How do hatches and dispatches vary? Learning intention: to understand population growth rates and how child mortality and life-expectancy affect intrinsically affect it.

Who lives the longest? Life expectancy: the number of years a person can expect to live, usually when they are born, based on the average living conditions within a country. Child mortality: the number of children who die between birth and the age of five years.

Life expectancy over time

Child mortality over time

Life expectancy, child mortality and wellbeing. Are there downsides to living longer? Look at Figure 2 on p. 131 in text. What are some of the trends/themes you see? Does life expectancy and child mortality affect wellbeing? What implication does an increase in life expectancy have on the provision of health care? Does wellbeing affect life expectancy and child mortality? Will increased incomes always lead to increased life expectancy and less child mortality?

Hatches and dispatches Fertility rate: the average number of children born per woman. Natural increase: the difference between the birth rate (births per thousand) and the death rate (deaths per thousand). This does not include changes due to migration. Replacement rate: the number of children each woman would need to have in order to ensure a stable population level – that is, to ‘replace’ its parents. This fertility rate is 2.1.

Natural increase Open textbook to pages 132-133 and examine Figure 1, 2 & 3. Is there anything surprising about these maps? What might explain some of these surprising things? What implications are there for a country if its fertility rate is below replacement rate? Suggest reasons why some countries would have higher birth rates than others? How would the reasons for some countries in Europe experiencing high death rate differ from those African countries with similar statistics?