Friday, November 7, 2008

Population Structures


The structure of a population describes the relative numbers of people with similar characteristics within a population, for example, age groups, sex, ethnicity. The structure of a population shows how the subgroups within it affect its composition and characteristics. For example, it shows the percentages making up the different age groups of the population.


Population structure changes over time as people age, but also because of births, deaths and migration. Changes to social, environmental and economic conditions can also influence population structure. For example, changes in migration reflect a number of these factors and have different effects on different age groups.


The interrelationship between population, society, economics and the environment defines a population’s future size and make-up.

Population size can refer to the total number of people living within a defined area, or it can refer to a group of people from a defined area who have similar characteristics (eg children aged 0 to 4 years, people of Asian ethnicities, people who live in two-bedroom houses, people who live in Mangere or in the Southland region).

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Population


When the Hewletts embarked upon their program of philanthropy, population issues were among the first they considered, with two grants in 1967 to Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Association of San Francisco.
Since that time, the Population Program at The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has awarded more than $470 million worldwide. But the mission remains essentially unchanged: to promote voluntary family planning and good reproductive health for all because of the benefits to individuals, societies, and the entire global community.
The Program pursues two complementary goals:
to enhance and protect the reproductive health and rights ofindividuals and
to stabilize global populations at levels that promote social andeconomic well-being and sustain the environment.
Our work includes helping women and their families choose the number and spacing of their children, preventing unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, and eliminating unsafe abortion. Over the past fifty years, better family planning and reproductive health have improved countless lives in many places, but much work remains to extend their benefits to all. In collaboration with other Foundation programs, the Population Program also supports related work to improve quality education in developing countries.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Population growth.....

Between October 2003 and December 2005, there were 524 individuals who were admitted to VA hospitals located in Washington State or Oregon and had a diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction or unstable angina. These individuals were Washington State residents (identified by residential zip code) admitted to VA hospitals or were non-state residents admitted to 1 of 3 VA hospitals in Washington State. According to VA death records, 136 (26%) died prior to January 1, 2006. Using the social security number, full patient name, and date of birth, these records were linked to death records obtained from the Washington State Department of Health. This process identified 117 (86%) decedents in state death records. Of the 19 who were not found, 8 were Washington State residents, 6 were residents of Idaho, 3 – of Alaska, 1 – of Montana, and 1 – of Oregon. Individuals with missing death records were similar to those whose death records were found in that the two groups did not differ with respect to age, gender, race, or year of death.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Environmental effects of Population Explosion


The rapid increase of human population is putting an incredible strain on our environment. While developed countries continue to pollute the environment and deplete its resources, developing countries are under increasing pressure to compete economically and their industrial advancements are damaging as well. The demands that this growth places on our global environment are threatening the future of sustainable life on earth.
One of the largest environmental effects of human population growth is the problem of global warming. The energy production (via power plants and coal burning) that is needed to support human life is increasing the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which can lead to rising global temperatures. The more automobiles in use on the planet also contributes to the pollution problem and the injection of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Some scientists fear that global warming will lead to rising sea levels and extreme weather conditions in the future. In order to support the growing population, forests are being destroyed at an alarming rate. Many countries are constantly cutting down their forests to clear land for farming and to make room for housing.
Deforestation is harmful to the environment for several reasons. The tropical moist forests that are being lost provide homes for some of the most diverse animal and plant life on the planet. The clearing of these forests results in the extinction of many species, possibly including hundreds that are yet unidentified by scientists. Deforestation also adds to the problem of global warming, because trees naturally absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Humans also continue to put a great demand on the natural resources of our planet. Many non-renewable resources are being depleted due to the unrestrained use of fuel and energy. Many parts of the world also suffer from a shortage of food and water. The growth of population puts larger demands on our already limited resources. The environment on earth is suffering from the growth of global population. The depletion of resources and biodiversity, the production of waste, and the destroying of natural habitat are serious problems that must be addressed in order to ensure that life on earth will be sustainable throughout the next century. Possible place to address concerns/comments on issue (but not related to specific HR bill): Secretariat United Nations Population Fund 220 East 42nd Street New York.

