John Carroll Human Geography

I'm still out due to sickness, and cannot write a blog post.

I was absent today and couldn't complete this blog post.

I was sent home early due to sickness and couldn't complete this blog post.

We studied a demographic transition model in class today and further discussed the stages of population change. To help us better understand this, we watched a video from yesterday from Khan Academy. In the video, demographic transition was explained through its main factors, birth rate, death rate, and natural increase/ decrease. In stages 1 through 4, the population increases due to birth rate consistently being higher than death rate, but in the fifth stage, the population decreases. This natural decrease is caused by birth rates being lower than death rates. Birth rates drop due to societal and cultural norms, such as women working paying jobs instead of being homemakers and stay-at-home mothers, as well as less people seeing having children and 'starting a family' as a necessity in the modern age. Since children can no longer be legally used for free manual labor, and most people live in urban environments where children can't be used for manual labor on farms, there

Why Populations Grow- 1. The population growth rates of less economically developed countries are very rapid compared to more economically developed countries. Some economically developed counties, such as Japan, actually have negative population growth because the death rate is higher than the birth rate. Due to the negative population growth in Japan, it's expected to lose about 21% of its population by 2050. 2. One way to measure population growth in an area is to find the Doubling Time, which is the amount of time it takes for the population to be double what it was initially. This is calculated by dividing 70 by the growth rate. 3. The main factors that influence population growth/ change are the rate of natural increase (the birth rate minus the death rate), and net migration rate. The birth rate is the number of live births per 1000 people per year, and the death rate is the number of deaths per 1000 people per year. These numbers tell us how much the population is changi

Today in class, we read and annotated a packet on the stages of the demographic transition. All countries start in stage one, and though we spent most of human history in stage one, no country today remains there. In stage one, both birth rates and death rates are high, resulting in  very low growth. Stage two is next, and resulted from the Industrial Revolution in Europe and North America, and from the Medical Revolution in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In stage two, death rates decline from better medicine and healthier communities, and high birthrates, once again from improved medicine. Stage three is next. In stage three, their crude birthrates suddenly drop as a result of economic and societal changes, mostly less women being stay-at-home mothers/ homemakers as they enter the labor force in higher numbers, and people moving to urban environments rather than rural environments. This results in smaller families and less children. Countries reach stage four when birthrates declin