Chapter 4

Factors affecting Distribution of Population

 The factors affecting distribution of population may broadly
be grouped into the following major categories:
1. Physical factors
2. Socio-economic factors
3. Demographic factors and
4. Political factors
Physical Factors affecting distribution of population

• Man makes the choice of molding space according to his

cultural values and hence, there are variations in
habitations in response to environmental stimuli.
• He/she relates to the natural environment through
settlements, which are physical embodiments of an ideal
environment.
 cont...

 Climate is one of the most important natural

conditions. It determines the nature of the flora of the
region and influences agriculture.
 Climate also determines the type of animals that are
associated with the region.
Humans seek favorable climatic conditions in the
places they want to settle in. The climatic belts are the
principal areas of most of the human activity.
 Topography or terrain

• Navigable areas are more populated than rough ones.

• Mountains are less preferred because of lack of arable
land and the cost of transportation, construction and
agriculture are considerably higher in such places as
well as it impose a physiological on humans’ capacity
to adapt.
 cont...

• This is because of reduced atmospheric pressure and low

oxygen content.
• Higher altitudes, therefore, do not favour population and
growth.
• Low lying plains and coastal areas are more favoured
areas for human settlement.
 water
• Water is essential for human survival.
• The ancient civilizations of the world flourished near rivers and
the coastal areas.
• The Nile, Amazon, and Ganges river systems supported rich
civilizations on their banks.
• Adequate rainfall favours vegetation and agriculture which in
turn, determine a place’s suitability for habitation.
• Because of lack of water, vast expanses of deserts are
uninhabited. For the same reason, there is less population on
the rain-shadow side of a hill or mountain;
 Location of a place

• Location of aplace is one from the point .

• Proximity to major towns and cities—favours concentration of
population.
• Generally, staying within the city limits increases living costs.
• The city’s periphery or nearby towns provide affordable housing
facilities.
• Cheap and reliable transportation provide convenient means of
commuting.
 Natural disasters
• Natural disasters discourage population concentration.
• Frequent storms, earthquakes, floods, wild fires
discourage formation of settlements as people migrate to
safer places.
• There are many examples of destruction of settlements
due to the natural disasters.
• The city of Bichuan, in Sichuan province of China was
completely destroyed in 2011 by an earthquake of
magnitude 8.0 causing collapse of eighty percent of the
buildings and a huge loss of lives.
 CONT......

END OF THE CHAPTER FOUR

 Chapter five
5.Population change

 Human population dynamics is a field that identifies the factors related to

changes in population such as
• fertility
• mortality
• life expectancy and
• migration.
 Predicting population changes is important because these demographic
trends
• effect economic,
• social and
• environmental systems.
 Chapter five
5.Population change
 Human population dynamics is a field that identifies the
factors related to changes in population such as
• fertility
• mortality
• life expectancy and
• migration.
 Predicting population changes is important because these
demographic trends
• effect economic,
•
That is how increase in human population influences the
societal aspects along with the quality of natural resources
like
 biodiversity,
 air,
 land and
water.
Over the past 25 years, population has increased by 2 billion
on a global scale; exceeding even the 7 billion score in late
2011.
It has been estimated that by 2050, the count is likely to get
increased by another 2 billion
 Birth Rate and Death Rate
Birth and death rates are the most important determinants
of population growth.
The industrial era changed many factors that affected
birth and death rates
As food supplies expanded, average levels of diet intake
rose, and vulnerability to chronic and contagious diseases
declined over succeeding generations.
The process of phased reduction in death and birth rates
is called demographic transition
 Fertility

• Fertility or total fertility rate is the number of births that can

be expected to occur to a typical woman in a given
society.
• This is accounted during her childbearing years.
• Fertility is a function of a woman's fecundity, along with
the social, cultural, economic, and health factors that
influence their reproductive choices.
 Mortality

• A population's age structure is an important factor that

influences its death rate. Death rates are highest among
infants, young children and the elderly.
• Developed countries with good medical services have
more people in older age brackets than developing
countries.
• Life expectancy is the age that a newborn would, on
average, live to, assuming she/he was subjected to a
particular set of age-specific mortality rates, usually those
prevailing in a particular year.
 Migration

• Migration is the geographic shift by populations within

nations and across borders.