ENVIRONMENT: Crises Likely to Spur Mass Migrations


UNITED NATIONS, Oct 9 (IPS) - As climate change, sea-level rise, earthquakes and floods threaten countries such as Bangladesh, Tuvalu, Vietnam and Tajikistan, the Tokyo-based U.N. University (UNU) warns that by 2050, some 200 million people will be displaced by environmental problems.This estimated figure is roughly equal to two-thirds of the current population in the United States or the combined population of Britain, France, Italy and the Netherlands. "All indicators show that we are dealing with a major emerging global problem," says Janos Bogardi, director of UNU's Institute on the Environment and Human Security. The issue of migration, he points out, represents the most profound expression of the inter-linkage between the environment and human security. Unlike the traditional economically-motivated migrants of today, the environmentally-motivated migration is expected to feature poorer people, more women, children and elderly, from more desperate environmental situations, and possibly less able to move far. A group of experts who did a two-year research study points out that existing human trafficking networks would gain strength and new ones could emerge as environmental deterioration, climate change and disaster uproot millions of people. In Bangladesh, women with children, whose husbands either died at sea during cyclone Sidr or are away as temporary labour migrants, are easy prey for traffickers and end up in prostitution networks or in forced labour in India. Bangladesh is also often considered "the country that could be most affected by climate change" due to projected sea-level rise and flooding from melting Himalayan glaciers. It is also heavily affected by sudden disasters, such as cyclones. According to preliminary findings, Bangladesh may lose up to one-fifth of its surface area due to rising sea level. And this scenario is likely to occur, if the sea level rises by one metre and no dyke enforcement measures are taken. Asked if there should be an international treaty to protect the new breed of environmental migrants, Bogardi told IPS: "Yes, there should be a convention or set of treaties and formal recognition of people displaced or migrating due to environmental causes." However, he said, such a treaty should be independent of the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. The new refugees will also come from countries such as the Maldives, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and Palau: small islands in danger of being wiped off the face of the earth due to sea level rise triggered by climate change. "An entirely different question is how to deal with the disappearance of a state? This is a legal question and international lawyers have already been contemplating 'solutions' like governments [in permanent] exile or the model of the Sovereign Order of Malta," said Bogardi. "While the submergence of an entire state is unique, we expect that the humanitarian [and economic] challenge [measured by the number of people affected] will be much greater in the deltas of Bangladesh, the Nile River, Mekong River or even the Rhine and Mississippi Rivers, than in small island states," he added. A three-day conference on environmental migrants, described as the largest ever conference on this issue, is expected to conclude next weekend in Bonn, Germany. Hosted by UNU, the conference, which is being attended by officials and experts from about 80 countries, also serves as a platform to introduce the fledgling Climate Change Environment and Migration Alliance (CCEMA). Meanwhile, addressing the high-level segment of the General Assembly sessions last month, the vice president of Palau, Elias Camsek Chin, told member states they must be guided by a single consideration: "Saving those small island states that today live in danger of disappearance." Palau and members of the Pacific Islands Forum, including Kiribati, Marshall Islands and Micronesia, "are deeply concerned about the growing threat which climate change poses not only to our sustainable development but also to our future survival," Chin said. "This is a security matter which has gone un-addressed," he warned the General Assembly. James Michel, the president of Seychelles, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, said: "It is not right that small island states have to run the risk of being submerged by rising sea levels, whilst some nations refuse to even acknowledge their responsibility for the high levels of environmental pollution which are now threatening the planet's resources." Kiribati's President Anote Tong told the General Assembly his country has only several decades before its islands become uninhabitable. The 100,000 people in his country must one day move elsewhere, he said. Asked if any of the countries neighbouring these small island states have expressed their willingness to accommodate the new migrants, Bogardi told IPS: "There is no recognition [yet] of environmentally [forced] migrants, hence there is no specific expression of obligation to let in migrants who migrate due to sea level rise, frequent storm surges or other such environmental events." "It is one of our main goals to establish and have accepted three categories of environmental migrants [namely, environmentally motivated migrants, environmentally forced migrants and environmental emergency migrants]," he said. The latter category of environmental emergency migrants would account for those displaced by natural hazard events like earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis etc. Bogardi said the frequently reported Tuvalu-New Zealand deal on migrants does not refer to accepting migrants for environmental reasons but rather New Zealand providing a labour migration quota for people from Tuvalu through its Pacific Access Category migration programme. Asked about the possible extinction of some of the low-lying small island states, Bogardi said some small island states could face "disappearance" in the case of more extreme sea level rise than expected in benchmark reports such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). Even if sea level rise exceeds expectations, he pointed out, the process is likely to be gradual over decades. "Increasing sea level would threaten coastal aquifers, thus feasible life and economic activities would diminish much before the islands would disappear," he said. Consequently, he added, "we expect migratory trends to emerge" or be stronger than at present in the years and decades to come. "In summary, we expect depopulation as an ultimate coping measure to be implemented gradually before the physical disappearance of those islands. Time scale is decades, if not centuries."

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Population


Effects of population explosion....

1. Social Problem

The village community has traditionally been the coalescing social unit in Pacific countries,
providing a social safety net, a forum for resolving family and kinship issues and sustaining social cohesion in towns as well just as in rural areas. Many migrant families continue to reinforce rural ties rather than establish new social ties in the wider urban community. Migrants from the same islands prefer to live and work together; the social and economic bonds they forge are the basis for
much social support in towns.

