Environmental Science: Human Demography

Zak Shively
Environmental Science
Human Demography Final Lab Report
Keywords- human demography, environmental issues, economic issues, population, growth rate. Introduction- In this lab we examined data collected on 230 countries. We examined the human population characteristics and determine if environmental and economic issues impact human population. We collected data from the fields of demography, economy, education, health, geography, and energy. We searched for data that directly correlated with another set of data in a different field. For example; if school life expectancy is low that may directly reflect the rate of individuals under the poverty line. We must first find the correlations in data so therefore we can determine what factors are causing poor numbers in statistics like infant mortality and life expectancy. As a world we want to find a way to distribute our doctors, food supply, energy, and land so that we can live a sustainable life. In this lab we attempt find certain tendencies between nations and regions.
I want to figure out things like is population growth rate related to GDP? Is infant mortality correlated to percent below poverty line? I hope to find the answers within the data collected. My hypothesis is that we will see developed nations dominate in the categories that show high income and individuals living longer, more healthy lives. I also expect that these developed nations will have high consumption levels. This is not good because we need to find a way to share our wealth and stop the diminishing of our fossil fuels. If the world does not change how we use and distribute our resources we will see poor nations suffer while developed nations thrive. Ninety-five percent of the world’s wealth is owned by only ten percent of the world. This is a problem because it means we live in a world where only the rich get richer and the poor struggle to survive. It is expected that ninety-eight percent of the world’s births in the next century will be in developing nations. If those statistics do not change we will see poverty increase exponentially worldwide. As part of my hypothesis I think the world will find a way to come together and help developing nations get to a sustainable point. I think nations will forgive the debts of poor countries. I believe we will continue to make strides in managing the environment so that our future generations can have opportunity. If we ignore these facts we could see the world turn into an arid wasteland. We could see population sizes explode in developing nations but have a low life expectancy because of dieses and low food supply. The specific purpose of this study is to find ways we can help that from happening. Methods- I got my data from the Central Intelligence Agency world fact book website. The World Fact book provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for the worlds 237 countries. On the website I went to each of the countries and found statistics for area per square mile, population size, density, population growth rate, birth rate, death rate, migration rate, maternal mortality, infant mortality, life expectancy, total fertility rate, health expenditures, hospital bed density, physician density, HIV/AIDS Adult prevalence, area of land, area of water, percent arable land, percent permanent crops, irrigated land, fresh water withdraws, GDP, PPP, unemployment rate, below poverty line, gini index, exports, educational expenditures, total literacy, school life expectancy for males and females, electrity production, electricity consumption, fossil fuels, nuclear fuels, hydroelectric fuels, renewable energy, refined petroleum consumption, natural gas consumption, and carbon dioxide emissions. I used excel to neatly organize my data to allow me to compare countries.
I placed the countries into these geographic regions; Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Eurasia, Northern Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Pacific, North America, Latin America, Central America and Caribbean. I then organized the data into categories such as Demography, Economy, Education, Health, Geography, and Energy. On Microsoft Excel I analyzed the data by making bar charts for each of the categories just described. I also made pie charts to see the data in more of percentage format. I made one for education, health, geography, and energy. In an attempt to find more useful correlations I made several scatter plots. The titles of the scatterplots are wealth vs. demography, wealth vs. health care, wealth vs. education, education vs. demography, environment vs. wealth, wealth vs. energy, and energy vs. environment. This work was done is room 105 in the Academic Center, at Bethel College. Results- I took note of the countries with extremely high numbers and compared them to the other countries. Central Africa has a 2.61 population growth rate. The next highest is the Middle East with 1.51 population growth rate. On chart “b)” we see how high the population growth rate is in every country. This is the most important problem I saw in this report. We see that not only developing nations are increasing in population but so are developed nations. We can determine from this that Africa will need to increase their food production and health care to accommodate a growing population. In the worst part of Africa the life expectancy is only 52.6 years and the next country is 62.3 years. This means that a lot of people will be born in Africa and live very short lives if we don’t do anything to help. The physician density in Central Africa is .09 while East Asia has an 8.28. As a world we need to figure out how to even out the physicians to allow people in need to have an opportunity to be treated. The school life expectancy in Central Africa is only 9.85 years while the rest of the world averages 11.5 years. In table “f)” we see that nations with low GDP have low school life expectancy. That is a problem because nations with low school life expectancy have a higher population growth rate.
This may be a direct correlation to physician density average and the average life expectancy in Africa. Because we have gathered this data we can see that maybe the answer to a higher life expectancy is to get a higher school life expectancy. The United States has over 5,000,000,000 units of carbon dioxide omissions while the next closest is just over 1,000,000,000. As a country we must recognize this and try to reduce our carbon dioxide omissions because it will have many harmful effects to the world’s environment.
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Discussion- What I learned throughout this is experiment is that the world’s population growth rate is very high. In order to live sustainably we must find ways to lower population rate, increase food production, and improve our distribution methods of the resources. I believe the route we should take is trying to improve the school life expectancy in females. Females that aren’t as educated struggle to have a career for themselves and usually have a higher mortality rate. This means that developing nations that can’t afford to send their females to school longer are having more children. Children are being born into poverty and not having the opportunity lives fulfilling lives. In poverty stricken countries it is shown the hospital bed density and physician densities are very low. This is where we need to improve our distribution methods because developed nations have very high hospital bed and physician densities.