Population Distributions:

• People move to areas that give them more opportunities and happiness

  • Larger urban areas offer economic and social opportunities

  • Rural areas have move dispersed housing with a quieter lifestyle

Population Density:

• Arithmetic density: the population/ the amount of land

• Physiological Density: The population/ the amount of arable land

• Agricultural Density: The amount of farmers/ the amount of arable land

Important Population Vocabulary:

• Crude Birth Rate: Number of live births in a year for every 1,000 people alive.

• Crude Death Rate: Number of deaths in a year for every 1,000 people alive

• Natural Increase Rate: The percentage by which a population grows in a year

• Total Fertility Rate: The average number of children a woman will have

• Dependency Ratio: The number of working people in a country who support the people in a country who cannot work

• Sex Ratio: The ratio of males to females in a population

• Doubling time: The time it takes for a population to double in size

Child Policies:

• Antinatalist: policies that restrict population growth and motivate people to have less children.

  • China One-Child Policy, Singapore

• Pronatalist: policies that encourage people to have more children

  • Russia

Malthusian Theory:

• The population would grow exponentially until eventually reaching the Earth’s carrying capacity.

  • Human pop. grows exponentially

  • Food production grows arithmetically

  • Neo-Malthusians: People who believe that Thomas Malthus was right

Migration:

• People move due to economic, political, social, or environmental reasons.

• The number one reason for migration is economic

• Ravenstein’s laws of migration:

  • Migrants move only a short distance

  • Migrants most likely move to cities

• Migration is either forced or voluntary

  • Forced: When the migrant’s life or family’s life is in danger

    • Move to seek shelter and safety

  • Voluntary: the migrant chooses to migrate without fear of persecution or death

• Intervening opportunities: Migrants can encounter a place on their journey that provides similar opportunities, causing them to stay.

• Intervening obstacles: a barrier that interferes someone’s journey to their destination

  • ex: a mountain, border patrol