Important questions 2025 test

 POPULATION GEOGRAPHY

Concepts/Definitions

Population geography is a division of human geography. It is the study of the ways in which spatial variations in the distribution, composition, migration, and growth of populations are related to the nature of places. Population geography involves demography from a geographical perspective. It focuses on the characteristics of population distributions that change in a spatial context. Examples can be shown through population density maps. A few maps that show the spatial layout of the population are choropleth, isoline, and dot maps. Population geography studies:

NATURE & SCOPE

In the expression ‘population geography’, the term ‘population’ signifies the subject matter, and ‘geography’ refers to the perspective of investigation. Population geography implies investigating the human covering of the earth and its various facets with reference to the physical and cultural environment. Although population geography is, in the early 21st century, a well-established subfield of human geography, this was not always the case. “A Case for Population Geography.” Presidential address G. T. Trewartha 1953 is recognized as the original call for the establishment of a population geography subfield within the discipline. Since most of the world's humanity lives in the less developed parts of the world, a significantly larger proportion of the net addition in world population during the first half of the twentieth century came from this part. The need for a more detailed account of demographic characteristics resulted in a switch over from macro to micro-level studies, which, in turn, facilitated population mapping. The world population continued to grow at an increasing pace. The growing availability of population data after the Second World War facilitated the mapping of the other demographic attributes pertaining to different regions of the world. There was a growing consciousness among the people regarding population expansion and its effects on economic development. The less developed countries had also begun experiencing redistribution of population within their boundaries from rural to urban areas. The emergence of large cities and their manifold problems became a compelling focus for research by geographers.

DEFINITION

• According to Trewartha, population geography is concerned with the understanding of the regional differences in the earth’s covering of people (Trewartha, 1969:87)

• John I. Clarke suggested that population geography is mainly concerned with demonstrating how spatial variation in population and its various attributes like composition, migration and growth are related to the spatial variation in the nature of places (Clarke, 1972:2)

• WilburZelinsky defines it as “a science that deals with the ways in which geographic character of places is formed by and, in turn, reacts upon a set of population phenomena that vary within it through both space and time interacting one with another, and with numerous non- demographic phenomena” (Zelinsky, 1966).

• R.J. Proyer suggested that population geography deals with the analysis and explanation of the interrelationship between population phenomena and the geographical character of places as they both vary over space and time (Proyer, 1984:25).

NATURE

Trewartha proposed a very comprehensive outline of the content of the sub-discipline, which many subsequent geographers seem to have adhered to.

Broadly speaking, the concerns of population geography, according to Trewartha, can be grouped into three categories:

(1) A historical (pre-historic and post-historic) account of population: Trewartha suggested that where direct statistical evidence is not available, geographers should adopt indirect methods, and collaborate with anthropologists, demographers, and economic historians.

(2) Dynamics of number, size, distribution, and growth patterns: In Trewartha’s opinion, an analysis of world population patterns, population dynamics in terms of mortality and fertility, area aspect of over and under population, distribution of the population by world regions and settlement types and migration of population (both international and inter-regional) form an important part of the analysis in population geography.

(3) Qualities of population and their regional distribution: He suggested two broad groups – physical qualities (e.g., race, sex, age, health, etc.), and socio-economic qualities (e.g., religion, education, occupation, marital status, stages of economic development, customs, habits etc.)

Population geography studies the formation of the population in different territories in terms of structure, density, specific clustering (cities and rural communities), and the conditions that determine the particular forms of settlement. 

The main concern of population geography revolves around the following three aspects of human population:

1. Size and distribution, including the rural-urban distribution of population.

2. Population dynamics – past and present trends in growth and its spatial manifestation; components of population change, viz., fertility, mortality, and migration.

3. Population composition and structure. They include a set of demographic characteristics (such as age-sex structure, marital status, and the average age at marriage, etc.), social characteristics (such as caste, racial/ethnic, religious, and linguistic composition of population; literacy and levels of educational attainment, etc.), and economic characteristics (such as workforce participation rate and workforce structure, etc.)

Population geography receives important primary data from demography, which reveals the geographic aspects of natural and migration population change. Population geography also uses field teams for observation and investigation. It studies the physical forms of inhabitance (types of residences according to spatial differences, the nature of planning and engineering for populated points, and so on), because all of these features are reflected in the regional characteristics of the physical make-up of cities and rural settlements. The location of the population both throughout the country and within its regions and the territorial organization of the population is basically determined by the nature and geography of production. The population density of individual populated points is usually related to their national economic functions, and the population density of regions reflects the degree of their economic development. At the same time, the established location of the population exerts in its turn an influence on the geography of production. The natural environment’s influence on settlement occurs primarily through production. It can be seen that the study of the population is multidisciplinary in nature, involving an understanding of biology, genetics, mathematics, statistics, economics, sociology, cultural anthropology, psychology, politics, geography, medicine, public health, ecology, etc.

SCOPE

The scope of population studies is quite wide. The quantitative aspect is concerned with a quantitative study of the size, structure characteristics, and territorial distribution of human populations and the changes occurring in them. Under the planned socialist economy, the practical tasks of population geography include a quantitative and qualitative assessment of labor resources and a search for the forms of settlement most responsive to the requirements of production and the cultural and domestic needs of the population. A study of the conditions of habitation in different natural geographic regions reveals the connections between population geography and medical geography. Research on ethnography and the economics of labor is closely associated and sometimes intertwined, with population geography. The development of methods for making population maps is very important. Hence, while describing, comparing, or explaining the determinants and consequences of population phenomena, social phenomena have to be taken into consideration.

Population geography has a special place in economic geography because people, as the main productive force, are employed in all economic sectors, and, up to a point, their location has an all-encompassing significance. The population is at one and the same time the producer and consumer of material goods. Population geography studies, systems and structures—the forms of settlement in relation to the spatial nature of production, the characteristics of the geographical environment, the economic geographical condition of population employment, and population migrations. Together with differences in the natural growth of population, migrations determine the course of territorial redistribution of population. A prominent place is given to the classification and typology of populated points.

One statement that can be made without reservation is that the boundary between population geography and demography, sociology, or economics can be challenging to locate. The consensus is that demographers focus more on fertility research, whereas population geographers tend to focus on migration. With the advent of more-sophisticated methods, in particular, those related to geographical information systems (GIS) or remote sensing, and the ever-increasing availability of data at multiple spatial scales, the fundamental importance of space and geography has become more mainstream in population studies across the social sciences. This evolution is apparent in the development of a multidisciplinary subfield called spatial demography which is neither traditional population geography nor pure demography.

Demographic phenomena (natality, mortality, growth rates, etc.) through both space and time increase or decrease in population numbers movements and mobility of populations,Occupational structure the way in which places, in turn, react to population phenomena e.g. immigration

Research topics of other geographic sub-disciplines, such as settlement geography, have also a population-geographic dimension: