notes from AJ that are probably longer than you actually need to know but hey better safe than sorry

Indicators of Human Wellbeing (quantitative and qualitative data)

• Quantitative indicators

  • Use numerical data to measure one aspect of wellbeing, i.e. poverty, health, education, or economic growth. E.g. income, GDP, poverty rate, literacy rate, Brandt Line, infant mortality rate

  • Infant mortality = deaths in the first year of life per 1000 births

    • From this, we can determine stuff like hygiene, diseases, childcare facilities, medical facilities, etc.

• Qualitative indicators

  • Include descriptions of living conditions and people’s quality of life. They are useful in analysing features that are not easily calculated or measures in numbers, i.e. freedom, corruption, sense of security. An example of one would be the Happiness Index.

• Composite indicators

  • Mathematical combinations of a set of indicators

• One indicator isn’t necessarily enough to make a judgement about wellbeing - there are many different factors needed to be able to measure something as broad as human wellbeing. Mostly, when determining the level of development of a country/region, they use a combination of indicators. This would cover more areas of life in that area overall.

• Multiple component Index/Indicator

  • The Human Development Index

    • A combination of many indicators creates a more accurate image of wellbeing. The HDI is a composite Index.

  • The HDI is scored as a value out of 1. It combines 1 indicators:

    • Literacy/Education

    • Health

    • Life expectancy

    • GNI (Gross national income)

  • Top countries; Norway, NZ, Sweden, Japan

  • Bottom countries; Rwanda, South Sudan, Yemen, Somalia

• Happy Planet Index

  • Calculated with

    • Wellbeing: how satisfied people are with their life

    • Life expectancy: the average number of years someone’s expected to live

    • Inequality of outcomes: Inequalities between people within a country - the distribution of wellbeing and life expectancy.

    • Ecological footprint: The average impact each resident of a country places on the environment

    • HPI = (Wellbeing x Life expectancy x Outcomes) ÷ Ecological footprint

Life expectancy and factors that determine it across the globe

• The average number a person in a country lives for, measurements begins from birth

• Factors for high life expectancy:

  • Stable, developed country

  • No current conflict for people to get caught up in

  • Good sanitation

  • Free/cheaper healthcare

  • Good aged care

  • Health education - teaching kids how to take care of their bodies

  • Food security, good quality food

  • Opportunities for exercise

  • Sense of community

  • Good air?

• i.e. Japan - Japan has the highest life expectancy, because it’s a highly developed country with heaps of good facilities, and within the culture there is a strong sense of community. The food is very healthy, much of it fermented, and in the culture Japanese people are generally active as well.

• Factors for low life expectancy:

  • Un-developed/developing country

  • War/conflict in the country - e.g. Afghanistan

  • Population density - leads to other environmental issues

  • Bad air/highly polluted air

  • Poor education, poorly skilled workforce

  • Bad governmental organisation

  • No sanitation

  • No medical facilities

  • Food insecurity

  • High infant mortality rate

• i.e. Uganda - Most of the population is young, because all of the young people tend to die off really soon - but the families need the hands to do the work necessary, so they have lots of kids - and don’t have enough facilities to properly care for them all - and so many of them don’t live too long.

• add extra country examples

Fertility rates and factors that determine it across the globe

• Average amount of children that one woman has in her lifetime

• Australia’s is 1.58

• Factors for high fertility rates

  • Poorer countries - families need more hands to support them, so they have more children

  • High infant mortality rate - because so many kids die, families have a lot of children, becuase they know a majority will die

  • Arranged marriages

  • The age women have their first child - the earlier it is, the more children they tend to have

  • Accessibility to contraception

  • Bad healthcare - contributes to infant mortality rate

  • Lack of education about children and health

  • Culture of having many children

• Factors for low fertility rates

  • More developed countries, where people can afford to not want children

  • Lifestyle choices in developed countries - children can be a drain on finances

  • Easily accessible birth control

  • Women tend to have children later in life, allowing for less kids, because of higher education opportunities

  • Culture accepting of people with no kids, as opposed to some where it’s absolutely expected of women to have children

  • No need for many children to provide for the family (quite the opposite)

Wellbeing in India Case Study - focus on women’s wellbeing and factors that determine it

• In India, women are valued less than men.

