The Human Population and Its Impact

Population Ecology
• Population
o Individuals of a particular species
living in a defined area
Species – a group of organisms whose
members freely interbreed with one another
in the wild to produce fertile offspring.

• Population ecology
o Branch of biology that studies
individuals of a particular species
in a defined area
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How Do Populations Change in Size?
• Growth rate (r)
o Rate of change of a population’s size, expressed in percentage per year

𝑟 =𝑏 −𝑑
where: r = growth rate
b = birth rate
d = death rate

If r > 0 population size increases

www.macrotrends.net
r<0 population size decreases
r=0 population size remains the same

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How Do Populations Change in Size?
• Dispersal
– Movement of individuals from one region to another
– Immigration (i)
• Individuals enter a population and increase its size
– Emigration (e)
• Individuals leave a population and decrease its size

– Growth rate of a local population must include

immigration and emigration along with birth and
death rates
• r = (b – d) + (i – e)

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Maximum Population Growth
• Biotic potential
– maximum rate of population increase under ideal conditions
– affected by factors called life history characteristics

Life history characteristics

• Age at first reproduction
• Reproductive fraction of life span
• Number of reproductive periods/events per lifetime
• Number of offspring per reproductive event

Large organisms (whales, elephants) have smaller biotic potentials

Small organisms (microorganisms) have greater biotic potentials

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 Maximum Population Growth
• Exponential population growth occurs when optimal
conditions enable organisms to maintain a constant
reproductive rate
– Is seen when population grows at its biotic potential
– Graphing this growth pattern produces a J-shaped curve

When bacteria divide at a constant rate, When bacterial numbers are graphed, the curve of
their number increases exponentially. exponential population growth has a characteristic J shape.

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Environmental Resistance
• Environmental resistance
– Environmental limits placed on exponential growth
• Exponential population growth results in increases in
competition, predation, and disease
• Availability of food, water, shelter, and other resources decline
• Eventually birth rate declines and death rate increases
– Environmental resistance increases as population grows
• Over time, environmental resistance may reduce population
growth to near zero
• This leveling out of growth occurs at the environment’s
carrying capacity (K)

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Carrying Capacity
• Carrying capacity (K)
– the largest population a particular
environment can support long term
if there are no changes in that
environment
• Carrying capacity changes in response
to environmental changes
• At carrying capacity, growth rate is In many laboratory studies, including Gause’s work with
nearly zero as population size levels off Paramecium, population growth increases exponentially
when the population is low but slows as the carrying
• Graphing this growth pattern produces capacity of the environment is approached. This
an S-shaped curve produces a curve with a characteristic S shape.

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Carrying Capacity
• Carrying capacity (K)
– Populations rarely stabilize at exactly K
but instead temporarily rise above and
drop below, hovering around K
– Some populations that overshoot K can
abruptly decline from high to low
population density as resources are
exhausted
• This sudden drop in population Graph of the reindeer population on the
Pribilof Islands from 1911–1950 .
numbers is known as a population Note the population crash after the population
crash peak in 1935

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Human Population Patterns
• How does human population grow compare to
other species?
• Thomas Malthus’ 1798 Essay on the Principle of
Population
• Growth due to a decrease in death rate (d) -
why?
– What factors affect (d)?

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Human Population Patterns
• Advances in global health result in a decrease in death rate
o Greater food production
o Better and more accessible medical care
o Improved water quality
o Improved sanitation

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 Projecting Future Population
• Human population continues to increase
• Growth rate (r) has declined over the last few
decades
– 1960: (r) = 2.2%
– 2010: (r) = 1.2%
• Global average of number of children born to each
woman is 2.5
Zero population growth – The
• The United Nations published low, medium, and state in which the population
high world population projections to 2050 remains the same size because the
birth rate equals the death rate.

