iGCSE Population - Case Studies

Problems

• Increase in the number of people with HIV/AIDS
• Spread of the disease
• Hopsitals can't afford medicines to treat the disease
• People die
• Fewer workers to pay taxes
• Government finds it hard to pay its international debt

Causes

• Difficult to get tested so people don't know they have HIV
• Unprotected sex is common due to lack of contraception
• People do not fully understand the disease
• Children are infected from their mothers during pregnancy

Solutions

• Condoms ae free and available (1990)
• Free testing (1997)
• Education about HIV/AIDS
• Improved medical services
• Improved maternaty services

FIGURES

• 2004 - treatment drugs are free
• 50% by 2008 are receiving the drug
• Women pregnant with the disease has fallen from 31% to 14%

Background information

• 1128 people per km2
• Area 147,000km2
• Population 163 million
• Capital city - Dhaka
• Located in Asia
• Birth rate 22 per 1000

Causes of overpopulation

• poor education about large families
• Early marriage 
• Brith rate is higher than death rate
• Traditional to have large families 
• LArge families in rural areas due to children working the farms
• Lack of family planning
• Lack of available contraception

Effects

• Low standard of living (35% living on less than $2 a day)
• High dependency ratio (ore children than adults)
• Spread of diseases due to overcrowding of areas i.e. slums
• Overcrowding
• Pressure on healthcare, education and sanitation
• Traffic issues
• Widespread deforestation 

Solutions

• make contraception available
• Education on family planning

Background information

• population is 26 million 
• 2 people per km2

Reasons

• Most is made up of desert
• Native population was killed by white settlers (most)
• Immigration is tightly controlled
• poor soil for farming

Problems

• Population is ageing - not enough workers in the future
• Can't exploit its resources properly
• Economy suffers due to low working population
• Relies on other country to defend it i.e. USA

Solutions

• Increase immigation
• Encourage higher birth rate

One for mum

One for dad

One for Australia

(Campaign for higher BR)

• Etend maternity leave for mothers to encourage a higher birth rate

Background information

• High birth rate - 3.9 per 1000
• 2016 - population was 45.4 million
• 42% of the population were under 15 yrs old

Reasons

• Lack of family planning
• More children needed to work the farms
• Lack of contraception
• Lack of education
• Traditional to have large families

Problems

• Increase pressure on resources
• Not enough taxes to the government
• Government can't afford to improve infrastructure
• Not enough workers to help boost the local economy

Solutions

• Education 
• Contraception available/free
• Increase taxes
• Encourage immigation to get more workers
• Improve family planning centres
• Get to rural areas with family planning

Background information

• Over 25 years the number of under 16s have fallen from 21% to 19%
• By 2035 - 23% over 65 and 17% under 16
• Life expectancy males - 78 yrs females - 86

Reasons

Life expectancy is increasing because of:

• better healthcare
• new treatments
• better living conditions
• more balanced diet

Women are having less children because:

• marrying later
• children are expensive
• careers first

Problems

• Increase pressure on the NHS
• Cost of caring for people with dementia is expected to double to £47 billion in the next 20 years
• Increase in nursing homes so taxes are diverted to maintain them.
• Increase the amount of tax revenue that the government has to spend on providing pensions.
• Fewer workers, less income tax to the government.
• Less tax, less money spent on hospitals, schools or infrastructure

Strategies to cope with an ageing population

• Increase retirement age
• Encourage workers to take out private pensions
• Encourage people who have retired to return to work part time
• Making elderly people who have savings over £25,000 to pay for the cost of their nursing homes instead of the government

In the late 1970s, the Chinese government introduced a number of measures to reduce the country's birth rate and slow the population growth rate. The most important of the new measures was a one-child policy, which decreed that couples in China could only have one child.

• In 1950 the rate of population change in China was 1.9% each year. If this doesn't sound high, consider that a growth rate of only 3% will cause the population of a country to double in less than 24 years!
•  Previous Chinese governments had encouraged people to have a lot of children to increase the country's workforce. But by the 1970s the government realised that current rates of population growth would soon become unsustainable.

