Class 8 Geography Chapter 6 Notes- Human Resources
In Class 8 Geography Chapter 6 Notes we study human resources, the Distribution of the Population, Factors Affecting the Distribution of the Population, Patterns of Population Change, and Population Composition. Notes of Ch 6 Human Resources are part of our NCERT Notes. You can download Human Resource Class 8 Notes Geography Chapter 6 pdf for offline study.
Human resource is the ultimate resource because Nature’s bounty becomes significant only when people find it useful. People with their demands and abilities turn them into ‘resources’.
Human resources like other resources are not equally distributed over the world. They differ in their educational levels, age and sex. Their numbers and characteristics also keep changing.
Distribution of Population
The way in which people are spread across the earth’s surface is known as the pattern of population distribution.
- More than 90 per cent of the world’s population lives on about 30 per cent of the land surface.
- Very few people live in high-latitude areas, tropical deserts, high mountains and areas of equatorial forests.
- The crowded areas are south and southeast Asia, Europe and northeastern North America.
- Many more people live north of the Equator than south of the Equator.
- Almost three-quarters of the world’s people live in two continents Asia and Africa.
- Sixty per cent of the world’s people stay in just 10 countries.
Density of Population
Population density is the number of people living in a unit area. It is normally expressed as per square km. The average density of the population in the whole world is 51 persons per square km.
Factors Affecting the Distribution of Population
There are two factors that affect the distribution of the population-
- Geographical Factors and
- Social, Cultural and Economic Factors
Geographical Factors
Topography: People always prefer to live on plains rather than mountains and plateaus because these areas are suitable for farming, manufacturing and service activities. The Ganga plains are the most densely populated areas of the world while mountains like Andes, Alps and Himalayas are less populated.
Climate: People usually avoid extreme climates that are very hot or very cold like the Sahara desert, and the polar regions of Russia, Canada and Antarctica.
Soil: Fertile soils provide suitable land for agriculture. Fertile plains such as Ganga and Brahmaputra in India, Hwang-He, Chang Jiang in China and the Nile in Egypt are densely populated.
Water: People prefer to live in areas where fresh water is easily available. The river valleys of the world are densely populated while deserts have spare populations.
Minerals: Areas with mineral deposits are more populated. Diamond mines in South Africa and the discovery of oil in the Middle east led to people settling in these areas.
Social, Cultural and Economic Factors
Social: Areas of better housing, education and health facilities are more densely populated e.g., Pune.
Cultural: Places with religion or cultural significance attract people. Varanasi, Jerusalem and Vatican city are some examples.
Economic: Industrial areas provide employment opportunities. A large number of people are attracted to these areas. Osaka in Japan and Mumbai in India are two densely populated areas.
Population Change
Population change refers to the change in the number of people during a specific time.
- The world population has not been stable It has increased multiple times.
- For an extremely long period of human history, until the 1800s, the world’s population grew steadily but slowly.
- Large numbers of babies were born, but they died early too because there were no proper health facilities. Sufficient food was not available for all the people. Farmers were not able to produce enough to meet the food requirements of all the people. As a result, the total increase in population was very low.
- In 1804, the world’s population reached one billion.
- A hundred and fifty-five years later, in 1959, the world’s population reached 3 billion. This is often called a population explosion.
- In 1999, 40 years later, the population doubled to 6 billion.
- The main reason for this growth was that with better food supplies and medicine, deaths were reduced, while the number of births still remained relatively high.
Birth Rate– the number of live births per 1,000 people.
Death Rate- the number of deaths per 1,000 people.
Migration– the movement of people in and out of an area.
Births and deaths are the natural causes of population change. The difference between the birth rate and the death rate of a country is called the natural growth rate.
- The population increase in the world is mainly due to a rapid increase in the natural growth rate.
- Migration is another way by which population size changes.
Emigration– When a person leaves a country. and Emigrants are people who leave a country;
Immigration– When a person enters a new country. and Immigrants are those who arrive in a country.
- United States of America and Australia have gained in numbers by in-migration or immigration.
- Sudan is an example of a country that has experienced a loss in population numbers due to out-migration or emigration.
Patterns of Population Change
Rates of population growth vary across the world. Although the world’s total population is rising rapidly, but this growth is limited to some countries.
- Some countries like Kenya have high population growth rates. They had both high birth rates and death rates.
- with improving health care, death rates have fallen, but birth rates still remain high leading to high growth rates.
- In countries like United Kingdom, population growth is slowing because of both low death and low birth rates.
Population Composition
A country’s population has little to do with its level of economic development. For example, both Bangladesh and Japan are very densely populated but Japan is far more economically developed than Bangladesh.
To understand the role of people as a resource, we need to know more about their qualities.
- People vary greatly in their age, sex, literacy level, health condition, occupation and income level.
- It is essential to understand these characteristics of the people.
- Population composition refers to the structure of the population.
- The composition of the population helps us to know
- how many are males or females,
- which age group they belong to,
- how educated they are and what type of occupations they are employed in,
- what their income levels and health conditions are.
We can study the population composition of a country by looking at the population pyramid, it is also called an age-sex pyramid.
A population pyramid shows
- The total population is divided into various age groups
- The percentage of the total population, subdivided into males and females, in each of those groups.
The shape of the population pyramid tells the story of the people living in that particular country.
- The numbers of children (below 15 years) are shown at the bottom and reflect the level of births.
- The size of the top shows the numbers of aged people (above 65 years) and reflects the number of deaths.
- The population pyramid also tells us how many dependents a country has.
- There are two groups of dependents — young dependents (aged below 15 years) and elderly dependents (over 65 years).
- Those of working age are economically active.
The population pyramid of a country in which birth and death rates both are high is broad at the base and rapidly narrows towards the top.
This is because although, many children are born, a large percentage of them die in their infancy, relatively few become adults and there are very few old people. This situation is typified by the pyramid shown for Kenya (Fig 6.7).
In countries where death rates (especially amongst the very young) are decreasing, the pyramid is broad in the younger age groups, because more infants survive to adulthood. This can be seen in the pyramid for India (Fig 6.8). Such populations contain a relatively large number of young people and which means a strong and expanding labour force.
In countries like Japan, low birth rates make the pyramid narrow at the base (Fig 6.9). Decreased death rates allow a number of people to reach old age.
Skilled, spirited and hopeful young people endowed with a positive outlook are the future of any nation. We in India are fortunate to have such a resource. They must be educated and provided skills and opportunities to become able and productive.
Class 8 Geography Chapter 6 Notes- Do You Know?
- The Government of India has a Ministry of Human Resource Development. The Ministry was created in 1985 with the aim of improving people’s skills. This shows how important people are as a resource for the country.
- Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna (PKVY) was started in 2015 to train one crore Indian youth from 2016 to 2020. The objective of this scheme is to encourage aptitude towards employable skills by giving quality training to probable and existing wage earners.
- The average density of the population in India is 382 persons per square km.