Lesson 1:
Human Populations
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Lesson Topics
• Population growth
• Limits to growth: some opposing views
• Human demography
• Population growth: opposing factors
• Demographic transition
• Family planning and fertility control
• The future of human populations
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1.1 Population Growth
World population now 7.97 billion (2022) For a current
estimate, see the Population Clock web page at:
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
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Current Birth and Death Rates
• Every second: about 4 children are
born, while about 2 other people die
• Net gain: 2.3 humans added to the
world population every second, 72
million added every year
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Decisions on how many children to have are influenced
by many factors, including culture, religion, politics, need
for old-age security, and immediate family finances.
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1.2 Perspectives on Population
Growth
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Human Population Levels Throughout History
ADD FIG. 4.2
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Human Population Levels Throughout History
ADD FIG. 4.2
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Perspectives on Population Growth
Varying Perspectives
• Overpopulation causes resource depletion and
environmental degradation
• Human ingenuity and technology will allow us to
overcome any problems - more people may be
beneficial
• Resources are sufficient to meet everyone's
needs - shortages are the result of greed, waste,
and oppression
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Perspectives on Population Growth
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A Professor has made …
A whole class fail ….
• An economics professor at a university
said he has never made a student fail,
but once failed an entire class.
• Because the students in this class are
adamant that a perfectly organized
society is a society where no one is rich,
no one is poor, and that it is a utopia, he
wanted to show them there is no such
society like that. 13
• So the professor said:
• "Okay, then our class will experiment on
that. All the points will be added and
divided equally, and everyone will get
the same score so that no one will fail
and no one will get an A*."
• After the first test, the average grade for
the whole class was B. The diligent
students were sad, and the lazy
students were happy.
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• On the second test, the grade point
average for the whole class was D! No
one was happy. Since the lazy students
were even more inert, the hardworking
students decided they should study less
too. On the third test, the average score
was F. The score did not increase, but
quarrels, suspicions, and accusations
broke out. Everyone is upset and angry,
and everyone no longer wants to learn
for the benefit of others.
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• In the last exam, all of them failed,
making everyone surprised...
• The professor told them that:
• -"Through the results of the tests, you
can easily see that the kind of social
justice you want is challenging to come
true. Although the idea is beautiful,
when put into practice, no one is
motivated to want to work anymore."
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• Finally, he concluded:
• You can't make the poor rich by making
the rich poor.
• Those who do nothing but still enjoy it,
while those who have to do it do not get
the reward worth the effort.
• What the government gives someone
for free, it must be taken from someone
else.
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• When half of humanity sees that they
don't need to do anything because
someone else will do it, and the other
half thinks that it won't do them any
good to exhaust their bodies because
others will take them over. That is the
beginning of the end of all societies!
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Technology can increase carrying
capacity for humans
• Technological advances have vastly
increased human carrying capacity
• The burst of world population growth that
began 200 years ago was stimulated by
scientific and industrial revolutions.
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Technology can increase carrying
capacity for humans
• I = PAT formula
Where:
(I)= Environmental impacts
(P) = Population size
(A)= affluence
(T) = technology
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Population growth could bring
benefits
• More people mean larger markets, more
workers, and efficiencies of scale in
mass production of goods.
• Moreover, adding people boosts human
ingenuity and intelligence that will
create new resources by finding new
materials and discovering new ways of
doing things.
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1.3 Many Factors Determine
Population Growth
• Demography - vital statistics about
people, such as births and deaths
• Two demographic worlds
• Less-developed counties represent 80%
of the world population, but more than
90% of projected growth
• Richer countries tend to have negative
growth rates
What a stupid term…click below for definition of "third", "second", and "first" worlds…
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http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Third_World/TW_definition_description.html
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By 2050,
India will
probably
be the
world's
most
populous
country.
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The other
demographic
world is made
up of the richer
countries of
North America,
western Europe,
Japan,
Australia, and
New Zealand.
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The populations of
many African countries
are now falling because
of this terrible disease.
