Key Issue Number Four

Why Might The World Face and Overpopulation?

THOMAS MALTHUS

• Thomas Malthus - one of the first to argue that the world's rate of population increase was outrunning the development of food supply. He wrote an essay about the matter called An Essay on the Principle of Population.
• Population vs. Food Supply
• Today : one person, one unit of food
• Fifty Years : four people, three units of food
• One Hundred Years : sixteen people, five units of food
• Neo-Malthusians
• Argued that Malthus did not take into consideration the fact that relatively poor countries woulod have the most rapid population growth because of transfer of medical technology.
• Also argued that the world population growth is going to outrun not only food production, but a wide variety of resources.
• Malthus's Critics
• Esther Boserup and Simon Kuznets criticize Mathus's theory; they believed that technology would advance and save society from lacking proper food supply.
• Julian Simon theorized that the human mind is the greatest resource, therefore making overpopulation a good thing.
• World Health Threats
• Epidemiology - the branch of medical science concerned with the incidence, distribution, and control of diseases that affect large numbers of people.
• Epidemiologic Transition - causes of death in each stage of the demographic transition.
• Stages One and Two: black plague and cholera.
• Stages Three and Four: heart attacks and various forms of cancer.
• Stage Five: infectious and parasitic diseases.
• Below is an article about global overpopulation.
• http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/childfree_by_choice/46451

Key Issue Number Three

Why Is Population Increasing at Different Rates in Different Countries?

This is a demographic transition model.

• Demographic Transition
• A process of change in a society's population.
• The demographic transition  diffuses to individual countries at different rates and produces local variations in natural increase, fertility, and mortality.
• Stages of Demographic Transition
• Stage One: Low Growth
• Crude birth rates and crude death rates vary while the natural increase rate was essentially zero.
• Agricultural Revolution - the time when human beings first domesticated plants and animals and no longer relied entirely on hunting and gathering.
• Stage Two: High Growth
• Crude birth rates remained while crude death rates fell rapidly. This results in a rapid rise of natural increase.
• Industrial Revolution - a conjunction of major improvements in industrial technology that transformed the process of manufacturing goods and delivering them to market.
• Medical Revolution - a conjunction of major improvements of medical technology and medical practices.
• Stage Three: Moderate Growth
• Crude birth rates dropped dramatically while crude death rates slowly continued to decrease. This results in a dramatic fall of natural increase.
• Stage Four: Low Growth
• Crude birth rates and crude death rates level out and begin to slowly increase. This results in dramatic fall of natural increase.
• Zero Population Growth (ZPG) - when the crude birth rate declines to a point where it equals the crude death rates, resulting in the natural increase approaching zero.
• Population Pyramids - bar graphs which displays country's population by displaying age and gender in groups.

This is an example of a population pyramid.
• Sex Ratio - the number of males per hundred females in the population.

If you click on the following link, you will come to a website which was written by Matt Rosenberg about population growth.

http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/populationgrow.htm

Key Issue Number Two

Where Has The World's Population Increased?

• We are concerned with society as a whole rather than individuals or groups. We look at crude rates.
• Crude Birth Rate (CBR) - the total number of live births in a year for one thousand people alive in society.
• Crude Death Rate (CDR) - the total number of deaths in a year for every one thousand people alive in society.

• Below is a link to an extra chat about world birth rates and death rates.
• http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004395.html

• Natural Increase
• Also known as NIR.
• The percentage by which a population grows in a year.
• The NIR affects the doubling time.
• The number of years needed to double a population, assuming a constant rate of natural increase.
• Fertility
• Also known as the Total Fertility Rate (TFR).
• The average number of children a woman will have throughout her childbearing years.
• Life Expectancy
• The average number of years a newborn infant can expect to live at current mortality levels.

Key Issue Number One

Where is the world's population distributed?

• Humans are unevenly distributed across planet earth. There is no uniform number in every one area. Concentration and density are the two key properties used to understand how population is distributed.
• Below is a link to an article about world population distribution.
• http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.e9ed97c612dc7ca852d192a455906383.5a1&show_article=1

Population Concentrations

• Four regions contain the majority clusters of two-thirds of the world inhabitants.
• East Asia
• One-fifth of the world population are inhabited in East Asia.
• This includes eastern China, the islands of Japan, the Korean peninsula, and the island of Taiwan.
• South Asia
• One-fifth of the world population are inhabited in South Asia.
• This includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the island of Sri Lanka.
• Southeast Asia
• One-third of the Asian population are inhabited in Southeast Asia. (The world's fourth largest population cluster).
• This includes the islands of Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, and the Philippines. (A series of islands which lie between the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean)
• Europe
• The world's third-largest population cluster.
• This includes all population of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the European portion of Russia.
• Cartograms display the size of countries according to population rather than land area.
• The northeastern area of the United States and southeastern Canada creates the largest population concentration in the Western Hemisphere.
• Ecumene - the portion of Earth's surface occupied by permanent human settlement.

This is the ecumene of China.

• Types of Lands
• Dry lands - land too dry for farming.
• Wet lands - land which receives high levels of precipitation.
• Cold lands - land covered in ice or land which has permanently frozen ground.
• High lands - land which has high elevation.

Population Density

• The number of people who occupy an area of land.
• Types of Density
• Arithmetic Density
• The total number of people divided by total land area.
• Used to compare conditions in different countries.
• Physiological Density
• The number of people supported by a unit area of arable land.
• The higher the physiological density, the greater pressure that people place on the land to produce food.
• Agricultural Density
• The ration of the number of farmers to the amount of arable land.