Population Case Studies for GCSE Geography, OCR, Spec B

Population Case Studies

Population Control

One Child Policy in China

China has the largest population in the world, 1.3 billion people.

In 1949 this was only 540 million so people were encouraged to have children to produce more food and build a stronger army.

By 1970 the population increase had become too much leading to a FAMINE in 1958-1961 where people did not have access to enough food and water.

1970- 'LATE, LONG, FEW' Policy

The government introduced a policy to encourage people to have babies LATER, have a LONGER age gap between them and have FEWER children.

This worked as the FERTILITY RATE decreased from 5.7 in 1970 to 2.9 in 1979.

However, the population continued to grow resulting in:

The One Child Policy

Couples were encouraged to only have one child and those who did were given benefits such as housing, education and pension. Those who had more than one child were not given benefits and part of their income was deducted as a fine.

The policy worked as FERTILITY RATE went from 2.9 to 1.8 in 2009. However, it led to and AGEING POPULATION thus making it unsustainable.

There were some exceptions to the one child policy

• Couples who had a female or disabled child first were allowed to have a second child in rural areas
• If one parent was disabled or both parents only children, they could have another child to help support them in their old age.

Ageing Population

United Kingdom

In 2005, 16% of the population was 65+

This figure is expected to rise to 25% by 2041.

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