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 Projecting Future Population Numbers

Comparing population growth in developed and

developing regions:
The human population is growing at a much faster pace in Regional population growth:
the world’s developing regions Africa has the highest sustained fertility
rates

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Projecting Future Population Numbers
• What is the Earth’s carrying capacity (K) and have we
surpassed it?
– K estimates range from 4 billion to 16 billion
– Why such a range? What factors affect K?
• Differences in fertility rate
• Resource consumption
• Technological innovations
• Waste generation
• Overall lifestyle
– The more highly developed countries have lower carrying
capacity, due to higher per-capita resource use
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 Projecting Future Population Numbers
• What will happen to the human population as it
approaches Earth’s carrying capacity?
– Optimists suggest a decrease in birth rate (b) will stabilize
human population
– Pessimistic experts predict widespread environmental
degradation
• Earth becomes uninhabitable for humans and other species
• Massive wave of suffering and death
• Extinction of humans unlikely, but severe hardship for most will ensue
• Some experts think humans have already exceeded the carrying
capacity of the environment

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 Demographics of Countries
Demographics is the applied branch
of sociology that deals with
population statistics.

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 Demographics of Countries
• Countries are classified into two
main groups:
– Highly developed countries
– Developing countries
• These classifications are based on
– Population growth rates
– Degree of industrialization
– Relative prosperity

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 Demographics of Countries
• Highly developed countries
– USA, Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, Australia,
Japan
– Lowest birth rates in the world
– Low infant mortality rates
– Longer life expectancies
– Higher per person GNI PPP
• GNI PPP: Gross national income in purchasing power parity infant mortality rate – The
• When divided by population, GNI in PPP indicates the amount of goods and number of deaths of infants
services an average citizen of that particular country could buy in the US under age 1 per 1000 live
• Average GNI PPP in the US is $55,860 births.
• Worldwide average GGNI PPP is $15,030

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 Demographics of Countries
• Moderately developed countries
– Mexico, Turkey, Thailand, most South American
countries
– Birth rates higher than highly developed countries,
but are declining Turkey

– Medium level of industrialization

– Average per person GNI PPPs lower than in highly
developed countries
Thailand

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 Demographics of Countries
• Less developed countries
– Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Niger, Ethiopia, Laos,
Cambodia
– Highest birth rates Afghanistan
– Highest infant mortality rates
– Shortest life expectancies
– Lowest average per person GNI PPPs

Cambodia
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 Demographics of Countries
• Infant mortality rate: Number of deaths under age
1 per 1,000 live births
– 2015 US rate was 6.0 and the world rate was 37
• Replacement-level fertility: Number of children a
couple must produce to ‘replace’ themselves
– Estimated at 2.1 to compensate for some childhood deaths
• Total fertility rate (TFR): Average number of
children born to each woman
– Global TFR is 2.5, above replacement level (was 6.1 in 1970!)
– TFR in Brazil in 1970 was 6.7, above global rate. Today it is 1.8!

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 Demographics of Countries
Fertility changes in selected developing countries

• The population in many developing countries is approaching stabilization

• Although fertility rates in several countries have declined, many still exceed replacement-
level fertility

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 The Demographic Transition
• Demographic transition
– The process whereby a country moves from relatively high birth
and death rates to relatively low birth and death rates
• There are four demographic stages that countries move through
as they becomes industrialized and urbanized
– Stage 1: Preindustrial
– Stage 2: Transitional
– Stage 3: Industrial
– Stage 4: Postindustrial

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 The Demographic Transition

The Demographic Transition. Demographers have identified four stages through which a
population progresses as its society becomes industrialized.

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Age Structure of Countries
• Age structure
– The number and proportion of people
at each age in a population
– Age structure helps predict future
population growth
• Age structure diagrams illustrate
the number of males and
females present in a given
population, at each age from https://www.researchgate.net/
birth to death
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 Age Structure of Countries
• Age structure diagram:
– Left side of an age structure diagram represents
males in the population, and the right side the
females
• Bottom third of each diagram = pre-
reproductive humans (0 – 14 years old)
• Middle third = reproductive humans (15 – 44)
• Top third = post-reproductive humans (45+)
– Segment widths are proportional to the
population sizes

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Age Structure of Countries

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Age Structure of Countries
• Population growth momentum
― How a population's present age distribution affects future growth
• Positive population growth momentum exists when a large percentage of the
population is in the prereproductive age group. Even if fertility declines, this
group is so large that the population will continue to grow for some time
afterward
• Negative population growth momentum happens when a smaller proportion
of the population is in the prereproductive group, leading to ever-smaller
subsequent generations

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Age Structure of Countries
• Population growth momentum
o Both positive and negative growth momentum can have significant social an
economic implications in their countries
• Rapid and significant population growth can stress food supplies, housing, the
environment, employment, and infrastructure
• Conversely, a population with two few young people and many elderly have too few
workers to meet the needs of the overall population and help both care for the infirm and
provide a large enough tax base to support the costs of the population as a whole

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Stabilizing World Population

a. In parts of Latin America, b. In sub-Saharan Africa, women do

men do the agricultural work. most of the agricultural work in
This Argentinian man is addition to caring for their children.
harvesting grapes. Photographed in South Africa.

