Formal Essay: Population
This is the biggest and final assignment of this class. Although it was hard and time-consuming, I really enjoyed it because after finishing the paper, I had a good view of what I had learned in this class.
Population is an important and interesting topic of environmental science. Every change of it, even the smallest one, can have a big impact on the world we are living in. However, not many people understand comprehensively about it and this is a sad truth that we need to change. There are many ways of increasing the awareness of people about population, and one of the best ways is through education.
For the assignment, I asked my roommate, Brent Goldschmidt to be my student about the topic of population. Brent is from Fort Loramie, Ohio and has worked in his family’s farm for a long time until coming to University of Cincinnati. Living in a small town, he did not know a lot about population of the world today and about how high the increase rate of population around the world. I motivated Brent to listen to my idea by asking him small questions about population every day. Eventually, he got interested this topic and wanted to learn more about it. I helped him study different concepts of demographics, population and sustainability, how we can predict future population growth, how human impacts on the environment and how human population patterns differ from country to country. However, finding a comfortable time for both people to study and understand a broad topic like population was hard because it required a lot of time. For this reason, we decided to study for one hour a day for five days in the evening so it would not interfere much with our schedule.
On the first day, I explained to Brent some of the demographic concepts of population that he would need in order to understand about it. The concepts included crude birth rate, crude death rate, natural increase rate, total fertility rate, replacement-level fertility rate, doubling time of population. These concepts were easy for him to understand because crude birth and death rates are the number of births and deaths per one thousand people per year. On the other hand, the natural increase rate is the percent growth of population in a year, the total fertility rate is the average number of children per woman during a lifetime and the replace-level fertility rate is the average number of children a couple must have to replace themselves. In addition, Brent quickly remembered the formula of population’s doubling time, which is equal 70 divided by natural increase rate. Furthermore, to test his understanding, I also asked him to research on the statics of various countries, which also helped him understand the concepts more deeply.
On the second day, I and Brent started discussing about different demographic models. Each country will go through four stages. Stage 1 has low Natural Increase Rate (NIR) but high crude birth rate (CBR) and crude death rate (CDR). On the other hand, stage 2 has high NIR and CBR and low CDR; stage 3 has moderate NIR, CBR and low CDR. Stage 4 has all three rates really low. This shows that a country would eventually stop increasing their population and balancing between the numbers of births and death. Specifically, it will go from having many children die at an early age and no family planning to having good health care, family planning and reliable food supply so fewer people die. Now, United States is in stage 4, but Vietnam is just in the second stage, which shows the difference between a developed country and a developing one.
On the third day, we began talking about various factors that influenced birth and death rates. This was an interesting talk because those factors related directly to many aspects; therefore, we could bring many real life examples into the discussion. Those factors we talked about were: education, children in labor force, infant mortality rate, availability of birth control, abortion, national health care, religion and culture. In order to make the talk become more interesting, we played a game of comparisons between the U.S.A and Vietnam and we came up with a lot of interesting facts of the two countries. There are many differences between them, such as the expanding population pyramid of Vietnam, a developing country and the constrictive pyramid of U.S, a developed country or the universal health care plan in Vietnam versus personal health care of people in America. While Vietnam has high crude birth and death rate, mainly young labor force, little accessibility to birth control, the U.S has low rate of birth and death and an old labor force. By comparing, we not only understood more about each other’s home country but also knew the reasons why there are such differences between the two of them.
We started talk about infant mortality rate in the fourth day. It was a useful discussion because Brent did not know a truly shocking fact that U.S. is 34th in world for infant mortality rate although it is the most developed country on the planet. America surpasses other countries in a lot of aspects such as economics, health-care services, and environment but its children death rate is one of the highest among all developed countries. I proved this to Brent by using recent scientific statistics, showing that from 2005 to 2010, there are 6.81 deaths per 1000 new born babies, which is even higher than the infant mortality rate of Cuba, a much less developed country in South America. Brent and I started researching on the internet to find the reasons for it and we came up with a conclusion that because American people can have access to the most advanced medical technology in the world, the high infant death rate proved the economic, ethnic, and racial disparities inside the U.S. For instance, the rate of black babies dying is twice more than the rate of white babies, or Alabama’s infant mortality rate is just five and Mississippi’s rate is about 10. The wealthniess and education of the parents also determines whether or not their child can have a good health care after birth. All these facts surprised Brent and got him more interested in understanding about population.
