Topic: Demographic processes in the world

Target group

Second‑grade student of high school and technical school

Core curriculum (Basic programme)

VIII. Changes in demographic and social structures and settlement processes: distribution and population, demographic changes, migrations, national, ethnic and religious diversity, cultural circles, settlement network, urbanization processes, rural development.

Student:

3) describes the stages of demographic development of the population on the examples of selected countries of the world and assesses the consequences of demographic explosion or demographic recession in selected countries.

General aim of education

The student will learn about the demographic transition phases and assess the consequences of demographic explosion or demographic decline.

Key competences

• communication in foreign languages;

• digital competence;

• learning to learn.

Criteria for success
The student will learn:

• to discuss the stages of the demographic transition;

• to give examples of the countries in different phases of demographic transition;

• to explain what the population explosion is;

• to explain causes for and effects of the population explosion;

• to discuss the epidemiological transition model.

Methods/techniques

• expository

  • talk.

• activating

  • discussion.

• exposing

  • exposition.

• programmed

  • with computer;

  • with e‑textbook.

• practical

  • exercices concerned.

Forms of work

• individual activity;

• activity in pairs;

• activity in groups;

• collective activity.

Teaching aids

• e‑textbook;

• interactive whiteboard, tablets/computers;

• Statistical Yearbook;

• Learnig Apss- board;

• maps from an e‑textbook;

• geographical atlases;

• projector.

Lesson plan overview

Before classes

• Students get acquainted with the content of the abstract. They prepare to work on the lesson in such a way to be able to summarize the material read in their own words and solve the tasks themselves.

Introduction

• The teacher begins classes by giving the subject and the goals of the lesson.

• The teacher displays on an interactive whiteboard an illustration from the e‑textbook: The development of the world's population. Joint analysis of changes in population size over the centuries. Drawing conclusions.

Realization

• The teacher explains what the term natural increase means and gives the method of calculating the natural increase.

• Students make calculations of the natural increase for countries such as Poland, Ukraine and China. The data needed to calculate students are searched in statistical yearbooks.

• Analysis of illustrations from an e‑manual. Changes in fertility in India and China over the years.

• Idea generator - students give reasons for the increase in natural growth in the world. The information provided is saved on the LearningApss board.

• The teacher asks you to explain the term demographic explosion. Students use the textbook.

• Brainstorming effects of a demographic explosion. Students write on the interactive whiteboard in the form of a mental map.

• Work in pairs. On the basis of content in the handbook and the Internet, students prepare information on the phases of demographic development and give an example of countries. The teacher indicates a couple to discuss one phase and give an example on the world map.

• Displaying the age pyramid on an interactive whiteboard, included in the e‑textbook. Interpretation of the demographic structure by a class team. Students give the features of the pyramid of a young and aging society.

• The teacher asks students to indicate actions to change the birth rate - pro‑natalist and anti‑birth policy. Students work in pairs, use the Internet. Indicated students give activities on the class forum.

Summary

• At the summary of classes, students perform exercises on the interactive whiteboard in relation to the topic of the lesson.

• The teacher assesses the students' work, taking into account the contribution and their possibilities.

The following terms and recordings will be used during this lesson

Terms

Texts and recordings

Demographic processes in the world

The graph clearly shows that the population was increasing rather slowly throughout the millennia. It means that the rate of natural increase was incredibly low. It went up in the modern times, and sharply sped up in the 19th century. Nowadays, the change pace is still high, but it slightly lost its initial speed.

The main problem of people was the lack of food, since they were dependent solely on the natural environment. Because of malnutrition, people were more prone to get sick. As the causes of the diseases were unknown, both the preventive treatment and the regular treatment were limited. The situation resulted in high mortality rate. In order to overcome this problem, more kids were born. People knew that a significant amount of them would die before they reached the adult age.

The big change, also on the demographic level, was brought by the 19th century Industrial Revolution.

Understanding plant physiology gave rise to fertilizers and increased food production. Due to the development of microbiology, the causes of diseases were identified and methods of food storage were discovered. The population moving to the cities gained in the industry, independent of the weather and the season of the year, source of income, and housing conditions, though disastrous from our point of view, were better than in most villages.

These factors have contributed to the reduction of mortality with still high level of births. The result of such a situation was a sharp increase in population growth and population.

There was a decrease in the birth rate, but also a steady, low mortality rate. People noticed that the progress in various areas of life positively influenced the mortality rate. Parents became less dependent on their kids, because of pension schemes and social security system. It influenced indirectly the decrease in the population growth, this time because of the low birth rate and even lower mortality rate.

Thanks to the long‑time data analysis of the rate of natural increase in a given country, it was possible to create a so‑called demographic transition model.

In Stage One, the rate of natural increase is very low, sometimes even negative (population decline), because the high birth rate is balanced by just as high mortality rate. Often the number of children determines the position of the family in the community. In this stage, only a few communities remained in the most remote parts of the equatorial forests of South America or New Guinea.

In Stage Two, the rate of natural increase is high; therefore, it can be often described with a term population explosion. It is the result of a decrease in mortality while maintaining a high level of births. The number of deaths has decreased due to increased food production, the introduction of health education and vaccines. The largest number of such societies is in sub‑Saharan Africa.

In Stage Three, the mortality rate keeps decreasing, however, at slower rate than before. The most significant difference in this stage is decrease in the birth rate resulting from, among other things, educating girls and women. The achievement of even basic education by women contributes to the birth of the first child at a later age. In addition, educated women can look after their offspring better, which in turn results in longer intervals between births. In this stage, there are some societies in developing countries, such as Brazil and Thailand.

In Stage Four, the rate of natural increase is low because of low mortality and fertility rates. This stage is common for the most developed countries, in which the pension system make the parents less dependent on their kids. Also, since people tend to be more focused on their career, they start a family later in time. Knowledge of human physiology, common knowledge about family planning, and an attitude towards satisfying one's own needs are additional factors that cause the first child to appear quite late, and the subsequent ones are less.

The Stage Five, was added to the model later on, because it turned out that many European countries have a long‑term negative rate of natural increase. Germany is in the worst situation in Europe. This phenomenon also exists in post‑Communist countries.

The demographic transition model is accompanied by the epidemiological transition model – it describes the changes in the death causes in each stage of population developing.

The first stage is dominated by malnutrition, hunger, injuries, infectious and parasitic diseases. The second stage is characterized by the prevalence of infectious diseases that easily attack large human populations and parasitic occurrences occurring especially in hot and humid areas. In subsequent stages, civilization diseases become more and more important: circulatory system, diabetes, cancer and degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease or parkinsonism.

The proportion between the young and the older part of a society can differ drastically from country to country. The data sample is showed below.

The most comfortable way to analyse the demographic structure is by looking at this peculiar type of chart – the age pyramid.

Having a lot of kids means that the parents need to: feed them accordingly to their physiology, provide them with medical care (for example, vaccinate them), and provide them with appropriate housing conditions. Another challenge is education – there is a need for schools, well‑formed teachers and, at least, basic teaching aids. It can be very costly for the budget of many countries.

• There are serious and long‑term challenges when it comes to finance and organisation challenges for both young and aging populations.

• In some countries, the governments introduce certain measures to increase the rate of natural increase.