Key Issue #2

Where has the world's population increased?

Figure 1: Crude birth rate
Geographer use a term called "natural increase" to describe the population changes in a country or the world as a whole through three elementary indicators. There is crude birth rate, crude death rate, and the natural increase rate. The world's population has increased exponentially during the last two century specifically the most. Even today, about 80 million people are added annually. The questions remains, "where does it actually take place?" The actual majority of growth in the world is concentrated in relatively poor countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The countries are for the most part in the 2nd stage of the demographic transition (mentioned later) and therefore have high birth rates while experiencing low death rates. Places that are not responsible for population growth are MDCs where the natural increase rate is rather low and they are relatively wealthier. 

Natural Increase
Geographers frequently measure the population changes in a country through three key indicators: (which are done yearly)
  1. Crude birth rate (CBR)- the total number of live births for every 1,000 people
  2. Crude death rate (CDR)- the total number of deaths for every 1,000 people
  3. Natural increase rate (NIR)- percentage by which a population grows in a year. It is computed by subtracting CDR from CBR and first converting the 2 measures from numbers per 1,000 to percentages
    1. It refers to natural increase meaning it bars migration when computation takes place.
The world NIR is now currently 1.2. This has been declining in the past fifty years from a 1963 high of 2.2. Although this number may seem statistically insignificant, the small changes have serious effects. A small change makes a huge difference in actual population totals. For example, if the NIR now is 1.2 and we have 6.6 billion people, the NIR says we will increase by another 66 million people. If the NIR was 2.2, we would have another 88 million people. If you think like me, then 22 million people is still a marginal amount of people to not consider the NIR.

The NIR can also affect the doubling time of a country. The doubling time of a country is the amount of years needed to double a population, assuming a constant rate of natural increase. For example, if the NIR of a country was 1.2, the doubling time would be 54 years. Doubling time is rather unscientific in the respect that it is theoretical and ignores population changes.

Almost 100% of the natural increase is clustered in the said high population density areas in Asia and Africa. Most of the high NIRs are LDCs as well. These regional differences in NIR between MDCs and LDCs shows a trend where the countries that have the MOST people have the LEAST ability to support all of them. (Quirky, is it not?)

Fertility
As with the highest NIRs, the highest crude birth rates are clustered in sub-Saharan countries and the lowest are in Europe. Many African countries have a CBR near 40+ as to the 10- in Europe.
The total fertility rate of a country, of the TFR, can be used to measure the number of births in a society. It is defined as the total number of children a woman will have throughout her childbearing years. The problem with this measure is that scientists assume women reaching a particular age in the future will be just as likely to have a child as they will today. It is different from the CBR in the fact that it tries to predict future human behavior.

As a whole, the world TFR is about 2.7. Again, this measure has incredible variation between MDCs and LDCs because of demographic differences discussed in Key Issue #3.

Mortality
Two more measures of mortality are the life expectancy and the infant mortality rate.The infant mortality rate is the annual number of deaths of infants under 1 year of age, compared with total live births. As was the case with the CBR and CDR, the IMR is usually expressed with the number of deaths among infants rather than a percent.

Similar to discussed global patterns, the IMR are highest in the sub-Saharan countries in Africa and the lowest rates are in Europe. The IMR of most countries reflect the general quality of its health care system. Lower IMRs are associated with good doctors and nurses, modern hospitals, and a large supply of medicine.

Life expectancy at birth measures the average number of years a newborn child infant can expect to live at current mortality levels. In most African countries, the life expectancy is around 40 and for Europe, it is in about the late 70s.

Current Event

In this article, Malaysia is now coming to grips with a new issue that is becoming rather serious. Their natural increase is going negative and their "greying nation" will have to deal with the issues of having a smaller workforce and less children to sustain the country. The population has most definitely not increased here and it is a perfectly good example where population growth does not occur. Contrastingly, this article below shows where and how population increase does occur.


Australia, like many other countries, still have NIRs that are on the rise and projections of almost 9 billion people in the very near future can be frightening. They are seeing how as slight increases in the NIR can cause massive population booms that can change the make-up of a population. Like countries in Asia and Africa, Australia will have to adapt its technology to meet the needs of their ever-growing population.





 

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