Lesson 4 ·Class 10 · Population — The Increasing Numbers and Rising Problems · Match Lab
Measuring Population — Key Demographic Terms
Demography, density, natality, mortality and growth rate, with the book's own figures
Match each demographic term or figure to what it actually means.
Matched 0/9
Free play — tap an item on the left, then its partner on the right; each link tells you why. Switch to when you're ready to test yourself.
Birth rate and death rate are both per 1000 people per year; density alone is per square kilometre. And growth rate is not counted from anything — it is the difference between the other two.
What this lesson covers
Challenges to clear
- Match all nine.
- Connect the growth rate of a population to how it is worked out.
The task
Match each demographic term or figure to what it actually means.
What this lesson covers
- Demography — The statistical study of human population — its size, density, distribution and vital statistics (From demos, people, and graphos, measurement. It is the parent subject; density, natality and mortality are the measurements it uses.)
- Population density — The number of individuals per square kilometre at any given time (The only one of these measures that is an area measure. Towns and larger cities have a greater density than rural areas.)
- Birth rate, or natality — The number of live births per 1000 people of population per year (Note the word live — and note that it is per 1000 people, per year, never per hundred and never per decade.)
- Death rate, or mortality — The number of deaths per 1000 of population per year (Measured on exactly the same base as the birth rate, which is what makes the two subtractable. Registration of births and deaths is compulsory in India.)
- Growth rate of population — The difference between the birth rate and the death rate (It is a subtraction, not a count. While the birth rate exceeds the death rate the population grows; if the birth rate falls below the death rate the population declines.)
- 440 live births in a population of 20,000 — A birth rate of 22 (Divide 440 by 20, because 20,000 contains twenty lots of 1000. The rate is always expressed per 1000, so you scale the population down, not the births.)
- India's birth : death ratio in 1901, and again in 1973 — 46 : 44 falling to 37 : 14 (Both rates fell, but the death rate fell far more sharply thanks to better medical care for infants and the old. That gap is exactly why the population rose so fast.)
- The highest national population density in 2016 — The Netherlands, at about 407 persons per square kilometre (India followed close behind at about 392 and Japan at about 348 — density depends on land area, not on total population.)
- The United States in 2016 — Only about 33 persons per square kilometre (A large population spread over a very large area gives a low density, which shows why density and total population must never be confused.)
Hint
Birth rate and death rate are both per 1000 people per year; density alone is per square kilometre. And growth rate is not counted from anything — it is the difference between the other two.