Demographics Summary

Demographics - Lesson Goals

  • Understand concepts relating to demography.
  • Understand population trends in Canada and around the world.
  • Understand how globalization affects and is affected by trends relating to demographics.

Studying Population

  • Population Geography: The study of SPATIAL variations in the distribution, composition, migration, and growth of populations over time.
  • Demography: The study of human population dynamics. It looks at how populations change over time due to births, deaths, migration, and aging.
  • Demographics: A term for population characteristics (birth rate, death rate, immigration, age, income, sex, education, etc.).
  • Population change affects political systems, economics, social structures, and environments.
  • Factors for population increase: Food, health, economic growth, migration.
  • Growth Rate: Number of persons added to (or subtracted from) a population due to natural increase (births – deaths) and net migration (immigration – emigration).
  • Factors contributing to decline in death rate: Better nutrition, access to medical care, sanitation, and immunization.
  • Effects of population increase: Increased poverty, resource depletion, medicine shortages, urban sprawl.
  • Population growth pattern: Baby Boom, Generation X, Baby Echo, Generation Y.
  • Factors leading to population decline: Heavy emigration, disease, famine, war, sub-replacement fertility.
  • Sub-replacement Fertility: Fertility rate not high enough to replace population (<= 2.12.1 children/woman).
  • Historical population decline: The Black Death, Old World Diseases, Potato Famine.
  • Current population decline: Sub-replacement fertility levels, migration.
  • Reasons for low sub-replacement fertility: Urbanization, contraception, government policies.
  • Effects of population decline: Deflation, rise in living standards, population aging, less environmental impact, political power shifts.
  • Europe is projected to decline in population by 2050.

Population Pyramids

  • Population pyramid: Back-to-back bar graphs showing males and females in 5-year age groups (cohorts).
  • Information from pyramids: Birth/death rate trends, number of economic dependents.
  • Dependency Load: Percentage of population (non-working:
  • Pyramid shapes: Rapid growth, slow growth, zero growth/decrease.

Global Village (If the world were a village of 1000 people)

  • Breakdown by continent: 584 Asians, 124 Africans, 95 Europeans, 84 Latin Americans, 55 former Soviets, 52 North Americans, 6 Australians/New Zealanders.
  • Languages: 165 Mandarin, 86 English, 83 Hindu/Urdu, 64 Spanish, 58 Russian, 37 Arabic, 200 other languages.
  • Religion: 329 Christians, 178 Muslims, 167 "Non religious", 60 Buddhists, 45 Atheists, 32 Hindus, 3 Jews, 86 other religions.
  • Finance: 200 people have 75% of the income, 200 have 2%. 70 own a car. 1/3 have clean water.
  • Social structure: 5 soldiers, 7 teachers, 1 doctor, 3 refugees. Half of the adults are illiterate.
  • Yearly budget: 3million.181,0003 million. 181,000 to weapons, 159,000159,000 to education, 132,000132,000 to health care.
  • Nuclear power: Enough nuclear weapons to destroy the village many times over, controlled by 100 people.