Population Structure

10 Key excerpts on "Population Structure"

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  Population Geography

  Pergamon Oxford Geographies

  • John I. Clarke, W. B. Fisher(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Pergamon

    (Publisher)

  It is also possible to distinguish between those aspects which are innate (sex, age, race) and those which are acquired during life (marriage, family, occupation), as well as between those which are individual and those which are communal. Geographers are interested in Population Structure as it varies territorially between countries, regions, urban and rural areas, communities and ethnic groups. Unfortunately, studies in regional geography have too often either neglected Population Structure or have treated only some aspects, such as language and religion. Yet sex and age-composition and the size of families may have even more striking eflfeas upon housing, educational and medical facilities, motor traflSc, and many other features of the cultural landscape. 65 66 Population Geography 1· AGE-STRUCTURE The study of age-structure (sometimes termed age-composition or age-distribution) has been too often neglected by geographers, perhaps because it is less easily observed and appreciated than some other aspects of the composition of population. Too often statements are made about population growth in absolute numbers without reference to changes in age-struaure, yet one cannot proceed very far in the study of population growth or migration without examination of age-structure. Moreover, there is hardly an aspect of individual or communal life which is not affected by age: economic and social activities, miHtary service, political propensities, social attitudes, mobihty. . . Furthermore, age-structure is directly influenced by three variables: mottaUty, fertility and migrations. These variables are not entirely independent, and any change in one may eventually influence the other two, but social and economic conditions only influence age-structure through them. Although age is the aspect of population composition most commonly investigated in enumerations, it is also one plagued by mis-statements due to ignorance, carelessness or misrepresentation.

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  Economic and Social Geography

  • R. Knowles, J. Wareing(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Made Simple

    (Publisher)

  PART TWO : POPULATION GEOGRAPHY CHAPTER FIVE POPULATION DISTRIBUTION Until quite recently the systematic study of population had been largely neglected by geographers, in contrast with other fields of human geography such as agriculture, industry and settlement which have a long-established tradition of systematic analysis. However, in recent years there has been a growing awareness of the importance of population studies within the broad framework of human geography. Population geography has rapidly advanced from a peripheral position within the discipline to the stage where it has been claimed that 'numbers, densities and qualities of the population provide an essential background for all geography. Population is the point of reference from which all the other elements are observed and from which they all, singly and collectively, derive significance and meaning. It is population which furnishes the focus.* (G. T. Trewartha) Population geography is concerned with the study of demographic processes and their consequences in an environmental context. It may thus be distin-guished from demography by its emphasis on the spatial variations in the growth, movement and composition of populations, and its concern with the social and economic implications of these variations. The development of the subject has been severely limited by a lack of demographic data for many parts of the world, but, like other branches of geography, it is concerned with description, analysis and explanation, although a large part of the work to date has been concerned with population mapping and descriptive studies, simply in order to establish the data base which must precede analysis. Sources of Population Data One of the most difficult problems facing the population geographer is the varied quality of population data available for different countries and regions of the world.

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  Population Geography

  • Rodolfo B. Valdenarro(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Delve Publishing

    (Publisher)

  PATTERNS OF POPULATION COMPOSITION 2 CONTENTS 2.1. Introduction ...................................................................................... 38 2.2. Population Age Structure .................................................................. 38 2.3. Population Economic Composition ................................................... 43 2.4. Population Ethnic Composition ......................................................... 46 2.5. Population Families and Household .................................................. 50 2.6. Population Language ........................................................................ 53 2.7. Population Marital Status .................................................................. 56 2.8. Population Nationality ...................................................................... 59 2.9. Population Religion .......................................................................... 62 Population Geography 38 2.1. INTRODUCTION A population is made up of different components. This chapter was prepared with one aim of presenting different patterns of population composition as discussed below. 2.2. POPULATION AGE STRUCTURE Population age structure is the percentage of people in a population that falls in various ages, classes, and sexes. We can also define the population age structure as the number of males and females present in various age groups within a particular population. Population Structure shows the divisions of a population on the bases of sex and age. The dynamics of a population are dependent on the age structure. The age distribution of the members of a population changes its age structure. Population age structure is represented in graphs known as population pyramids. 2.2.1. Population Pyramids Population pyramids are a type of graph made up of stacked bars. The bars are horizontal. The proportion of the population is shown on the X-axis. The Y-axis depicts age-groups within the population.

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  Social Structure of Contemporary China

  • Xueyi Lu(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • WSPC

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER I

  Population Structure

  Yan Ye

  Human beings are the fundamental components of society and the essential carriers for resources and opportunities. The foundation of a country’s society is directly related to the population size and social status. Population Structure refers to the proportional relationship among different properties or elements within a population in a certain geographical region during a given period of time. From a social structure perspective, Population Structure reflects the allocation of resources and opportunities in terms of population characteristics. Generally, a reasonable Population Structure suits the development of productive social forces; in essence, this is a matter of the Marxist concept of adaptation between the productive forces and the productive relations.

