Population Age Structures: Analysis and Impacts
Demography: Analyzing Population Age Structures
What is the age structure of a population? How do demographers analyze age structure? What are the general differences in the age structure of poor countries compared to the age structure of Canada? What are the social and/or economic implications of these differences? Explain.
The age structure of a population is the breakdown of the population into age (and sex) cohorts. Geographers use population pyramids to analyze age structure. Three broad cohorts are often used: youth (<15 years), middle (15-64), and old age (>64) to assess the dependency ratio of a population.
The age structure of poor countries has a wide youth cohort, a moderate middle-age cohort, and a narrow old-age cohort. This could be for several reasons:
- High fertility rates due to the lack of access to jobs and education for women.
- Lack of medical facilities, leading to short life expectancy and a narrow old-age section.
- People in those countries tend to have many children to help them in their labor jobs. If some children are likely to die, others may live.
Canada’s age structure shows smaller cohorts for the young due to the stable fertility rate, a reasonably wide middle-age cohort, and high life expectancy, with Canadians living until the age of 95. Canada will soon experience a wider old-age cohort due to the baby boom generation entering this cohort. This exemplifies how the age structure of a population could help understand the current structure and predict changes over time.
The social and economic implications for poor countries include:
- Challenges of providing education for children.
- A high dependency ratio.
- Rapid population growth, potentially leading to additional pressures on scarce resources.
For Canada, an aging population will lead to challenges in providing for the increased healthcare needs and public pensions/retirement income of a large and growing number of seniors due to the baby boom.
Different Forms of Agriculture and Industrialization
What are four different forms of agriculture? Where do they primarily occur geographically (which countries or areas)? How does the industrialization of agriculture relate to or impact them?
- Commercial Agriculture: An agricultural system dominant in core countries.
- Subsistence Agriculture: An agricultural system practiced in periphery and semi-periphery countries and regions.
- Shifting Cultivation: Usually practiced in tropical forests. An agricultural system that maintains soil fertility by rotating the fields where cultivation occurs. Supports relatively low population densities.
- Pastoralism: Involves the breeding and herding of animals to satisfy human needs for food, shelter, and clothing. It is usually practiced in the cold and dry climates of deserts and savannas, where subsistence agriculture is not efficient or practical.
The industrialization of agriculture impacts these four forms differently. For example, commercial agriculture, which exists for market production, benefits from industrialization. Factors such as mechanization, chemical farming, processing, transportation, and storage methods lead to a dramatic increase in food production, resulting in profits for agribusinesses. Industrialization could also positively impact families who practice subsistence agriculture; however, these families may have difficulties accessing advanced production machines.
Industrialization may be an advantage for commercial agriculture but not always for subsistence agriculture, as food production companies can afford a variety of foods at any time and anywhere, attracting more people to grocery stores. However, some people are cautious about the quality of their food and, therefore, buy from local food producers and farms because they are likely to be more sustainable.