Altogether, Africa’s
population is expected
to be nearly 200 million
lower in 2050 than it
would have been
without AIDS
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Human Population Distribution Around
the World
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Fertility and Birth Rates
• Fecundity - physical ability to reproduce
• Fertility - the actual production of offspring
• Crude birth rate - number of births per year
per thousand people
• Total fertility rate - number of children born
to an average woman during her reproductive
life
• Zero population growth (ZPG) - occurs
when births + immigration just equal deaths +
emigration
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Fertility rates
have declined
dramatically in
every region of
the world except
Africa over the
past 50 years
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Regional Declines in Total Fertility Rates
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China's one-child-
per-family policy
decreased the
country's fertility rate
from 6 to 1.8 in two
decades. However,
the policy is very
controversial.
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Mortality is the other half of the population
equation
• Crude Death Rates (or crude mortality
rates) are expressed in terms of the
number of deaths per thousand
persons in any given year.
• Crude death rate subtracted from
crude birth rate gives the natural
increase of a population.
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Life span and life expectancy describe our
potential longevity
Life span is the oldest age to which a
species is known to survive.
Life expectancy is the average age that
a newborn infant can expect to attain in
any given society. It is another way of
expressing the average age at death.
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As incomes rise,
so does life
expectancy.
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Living Longer: Demographic Implications
• A population growing by natural increase has
more young people than does a stationary
population.
• Dependency ratio - the number of
nonworking individuals compared to working
individuals - declining in countries such as
the U.S. and Japan
• If current trends continue, by 2100 the
median age in the U.S. will be 60.
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Both rapidly growing
countries and slowly
growing countries can
have a problem with
their dependency ratio,
or the number of
nonworking compared
to working individuals in
a population.
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Emigration and immigration are important
demographic factors
• Humans are highly mobile, so emigration
and immigration play a larger role in
human population dynamics than they
do in those of many species.
• The more-developed regions are
expected to gain about 2 million
immigrants per year for the next 50
years.
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Immigration is a controversial issue in many
countries.
• Migrant workers often perform
heavy, dangerous, or disagreeable
work that citizens are unwilling to
do.
• They generally are paid low, wages
and given substandard housing,
poor working conditions, and few
rights.
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1.4 Ideal Family Size Is
Culturally and Economically
Dependent
Pronatalist pressures
• Factors that increase people's desires to have
children
• Parental desire for children rather than an unmet
need for contraceptives may be the most important
factor in population growth in many cases
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1.4 Ideal Family Size Is
Culturally and Economically
Dependent
Birth reduction pressures
• Factors that tend to reduce fertility
• Higher education and personal freedom for
women often result in decisions to limit
childbearing.
• Thus, education and socioeconomic status are
usually inversely related to fertility in richer
countries. In developing countries, however,
fertility is likely to increase as educational levels
and socioeconomic status rise.
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U.S. Birth Rates: 1910-2001
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Could we have a birth dearth?
• Birth rates below replacement rates
• One reason that birth rates have been
falling in many industrialized countries
may be that toxins and endocrine
hormone disrupters in our environment
interfere with sperm production.
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1.5 A DEMOGRAPHIC
TRANSITION CAN LEAD TO
STABLE POPULATION SIZE
• In 1945, demographer Frank Notestein
pointed out that a typical pattern of
falling death rates and birth rates due to
improved living conditions usually
accompanies economic development.
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1.5 A DEMOGRAPHIC
TRANSITION CAN LEAD TO
STABLE POPULATION SIZE
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Demographic Transition Accompanying
Economic and Social Development
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1.5 A DEMOGRAPHIC
TRANSITION CAN LEAD TO
STABLE POPULATION SIZE
• Optimistic view - world population will
stabilize during this century
• Pessimistic view - poorer countries of
the world are caught in a "demographic
trap" - helping poor countries will only
further threaten the earth's resources
• Social justice view - overpopulation
due to a lack of justice, not resources 49
Fig. 4.13
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Infant Mortality and Women's Rights
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Part 7: The Future of Human Populations
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End of Presentation
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