GCSE Population Dynamics

Question	Answer
Age-Dependency Ratio	The ratio of persons in the ages defined as dependent (under 15 years and over 64 years) to persons in the ages defined as economically productive (15-64 years) in a population.
Age-Sex Structure	The composition of a population as determined by the number or proportion of males and females in each age category. See also population pyramid.
Ageing of Population	A process in which the proportions of adults and elderly increase in a population, while the proportions of children and adolescents decrease. This process results in a rise in the median age of the population. Ageing occurs when fertility rates decline while life expectancy remains constant or improves at the older ages.
Antinatalist Policy	The policy of a government, society, or social group to slow population growth by attempting to limit the number of births.
Baby Boom	A dramatic increase in fertility rates and in the absolute number of births in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand during the period following World War II (1947-1961).
Birth Control	Practices employed by couples that permit sexual intercourse with reduced likelihood of conception and birth. The term birth control is often used synonymously with such terms as contraception, fertility control, and family planning. But birth control includes abortion to prevent a birth, whereas family planning methods explicitly do not include abortion.
Birth Rate (or crude birth rate)	The number of live births per 1,000 population in a given year. Not to be confused with the growth rate.
Brain Drain	The emigration of a significant proportion of a country's highly skilled, highly educated professional population, usually to other countries offering better economic and social opportunity (for example, physicians leaving a developing country to practice medicine in a developed country).
Carrying Capacity	The maximum sustainable size of a resident population in a given ecosystem.
Census	A canvass of a given area, resulting in an enumeration of the entire population and often the compilation of other demographic, social, and economic information pertaining to that population at a specific time. See also survey.
Childbearing Years	The reproductive age span of women, assumed for statistical purposes to be 15-44 or 15-49 years of age.
Death Rate (or crude death rate)	The number of deaths per 1,000 population in a given year.
Demographic Transition	The historical shift of birth and death rates from high to low levels in a population. The decline of mortality usually precedes the decline in fertility, thus resulting in rapid population growth during the transition period.
Demography	The scientific study of human populations, including their sizes, compositions, distributions, densities, growth, and other characteristics, as well as the causes and consequences of changes in these factors.
Dependency Ratio	The ratio of the economically dependent part of the population to the productive part; arbitrarily defined as the ratio of the elderly (ages 65 and older) plus the young (under age 15) to the population in the working ages (ages 15-64).
Depopulation	The state of population decline.
Economic Infrastructure	Economic infrastructure includes the internal facilities of a country that make business and financial activity possible, such as communication, transportation, and distribution networks; financial institutions and markets; and energy supply systems.
Emigration	The process of leaving one country to take up permanent or semipermanent residence in another.
Family Planning	Family planning connotes conception control to avoid pregnancy and abortion, but it also includes efforts of couples to induce pregnancy.
Gender	Gender is a sociocultural expression of particular characteristics and roles that are associated with certain groups of people with reference to their sex and sexuality.
Gender Equality	Gender Equality is the state or condition that affords women and men equal enjoyment of human rights, socially valued goods, opportunities, and resources.
Growth Rate	The number of people added to (or subtracted from) a population in a year due to natural increase and net migration expressed as a percentage of the population at the beginning of the time period.
Immigration	The process of entering one country from another to take up permanent or semipermanent residence.
Infant Mortality Rate	The number of deaths of infants under age 1 per 1,000 live births in a given year.
Least Developed Countries	Following United Nations' definitions, the term "least developed countries" includes 50 countries: Afghanistan, Angola, Bangladesh, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Kiribati, Laos, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Niger, Rwanda, Samoa, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Yemen, and Zambia. These countries are also "less developed" in United Nations' terminology.
Less Developed Countries	Following United Nations' definitions, the term "less developed countries" (or regions) refers to countries in Africa, Asia (except Japan), Latin America and the Caribbean, and Oceania (except Australia and New Zealand).
Life Expectancy	The average number of additional years a person could expect to live if current mortality trends were to continue for the rest of that person's life. Most commonly cited as life expectancy at birth.
Malthus, Thomas R. (1766-1834)	English clergyman and economist famous for his theory (expounded in the 'Essay on the Principle of Population') that the world's population tends to increase faster than the food supply and that unless fertility is controlled (by late marriage or celibacy), famine, disease, and war must serve as natural population restrictions. See neo-Malthusian.
More Developed Countries	Following United Nations' definitions, "more developed countries," or industrialised countries (or regions), include Europe (including all of Russia), the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.
Migration	The movement of people across a specified boundary for the purpose of establishing a new or semipermanent residence. Divided into international migration (migration between countries) and internal migration (migration within a country).
MENA Countries	The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is an economically diverse region that includes both the oil-rich economies in the Gulf and countries that are resource-scarce in relation to population. The region's economic fortunes over much of the past quarter century have been heavily influenced by two factors: the price of oil and the legacy of economic policies and structures that had emphasised a leading role for the state. The MENA region includes: Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malta, Morocco. Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, West Bank and Gaza, and Yemen.
Mortality	Deaths as a component of population change.
Natural Increase (or Decrease)	The surplus (or deficit) of births over deaths in a population in a given time period.
Ageing Population	A population with a relatively high proportion of middle-age and elderly persons, a high median age, and thus a lower growth potential.
Population	A group of objects or organisms of the same kind.
Population Control	A broad concept that addresses the relationship between fertility, mortality, and migration, but is most commonly used to refer to efforts to slow population growth through action to lower fertility. It should not be confused with family planning. See also family planning.
Population Density	Population per unit of land area; for example, people per square mile or people per square kilometre of arable land.
Population Distribution	The patterns of settlement and dispersal of a population.
"Population Explosion" (or "Population Bomb")	Expressions used to describe the 20th century worldwide trend of rapid population growth, resulting from a world birth rate much higher than the world death rate.
Population Increase	The total population increase resulting from the interaction of births, deaths, and migration in a population in a given period of time.
Population Momentum	When population growth continues even though birth rates have decreased due to a high concentration of people in the childbearing years.
Population Policy	what a government does to influence population size, growth, distribution, or composition.
Population Projection	prediction of future changes in population numbers, given certain assumptions about future trends in the rates of fertility, mortality, and migration.
Population Pyramid	A bar chart, arranged vertically, that shows the distribution of a population by age and sex. By convention, the younger ages are at the bottom, with males on the left and females on the right.
Pronatalist Policy	The policy of a government, society, or social group to increase population growth by attempting to raise the number of births.
"Push-Pull"	Hypothesis A migration theory that suggests that circumstances at the place of origin (such as poverty and unemployment) repel or push people out of that place to other places that exert a positive attraction or pull (such as a high standard of living or job opportunities).
Replacement–Level	Fertility The level of fertility at which a couple has only enough children to replace themselves, or about two children per couple.
Reproductive Age	See childbearing years.
Stable Population	A population with an unchanging rate of growth and an unchanging age composition as a result of age-specific birth and death rates that have remained constant over a sufficient period of time.
Survey	A canvass of selected persons or households in a population usually used to infer demographic characteristics or trends for a larger segment or all of the population. See also census.
Urban	Typically, a community or settlement with a population of 2,000 or more is considered urban.
Urbanization	Growth in the proportion of a population living in urban areas.
Youthful Population	A population with a relatively high proportion of children, adolescents, and young adults; a low median age; and thus a high growth potential.
Zero Population Growth	A population in equilibrium, with a growth rate of zero, achieved when births plus immigration equal deaths plus emigration.

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	Created by Daniel Evans over 9 years ago