  1.Profound Changes in Population Structure and Their Social Causes

  1.1.Adult-Age Population Structure and Abnormal Sex Composition

  Compared to 1953, with respect to the changes in age structure, the Chinese population in 2008 was characterized as follows: the proportion of the elderly population aged 65 and over increased by 88.2%; the proportion of the working population increased by 30.5%; and the proportion of children in the population declined by 56.1%, resulting in a 52.8% decrease in the gross dependency ratio, which is currently lower than 40%. In general, the Chinese population is aging, but since the working population is in its “golden age,” the age structure is in an “adult-form.”

  In terms of the sex composition of the population, since 1964, the sex ratio has generally fluctuated within a reasonable range of 103–107. As a result of the accelerated aging process, the sex ratio should have declined continuously and substantially. However, the extent of the decrease was relatively small (dispersion is still close to 1). The main reason for this trend is the high sex ratio at birth for the age group of 0–4-year-olds, which has led to an overall abnormal sex composition.

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  Population Geography

  Social Justice for a Sustainable World

  • Helen D. Hazen, Heike C. Alberts, Kazimierz J. Zaniewski(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  digital nomads —people who work remotely from coffee shops, co-working spaces, recreational vehicles, and even abroad—has been increasing for some time. Their numbers thus far are too small to amount to a significant population shift but may lead to meaningful population redistributions in the long term. These movements are also important beyond the small number of people involved because they highlight significant inequalities among population groups, with stark divides emerging between those who are able to work remotely and those who cannot and between those who have the economic means to seek out desirable locations and those who do not. These shifts also contribute to important changes in population composition, as booming towns receive an influx of economically successful professional workers, whereas declining industrial areas are left with poorer, less skilled, and older populations. Aspects such as this help illustrate why the composition of population is such an important issue—it is to this topic that we turn next.

  PART II: POPULATION COMPOSITION

  Population geographers commonly study age, sex, and ethnic/racial compositions of populations, but many other population characteristics can be considered, including religion, language, and socio-economic status, or even literacy rates and access to clean water. Knowledge about population composition is not just an academic exercise but can also point to real-world problems such as a shortage of schools or inadequate sanitation. In the remainder of this chapter we explore age, sex/gender, and ethnicity/race as primary characteristics of population composition.

  Age structure

  Age structure provides important information about the characteristics of populations because people of different ages play very different roles in society. Children are dependent on the broader population for support and may spend considerable time in education (box 3.1 ). Young adults are some of the most dynamic members of society, driving economic migration flows and providing labor and tax revenue to fuel the economy. Many people also become parents in their 20s or 30s, so a large young adult population increases fertility rates. By middle age, women are moving beyond their childbearing years but continue to play a critical role in childrearing. In middle age, many people also have eldercare responsibilities and may find themselves in the sandwich generation , concurrently performing childcare and eldercare roles, with clear physical and socio-emotional tolls (Buchanan 2013

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  Applied Human Geography

  • Rodolfo B. Valdenarro(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Delve Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Population geography has a superior place in economic geography. This is because the individuals, as the chief productive force, are hired in all the economic departments and, up to a point, their place has an all-inclusive importance. The population is at one and the similar time the creator as well as the customer of material goods. Population geography observations, frameworks and structures the forms of settlement in association to the spatial nature of production, the features of the geographical atmosphere, the financial topographical condition of population employment , and population relocations. Together with changes in the natural development of population, migrations describe the course of regional relocation of population. A prominent place is provided to the categorization and typology of the inhabited points. One declaration that can be made without the restriction is that the distinction between population geography and demography, sociology, or economics can be hard to find. Population Geographies 129 Figure 6.4: Population geography explains the various factors of the popula-tions all over the world along with the effects of population on various factors such as economy and finances. Source: https://www.maxpixel.net/static/photo/1x/Global-International-World-Population-Globalization-3340864.jpg The consensus is that the population demographers pay more attention on the fertility studies. On the other hand, the population geographers tend to pay more attention on migration. With the beginning of more-sophisticated approaches, in specific those connected to GIS or remote sensing, and the ever-increasing accessibility of data at numerous spatial scales, the fundamental significance of space and geography has become more common in in the studies of the population beyond the social sciences.

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  The Population of Malaysia (Second Edition)

  • Saw Swee-Hock(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • ISEAS Publishing

    (Publisher)

  102 6 Population Structure In this chapter we will examine the structure of the population in terms of sex composition, age structure, educational attainment and citizenship pattern. The structure of the population has evolved over many decades in accordance with not only demographic determinants like migration, mortality and fertility, but also social and economic forces. These variables have exerted their influence in different ways and in varying degrees on each aspect of the Population Structure. In Malaysia, international migration has left its pervasive and permanent imprint on many facets of the population. The two important topics concerning ethnic composition and religious pattern have already been examined in Chapter 4. SEX COMPOSITION In a closed population unaffected by migration, the sex composition is determined by the proportion of boys and girls at birth, but this is counter-balanced by males being subject to higher mortality so that the eventual sex ratio of the general population is very near normal with fairly even numbers between the two sexes. However, in a country where migration of predominantly males has been a major force of population growth, we can expect the sex ratio to deviate from the normal pattern. This is true in the case of Malaysia where predominantly male migration has always been significant, resulting in more males than females in the population. However, in the course of time a slow movement towards a more balanced sex ratio has taken place, first as the proportion of female immigrants increased, then as the volume of natural increase became larger, and latterly as the flow of migration diminished. Population Structure 103 The distribution of the population by sex and the computed sex ratio defined as the number of males per thousand females are presented in Table 6.1.