• Migration is less predictable over long periods than

fertility or mortality, as it can happen in sudden waves.
Population Processes and Global Changes
 There is a need for more fundamental appreciation of the
linkages between population processes and global
environmental changes taking place.

 Population growth, composition, and distribution have

important interconnections with land use patterns, land
cover, and global climate change.
 cont....
 There is a need for more fundamental appreciation of the
linkages between population processes and global
environmental changes taking place.

 Population growth, composition, and distribution have

important interconnections with land use patterns, land
cover, and global climate change
 CONT....
.
They also affect the needs for other kinds of natural
resources because, for any given combination of
technology, energy use patterns, and social
organization, population can have important multiplying
effects in association with global change.
 cont.....

The need for policy responses to global change varies

with the size, composition, and distribution of populations.

 Demand for policy responses is also affected by the

populations that would realize the impact of global
change.
TIME OF REFRESHMENT
 Chapter six
Population policies

 Population policy is explicit or implicit measures instituted by

a government to influence population size, growth,
distribution or composition.
 They are government actions (laws, regulations, programs),
that try to influence the three agents of population change
(births, deaths and migration), as a way to promote social
and economic development.
 cont....

The stated intent of these policies often, is to improve the

quality of lifeand
consistent with the available resource in a country.
 CONT
 Population policies are concerned with influencing
 growth rates,
 regulating fertility,
 lowering mortality altering patterns of internal migration
and hence population distribution and controlling
international migration.
 Population problems are integral parts of wider
development problems and a variety of polices are
formulated to deal with them.
 The Population Policy Of Ethiopia
• Ethiopia has formulated its population policy for the first
time in 1993.
• The adverse climatic conditions and the decline
productivity in all sectors of the economy, combined with
the political situation that had existed in the past two
decades reduced the population of Ethiopia in a side of
absolute poverty.
• The economy grew at a rate lower than the population
growth.
 Population Growth

• The total population in 1900 was estimated at 11.8 million.

It took only 28 years for the population in 1960 to double
to 47.3 million in 1988.
• The population growth rate was estimated at 0.3% per
year at the beginning of this century. It grew at an average
annual rate of 2.5% between 1965 and 1980, at 2.9%
between 1980 and 1989, and up to 3.2% during the
1990’s.
 Population Distribution

A. Age Structure
• The population of Ethiopia is very young with a mean age of about 17 years
and thepopulation under the age of 15 was 48% in 1984.
Two consequences of a young population age structure are:
a. There is a high potential for a rapid population growth; due to addition of a
large population of women in their reproductive years.
b. A high proportion of the total population, 48%, are children under 15 years of
age which are outside the labour force (dependent).

• When combined with the 4.0% of the total population (60 years and older), it
means a high age dependency burden.
 B. Spatial Distribution

 The spatial distribution of the population of Ethiopia

describes the degree and quality of access of a
population to land and other resources.
 The man/land ratio has been increasing over the last
several decades due to:-
a. the rapid rate of population growth
b. the secular decline in environmental quality.
 Population and Environment

• In Ethiopia, it has been shown that as the number of

people increased, the population carrying capacity of the
environment decreased for the last two decades.
• A high population growth rate induces increased demand
for resources and the rate at which these resources are
exploited.
 cont....
• In order to meet immediate needs, environmentally
harmful and economically counter-productive methods of
exploiting land and associated resources (forests, animal
resources) are resorted.
• As a result, climatic conditions are becoming worse and
soil quality is declining at an alarming rate.
 Population and Agriculture

• Crop producing areas have become less and less

productive due to lack of proper agricultural policy
designed to stimulate dynamism in the sector; limited
accessibility of modern factor inputs to small farmers (like
providing suitable farm implements,
 cont....

