggest?
High death rates + low life expectancy
What do near vertical sides of a population pyramid suggest?
Indicate low death rates
What did the global population pyramid look like in 1970?
- The largest segment was the youngest (0-5 years, 14% total)
- Whilst above 85 years there were very few people
What did the global population pyramid look like in 2015?
- More like a dome
- Young children still the largest group, but now make up only 10% of the population
- Those above them = almost as big a cohort with 9.5%
- Age groups start to become markedly smaller only around the age of 40, so incline starts much further up the chart than with the pyramid
- Now also 50m people above 85, so the dome of 2015 had a spike
What will the global population pyramid look like in 2060?
- The dome has gone now and the shape of the population looks more like a column or pillar
- Up to the age of 50 - generations are almost of equal size + shape has near-vertical sides
- By 2060 - children will be barely more numerous than any other age group up to 65
How to decipher population pyramids?
- The higher the pyramid, the longer people live
- A broader shape at the top shows a higher proportion of people living longer
- Differences between males + females can be picked out - is there a gender imbalance?
- Bulges show either a period of immigration, or a baby boom year
- Indents show years of higher death rates than normal (disease, war, famine) or emigration
- Youthful populations correspond with high fertility rates + larger family sizes
- A wide base shows a high birth rate
- A narrow base shows a falling birth rate
What is an example of a country with more male migrants than female migrants + high birth rate in migrant groups that shows huge imbalances on the population pyramid?
The United Arab Emirates (UAE)
What did the global fertility rate look like in 1950?
Women were having an average of 4.7 children in their lifetime.
- The global fertility rate all but halved to 2.4 children per woman in 2021
What replacement level does a country’s fertility rate have to drop under to cause the populations to eventually start to shrink?
2.1
How many nations had a fertility rate below 2.1 in 1950?
0 nations
How many countries now (2018) have fertility rates below the replacement level of 2.1?
Half of the world’s countries
Which countries have lower fertility rates?
More economically developed countries including:
- Most of Europe
- The USA
- South Korea
- Australia
Does the lower fertility rate in half of the world mean that the population is falling?
Not yet, as it can take generations for the changes in fertility rate to take hold - POPULATION MOMENTUM