The one-child policy, established in 1979, meant that each couple was allowed just one child. Benefits included increased access to education for all, plus childcare and healthcare offered to families that followed this rule.

Problems with enforcing the policy

• Those who had more than one child didn't receive these benefits and were fined.
• The policy was keenly resisted in rural areas, where it was traditional to have large families.
• In urban areas, the policy has been enforced strictly but remote rural areas have been harder to control.
• Many people claim that some women, who became pregnant after they had already had a child, were forced to have an abortion and many women were forcibly sterilised. There appears to be evidence to back up these claims.

Impact of the policy

• The birth rate in China has fallen since 1979, and the rate of population growth is now 0.7%.
• There have been negative impacts too - due to a traditional preference for boys, large numbers of female babies have ended up homeless or in orphanages, and in some cases killed. In 2000, it was reported that 90% of foetuses aborted in China were female.
• As a result, the gender balance of the Chinese population has become distorted. Today it is thought that men outnumber women by more than 60 million.

Long-term implications

China's one-child policy has been somewhat relaxed in recent years. Couples can now apply to have a second child if their first child is a girl, or if both parents are themselves only-children.

While China's population is now rising more slowly, it still has a very large total population (1.3 billion in 2008) and China faces new problems, including:

• the falling birth rate - leading to a rise in the relative number of elderly people
• fewer people of working age to support the growing number of elderly dependants - in the future China could have an ageing population

Background Information

• Found in the Pacific Ocean.
• Population - 130 million
• Density - 340 per sq km
• 73% of Japan is mountainous

Distribution

• Highest population density is found in the coastal regions e.g. Osaka Bay
• Lowest population density is found int he mountainous regions e.g Japanese Alps, Honshu Island

High Density

Close to the coast because of:

• flat land to build on (limited)
• Trasnporting goods by sea
• Cooler weather

• Osaka Bay has a natural harbour
• Good roads and railways for businesses
• Good job opportunties

Low Density

• Not enough flat land
• extreme climate cuased by high altitude 
• poor soil (very acidic)
• Isolated/remote
• Covered in forests, making it difficult to build

Background Information

• Population - 35 million
• Density - 3.87 people per sq km
• Sparsely populated country
• Population clustered in the southern regions
• Cold Arctic climate in the North
• People live in Eastern areas since the west is mountainous

Why is density low?

• Many mountainous areas e.g. Canadian Rockies in the west
• Permafrost in the Northern areas (high latitudes) so land is too cold for agriculture
• Snow and ice make transport difficult e.g. inner provinces of Canada
• Too steep to farm on easliy and challenging for construction and transport

Location

• Kibera is the largest slum in Africa
• Outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya
• Kibera has a population of 1 million

Kibera slum characteristics

• Lack of sanitation - 1/5 do not have toilets 
• Crime
• Lack of space
• No electricity
• Spread of diseases
• Chances of fires are high

Rural - urban migration

People move to the cities because:

• better jobs
• better healthcare
• education
• improved housing

Pull factors

• poor housing
• no healthcare/education
• drought
• poor sanitation

push factors

Improvements to Kibrea

• Self-help scheme such as Practical Action (UK charity) provide building materials to improve slum housing.
• United Nations Human Settlement Programme has provided affordable electricity
• Two main water pipes provided by the council and World Bank
• Clinics set up with basic medical care
• Schools set up by charities

Facts and figures

• 13 million Syrians have escaped Syria
• 800,000 have reached Germany
• Conflict

Why leave Syria (push factors)

• War 
• Avoid political persecution (against the government)
• Radical religious groups e.g. IS (Islamic State)
• Fields for farming are destroyed 
• Housing destroyed by bombing
• Lack of medical care
• Money spent on the conflict
• Towns and villages destroyed/damaged

Why go to Germany (pull factors)

• Economic stability 
• Unemployment rate is low
• Many sectors will be looking for workers as the German population continues to age
• Protect and promotes human rights, offering food, shelter, and language courses to refugees
• Job opportunties 
• Education for children 
• Better healthcare
• Better sanitation
• Better housing