Human Geography

Jerome D. FellmannMark BjellandArthur GetisJudith Getis

Human GeographyChapter 4

Population: World Patterns, Regional Trends

Source: Library of Congress

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Population Growth

• Implications of the Numbers

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Population Geography• Provides the background

tools and understanding of population data such as:– Numbers of people– Age of people– Sex distribution of people– Patterns of fertility and

mortality– Density

• Helps us understand how the people in a given area live, how they may interact with one another, how they use the land, what pressure on resources exists, and what the future may bring

• Differs from demography, the statistical study of human population, in its concern with spatial analysis – the relationship of numbers to area

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Some Population Definitions

• Birth Rates– Crude Birth Rate

• Fertility Rates– Total Fertility Rate– Replacement Level Fertility

• Death Rates– Crude Death Rate– Infant Mortality Rate

Human Geography 11e

Some Population Definitions• Crude Birth Rates

– The annual number of live births per 1000 population

– It is “crude” because it relates births to total population without regard to the age or sex composition of the population

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Some Population Definitions• 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

– A more refined statement than the crude birth rate for showing the rate and probability of reproduction among fertile females

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Some Population Definitions

• Crude Death Rate– Also called mortality rate– The annual number of deaths per 1000 population– In the past, a valid generalization was that death rate

varied with national levels of development– Characteristically, highest rates were found in the less

developed countries– Nowadays, countries with a high proportion of elderly

people, such as Denmark and Sweden, would be expected to have higher death rates than those with a high proportion of young people

Human Geography 11e

Some Population Definitions

• Infant Mortality Rate– The ratio of deaths of

infants aged 1 year or under per 1000 live births.

– Infant mortality rates are significant because it is at these ages that the greatest declines in mortality have occurred, largely as a result of the increased availability of health services

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Some Population Definitions• Maternal Mortality

Ratio– Maternal deaths

per 100,000 live births

– Maternal mortality is the single greatest health disparity between developed and developing countries

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Population Pyramids

• A graphic device that represents a population’s age and sex composition

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Population Pyramids• A rapidly growing country has most people in the lowest age cohorts; the

percentage in older age groups declines successively, yielding a pyramid with markedly sloping sides.

• Rate of Natural Increase of a Population– Derived by subtracting the crude death rate from the crude birth rate– Natural means that increases or decreases due to migration are not included

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Population Growth

• Rate of Natural Increase• Doubling Times

– The time it takes for a population to double if the present growth rate remains constant

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The Demographic Transition

• The Western Experience

• A Divided World Converging

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The Demographic Transition• An attempt to summarize an observed

voluntary relationship between population change and economic development– Traces the changing levels of human

fertility and mortality presumably associated with industrialization and urbanization

– High birth and death rates will gradually be replaced by low rates

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The Demographic Transition• First Stage

– High birth and high but fluctuating death rates

– Wars, famine, and disasters took heavy tolls

• Second Stage– Industrialization– Falling death rates

due to advances in medical and sanitation practices; improved foodstuff storage; urbanization

– High birth rates because large families are still considered advantageous

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The Demographic Transition• Third Stage

– Birth rates decline– People begin to

control family size– The advantages of

having many children in an agrarian society are not so evident in urbanized, industrialized cultures

• Fourth Stage– Characterized by

very low birth and death rates

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The Demographic Equation

• Population Relocation• Immigration Impacts

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World Population Distribution

• Pattern of Unevenness

• Ecumene– Permanently

inhabited areas of the earth’s surface

•Nonecumene– The uninhabited or

very sparsely occupied zone, does include the permanent ice caps and large segments of the tundra and coniferous forest of northern Asia and North America

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Population Density• Density Measures

– Arithmetic– Physiological– Agricultural

• Overpopulation– Carrying Capacity

• Urbanization• Arithmetic Density

– The calculation of the number of people per unit area of land, usually within the boundaries of a political entity

• The figure can be misleading since it is a national average density that does not reveal any information about type of territory– some sparsely

populated areas are largely undevelopable

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Population Density• Physiological Density

– The ratio between the total population and the amount of land under cultivation in a give unit of area

– An expression of population pressure exerted on agricultural land

• Agricultural Density– The ratio between the

number of agriculturalists (farmers) per unit of farmable land in a specific area

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• Carrying Capacity– The number of people an area can

support on a sustained basis given the prevailing technology

• Population Data and Projections– Population Data– Population Projections

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Population Controls• Malthus

– A British economist– In 1798 he published “An

Essay on the Principle of Population and It Affects in the Future Improvement of Society”

– The world’s population was increasing faster than the food supplies needed to sustain it

– Population increases at what he called a geometric rate

– The means of subsistence growth at an arithmetic rate

– Population growth might be checked by hunger or other tragic events

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Population Prospects

• Demographic Momentum– When a high proportion of the

population is young, the product of past high fertility rates, larger and larger numbers enter the childbearing age each year

• Aging