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  Human Geography

  People, Place, and Culture

  • Erin H. Fouberg, Alexander B. Nash, Alexander B. Murphy, Harm J. de Blij(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  When they have grasped the characteristics of populations Population geography The study of why populations have certain characteristics and why they distribute themselves across space in particular ways. Demography The study of the characteristics of a population, such as race, age, sex, and ethnicity. 92 CHAPTER 4 Population and their locations, other questions arise: Why are some popu- lations aging more quickly than others? Why might there be significantly more men than women in countries such as China or India? Why do particular ethnic groups seem to favour living and working in certain locales? Why do certain population groups, such as Millennials, prefer urban (or suburban or rural) settings? Population geographers are also concerned with more abstract questions about populations, such as how the term “population” comes to be understood as an object or a “thing,” who becomes part of a “population,” and how these “popula- tions” are regulated and controlled through state policy and governance. Before we can begin to work through some of these more detailed questions, we need to compile and understand a few basic facts about the populations we are interested in studying. Population geographers undertake basic calculations about a particular population, such as its density, distribution, and composition. This information provides the starting point for considering the complex spatial organization and movement of populations. POPULATION DENSITY Demographers report the population density of a country as a measure of total population in relation to total land area. They usually calcu- late density as the number of people located in a particular territorial unit—usually a square kilometre. This is a rather simplistic calculation, as it assumes an even distribu- tion of the population over the total land or territory in ques- tion.

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  Demographic Methods

  • Andrew Hinde(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  13

  Models of Population Structure

       

  13.1 Introduction

  This chapter describes Population Structure and population dynamics. It begins by describing in Section 13.2 what demographers mean by the age structure of a population. Section 13.3 describes in general terms how the age structure of a population is related to its rate of growth, and hence to its fertility and mortality experience. A population’s age structure is shown to be a dynamic, changing thing, revealing aspects of a population’s demographic history, as illustrated in Section 13.4 , and anticipating aspects of its demographic future.

  Section 13.5 then introduces and defines two special types of population, which are called the stationary population and the stable population. These are simplified populations in which certain assumptions about fertility and mortality are met. Section 13.6 shows how the age structures of stationary and stable populations are related to their rate of growth, and hence to their fertility and mortality experience. These relationships can be expressed using relatively simple formulae.

  The central propositions of the stable population model are that a population which has constant fertility and mortality for a long period will develop an age structure which does not change, in relative terms, over time (that is, there will be a constant proportion of people at each age), and this population will increase (or decrease) in size at a constant rate. Sections 13.7 and 13.8 include outline proofs of these propositions. The proofs require the use of calculus, and these sections can be omitted by readers who are not mathematically inclined. Finally, in Section 13.9 , we return to the idea of the length of a generation, introduced in Section 12.5 , and show how this quantity may be estimated from data on age-specific fertility and mortality.

  13.2 The age and sex structure of a population

  The age and sex structure of a population is simply the distribution of the population by age and sex. The terms age and sex composition and age and sex distribution

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  Population and Economy in Classical Athens

  • Ben Akrigg(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 2 Population StructureS Introduction This chapter will discuss the structure of the population of classi- cal Athens. The main focus will be on age structure, although at the end of the chapter, I shall turn briefly to a broad question of sex structure (that is, whether there was ever a significant imbalance between the numbers of men and women). In both cases, I shall concentrate here on the native citizen population. The free resident non-citizen (metic) and servile populations, both of which were of considerable size for most of the fifth and fourth centuries, present their own special challenges and will be discussed separately (in Chapter 4). Population Structure has on the whole received less attention from would-be historical demographers of Athens than the size of the population. I give it a more detailed treatment here for two reasons. The first is that, for reasons that will become apparent, the age structure of the population is fundamental to almost any attempt to derive demographic data from the information in the literary and epigraphic sources. This fact has of course been clearly recognised by most of those who have sought to quantify the population. Most influential here is Mogens Herman Hansen, whose position on this issue has been widely accepted. 1 One of the key points I want to make here is that the details of the conclusions Hansen and others have reached were even less firmly based than they realised, and that we can in fact do better. The second, which has not always been fully appreciated by Greek historians, is that 1 Golden 2000 provides a summary; this is, admittedly, in the context of a volume produced in Hansen’ s honour, but in fact Golden cannot be accused of exaggerating: see note 1 in Chapter 1. 9 issues of structure are of considerable intrinsic interest and impor- tance – and potentially more so than discussions that are limited to the overall size of a population.

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