College Town's Population Pyramid

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1. Describe the shape of a population pyramid for each of the following
A college town.
The shape of a college town’s population pyramid would have a large spike in the early to mid-twenties starting in the 15-19 cohort and ending with the 25-30 cohort. It would have much smaller amounts of everyone else because they were displaced for college students. It would have a narrow base and top, but a large spike in the early to mid-twenties.
b. A town that has a very high proportion of retired people.
It would have a lot of people over 65 and much higher proportions of people in the oldest old cohort than average. It would have less people everywhere else, and a small population of adults whose job it is to support many of these retired people. …show more content…

He believed that population growth would quickly far outstrip the food supply causing famine and depletion of natural resources unless countries applied “moral constraint”. Neo-Malthusianism is the view that the rate of population should be controlled to prevent overpopulation and famine, such as policies enforced by the Chinese government. They also believe that Malthus’s is much more frightening than ever before due to the large growth in population. They argue that world population is also destroying the world’s natural resources, using at a highly unsustainable level, which will have many future implications if they run …show more content…

Thomas Malthus believed that the food supply only increased arithmetically, whereas the population increased geometrically. He felt that due to this, the population would have to be kept in check by things called negative checks, decreasing the birth rate, and positive checks, increasing the death rate. He also believed that the only way out of this vicious cycle was for people, purposefully decrease their crude birth rate. On the other hand, Boserup believed the food supply increased with demand, a process she called agricultural intensification. She believed that if more food was needed, more food would be farmed by intensifying the use of arable land, such as by putting more land into cultivation and using better cultivation methods. An example of this is a farmer not using part of his land because it does not have a supply of water, but the farmer then putting in an irrigation canal when he goes hungry because he does not have enough food for his kids. In conclusion, the fundamental difference between Malthus and Boserup in their approach to population issues is that Malthus believed that food supply could not adapt to a rapid increase in a population, whereas Boserup thought it

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