2.1 Population Distribution
- Physical factors (climate, landforms, water bodies) and human factors (culture, economics, history, politics) influence the distribution of population.
- Factors that illustrate patterns of population distribution vary according to the scale of analysis.
- The three methods for calculating population density are arithmetic, physiological, and agricultural.
- The method used to calculate population density reveals different information about the pressure the population exerts on the land.
2.2. Consequences of Population Distribution
- Population distribution and density affect political, economic, and social processes, including the provision of services such as medical care.
- Population distribution and density affect the environment and natural resources; this is known as carrying capacity.
2.3 Population Composition
- Patterns of age structure and sex ratio vary across different regions and may be mapped and analyzed at different scales.
- Population pyramids are used to assess population growth and decline and to predict markets for goods and services.
2.4 Population Dynamics
- Demographic factors that determine a population’s growth and decline are fertility, mortality, and migration.
- Geographers use the rate of natural increase and population-doubling time to explain population growth and decline.
- Social, cultural, political and economic factors influence fertility, mortality, and migration rates.
- Social, cultural, political and economic factors influence fertility, mortality, and migration rates.
2.5 The Demographic Transition Model
- The demographic transition model can be used to explain population change over time.
- The epidemiological transition explains causes of changing death rates.
2.6 Malthusian Theory
- Malthusian theory and its critiques are used to analyze population change and its consequences.
2.7 Population Policies
- Types of population policies include those that promote or discourage population growth such as pronatalist, antinatalist, and immigration policies.
2.8 Women and Demographic Change
- Changing social values and access to education, employment, health care, and contraception have reduced fertility rates in most parts of the world.
- Social, economic, and political roles for females have influenced patterns of fertility, mortality, and migration, as illustrated by Ravenstein’s laws of migration.
- Population aging is determined by birth and death rates and life expectancy.
- An aging population has political, social, and economic consequences, including the dependency ratio.
2.10 Causes of Migration
- Migration is commonly divided into push factors and pull factors.
- Push/pull factors and intervening obstacles/opportunities can be cultural, demographic, economic, environmental or political.
2.11 Forced and Voluntary Migration
- Forced migrations include slavery and events that produce refugees, internally displaced persons, and asylum seekers.
- Types of voluntary migrations include transnational, transhumance, internal, chain, step, guest worker, and rural-to-urban.
2.12 Effects of Migration
- Migration has political, economic, and cultural effects.
THREE: CULTURAL PATTERNS & PROCESSES
3.1 Introduction to Culture
- Culture comprises the shared practices, technologies, attitudes, and behaviors transmitted by a society.
- Cultural traits include such things as food preferences, architecture, and land use.
- Cultural relativism and ethnocentrism are different attitudes toward cultural difference.
Favorite Specific Resources for this Unit:
- WomanStats– Project compiling international data set on women
- NationMaster-World Statistics with Country comparisons
- National Geographic’s video: 7 billion
- Migration in the USA-county to county interactive map
- Ethnicity and Migration in the USA-More Asians than Latinos
- Japanese Case-Study: Problems of a Shrinking Population
- Europe Case Study: No Babies–Population decline in Europe
- Foreign Policy: The Islamic World’s Quiet Revolution
- Demographic Chaos: “The Russian Cross“
- NPR Video: Global Population Growth History in under 3 minutes
- Census Bureau: Population Pyramid Generator
- The Guardian: Impacts of Gender Imbalance in China
- Forbes Interactive Map: Internal Migration among U.S. counties
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