On the fifth and also last day, we talked about the effects of population increasing and decreasing rate. In 2050, there will be 2 billion of 60 years or older people in America, which will outnumber children here. The population will decline in a rapid rate and leads to severe economic problems, such as paying more for services for elderly, finding hardly enough labor for work, decreasing public deficits to fund higher pension and health care costs, and many other social problems. On the other hand, fast increasing rate of population in Vietnam also creates many negative effects to the economy. For example, there will be not enough works for young people or health care, restaurant and hotel services will become overloaded because of the high demand. In addition, Brent and I also talked about what we need to do to save the planet from running out of resources to serve 7 billion people all around the world. In order to meet our needs in the future, humankind needs to find and use more kind of renewable resources and energy, lessen population around the world, increase productivity of all industries and protect endangered species from extinction.
After five days, I could see Brent become really interested in environmental sciences and have a good knowledge about population characteristics. He can discuss a topic about population with me without having to ask the meaning of some concept or need me to explain some popular population matter. To test him and see if he can apply his knowledge, I ask him how the U.S government can lessen the rate of infant mortality. Brent showed me that he understand the issue well by explaining to me several good solutions to my question. He said that the U.S needs to have a better health care program for women when they carry their baby. For example, the United States can study other countries which have universal health care that include women’s health coverage before and after pregnancy. Also, he stated that stronger laws and regulations are required to give the best health care as possible to new-born babies. In addition, the fact that not all American people know how high the infant mortality rate of their country is shows the necessity to educate young people about contraception to prevent premature birth. By answering my question, Brent showed that he now has good knowledge about population matters.
References
Eisner, Wendy. Population PowerPoint. Crowded Greenhouse. April 19, 2013
Population is an important and interesting topic of environmental science. Every change of it, even the smallest one, can have a big impact on the world we are living in. However, not many people understand comprehensively about it and this is a sad truth that we need to change. There are many ways of increasing the awareness of people about population, and one of the best ways is through education.
For the assignment, I asked my roommate, Brent Goldschmidt to be my student about the topic of population. Brent is from Fort Loramie, Ohio and has worked in his family’s farm for a long time until coming to University of Cincinnati. Living in a small town, he did not know a lot about population of the world today and about how high the increase rate of population around the world. I motivated Brent to listen to my idea by asking him small questions about population every day. Eventually, he got interested this topic and wanted to learn more about it. I helped him study different concepts of demographics, population and sustainability, how we can predict future population growth, how human impacts on the environment and how human population patterns differ from country to country. However, finding a comfortable time for both people to study and understand a broad topic like population was hard because it required a lot of time. For this reason, we decided to study for one hour a day for five days in the evening so it would not interfere much with our schedule.
On the first day, I explained to Brent some of the demographic concepts of population that he would need in order to understand about it. The concepts included crude birth rate, crude death rate, natural increase rate, total fertility rate, replacement-level fertility rate, doubling time of population. These concepts were easy for him to understand because crude birth and death rates are the number of births and deaths per one thousand people per year. On the other hand, the natural increase rate is the percent growth of population in a year, the total fertility rate is the average number of children per woman during a lifetime and the replace-level fertility rate is the average number of children a couple must have to replace themselves. In addition, Brent quickly remembered the formula of population’s doubling time, which is equal 70 divided by natural increase rate. Furthermore, to test his understanding, I also asked him to research on the statics of various countries, which also helped him understand the concepts more deeply.
