ENV 11 CHAPTER 6 QUIZLET

Thomas Malthus

Eighteenth-century English intellectual who warned that population growth threatened future generations because, in his view, population growth would always outstrip increases in agricultural production. He determined that England's population was experiencing exponential growth by increasing at a rate proportional to the total number of people and thus accelerating over time. Importantly, this person argued that food production typically does not grow at this rate.

Replacement fertility

A TFR of 2.1 children, which is the rate at which the population does not grow or decline. This occurs because two children will take the place of their parents and the extra fraction accounts for children who will not survive very long after their birth or who die without themselves producing offspring. The higher the TFR is above 2.1, the more the population will grow, and the lower it falls below 2.1, the more the population will shrink. The total fertility rate in the United States recently fell below 2 children per woman of childbearing age, a number just below this level, and a similar rate is seen in many developed nations such as New Zealand, Chile, and Sweden. Other nations have a much lower TFR, including China and Italy at around 1.5, Ukraine, and South Korea around 1.3, and the island city-state of Singapore at 0.8. When population growth is the goal, authorities may institute policies to push the TFR above this rate. For example, Singapore has the lowest TFR in the world, which has fallen below 1. In response, the government attempted to encourage women to have more children by setting up online matchmaking services, relationship classes, and speed dating sessions and introducing cash bonuses for childbirth. It seems that once a country's TFR has been reduced below this level, it is very difficult to raise it back above that level, as a lower TFR is typically associated with a rising standard of living and more investment of resources per child.

Demographic transition

A decrease in the birth and death rates of a population linked to improvements in basic human living conditions, the availability of modern birth-control technologies, and economic growth. The rate of global population growth peaked in the 1960s at more than 2% per year but has since fallen to 1% per year. The number of additional people added annually to the planet in absolute terms peaked in the late 1980s at 87 million. It has since fallen to about 70 million per year and will likely keep declining. The TFR for the world peaked long ago in the 1950s at 5 children per woman. The global TFR is now near 2.3, less than half of what it was in the 1970s. In fact, 40% of the world population now lives in countries with TFRs below 2. Despite these trends, countries such as Niger, Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Pakistan still have high TFRs, meaning their populations will continue to grow rapidly for some time..

Stability transition

A period when low birthrates match low death rates. Japan entered this transition as the birthrate and death rate approached each other through the 1980s and 1990s. In 2007, the death rate began to exceed the birthrate, leading to a declining population. And with fewer births, today Japan has the highest percentage of people over age 60 among all nations. Between 1935 and 1955, the death rate in the United States fell from 11 people per year per 1,000 to 9.3, and infant mortality declined from 58 deaths per 1,000 live births to 28. During the same period, the birthrate increased from 18.7 births per year per 1,000 to 25, and the TFR ticked up from 2.1 to 3.7 children per woman of childbearing age, starting a period known as the "baby boom." Then, when the resulting "baby boomers" (those born between 1946 and 1964) began reaching reproductive age in the mid-1960s, they started to exhibit a lower fertility rate than that of their parents. The TFR in the United States fell steadily through the 1960s back to the replacement rate of 2.1 by the beginning of the 1970s.

Fertility transition

A period when the population growth slows because even though the death rate remains low, the birthrate decreases. This can happen if the young generation has a lower fertility rate than that of their parents' generation by having their first children later in their lives and limiting their family sizes with birth control. During this transition, population growth slows because even though the death rate remains low, the birthrate decreases. During this phase, the population is dominated by people of working age, so the percentage of the population that is dependent—either because they are too young or too old to work—will be relatively small. This condition can have benefits for the country and is often called a demographic window. Many countries have achieved tremendous increases in economic growth during a demographic window. This growth is often associated with several factors that improve living conditions and reduce fertility rates. These include improvements in basic health and nutritional conditions, better educational and employment opportunities for women, the provision of social security programs for the elderly, and urbanization.

Youth bulge

A prolonged period of low mortality with high fertility, leading to explosive population growth and a very large population of young people. Some social scientists warn that in these cases, this can occur, often associated with increasing incidences of civil unrest, crime, and terrorism as a large, under-educated, unemployed generation of young people become alienated and prone to radicalism and violent conflict. For example: Anti-government protestors in 2011 in Yemen, where this theory is present. They eventually forced the president out of power. Experts caution that a [answer] on its own does not determine civil unrest; factors such as corruption, poverty, ethnic or religious tension, weakening political institutions, and adverse environmental conditions also play a role (as was the case in Yemen).

Demographers

A social scientist who studies the characteristics and consequences of human population growth. They examine both current and historical trends to look for lessons.

Demographic window

A time when a country's population is dominated by people of working age; the share of the population younger than 15 years is less than 30% and the share of the population older than 64 years is less than 15%. These factors, in turn, are associated with further declines in the fertility rate that usher in the third phase, a stability transition with low birthrates matching low death rates. During this phase of transition, there is zero population growth or even population decline if death rates start to exceed birthrates. Japan and many European countries such as Germany and Italy are experiencing this phase of the transition.

Cairo Consensus

An agreement saying that demographic and development goals could only be met when the rights and opportunities of men and women were balanced. The agreement set out goals for nations including universal education for women, health-care improvements to reduce infant and maternal mortality, and the provision of family planning services such as birth control for women. Women in developing nations often lack these rights, and when they are granted, population growth slows rapidly.

Ecological footprint analysis

An analysis that tries to tally the area of land (and water) required for each category of consumption and waste discharge, to make human consumption impacts more visible. What is more revealing is the comparison of average ecological footprints across high-, middle-, and low-income countries. This clearly shows the role of affluence and consumption on environmental impact, as the ecological footprint of high-income countries is several times that of low-income countries. Moreover, when the footprints are broken down into different consumption activities, we see that for low-income countries, nearly all of the footprint is created by the provision of food and shelter. In contrast, carbon emissions related to transportation and the production of consumer goods account for more than 50% of the ecological footprint in high-income countries such as the United States.

The Eugenics Movement

Government efforts to control population have at times moved into the realm of [answer], a word with Greek roots meaning "well-born." This movement was founded in England in the late 1800s by Francis Galton, who believed that the human species could benefit from selective breeding that encouraged the genetically superior upper classes to multiply while pursuing population-control measures on others. The movement flourished in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s when many states had forced-sterilization policies focusing on the elimination of "undesirable traits" believed to be hereditary including criminality, promiscuity, poverty, and mental disability. These policies were often used to subjugate racial and ethnic minorities and women. In the 1930s, the Nazi Party in Germany consulted with California [answer]-ists when designing their own forced-sterilization policies.

I=PAT

Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology A shorthand for the idea that environmental impact (I) is a function of not only the human population (P) but also affluence (A) and technology (T). It is not a mathematical formula, but an attempt to represent and compare different aspects of human activity. Affluence is usually measured as the gross domestic product (GDP) per person in a country. GDP is a measure of the total value of goods produced and services provided in a country in a given year—and that are changing hands—so it is also an indicator of the level of consumption. Technology is used to represent the energy and resource intensity associated with the consumption of goods and services. This equation is too simplistic to produce numerical values for actual environmental effects, but it can help us see that the level of human environmental impact depends on more than just our population.

Natural increase

Population growth due to birthrates exceeding death rates. Cities can grow by this, where their birthrates exceed their death rates. But they can also grow as people migrate into cities from rural areas. The most rapidly growing cities in the world today—cities such as Shenzhen, China; Karachi, Pakistan; and Lagos, Nigeria—are in the developing world where there is a massive urban migration under way.

Contraception

Technology such as condoms or birth-control pills that greatly reduces the probability of impregnation. We are now accustomed to highly successful and technologies of this type, such as condoms or birth-control pills that greatly reduce the probability of impregnation. When these technologies are used, fertility rates drop dramatically. For example, after gaining independence in 1966, Botswana quickly established a wide-ranging family planning program that distributed these to almost every part of the country and coupled it with maternal and child health services. Its TFR dropped from greater than 6 in 1966 to less than 3 today and is the fastest-declining TFR in sub-Saharan Africa. Demographers now estimate that we have reached a point in time globally where birth-control methods dramatically limit the global pregnancy rate. Reduced fertility rates have enormous benefits for families, especially for women in developing countries, as the burden of childbirth and child care falls disproportionately on their shoulders.

Total Fertility Rate (TFR)

The average number of children a woman will have throughout her childbearing years or reproductive years (roughly between 15 and 40 years of age) in a given population. Demographers use this rather than a birthrate (usually figured as births per 1,000 people) because it is not influenced by the age structure of a population and instead focuses exclusively on birthrate among those women in the population who are able to produce offspring. The health, education level, and workforce participation of women and girls all increase as it drops.

Literate life expectancy

The average number of years in one's life a person has the ability to read and write, attempts to capture the important factors of improved health and education. In countries that have already undergone a demographic transition in North America, Europe, and Asia, literate life expectancy is 65 years or more. For example, Spain now has a [answer] of 70 years. This means that the average person has a life span that exceeds 70 by several years and is literate for nearly all of those years. However, a lower number tends to reflect short life spans and less literacy—perhaps due to less access to health care and education. The literate life expectancy in India is close to 30 years. In Afghanistan it is just 14 years

Carrying capacity

The maximum number of individuals of a species that a habitat can sustainably support. Contrary to many predictions, humans have effectively increased the [answer] of Earth for our species. But these gains have come at a cost in the form of human-caused environmental impacts such as air and water pollution, soil loss and degradation, shrinking biodiversity, and climate change. - If the objective is simply basic survival, some experts have estimated that Earth could support as many as 15 billion or 20 billion people. But bare survival in such a crowded world would probably not be an existence desirable to most of us. This would be more than double our current population, which as it now requires the consumption of more than 40% of all the plant matter produced on land. In our world today, more than 80% of the population is concentrated in countries that use more resources than they can gather from their own territory. Packing more than twice as many people onto the planet would amplify these impacts. If the objective is a more comfortable lifestyle, like that enjoyed by many Americans, most experts agree that we are already pushing or past planetary limits. If all 7 billion of us adopted the average US level of consumption, it would take more than four Earth to provide the resources we need and absorb the wastes we produce.

Crude death rate

The number of deaths per year per 1,000 people. Due to the declines in this area, the total number of deaths per year per 1,000 people, has also driven population increases. While there have certainly been famines, diseases, and wars in the 19th and 20th centuries, the [answer] has fallen from more than 25 people per year per 1,000 during Malthus's time to just 8.3 people per year per 1,000 at present. This combination of TFRs above 2.1 and lower rates has caused the global human population to rise steeply.

Mortality transition

The period that occurs as access to food, clean water, and medical care improves, and the country's death rate declines. However, during this phase the birthrate remains high, so the population grows quickly. Most significant, infant mortality drops, and more children survive into adulthood. The rapid growth in this phase transforms the age structure of the population, creating a large proportion of young people. As young people in these expanding countries approach their reproductive years, they are poised to raise the population to unprecedented levels.