K. Bruce Newbold - Population Geography: Tools and Issues

Tools and Issues

FOURTH EDITION

K. Bruce Newbold

McMaster University

Lanham Boulder New York London

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Names: Newbold, K. Bruce, 1964 author.

Title: Population geography : tools and issues / K. Bruce Newbold.

Description: Fourth edition. | Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020045284 (print) | LCCN 2020045285 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538140765 (cloth) | ISBN 9781538140772 (paperback) | ISBN 9781538140789 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Population geography.

Classification: LCC HB1951 .N47 2021 (print) | LCC HB1951 (ebook) | DDC 304.6dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045284

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045285

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To my parents, Eric and Iris

I gratefully acknowledge the research assistance of Joann Varickanickal, School of Earth, Environment & Society, McMaster University. I also wish to acknowledge the ongoing support from Susan McEachern and the team at Rowman & Littlefield.

F OR MOST OF HUMANITYS HISTORY, the global population was small and grew at a slow pace. Estimates of the worlds population at the start of the seventeenth century, on the eve of a faster population growth regime, are about 500 million. Since then, advances in medicine, sanitation, and nutrition have allowed the worlds population to grow at a faster rate. By 1900, the worlds population was approximately two billion, growing to more than 7.73 billion in 2020. and particularly in Africa and large parts of Asia. Moreover, much of the future growth of the worlds population is expected to occur in the developing world, fueled by comparably high birth rates, reduced death rates, and young populations.

To view population processes, including fertility, mortality, and population movement, we must begin to understand many of the underlying issues in todays society, including conflict, resource use, environmental degradation, and relations between countries and their peoples. Societies around the world are characterized by or shaped by their population processes and characteristics. We may characterize, for example, populations and regions by differences in mortality and fertility processes. For instance, the infant mortality rate (IMR), which measures the number of deaths of infants less than one year of age per 1,000 births, was four in developed countries, compared with a world average of 31 in 2020. Life expectancy at birth, which measures the number of years an individual is expected to live, averaged 79 years in more developed countries, but only 65 in least developed countries, with some of the shortest life expectancies found in Middle Africa, where life expectancy is just 54 years in the Central African Republic and 56 years in South Sudan. In many cases, poor life expectancy outcomes and high death rates reflect poor or inadequate health care, the failure of governments to provide basic necessities, conflict, or educational differences that disadvantage women.

Countries or regions are also tied together by population movements. Population movement includes local residential changes as housing needs change; domestic migration associated with, for example, employment opportunities or amenities; or international migration. Although local or domestic migration is rarely controlled, most countries tightly control international movements, often restricting entry to those who qualify under specific programs. With population mobility and migration typically selecting the young and those with skills, who moves is just as important as the origins and destinations of migrants. Most developed countries actively promote the entry of individuals who can invest in the host country or embody the education or skills that are demanded by developed countries.

War, refugee movements, and simple geographic interaction across space perpetuate poor health and disease. Although the movement of legal immigrants is not inconsequential, undocumented immigrants (also known as illegal immigrants) and refugees dominate international movement. For those seeking a better life elsewhere, undocumented immigration may be a desperate, but only, option. Exemplified by the events in Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia, refugees and displaced populations have become an increasingly visible issue. Defined by the United Nations, refugees are persons who are outside their country of nationality and are unable to return owing to fear of persecution for reason of race, religion, nationality, or association in a social or political group. In 2019, major refugee-producing countries included the Syrian Arab Republic, Afghanistan, and South Sudan. Overall, the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that there were approximately 70.8 million individuals forcibly displaced worldwide in early 2020the largest number ever recorded, including some 20.4 million refugees under UNHCR protection.

The importance of considering fertility, mortality, and population movement is in realizing the multiple interconnections with population, such that population underlies many of the issues facing the world today, including resource and environmental issues. Packaged with understanding population processes is the ability to understand and interpret their measurement. The primary motive of this book is to provide the reader with a set of functional toolsmeasuring or describing population processes, data, and population compositionfor studying population geography, while linking to population issues such as fertility, mortality, and immigration. Although the study of population is interdisciplinary in its scope, the geographical perspective is valued through its emphasis on the role of space and place, location, regional differences, diffusion, and its ability to provide insight and bridge disparate issues. Second, this book is motivated by the need to understand population processes. In other words, in addition to introducing population studies, it also makes available to readers an overview of current and future issues related to population by drawing linkages to economic, political, and resource issues.