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Culture and Fertility
• Culture
o The values and norms of a society
o What is considered right from wrong
o What is expected of a person
o Language, beliefs and spirituality
• Gender roles
o The varying roles men and women are expected to fill
o Different societies have different gender expectations
o A couple is expected to have the number of children traditional in their
society
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 Culture and Fertility
• High total fertility rates (TFRs)
• Are traditional in many cultures to offset high infant mortality rates
• Are traditional in some developing countries as children work,
contributing to the family’s livelihood
• 168 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 worked full time in
2012, mostly in developing countries
• Almost 85 million child laborers do hazardous work such as mining and
construction
• Children who work full time do not have childhoods, nor do they receive
education
• Children also tend to provide support for aging parents
• Some cultures place higher value on male children and women who bear many
sons achieve a higher status, leading to a higher (TFR)
• Women who don’t follow any religion have the lowest TFRs as compared to
those who do follow a religion

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 The Social and Economic Status of Women
• Gender inequality exists in most societies
o Women don’t have the same rights, opportunities, or privileges as
men
o Women have lower political, social and economic status
o More women than men live in poverty
o In most countries, women are not guaranteed equality in legal rights,
education, employment or earnings, or political participation
o Sons often go to school, girls are kept home to work
• Worldwide, 15 million girls receive no elementary school education
o In most developing countries, more women are illiterate than men,
although progress is being made in this area
• Worldwide, 97 girls attended primary school per every 100 boys in
2015, up from 91/100 in 2000

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The Social and Economic Status of Women
The low status of women in many societies is the biggest factor influencing high T F Rs
• Strategies to reduce population growth must address women’s economic and educational
opportunities
Marriage age also affects T F R
• The earlier a woman marries, the more children she is likely to have

Education affects T F R
• Less education leads to earlier marriages
• More education leads to later marriages and fewer children
• Education improves women’s health awareness
• Understanding of fertility and how to control it
• Decreases in infant and child mortality
• It increases women’s career options and improves status https://www.theatlantic.com/

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 EnviroDiscovery: Microcredit Programs
• Programs that extend loans of
$50 – $500 to very poor people
to establish businesses
• Targets women, as 70% of the
world’s poorest are women
o Providing mothers with means
of self-employment is
believed to alleviate effects of
poverty and hunger on
children
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Family Planning Services
• Health and family planning services
availability is necessary if TFRs are to be
reduced
• These services have lowered TFRs in
developing countries, when available
• Increased availability of prenatal care has
lowered TFR
• Information on contraceptive use and
access to contraceptives have lowered TFR

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 Family Planning Services
• 90% of the decrease in TFR in 31 developing countries was a direct result
of increased knowledge and availability of contraceptives
• In highly developed countries, 67% of married women of reproductive
age use contraceptives

Developing countries around the world have experienced

declines in their fertility rates (TFRs) as women there
have increased their use of contraceptives. Solid lines
represent fertility rates; broken lines represent
percentages of contraceptive use by women 15–49.

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What a Scientist
Sees: Education
and Fertility
• Demographers know that the
total number of children a
woman has during her life (TFR) is
affected by the amount of
education she has received
• The bar graph shows TFRs for 40-
to 50-year-old women in the
United States in 2012 by level of
education
• A similar trend—in which more
education leads to lower TFRs—
also occurs among women in
developing countries

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 Government Policies and
Fertility
• Governments are involved in population health and management
• This includes establishing laws and regulations governing
minimum marriage age, compulsory education requirements,
and taxation credits or fees based on family size
• Many governments are involved in providing health care which
includes family planning and women’s and children’s health
programs
• Education, old-age care, and economic development incentives
are also provided or managed by most governments
• All of these programs and policies can increase family health,
childhood survival, and women’s status. As a result, they can
result in lower TFRs, thus stabilizing populations and preventing
overpopulation where they are in effect

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