Snow day

I'm not sure whether or not we needed to do a blog this evening because we did not have class because school was closed, but it is better safe than sorry.  For me today was mostly studying for exams.  I completed extra practice work that was distributed, I read notes and old powerpoints and used all of the material that I had to study.  Today I went over all of the subjects that I needed to study like I would have done if I were at school today for the review day.  From here on out I will study for the exams that I have the next day.  I feel well prepared for my exams after having a day to my self, studying at my own pace, and studying the topics that I thought I needed to work on the most.  I hope we have no more bad weather this week that will disturb the exam schedule.

Writing the essay

Today in human geo we wrote our essay for the exam.  I used the notecard with the ideas from my practice essay to help me remember all of the main information on the essay that I wanted to write.  I feel like I did fairly well on my essay, although  I wrote fairly long paragraphs.  I will continue to study for the exam to prepare my self for the main part of the exam.  I feel like I was well prepared for this exam after I wrote a practice essay and prepared a notecard where I did not even really need to look at the notecard.  I have done well in the class thus far, and I will use the old tests that I have taken in this class to help prepare for the mid term.

Continuing to prepare for the essay

Today in honors human geo we continued to prepare for the essay by receiving a notecard.  this notecard is to be used to put notes on that will help us to write a better essay that helps us get a better grade.  I wrote a rough essay that helped me to get the Ideas that I wanted to put in my essay down on paper. I will then condense this information into the main points that I plan to put into my essay.  I'll use these main Ideas to help make sure that I do not forget any main points that I need to put in my essay. Overall I feel like I should do fairly well on this essay because I will have a notecard, and I have written a practice essay.  I will also continue to study for the rest of the exam as well. I feel confident about this exam.

Essay

Around the world, there are many countries that are at vastly different points in their developmental stages.  These different stages are affected by these countries’ health care and economic positions. Some countries on both ends of the spectrum can face problems due to their population position.  Problems are not only faced by countries that are at the beginning of the model, where their economies are weak, and death rates are high, but there are problems with the population where there is good healthcare and the economy is powerful.  Two examples of this would be countries A and B. Both of these countries are on opposite sides of the population pyramid, and they both face problems, and there are possible solutions to the problems that they may face.  

Country A’s population pyramid shows a large pre-reproductive population with a smaller aging population.  This population pyramid shows that this country may be in stage two. This is because of the fact that they have very high birth rates in their nation, but the deaths are starting to decrease because there is a slightly larger elderly population.  There are several problems that can be faced by this country with the state that it is in. One of these could be overpopulation. Overpopulation could be a problem for this nation depending on the amount of land and resources that it has available to it.  Overpopulation will continue to happen in this country as more people live longer, and move into their reproductive years to begin to have children of their own.

Country B’s population pyramid shows it to begin to be in stage 4 or be at the beginning of stage 5.  This is shown through the fact that there are nearly as many young people as old people. In this stage of the model, the quality of living has gone way up, as has education and health care.  This allows people to become higher educated, and become more interested and committed to leading a career than building a family. This can also cause problems for a country based on its population.  This can cause an underpopulation of young people. It is necessary for a country to have a fair amount of young people because a nation that contains only elderly people, or people of a retiring age cannot do the grunt work of building roads.  Also, the country may not have enough young people to take care of the elderly. There is an equal amount of problems with having a population that increases too rapidly as well as one that begins to decrease.

There are solutions to these problems, although they are not instant fixes they could eventually help to fix these country’s population issues.  A fix to begin to slow down the population growth of country A would perhaps be to institute a law that only allows each family to have one or maybe two children.  Another solution that could help Nation A would be a strong urbanization movement or getting people to move into more urban areas. This could help the country to decrease its population growth because more people would have smaller living areas and it would not be necessary to have large families to work the farm, also more women could get in the workforce when they live closer to the urbanized area closer to education sources.  These solutions to attempt to slow down the population growth of nation A.

Similar to Nation A there are several fixes to the country that could help to raise the population growth over time.  These include offering incentives to families to have more children. These could include large tax breaks or other government help until the population got back to where it needs to be.  This solution would only help to grow the population with its RNI. the population could also be grown through immigration. The country could go to other nations and attempt to influence them to send young able-bodied people and their families to help do more of the grunt work that the country’s own aging population cannot do.  

