Human Population Report Example

Ans 1: The unique formula for environmental impact of populations is “I = PAT” equation, where I (Environmental Impact) is the product of Population (P), Affluence (A) and Technology (T). Environmental Impact can be computed as “Environmental Impact = Population x Affluence (or consumption) x Technology”.
Ans 2: Mathematics is used by the demographers to predict the population changes and trends, and these changes are summarized in the form of graphs, charts and maps. The important determinants of the population growth are the birth (fertility) and death (mortality) rates.
Ans 3: The three major factors in determining population are Fertility, Mortality, and Migration. Fertility levels are decreasing as women have started working out, marrying late, or using contraception to prevent pregnancy. Mortality levels have decreased and the life expectancy has increased due to the adequate health and sanitation facilities, vaccinations, and awareness of public health infrastructure. People migrate across nations for better opportunities and this factor becomes less predictable compared to fertility and mortality.
Ans 4.a: The scientists have currently estimated that the human beings approximately evolved on earth roughly 130,000 to 160,000 years ago.
Ans 4.b: Estimation proves that fertility rate will decline from the current 2.6 children per woman to 2.0, or 1.6. If this fluctuating fertility rate continues than the population of the planet will be 7.7 billion with 1.5 children per woman or 10.6 billion if it is 2.5, by 2050.
Ans 4.c: The major milestones achieved in reducing mortality were improving the sanitation and waste removal, improving quality of water supply and making it accessible to many people, researching infectious diseases, vaccinations and antibiotics, limiting child labor, following work safety rules, promoting nutrition, and creating public health boards.
Ans 5.a: The 2 factors that explain human impact on the environment are: consumption of resources, and emitting waste. Over consumption of the resources such as land, water, food reduces the production of renewable sources such as forests, and non-renewable sources such as fossil fuels. Emitting waste intimidates human health, and reduces oxygen in the atmosphere.
Ans 5.b: In 1979 China imposed a limit of one child per family, allowing a maximum of 2 children in exceptional cases. This policy was applied by forced abortion and sterilizations.
Ans 5.c: The idea of leapfrogging is to set up advanced and clean technologies in the developing countries before these nations can be considered developed. This idea has not been happening due to the difficulty to transfer technology on the borders of the country and inadequate support from the international financial institutions.
Ans 6.a: The top 5 cities in terms of population are San-Paulo, Mumbai, Dhaka, Tokyo and Mexico City.
Ans 6.b: Urbanization or city life can be unhygienic, dirty and dangerous to health and environment. Many rural people move to city life and end up living in slums, and these people are deprived of clean drinking water and sanitary facilities, and mortality rate is higher in such people as they die from indoor air pollution, and water related diseases in the environment.
Ans 7: Society consists of the dependents and the workers, and dependency ratio is the ratio of dependents to the working-age population. The dependents are the people who are considered too young or old to work and worker’s age ranges from 15 – 64. The change in the ratio in the developed countries increases the capital and national per-capita income, as the dependents are increasing than the workers.
Ans 8: The two facts that interested me are that a few developing countries have lower fertility and mortality rates. As compared to the life expectancy in 1950, these rates have reduced the gaps and are nearly equal to the rates of the developed countries. The other interesting fact is that if the wealthy countries double their spending from the current $80 billion to $160 billion per year on the poorer nations than the poverty rate in these nations can be reduced.
Ans 9: “The Economics of Demographics,” (whole issue) Finance & Development, vol. 43, no. 3, September 2006. I would be interested to learn about the policy amendments that can help the world leaders to handle the demographic changes.