  • India has a high fertility rate - likely because of the lack of education, lack of contraceptives, lack of good medicine. It’s also within the culture to have arranged marriages at a young age for the benefit of the family, so the women likely don’t have a choice but to have children.

  • India has a very fast growing population due to this fertility rate - and because of how fast it grows, there will soon be less food, water, and housing available, despite a larger workforce.

• Brief mention to India’s wealth inequality, but it’s not really relevant here.

• The Caste System

  • India’s main religion is Hinduism - 80% of the country follows it

  • The Hindu caste system os the world’s oldest surviving form of social hierarchy - it divides Hindus into rigid hierarchical groups based on their karma (work) and dharma (religion/duty).

  • Members of different castes couldn’t mix, and especially couldn’t marry

  • The upper and lower castes had very different occupations and wealth.

  • Outside of the system were the Untouchables, or Dalits. Dalit means “oppressed” or “broken”. Normally the Dalits did spiritually contaminating work that nobody else wanted to do, i.e. prepping bodies for funerals, tanning leather, toilet cleaning, pest control, etc.

  • Under Hindu beliefs, jobs involving death corrupted the workers’ souls, so they could not mingle with other castes and had to only marry each other.

  • Dalits classify as scheduled castes - not even counted in the census.

  • TIERS:

    • Brahmins - priests

    • Kshatriyas - kings/rulers, warriors

    • Vaisyas - merchants, craftsmen, landowners, skilled workers

    • Sudra - farm workers, unskilled workers, servants

    • Dalits - street sweepers, clean up waste, deal with dead bodies

  • Indian law bans caste discrimination, but 160 million Dalits still experience it anyway.

• Gender inequality

  • Women experience much gender discrimination in India, even though formally they have equal rights

  • Child sex ratio for 6 and below is 918 girls for every 1000 boys

  • Reasons for it are a traditional value system, low literacy, and poverty

    • sons are seen as breadwinners

    • daughters are an economic burden who will marry into another family

      • marriage dowries

      • other celebrations

• Attitudes towards women - article on rape

  • Men typically tend to dehumanise the women a lot

  • the words they say show a deep rooted sexism and belief in the patriarchy

  • patriarchal society in india had led to the common objectification and dehumanisation of women

• Infanticide

  • Sometimes a family will have a girl and either not want her or will realise that they don’t have the resources to raise her, so they’ll either abandon her somewhere or kill her.

  • more than 63 girls are missing because of this in india.

  • Some families are sad they have more than one daughter because is so expensive and it’s considered an economic impossibility to raise more than one

• Dowry death/bride burning

  • basically where the husband, or the husband’s family, pours kerosene or something similarly flammable on the wife and sets her on fire. occurs generally when a wife refuses to pay a dowry. leaves her permanently disfigured so she can’t marry again.

  • generally occurs in rural, poor areas where women are isolated and illiterate

• menstruation

  • we watched a video on it

  • women struggle to buy pads when there are so many men around - and almost all of them don’t even know what a pad is

Causes and consequences of inequality in Australia

Global trends in urbanisation

urbanisation - key terminology

• urban - settlement with high population density and an infrastructure of built environment

• rural - areas not directly connected to a large city. more country-like.

• urbanisation - the population shift from rural to urban areas and the corresponding decrease in rural population. the increase in percentage/proportion of people living in urban areas.

• urban growth - an increase in the absolute size of an urban area

• urban sprawl - the spreading of urban developments on underdeveloped or undeveloped land near a city.

  • the difference between growth and sprawl is that growth includes building on top of what’s already there, and sprawl does not.

• population density - the number of people living in an area per square km, or other land unit.

• population distribution - geographical pattern of distribution of amount of population density in different areas.

  in 1950, 71% of the population was rural and 29% was urban. this was due to less technology, more agriculture, different job types, and the children who were evacuated to the country in WWII.

• in 2020, 45% of the population is rural, and 55% is urban. this is because of the better transport, new industries leading to more city jobs, migration post WWII, and globalisation of finance and business.