2. Health Problem

The most prominent public health problems in Pacific countries, especially among the poor,
remain those of (largely preventable) infectious diseases, in particular respiratory diseases
related to overcrowding, and gastroenteric diseases related to water pollution, poor
sanitation, and inappropriate health and hygiene practices. Poor-quality water and sanitation
services continue to contribute to public health risks.

3. Unemployment

Education systems are orienting young people to non-manual employment in towns, primarily in government. It has not equipped them with the technical and business skills demanded by the emerging urban economy, however, and expatriate workers with these skills are imported at very substantially higher cost.

Population..


Effects of population Growth....

Competition for water resources among individuals, regions, and countries and associated human activities is already occurring with the current world population. About 40 percent of the world's people live in regions that directly compete for shared water resources. In China where more than 300 cities already are short of water, these shortages are intensifying. Worldwide, water shortages are reflected in the per capita decline in irrigation used for food production in all regions of the world during the past twenty years. Water resources, critical for irrigation, are under great stress as populous cities, states, and countries require and withdraw more water from rivers, lakes, and aquifers every year. A major threat to maintaining future water supplies is the continuing over-draft of surface and ground water resources.

Diseases associated with water rob people of health, nutrients, and livelihood. This problem is most serious in developing countries. For example, about 90 per cent of the diseases occurring in developing countries result from a lack of clean water (Pimentel et al., 1996). Worldwide, about 4 billion cases of disease are contracted from water and approximately 6 million deaths are caused by water-borne disease each year. When a person is ill with diarrhea, malaria, or other serious disease, anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of an individual's food intake offsets the stress of the disease.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

population


According to the , U.S. Census Bureau, the total population of the World, projected to 09/28/08 at 17:39 GMT (EST+5) is

6,726,599,753

The world population growth rate rose from about 1.5 percent per year from 1950-51 to a peak of over 2 percentin the early 1960s due to reductions in mortality. Growth rates thereafter started to decline due to rising age at marriage as well as increasing availability and use of effectivecontraceptive methods. Note that changes in population growth have not always been steady. A dip in the growth rate from1959-1960, for instance, was due to the Great Leap Forward in China. During that time, both natural disasters and decreased agricultural output in the wake of massive social reorganization caused China's death rate to rise sharply and its fertility rate to fall by almost half.

In addition to growth rates, another way to look at population growth is to consider annual changes in the total population. The annual increase in world population peaked at about 88 million in the late 1980s. The peak occurred then, even though annual growth rates were past their peak in the late 1960s, because the world population was higher in the 1980s than in the 1960s.

Population of the world


Globally, the 20th century was marked by: (a) two devastating world wars; (b) the Great Depression of the 1930s; (c) the end of vast colonial empires; (d) rapid advances in science and technology, from the first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina (US) to the landing on the moon; (e) the Cold War between the Western alliance and the Warsaw Pact nations; (f) a sharp rise in living standards in North America, Europe, and Japan; (g) increased concerns about the environment, including loss of forests, shortages of energy and water, the decline in biological diversity, and air pollution; (h) the onset of the AIDS epidemic; and (i) the ultimate emergence of the US as the only world superpower. The planet's population continues to explode: from 1 billion in 1820, to 2 billion in 1930, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1988, and 6 billion in 2000. For the 21st century, the continued exponential growth in science and technology raises both hopes (e.g., advances in medicine) and fears (e.g., development of even more lethal weapons of war).

Land boundaries
the land boundaries in the world total 250,708 km (not counting shared boundaries twice); two nations, China and Russia, each border 14 other countries
note: 44 nations and other areas are landlocked, these include: Afghanistan, Andorra, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bhutan, Bolivia, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Czech Republic, Ethiopia, Holy See (Vatican City), Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malawi, Mali, Moldova, Mongolia, Nepal, Niger, Paraguay, Rwanda, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Swaziland, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Uzbekistan, West Bank, Zambia, Zimbabwe; two of these, Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan, are doubly landlocked

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

IIPS

In 1956, the United Nations, the Government of India and the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, jointly established the Institute to serve as a regional center for teaching, training and conducting research in the area of population studies in the ESCAP region. Prior to 1970, the IIPS was popularly known as Demographic Training and Research Centre (DTRC). It was declared as a deemed university on August 15, 1985. The Institute is an autonomous institution under the administrative control of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. It also offers academic courses to strengthen the reproductive health, research and training programmes and provides consultancy to government and non-governmental organizations and other academic institutions.

The IIPS has helped in building a nucleus of professionals in the field of population and health in various countries in the ESCAP region. During the past 50 years, students from 42 different countries of Asia and the Pacific region, Africa, and North America have been trained at the Institute. Many, who are trained at the Institute, now occupy key positions in the field of population and health in governments of various countries, universities and research institutes as well as in reputed national and international organizations.