• fertilisers, pest control systems, methods of harvesting

and storage, etc.).
• Agricultural extension service have been weak and,
largely ineffective.
• But more importantly the declining productivity is due to
increasing man/land ratio as a result of rapid population
growth and the recurrent drought.
 Population and Education

• A large proportion of the school age population still

remains outside the school system, inspite of significant
increase of student enrolment during the last several
decades.
• The quality of education has seriously deteriorated due to
more rapid rate at which enrolment increased relative to
facilities.
Student/teacher ratio, number of students per class room
and number of students per text book at all levels have
been increasing and continue to increase rapidly.

 The school age population (ages 7-18) is expected to

increase from 12 million in 1984 to 42.5 million in the year
2020 representing an average annual growth rate of
3.5%.

Taking the budgetary constraints of the country, it is not

difficult to understand the cost implications of achieving
the goal of “access to second and third level” facilities.
 Population and Health

• It is estimated that only less than 46% of the population of

Ethiopia has access to modern health services.
• The ratio of different health personnel to population and
health facilities to population are extremely high.
• Only 18% of the rural population and 78% of the urban
population has access to safe water supply, and 5.3% use
any form of latrines.
 Fertility And Maternal and Child Health
•
• High fertility is usually associated with high maternal,
infant and child mortality rates.
• Foetal deaths, low birth weight and other related problems
are also associated with unregulated fertility.
 cont...
• Short birth intervals, pregnancies under the age of 20
and above 35 are some of the causes for high maternal
moralities, infant and child moralities aggravated by high
prevalence of infectious and communicable diseases and
malnutrition.
• The limited budget allocated to the health section is not
adequate to alleviate these problems and even
aggravated by poor resource utilisation capacity.
 Population and Housing

The quality of hosing in Ethiopia is very low:

a. 70.2% of dwelling units in the country have one room
only
b. The average number of rooms per dwelling unit is 2.3;
most of the dwelling units in the country are below standard
and lack adequate living space.
 cont....

c. A large proportion of the dwelling units are shared by

more than one household
• d. The majority of dwelling units lack even the most
• basic sanitary facilities.
 Labour Force and Unemployment

• Unemployment and underemployment have been major

problems of the Ethiopian society during the second half
of the century and the situation had progressively
deteriorated in the 1970s and 1980s.
• Currently, there are thousands of school leavers who are
without job.
 cont..
• The situation is likely to be further aggravated by the rapid
rate at which the population of the working age is
expected to increase under the high population growth.
Rational for The National Population Policy
• In Ethiopia demographic factors such as rapid population
growth, young age structure and the uneven spatial
distribution of the population aggravated by a continuing
high fertility manifest the severe state of
underdevelopment that characterises the present
Ethiopian society.
• Underdevelopment manifests itself, among others, in the
following ways.
1. Low productivity in almost all sectors of the economy resulting
in high rates of unemployment and underemployment.
2. Low accessibility to education, health services and housing.
3. The perennial problem of food insecurity.
4. High prevalence of maternal, infant and child morbidity and
mortality.
5. Low life expectancy.
 Objectives of the National Population
Policy

• The National Population Policy of Ethiopia has for its

major goal the harmonisation of the rate of population
growth and the capacity of the country for the
development and
• Rational utilisation of natural resources, there by creating
conditions conductive to the improvement of the level of
welfare of the population
 cont...
• The task of harmonising the rate of population growth with
the rate of economic and social development requires the
involvement and
• Collaboration of a number of governmental and non-
governmental agencies.
General Objectives of the national population Policy

 Closing the gap between high population growth and low

economic productivity through planned reduction of
population growth and increasing economic returns.
 Expending economic and social development processes
through holistic integrated development programs
designed to expedite the structural differentiation of the
 cont....
• Economy and employment. Reducing the rate of rural to
urban migration.
• Maintaining/ improving the carrying capacity of the
environment by taking appropriate environmental
protection/ conservation measures.
 cont....
 Raising the economic and social status of women by
freeing them from the restrictions and drudgeries of
traditional life and making it possible for them to
participate productively in the larger community.
 Significantly improving the social and economic status of
vulnerable groups (women, youth, children and elderly).