• in 2010, for the first time ever, more then 50% of ther world’s population were living in towns and cities.

• it’s predicted that by 2050, 70% of the world’s population will be urbanised.

  • most of this growth will be concentrated in asia and africa.

  • around 90% of the growth has been occurring in the developing world

• Australia’s urban percentage increased from 65% in 1973 to 86% in 2020 - making australia the 15th most urbanised country in the world. singapore and hong kong are ranked first, with 100% of the population being urban.

  • why do people migrate? climate crisis

  • better jobs

  • education

  • unstable government

  • poor economy

  • poor housing

Causes of urbanisation (i.e. push and pull factors)

• push factors

  • food insecurity

  • lack of employment opportunities

  • lower access to healthcare, employment, public transport, food

  • less infrastructure when it’s not urban

• pull factors

  • industrialisation

  • employment opportunities to make a better life for yourself

  • better education, healthcare, public transport, food

  • desire for a more modern lifestyle

  • public infrastructure

Consequences of urbanisation

• consequences of urbanisation

  • air pollution from industrialisation

  • deforestation

  • housing prices go wayy up since all the people are trying to cram themselves into one city

Migration in China

• Rural-urban migration

  • Labourers moving to coastal cities

    • Job opportunities

    • due to reforms in 1978, opening china to foreign investments

      • government making decisions without public vote/opinions

      • rural-urban migration was forbidden before this, but allowed with the policy (hukou?)

        • more than 150 million rural poor migrated to cities

        • largest migration waves in human history

  • rural people moving towards towns and cities

    • for better living standards

    • to provide for families

      • children left behind to raise their siblings on their own

• push factors

  • environmental

    • increased agricultural productivity

    • fewer farm labourers needed

    • forced to move to urban areas for employment

  • political

    • people encouraged to move from rural to urban areas

    • to send money back home for their families - but the parents wouldn’t be able to live with the kids

    • the migration of one person frees the entire household from poverty

      • is the government’s slogal

• pull factors

  • economic factors

    • higher income → more opportunities for career development, and more job opportunities

  • social factors

    • entertainment

      • parks

      • movies/cinema

      • restaurants

      • shoes

    • improved infrastructure

      • buildings

      • pathways

      • better roads

      • medicine and health facilities

    • more connectivity

    • modern urban lifestyle

China general info

• The third largest country in the world, china is dissected by the tropic of cancer and spans almost to the arctic circle. It is bordered by a bunch of countries, namely Mongolia, India, Russia, Vietnam, Nepal, and Kazakhstan. It has key real estate in Asian diplomacy, and emerges as a global superpower with increased assertiveness. It’s geographic location will play a key role in its future.

• In 1981, almost 90% of China lived in extreme poverty.

  • It had an agriculture based economy

  • then the government brought in the factories, and that opened up lots of job opportunities for people as well as economic opportunities for china.

  • over the next 40 years (until 2021) its GDP grew almost 40 times

• Chinese internal migration

  • largest internal migration of people in history

  • people left their hometowns and moved to the cities on the east coast - Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou

• Population = 1.4 billion

• urbanised population = 65%

• Most of the population is located on the East coast

• there are 160 million rural to urban migrants in china - 12% of the population.

• Push factors in migration

  • Fewer rural labourers needed as china industrialised - no more jobs in the farming industry since machines do it all

  • agricultural production is way less profitable, and its near impossible to get out of poverty while working in agriculture in a rural area

  • china’s central planners encouraged local leaders to encourage the people to migrate

• Pull factors in migration

  • economic reasons - urban jobs have 5x the income of someone in rural china

  • there are many more opportunities to make a better life for yourself and your family in the city - since you can be so many things that aren’t ‘farmer’.

  • social factors - the desire for a more modern lifestyle, boredom with village life, freedom from parents

Directive Terms

Account for - State reasons for

Describe - Provide characteristics and features – CLEARLY identify the impacts, firstly, secondly, thirdly, etc.

Identify - Recognise and name

Outline - Sketch in general terms and give main features

Explain – Give the cause and effect (explain how = explain what happened) (explain why = give reasons for)

Define - Give the meaning of a word or concept

Distinguish - Note the differences between