Age Distribution
A model used in population geography that describes the ages and number of males and females within a given population.
Agricultural Density
The ratio of the number of farmers in a given area to the total amount of arable land in that area.
Arithmetic Density
The total number of people in an area divided by the total land area.
Carrying Capacity
The number of people an area of land can reasonably support; often used in terms of the entire earth and world population.
Census
A complete enumeration of a population.
Child Mortality Rate
A figure that describes the number of children that die between the first and fifth years of their lives in a given population.
Contraception
A method which prevents conception or birth.
Crude Death Rate
The number of deaths per 1,000 people per year.
Crude Birth Rate
The number of births per 1,000 people per year.
Demographic Equation
The global difference between births and deaths.
Demographic Transition Model
A model describing the change in CBR, CDR, and overall population growth through the various stages of economic and scientific development.
Demography
The scientific study of human populations.
Dependency Ratio
The ratio of children under 14 and elders over 65 to the number of 15-64 year olds; it is a rough approximation of the number of nonworking people being supported by a society.
Doubling Time
The number of years needed to double a population, assuming a constant rate of natural increase.
Ecumene
The portion of Earth's surface occupied by permanent human settlement.
Non-Ecumene
The very sparsely habited, uninhabited or uninhabitable area of the world.
Epidemiological Transition
Characteristic shift in disease pattern of a population as mortality falls. Acute, infectious diseases are reduced while chronic degenerative diseases increase
infant mortality rate
The annual number of deaths of infants under one year of age per 1000 live births.
Life Expectancy
A figure indicating how long, on average, a person may be expected to live. Normally expressed in the context of a particular state.
Thomas Malthus
Eighteenth-century English intellectual who warned that population growth threatened future generations because, in his view, population growth grew exponentially, while agricultural production only grew linearly.
Pro-natalism
A policy or general attitude that encourages population growth, often in the face of limited resources.
Anti-natalism
A policy or general attitude involving official policies designed to discourage births
Natural Increase Rate
The percentage at which the population of a region grows in a year.
Neomalthusians
A group who built on Malthus' theory and suggested that people wouldn't just starve for lack of food, but would have wars about food and other scarce resources.
Overpopulation
What happens when the number of a people in an area exceeds the capacity of the environment to support life at a decent standard of living.
Physiological density
The number of people per unit of area of arable land.
Population Pyramid
A bar graph representing the distribution of the population of an area by age and sex.
Replacement Fertility
The number of children a couple must have to replace themselves (2.1 developed, 2.7 developing).
Sex Ratio
The number of males per 100 females in the population.
Total Fertility Rate
The total number of children an average woman in an area has.
Zero Population Growth
What occurs when the total fertility rate of a population is replacement rate.
Asylum Seeker
A refugee who seeks to migrate permanently to another country.
Internally Displaced Person
Someone who is displaced within their own country due to war, political turmoil, or persecution.
Brain Drain
Large-scale emigration by talented people
Brain Gain
Large-scale immigration by talented people
Chain Migration
Migration of people to a specific location because relatives, friends, or members of the same nationality previously migrated there
Circulation
Short-term, repetitive, or cyclical movements that recur on a regular basis.
Diaspora
Describes the communities of a given ethnic group living outside their homeland.
Emigration
Migration from a place (especially migration from your native country in order to settle in another)
Immigration
Migration to a place
Forced Migration
Human migration in which the migrants have no choice but to relocate.
Voluntary Migration
Human migration in which the migrants relocate voluntarily.
Guest Worker
Authorized immigrant who has a work visa, usually short term.
Internal Migration
Movement within a particular country.
International Migration
Movement between countries.
Interregional Migration
Movement between regions within a particular country.
Intraregional Migration
Movement within a given region within a particular country.
Intervening Obstacle
An environmental, political or cultural feature of the landscape that hinders migration.
Intervening Opportunity
The presence of a nearer opportunity that greatly diminishes the attractiveness of sites farther away to migrants.
Migration Transition
Change in the migration pattern in a society that results from industrialization, population growth, and other social and economic changes that also produce the demographic transition.
Migration
Form of relocation diffusion involving a move to a new location.
Mobility
All types of movement from one location to another.
Net Migration
The difference between the level of immigration and the level of emigration.
Push Factors
Factors causing people to leave a location and migrate to a new area.
Pull Factors
A factor that draws or attracts people to a location.
Quota
A limit placed on the quantity of people that can migrate from a particular region.
