GCSE Geography - Population - World Population Change
In today's post, we're going to be embarking on a fascinating journey to unravel the mysteries of world population change.
Buckle up - because we're diving into the captivating world of the Demographic Transition Model, peeking at the unique shapes of Population Pyramids, and exploring the differences between Less Economically Developed Countries (LEDCs) and More Economically Developed Countries (MEDCs).
Get ready for a whirlwind adventure where numbers come alive and tell the incredible story of how our world is growing and changing. Let's make population studies as exciting as your favourite video game – it's time to level up our knowledge! 🚀🌐
First of all we need understand how and why the world's population is growing.
We'll explore two key factors - birth rate and death rate - and how they interact is what we call "natural increase."
If the birth rate is higher than the death rate, there's a positive natural increase, and the population grows.
If the birth rate is lower than the death rate, there's a negative natural increase, and the population shrinks.
And if they're about the same, there's no natural increase.
Here's a simple formula: Birth Rate - Death Rate = Natural Increase.
Now, let's talk about what influences birth and death rates!
Factors Controlling Birth Rates:
Birth rates can change for various reasons. In places where big families are needed for early work, birth rates are high. Some families have lots of kids to ensure someone is there to care for parents in old age. Certain religions discourage contraception, making it harder to control birth rates.
Birth rates drop when healthcare improves, ensuring more kids survive into old age. In many developed countries, women marry and have kids later as they focus on their careers. Education on contraceptive use also helps lower birth rates. Some countries even have laws controlling birth rates, like China.
Factors Controlling Death Rates:
Death rates are high in countries with poor healthcare, bad sanitation, or not enough food. These are often less developed countries that struggle with disease.
Death rates drop when healthcare gets better, and there's cleaner water and improved sanitation, reducing the threat of diseases.
Now, let's peek into the Demographic Transition Model. It's like a guide showing how countries change as they grow. The UK is at Stage 4, while others are at different stages.
The relationship between birth rate and death rate has been used to create a four stage model of a country's population change, called the demographic model. Countries which are described as being developed have reached Stage 4. The UK is one of these. Other countries are at different stages of their development, and therefore occupy different places on the model. The main characteristics of each stage are described below:
Stage One: High birth rate (BR) and high death rate (DR), both around 35 per 1000. This means a relatively slow population growth. High BR due to no contraception and the need for large families. High BR due to diseases, poor health care, poor water quality, and a poor food supply. The UK was at this stage in the period upto 1750. Only a few remote indigenous tribes, in places such as the Amazon rainforest, exhibit these characteristics nowadays.
Stage Two: BR remains high, at around 35 per 1000, but DR falls to about 20 per 1000 by the end of the stage. The DR falls due to improvements in health care, sanitation and water quality. There is also increased access to medicines and food. The UK was in this period between 1750 and 1880. Countries such as Bangladesh, Libya and Nigeria are currently in this stage of their development.
Stage Three: BR falls rapidly to near 20 per 1000, and DR continues to slowly fall to around 15 per 1000. The fall in the BR is due to better access to contraception, more family planning education, working women getting married and having children later, less need for children as a labour source. DR continues to fall as health care improves further, and sanitation conditions improve. The UK was in this stage between 1880 and 1950. Countries passing through this stage at present include China and Argentina.
Stage Four: BR and DR low, at under 10 per 1000. Although there may be some annual fluctuations population growth is close to zero. The UK is in this stage at the moment, along with countries such as the United States and Japan.
Stage Five: It has been suggested that a new fifth stage should be added to the model, due to some countries, such as Sweden and France, having higher DR than BR, so that their populations are actually falling.
The Demographic Model looks like this:
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<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Demographic-TransitionOWID.png">Max Roser</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons
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The composition of the population of a country can tell you a great deal about its development. The best way to look at this is by studying a population pyramid. This is basically back to back bar graphs, one showing the number of males, the other showing the number of females. The bars represent age bands of 5 year intervals.
Different shaped population pyramids indicate the stage of development that a certain country has reached. The differences between the population pyramids of MEDC's and LEDC's are covered in the next section.
Population pyramids can indicate the BR and DR of a country. For instance a country whose pyramid has a wide base has a high BR. If the numbers rapidly decrease, to form a triangular shaped pyramid, then there must also be a fairly high DR, and so the country is in either the first or second stage of development. A country in Stage four will have a relatively narrow base, and there will be similar numbers of people in all the bands up until 70, when the numbers will start to fall. This country would be one like the UK with good health care, and a high life expectancy.
Population pyramids can also show the percentage of the population, which is described as being "dependant". These are the groups of people who rely on the economically active members of society. Dependants are classified as those under working age (0 - 15 years old) and those who have retired (over 65). They rely on the working age group of people between 16 and 64.
Population pyramids can also show significant events. In Germany there are far more males between 20 and 35, than there are females of a similar age. This shows up quite clearly on a pyramid, and is due to the huge numbers of male immigrant workers that came into the country through the 1990's. They came to Germany to find work, and left their families at home in places such as Yugoslavia and Turkey.
Another type of event that can be traced easily on population pyramids, is the effect of war. Often this leads to large in-balances in the population, with far more women than men of fighting age remaining as the men have been killed in battle.
Population pyramids can be used to help planning for the future also, as they can used to project the percentages of certain age-groups in the population over the next 50 years. In this way plans can be introduced to cope with the forecast changes, such as the ageing population in the UK.
Stay tuned for more adventures in the world of population! 🚀🌐
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