Question.
What are population pyramids? How do they help in understanding the population of a country?
( Chapter - 6 Human Resources, Cass 8 NCERT, Resources and Development ( Geography) )
Answer.
Population pyramids are a tool for studying population composition. Population pyramids are also called age-sex pyramids because they provide characteristics of a country's population in terms of two variables age and sex.
The population pyramid helps in understanding the population of a country in the following ways:
The shape of the population pyramid describes the characteristics of the country's population.
The population pyramid shows the share of different age groups such as 5 to 9 years, 10 to 14 years, 16 to 59 years, and above 59 years. The lower part of the pyramid shows the number of children (below 15 years), which indicates the level of birth. The broad bottom of the pyramid suggests that there is a high birth rate which means a growing population. The population pyramid in most countries in Africa, such as Kenya, has a wide bottom. The size of the top of the pyramid represents the age population (over 65 pages) and it represents the number of deaths.
The population pyramid also tells us the number of dependent populations in the country. There are two levels of dependents – young dependents (under 15 years of age) and elderly dependents (over 65 years of age). The working population (age group 15 to 65) is economically productive.
The population pyramid tells us the percentage of males and females in the total population.
A country with a high birth rate and a high death rate has a broad base of the population pyramid with the population pyramid becoming increasingly narrow towards the top. The population pyramid of Kenya is an example of this.
Some countries, such as Japan, have declining birth rates, which narrows the base of their population pyramid.
You may like also:
ConversionConversion EmoticonEmoticon