Population Page

 

    This page is about the population of the world. As you saw on the FrontPage, this project is based on the book If The World Were A Village by David J. Smith. In this book, the world is reduced to a village of 100, with one person equalling 64 million; to make numbers easier to comprehend, and make percentages easier. Of course, with so many people in the real world, compared to the imaginary village, the numbers have to be rounded a lot, and sometimes this changes their meaning. In this wiki, we aim to go above and beyond the data in the book. ~ Pete and Katherine

    This is our population page! Here, we will explain the pros and cons of the increasing population. If the population gets too large than it will be hard to get water and food. The bigger the population the more problems there will be. What if health care got so good that nobody dies? Will we move to the moon? And bad as diseases are they are one of the few things left that keeps the population down.

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    This graph show that our population is shooting up rapidly. This is called a J curve, the population stays the same for a while, and then it shoots up. The highest incline in the population, so far, was from 1965 to 1999. In that period the population was steadily rising. The years where the population grew the most, so far, have been 1975 to 1980, in those five years the population grew 0.5 billion. You can also see, by the graph, that the less devolped countrys are growing much faster than the more developed countrys.  That is probably because the country that are less developed, the woman lack the education to bulids a proper family.  A woman who lacks education is apt to have a large family, and probably would starts childbearing at and early age.  If our population keeps growing at the rate it is at right now, in 2150, our population will reach 9.2 billion. If it does, then there will be not be enough natural resources.

Birth Rates

    Every six seconds sixteen babies are born. In America alone, one baby is born every eight seconds, and every eleven seconds there is a death. In the United States, in 2006, 14.3 million babies were born, a quarter of them were Latino.The world grows so fast, that it's like adding a New York City every month, a Germany every year, and almost an India every decade. In 1804 the population reached one billion. By 1960 the population reached three billion. By 1975 the population reached four billion. By 1987, the population reached five billion. And in 1999, it reached six billion. A really good website is World Population Clocks

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Mortality Rate

        The mortality rate (death rate) of the world is one of the main reasons that the population is going up. The mortality rate is the When the death rate is less than birth rate the population goes up, when mortality rate is higher than the birth rate the population goes down. When they are the equal the population stays the same. Currently every second an average 4.2 babies are born and every second  an average of 1.8. people die. So that is one of the reasons the population is sky-rocketing.

        One of the huge reasons the birth rate is so much higher than the mortality rate is because of the amazing health care of the 20th-21st century. For instance before smallpox was vaccinated the mortality rate was much higher than the birth rate. But after that the two rates became equal again. Once we invented  vaccination that  destroy a lot of the deadly diseases that were causing mass-death the mortality rate went down tremendously. One comedian once said “The worst thing that ever happened to us was the eradication of smallpox." Smallpox kept the population down. So something has to keep our population down quickly and stabilize the mortality rate.

                                                                                                                                                           per kilometers squared

 This graph is a graph of all the countries in the world, were each country is colored by the population density.  it shows that the countries that are usually very cold, like Canada and Russia are not as populated.  This is because not many people like to live were it's cold, and it's harder to survive.  Also countries that are islands like Australia and Iceland are not as populated either.  This is because in the old days they didn't have planes and ferries to get them to islands.  As I looked at the map I noticed that the countries that are most populated are closer to the equator.  The closer to the equator, the hotter it is, many people like living where the climate is warm.  There are some countries

Population Pyramids

    Our world is made up of many ages.  Young and old people roam this planet.  About  2% of the world population is age 75+ and 9.5 % of the population is 0-4.  This shows we have a very young community.  The young people will one day grow up and be the worlds adults.  In the world there are not very many people who are 75 years and older.  That means a lot of people die before the age of 75.

Population pyramids are graphs that show how many people are living per age group in a country.  They are spilt down the middle, divided by male and female.  The more rectangular the pyramid's shape, the more stable the population.Take a look at the population pyramids of France, India, Mexico, Nigeria, China, and the United States.

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  As you can see the population pyramid of India show India population is not very stable.  India is the second most populated country and continues growing very rapidly.  In India an average family has seven children.  This shows that the population will continue to get larger if the birth rate stays the same.  One reason why the population is so high is because India has some very poor areas.  In the poor areas children are needed to work instead of going to school.   If India had a better education system, maybe the population would go down and the pyramids would be stable.

  As you can see the population pyramid of France show France's population is pretty stable. This might be because they have socialized medicine. So people who can't aford to pay for health care can have it for free. I think people in France are having less babies than before because there are more older than 30 than kids younger than 4. Also the women in France live longer than the men.

   As you can see the population pyramid of Mexico shows that Mexico's population is not very stable.  Mexico is one of the fastest developing countries, so the population is growing rapidly.  Also you can see there are more males than females.  That is probably because people in Mexico would rather have a boy than a girl to help on the farm.

Nigeria has a very unstable population pyramid. They have a lot of babies and almost nobody lives to be 80. That is about the opisite of what people want. If each pyramids was more like France then the world would be in much better shape. The reason Nigeria's pyramid is in such bad shape is that there is an AIDs epidemic going around.  The parenting age is around 30-50.  Since AIDs is killing so many adults near the parenting age, many children are orphans.

 China's population pyramid is a bit scrambled up. When it gets past 10-14 the population shoots up but then goes back down at 25-29. Then it goes down then up again at 50-54 then it steadily goes back down again. There are more males than females because couples can only keep one child. If they get a girl they mainly send the girl to an orphanage hoping they can get a boy next time. The population is the highest in the world in China and they have many strict rules about population.

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Citations

http://illuminations.nctm.org/lessons/3-5/accessdata/Image50.gif 

http://fathersforlife.org/images/India1991.gif 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Chinapop.svg/800px-Chinapop.svg.png

http://www.tkb.org/images/pyramids/originals/ni-pp.png

http://images.nationmaster.com/images/pyramids/fr-2003.png  

http://www.populationeducation.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=443&Itemid=2

www.census.gov/

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/World_population_density_map.PNG