India entered the new millennium with a population exceeding
one billion. Malthusian fears of famine and food
shortages seem to have been banished by the fruits of the
Green Revolution. In the 1960s, when I first heard of
Malthus in an undergraduate economics class, India’s
population was a little over half the present number, but
famine, food imports and PL-480 were everyday words.
The transformation of agriculture consigned Malthus to
the seminar rooms of academia. In his 1995 lecture at
Delhi, Amartya Sen traces the origins of the ‘analysis of
the population problem’ noting that the Marquis de Condorcet
had preceded Malthus in worrying about the consequences
of increasing populations: ‘When the increase
of the number of men surpasses their means of subsistence,
the necessary result must be either a diminution of
happiness and population, or, at least, a kind of oscillation
between good and evil. In societies arrived at this
term, will not this oscillation be a constantly subsisting
cause of periodic misery?’ Unlike Malthus, Condorcet
was an optimist, who saw that solutions to the problems
created by burgeoning populations would emerge from ‘a
cooperative response through the reasoned agency of the
people themselves’. Condorcet’s view seems to have been
vindicated, as voluntary family planning has completely.

Population-First a community

Population First is an NGO working on population and health issues within the framework of women's rights and social development. We believe that population is not an issue of numbers alone. Numbers are but a manifestation of poor social development and lack of access to health and contraceptive services. Across the country, fertility is highest where social development is low and gender inequality is high.

Population First is a communications and advocacy initiative for a balanced, planned and stable population. Reducing gender imbalances, investing for the current and future population and reaching the goal of family size of two children per couple are our key communications objectives.

In demographic terms, the population explosion is a numbers
equation, birth rate decline lagging behind a fall in death rate.
But in terms of historical action, the population explosion is the
unequal diffusion of the two technologies of death control and
birth control. One element, probably the most important, in this
inequality stems from broad societal attitudes towards human
reproduction. In the last analysis, it seems to be attitudes
among decision makers and elite members of a society as they
relate to the availability of choices, rather than attitudes
among the world’s contemporary millions, that still slow the
repairing of the mistakes

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

World Population


The world population is the total number of humans on Earth at a given time. In February 2008, the world's population is believed to have reached over 6.60 billion. In line with population projections, this figure continues to grow at rates that were unprecedented before the 20th century, although the rate of increase has almost halved since its peak, which was reached in 1963, of 2.2 percent per year. The world's population, on its current growth trajectory, is expected to reach nearly 9 billion by the year 2050.

Censuses taken between 300–400 AD showed over 50 million people living in the combined eastern and western Roman empire.(citation Dr. Kenneth W. Harl, tulane.edu)

Below is a table with historical and predicted population figures shown in millions. The availability of historical population figures varies by region. Please see World population estimates for more figures.

Different regions have different rates of population growth, but in the unusual case of the 20th century, the world saw the biggest increase in its population in human history due to medical advances and massive increase in agricultural productivity made by the Green Revolution.

In 2000, the United Nations estimated that the world's population was then growing at the rate of 1.14% (or about 75 million people) per year, down from a peak of 86 million per year in 1987. In the last few centuries, the number of people living on Earth has increased many times over. By the year 2000, there were 10 times as many people on Earth than there were 300 years ago. According to data from the CIA's 2005–2006 World Factbooks, the world human population currently increases by 203,800 every day. The 2007 CIA factbook increased this to 211,090 people every day.

Population Explosion


In sociology and biology a population is the collection of people or individuals of a particular species. A population shares a particular characteristic of interest most often that of living in a given geographic area. In taxonomy population is a low-level taxonomic rank.

Human populations can be defined by many characteristics such as mortality, migration, family (marriage and divorce), public health, work and the labor force, and family planning. Various aspects of human behavior in populations are also studied in sociology, economics, and geography.

Study of populations is almost always governed by the laws of probability, and the conclusions of the studies may thus not always be applicable to some individuals. This odd factor may be reduced by statistical means, but such a generalization may be too vague to imply anything. Demography is used extensively in marketing, which relates to economic units, such as retailers, to potential customers. For example, a coffee shop that wants to sell to a younger audience looks at the demographics of an area to be able to appeal to this younger audience.

According to papers published by the United States Census Bureau, the world population hit 6.5 billion (6,500,000,000) on January 25, 2006. The United Nations Population Fund designated October 12, 1999 as the approximate day on which world population reached 6 billion. This was about 12 years after world population reached 5 billion, in 1987. However, the population of some countries, such as Nigeria, is not even known to the nearest million,[citation needed] so there is a considerable margin of error in such estimates.