These two countries are distinctly different although they both face problems regarding there population.  Country A has exponential growth and country B can be facing a declining population. Although there are not instant fixes there are some fixes that could help to get these nations under control.  For country A a law could be instituted, and an urbanization movement could be started. For country B, with a declining population, An immigration movement or government incentives to people could help to move the population up. These countries can be helped to get there populations back on track. 

Quiz on the demographic Transition

Today in class we took a quiz on the demographic transition.  I fell like I did fairly well on it, but I think I got the question on the equation incorrect.  I think that a wrote the incorrect equation.  then on the part of the quiz that asked what moved many countries to stage 2 in the late 19th century, I put the medical revolution because I thought that I had heard that somewhere, but I am not sure that that I correct.  Other than those two questions I feel like I did fairly well on this quiz.  I think that I got most of the rest of the questions on the rest of the quiz correct.

Demographic transition

Today in class we continued to discuss the demographic transition and demographic transition model.  We did this by first drawing the model in our notebooks then we rewatched the Kahn academy video.  This video covered how the demographic transitions change from stage  1 to stage 5.  In stage 1 the country has a high birthrate and deathrate this stage occurs before there are any advances in technology that can raise the life expectancy, and better the quality of life. Then stage 2 occurs often when a country has an industrial revolution this causes the death rate to go down, but the birthrate stays the same which causes the population to grow exponentially.  then in stage three as the country continues to develop it reaches stage 3 which is when the birth rate decreases which leads to a smaller increase in the population.  Then when the country continues to develop more women can enter the workforce then fewer children are born which allows the deaths to begin to outnumber the births which cause the population to decrease.  Then there is a possible stage 5 where the country's population continues to decrease.  After this, we do not know what will happen next.

Demographic Transition Video Assignment

Kahn Academy Video
1. demographic transition shows the changing of a country's population growth rate as the country develops.
2. To get the population growth rate you take the new number minus the initial number, then divide it by the initial number then multiply that by 100 to get a percentage.
3.things that can cause a population to grow include the government offering incentives to people for having children, their faith-promoting large families to increase the number of followers it has and passing down the morals and ideas to your children which have a certain prestige that goes along with it.
Video From Dr. Kim Smith Ph.D.
1. We experience the same population growth that was experienced per year in the 1600s every 6 hours because our fertility rates are so high especially in developing nations.
2. In the times of stage 1 women and children were seen as property, and defined the wealth of men based on how many children they had.  The more children that they had, the higher the status of the family, and the more help that they had.
 3. In stage 2 the population starts to increase sharply because the mortality rates go down because of bettering in technology that helps the economy although the birth rates stay high.  this is called a cultural lag because even though the mortality decreases people still have large amounts of children.  this is because the technology changed faster than the culture's ability to adapt
Why populations grow
1. One way that we can measure population growth is by measuring the doubling time, or how long it will take a country to double its population.  this can be calculated by dividing 70 by the growth rate.
2. In the third stage of the demographic change model, the death rates continue to decrease as do the birth rates which allows the population to increase but at a slower rate. This can be caused by increased living standards, better health care, and a movement towards urban life making it unnecessary to have large families.
3. In the 4th stage of the model booth birth and death rates are low which causes the population to equal out.  this is seen in most of the economically advanced nations around the world.  this is because these countries have better health care, more education, and more women in the workforce.

I think that the video by Dr. Kim Smith Ph.D. was the most helpful to me. This is because she was easier to understand than the other videos, and she offered supplementary information that helped to make the data easier to apply and understand.

The Demographic transitions hand out

Today we read a hand out on the demographic transition.  reading this hand out mad a lot of sense with what we talked about with the population pyramids and NRI, CDR, CBR and other ways to describe the population of a place.  this change in the demographics of a place is split into 4 categories.  Category 1 is when there has not been much growth in a nation.  Both the Birth Rate and death rates are very high which leads to a very small increase in population.  then in stage two, the country undergoes a change economically or medically which causes the death rate to go down, but the birthrate remains the same causing the population to grow fairly quickly.  then in stage three the country continues to grow which causes people to move into cities where it is less necessary to have large families.  This decreases the birth rate which allows the population to increase slowly.  In stage 4 the majority of people are in the workforce, and may not have time for having children wich causes the birthrate to decrease.  As the population in stage 4 begins to age the population can stop increasing, or decrease such as in the case of Japan.