Population Change

The population of the world is increasing at an exponential rate - faster and faster

Birth rate - number of live babies born per thousand of the population per year
Death rate - number of deaths per thousand of the population per year

Higher birth rate than death rate = natural increase

Higher death rate than birth rate = natural decrease

Migration affects population size (the movement of people from one area to another)

• High birth rate - no use of contraception, have many children because many die
• High death rate - poor healthcare
• Population growth rate - zero
• Population structure - low life expectancy so most of the population is young people

• High birth rate - no use of contraception, lots of children needed to work on farms as economy is based on agriculture
• Falling death rate - improved healthcare
• Population growth rate - very high
• Population structure - life expectancy increased, but still more young people than older people

• Rapidly falling birth rate - emancipation of women, better education, increase in use of contraception, women work rather than having children, industrialization (less farming)
• Falling death rate - more medical advances
• Population growth rate - high
• Population structure - more people living to be older

• Low birth rate - urbanisation, improved wealth, more possessions = less money for children
• Low and fluctuating death rate
• Population growth rate - zero
• Population structure - high life expectancy, even more people living to be older

• Slowly falling birth rate - less money for children because people have elderly dependant relatives
• Low and fluctuating death rate
• Population growth rate - negative
• Population structure - more older people than younger people

Social

• Services (e.g. healthcare, education) can't cope with the rapid growth so not everyone gets access to them
• Children miss out on education because they are working to support their large families
• Not enough houses so people build makeshift houses in overcrowded settlements. This causes health issues as they aren't connected to sewers or clean water
• Food shortages if the country can't grow or import enough food for the population

Political

• Majority of population is young so government focuses on policies important to young people, e.g. education and provision of childcare
• Less older people means government doesn't have to focus on policies important for the elderly, e.g. pensions
• Government has to make policies to control population growth so social and economic issues don't get worse

Economic

• Aren't enough jobs for the number of people in the country, so unemployment increases
• Increased poverty as more people are born into families that are already poor

Countries need to control population growth whilst also developing sustainably (allowing people today to get what they need without stopping future generations from getting what they need).

Birth Control Programmes

• Aim to reduce birth rate
• Laws on number of children a couple can have
• Governments offer free contraception and sex education
• Sustainable because population doesn't get much bigger so people don't use many resources so there is some for the future

Immigration Laws

• Limit number and type of people they let in, e.g. fewer people of childbearing age
• Sustainable because it slows down rate of population growth

• Largest population in the world - over 1.3 billion
• OCP introduced in 1979 means couples are strongly encouraged to have only one child
• Couples with only one child receive benefits like longer maternity leave, better housing and free education for the child
• Couples with more than one don't get any of these and are fined part of their income
• There are some exceptions:
  • In some rural areas, a second child is allowed if the first is a girl or physically disabled to ensure there are children to work on the family farms
  • If one parent is disabled or both are only children, a second child is allowed to ensure they will be looked after 

Effectiveness
1) Prevented up to 400 million births, fertility rate dropped from 5.7 in 1970 to 1.8 today
2) Some think OCP wasn't the only factor in slowing population growth and that older policies about leaving gaps between children were more effective, and Chinese people want fewer children as they've become more wealthy

OCP helps towards sustainable development as the population hasn't grown as fast and large as it would have without the policy so fewer resources have been used.

• Country made up of thousands of islands, population of over 240 million
• Population isn't evenly distributed 130 million people live on the island of Java
• Lead to social and economic problems on densely populated islands, e.g. lack of adequate services and housing, unemployment and poverty
• Indonesian Government created Transmigration Policy in the 1960s to reduce impacts
• Millions of people have been moved from the densely populated islands like Java to the less densely populated islands like Sumatra

Effectiveness
1) Millions moved, but population still unevenly distributed
2) Not everyone who moved escaped poverty as they either didn't have skills to farm the land or the land was too poor to be farmed on the new island
3) Lots of people were moved to land occupied by native people which created a new problem of conflict between the natives and migrants

Indonesia's Transmigration Policy hasn't helped towards sustainable development because it only reduces the impacts of population growth - the population is still getting much bigger

In an ageing population, there are more older people than younger people and more people live to an older age. Ageing populations tend to be in richer countries in Stage 5 of the DTM. Elderly dependents (65+) are reliant on independents (16-64) so an ageing population has a higher proportion of people who are dependent. This has economic and social impacts, which can affect a country's future development.

Economic

• Working population pay taxes for state pensions, retirement homes, and healthcare. Taxes go up when there are more elderly people to pay for
• Economy grows slower because more money is spent on things that don't help the economy like care homes and not spent on things that grow the economy like education and business

Social

• Healthcare is stretched because older people need more medical care
• People work as unpaid carers for older family, causing stress as they have less leisure time
• Fewer children as money is needed to care for elderly, so birth rate drops
• People have to retire later because the pension decreases with more people 

Unsustainable - don't help towards sustainable development because they increase the population size:

• Encourage larger families, e.g. in Italy woman offered cash rewards to have more children. This increases the number of young people so when they start working there will be a large workforce to pay taxes and support the ageing population
• Encourage immigration of young people from other countries which increases the working population so there are more people paying taxes and supporting the ageing population

Sustainable - help towards sustainable development because they reduce the impacts without increasing population size:

• Raise retirement age so people stay in work longer and contribute to pensions for longer, and also claim state pension for less time
• Raise taxes for working population to increase the amount of money available to support the ageing population

Causes

• People live longer because of medical advances and better living conditions. From 1980 to 2006 life expectancy rose 2.6 years to 81.5 for women and 6.4 years to 77.2 for men. This means the proportion of older people in the country is going up
• Lots of babies were born in the 1940s and 1960s ('baby booms') and are retiring now, creating a 'pensioner boom'
• Since the 1970s, the birth rate has dropped, so with fewer young people in the population, the proportion of older people goes up

Problems

• More elderly people live in poverty because the working population isn't large enough to pay for decent pensions and many people don't have other savings
• The state pension is low but the government is still struggling to pay it as the taxes the independent population pay aren't enough to cover it 
• NHS is under pressure because older people need more medical attention than young people, e.g. in 2005 the average hospital stay for people over 75 was 13 nights, but for the whole of the UK was only 8 nights

Strategies to Cope

• Raise the retirement age from 65 (men) and 60 (women) to 68 for everyone by 2046 so  people work longer and there will be more people paying tax and less taking pensions
• Encourage the immigration of young people to the UK - the UK allows the immigration of people from countries that joined the EU in 2004. Around 80% of these immigrants were 34 or under, increasing the number of people paying taxes, paying the state pension and services
• Encourage women to have children - working family tax credits support parents who go back to work after their children are born so it is more affordable to have children
• Encourage people to take out private pensions - the government gives tax breaks for some types of private pension. Wih private pensions, people aren't so reliant on state pension

Have They Worked?

It's too early to tell if government strategies are working. Even if they do have some effect it's likely that future generations will have to work longer and rely on their families to support them in old age.

Push Factors - factors about a person's place of origin that make them want to leave, for example, natural disaster, war, poverty. An example is when thousands of people migrated to escape the war is Kosovo in 1999.

Pull Factors - factors about a person's destination that attract them, for example, better standard of living, free education, better healthcare.