Ravenstein's Laws
Laws dealing with migration patterns: 1. Most migration is over a short distance. 2. Migration occurs in steps. 3. Long-range migrants usually move to urban areas. 4. Each migration produces a movement in the opposite direction (although not necessarily of the same volume). 5. Rural dwellers are more migratory than urban dwellers. 6. Within their own country females are more migratory than males, but males are more migratory over long distances. 7. Most migrants are young adults. 8. Large towns grow more by migration than by natural increase. 9. Migration increases with economic development. 10. Migration is mostly due to economic causes.
Refugee
A person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or political disorder.
Remittance
Money a migrant sends back to family and friends in their home countries, often in cash, forming an important part of the economy in many poorer countries.
Urbanization
A migration pattern which shows an increase in the percentage and in the number of people living in urban settlements.
Suburbanization
A migration pattern which shows an increase in the percentage and in the number of people living in the urban-country fringe.
Counter-urbanization
Net migration from urban to rural areas in more developed countries.
Acculturation
The adoption of cultural traits, such as language, by one group under the influence of another.
Animism
Belief that objects, such as plants and stones, or natural events, like thunderstorms and earthquakes, have a discrete spirit and conscious life
Artifact
An item from the past (such as a dinosaur bone, or something made by human's in the past.
Assimilation
the social process of absorbing one cultural group into harmony with another
Baha'i
Started in Iran in 1800s. Bahai is based on two people. Bahai doesn't take the Qur'an literally. They don't believe in angels or devils. heaven or hell are not places they are condition of the soul. All religions come from the same source.
Behaviors
Observable actions of responses of humans or animals
Beliefs
specific ideas that people hold to be true
Bilingualism
The acquisition of two languages that use different speech sounds, vocabularies, and grammatical rules.
Buddhism
a world religion or philosophy based on the teaching of the Buddha and holding that a state of enlightenment can be attained by suppressing worldly desire
Confucianism
The system of ethics, education, and statesmanship taught by Confucius and his disciples, stressing love for humanity, ancestor worship, reverence for parents, and harmony in thought and conduct.
contagious diffusion
The rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population.
creole
a mother tongue that originates from contact between two languages
cultural determinism
Cultural determinism is the belief that the culture in which we are raised determines who we are at emotional and behavioral levels. This supports the theory that environmental influences dominate who we are instead of biologically inherited traits.
cultural diffusion
the spread of cultural elements from one society to another
cultural ecology
Geographic approach that emphasizes human-environment relationships.
Cultural geography
The subfield of human geography that looks at how cultures vary over space.
Cultural hearths
Heartland, source area, innovation center, place of origin of a major culture
Cultural landscape
the visible imprint of human activity and culture on the landscape
Cultural relativism
the practice of judging a culture by its own standards
Cultural transmission
the process by which one generation passes culture to the next
Culture Complex
A related set of culture traits descriptive of one aspect of a society's behavior or activity (may be assoc. with religious beliefs or business practices).
Culture Region
An area in which people have many shared culture traits
Culture system
A collection of interacting elements taken together shape a group's collective identity. Includes traits, territorial affiliation, shared history, and more complex elements, like language
Culture trait
A single element of normal practice in a culture, such as the wearing of a turban.
Daoism
philosophical system developed by of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu advocating a simple honest life and noninterference with the course of natural events
dialect
a regional variety of a language, with differences in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation; also a form of a language spoken by members of a particular social class or profession
diasporas
the migration of religious or ethnic groups to foreign lands despite their continued affiliation with the land and customs of their origin
Eastern Orthodox
derived from the Byzantine Church and adhering to Byzantine rites
environmental determinism
the view that the natural environment has a controlling influence over various aspects of human life including cultural development
ethnic religion
A religion with a relatively concentrated spatial distribution whose principles are likely to be based on the physical characteristics of the particular location in which its adherents are concentrated.
ethnocentrism
belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group
extinct language
A language that was once used by people in daily activities but is no longer used.
folk culture
Culture traditionally practiced by a small, homogeneous, rural group living in relative isolation from other groups.
folk culture region
When many people who live in a land space share at least some of the same folk customs.
folk life
the composite culture, both material and non-material, that shapes the lives of folk societies
geographic region
a demarcated area of the Earth
Hagerstrand, Torste
A famous geographer that wrote about cultural diffusion about the same time as Carl sauer
hierarchical diffusion
The spread of an idea from persons or nodes of authority or power to other persons or places