Human Population Flashcards

Flashcards from Environmental Science and Sustainability, Chapter 6, by David Montgomery and Daniel Sherman

Demographers

Social scientists who study the characteristics and consequences of human population growth.

Total Fertility Rate (TFR)

The average number of children a woman would have in her reproductive years (~15-40 years old) in a given population.

Replacement Fertility

A TFR of 2.1, the rate at which the population does not grow or decline.

Crude Death Rate

The total number of deaths per year per 1,000 people.

Carrying Capacity

The maximum number of individuals of a species that a habitat can sustainably support.

Demographic Transition

A decrease in the birth and death rates linked to improvements in basic human living conditions, modern birth-control technologies, and economic growth.

Mortality Transition

A period that occurs as access to food, clean water, and medical care improves, and the country’s death rate declines.

Fertility Transition

A period when the population growth slows because even though the death rate remains low, the birthrate decreases due to societal changes.

Demographic Window

A condition when a country’s population is dominated by people of working age with less than 30% of the population being younger than 15 years old and less than 15% being older than 64 years old.

Stability Transition

Low birthrates that now match low death rates, producing zero population growth.

Cairo Consensus

A 1994 international agreement that held that demographic and development goals could only be met when the rights and opportunities of men and women were balanced.

Ecological Footprint Analysis

Used to estimate the area of land and water required for each category of consumption and waste discharge.