On the second day, I and Brent started discussing about different demographic models. Each country will go through four stages. Stage 1 has low Natural Increase Rate (NIR) but high crude birth rate (CBR) and crude death rate (CDR). On the other hand, stage 2 has high NIR and CBR and low CDR; stage 3 has moderate NIR, CBR and low CDR. Stage 4 has all three rates really low. This shows that a country would eventually stop increasing their population and balancing between the numbers of births and death. Specifically, it will go from having many children die at an early age and no family planning to having good health care, family planning and reliable food supply so fewer people die. Now, United States is in stage 4, but Vietnam is just in the second stage, which shows the difference between a developed country and a developing one.
On the third day, we began talking about various factors that influenced birth and death rates. This was an interesting talk because those factors related directly to many aspects; therefore, we could bring many real life examples into the discussion. Those factors we talked about were: education, children in labor force, infant mortality rate, availability of birth control, abortion, national health care, religion and culture. In order to make the talk become more interesting, we played a game of comparisons between the U.S.A and Vietnam and we came up with a lot of interesting facts of the two countries. There are many differences between them, such as the expanding population pyramid of Vietnam, a developing country and the constrictive pyramid of U.S, a developed country or the universal health care plan in Vietnam versus personal health care of people in America. While Vietnam has high crude birth and death rate, mainly young labor force, little accessibility to birth control, the U.S has low rate of birth and death and an old labor force. By comparing, we not only understood more about each other’s home country but also knew the reasons why there are such differences between the two of them.
We started talk about infant mortality rate in the fourth day. It was a useful discussion because Brent did not know a truly shocking fact that U.S. is 34th in world for infant mortality rate although it is the most developed country on the planet. America surpasses other countries in a lot of aspects such as economics, health-care services, and environment but its children death rate is one of the highest among all developed countries. I proved this to Brent by using recent scientific statistics, showing that from 2005 to 2010, there are 6.81 deaths per 1000 new born babies, which is even higher than the infant mortality rate of Cuba, a much less developed country in South America. Brent and I started researching on the internet to find the reasons for it and we came up with a conclusion that because American people can have access to the most advanced medical technology in the world, the high infant death rate proved the economic, ethnic, and racial disparities inside the U.S. For instance, the rate of black babies dying is twice more than the rate of white babies, or Alabama’s infant mortality rate is just five and Mississippi’s rate is about 10. The wealthniess and education of the parents also determines whether or not their child can have a good health care after birth. All these facts surprised Brent and got him more interested in understanding about population.
On the fifth and also last day, we talked about the effects of population increasing and decreasing rate. In 2050, there will be 2 billion of 60 years or older people in America, which will outnumber children here. The population will decline in a rapid rate and leads to severe economic problems, such as paying more for services for elderly, finding hardly enough labor for work, decreasing public deficits to fund higher pension and health care costs, and many other social problems. On the other hand, fast increasing rate of population in Vietnam also creates many negative effects to the economy. For example, there will be not enough works for young people or health care, restaurant and hotel services will become overloaded because of the high demand. In addition, Brent and I also talked about what we need to do to save the planet from running out of resources to serve 7 billion people all around the world. In order to meet our needs in the future, humankind needs to find and use more kind of renewable resources and energy, lessen population around the world, increase productivity of all industries and protect endangered species from extinction.
After five days, I could see Brent become really interested in environmental sciences and have a good knowledge about population characteristics. He can discuss a topic about population with me without having to ask the meaning of some concept or need me to explain some popular population matter. To test him and see if he can apply his knowledge, I ask him how the U.S government can lessen the rate of infant mortality. Brent showed me that he understand the issue well by explaining to me several good solutions to my question. He said that the U.S needs to have a better health care program for women when they carry their baby. For example, the United States can study other countries which have universal health care that include women’s health coverage before and after pregnancy. Also, he stated that stronger laws and regulations are required to give the best health care as possible to new-born babies. In addition, the fact that not all American people know how high the infant mortality rate of their country is shows the necessity to educate young people about contraception to prevent premature birth. By answering my question, Brent showed that he now has good knowledge about population matters.
References
Eisner, Wendy. Population PowerPoint. Crowded Greenhouse. April 19, 2013