Pre-Reading Notes

Welcome to Chapter 8: South Asia! This is a pretty well-defined region physiographically and that’s really because it’s essentially its own tectonic plate (see figure 8.2). What some people might not realize is that this region is highly multicultural. Maybe it’s because in the United States, we have restaurants that serve “Indian food” (my favorite cuisine, if anyone’s wondering), we tend to lump everyone in the country together and assume there’s a singular Indian ethnicity, when that’s not at all the case. (The same is true of China and other places where ethnic variety has often been homogenized for American restaurants.) So keep in mind the wide variety of cultural expressions we have here as you read this chapter.

The core focus of this chapter is population. The study of population is known as demography and we’ll cover some key measures of population in this chapter. In this chapter, we’ll also look at the changing demographics of this region and some of the future challenges related to the human geography of this region.

The learning objectives for Chapter 8, and questions you might consider, are:

• Identify the key geographic features of South Asia
  • What are the most prominent features of the South Asian geographic landscape?
  • What climatic features are most important in this region?
• Explain the patterns of human settlement in South Asia
  • How does the physical geography of South Asia impact the patterns of human settlement found here?
  • Where are there conflicts in South Asia, and why have these conflicts occurred?
• Describe the cultural landscape of South Asia
  • What are the main religions found in South Asia and what are some of these religion’s key beliefs and practices?
• Analyze South Asia’s current population growth and future prospects
  • What are some key measures of population density?
  • What information can population pyramids provide about a country’s population, both in terms of historical changes and future projections?
  • What challenges might South Asia face as a result of its future population changes?

Don’t forget to add your own review questions to this list as you read the chapter!

Notes After Reading

Welcome to the study notes for Chapter 8! Had you known there used to be two areas that were part of Pakistan before you read this chapter? Why do people keep thinking that splitting up a country into two disconnected territories is going to work? When you’re a famous representative to the U.N. and people are trying to argue for creating a new country that covers two completely disconnected areas of land, step in and say, “You know what… I feel like we’ve tried this before…” Ah well.

Okay, so what I’d really like to focus on for our after-reading notes is population pyramids!

You get a population pyramid!

And you get a population pyramid!

And you get a population pyramid!

And India, you get a population pyramid, too!

Everybody gets a population pyramid!!!

Seriously, everyone does because PopulationPyramid.net provides free population data and images. Keep being awesome, PopulationPyramid.net.

Okay, so now we have four very different examples of population pyramids. Here they are all together if it’s easier to visualize the differences, but go back to the larger images to analyze changes within a country:

Alright, so population pyramids are kind of my favorite. Why, you ask? Well, they tell us SO much about what’s going on in a country now, what’s been happening historically, and what’s likely to happen in the future. Let’s review some basics and then we’ll get into a deeper analysis.

First, if your population pyramid actually looks like a pyramid, like Ghana’s, what’s going to happen to its population in the future? Well, notice how each of the last few bars is larger than the other. Each of these bars represents a particular age cohort, such as kids age 0-4. So imagine what the next bar would look like once these kids got older. It would likely look something like this:

Most likely, the bars would continue to be larger than the next (though this would likely slow down over time, if you go back and review the Demographic Transition Model). So, the population would likely increase, right? What challenges would a country face with a rapidly growing population? (Think about schools, housing, availability of jobs, etc.!)

What about Japan’s population pyramid? What would happen over the next few years? Well, imagine expanding the bars at the bottom of the pyramid:

It looks like its population is shrinking, right? That is… not great. What challenges would a country with a shrinking population face? Well, notice the size of the larger cohorts (ages 70-74 and another bulge for 45-49) relative to the younger cohorts. As these groups age, what you’ll have is a relatively small workforce compared to a large aging population. As the older residents are unable to work, it’s expensive to provide things like social security or the equivalent because those systems rely on the wages of younger workers paying into it.

Thus, when people are like, “Why does the U.S. have problems with the social security system?” just look at the population pyramid!

Notice the two bulges? The top is the “baby boomers” born after World War II, and it’s a large cohort and as they age, it will put a significant strain on social security resources. Why? Well, notice that the other cohorts are relatively smaller. There’s a bulge for Millenials (born between 1981 and 1996) who are mostly children of baby boomers and early Gen Xers, but look at the steady decline since then. You may have heard of the joke of having 2.5 children on average in the U.S. – two whole kids and then half a kid. It’s a terrible joke, I know, but it’s also not true – we now have around 1.77 kids on average in the U.S. And whenever this rate gets less than 2.1, your population will decline. (Japan’s total fertility rate is 1.43 by comparison, if you were curious.)

Population pyramids don’t just help us know where we’re going and what challenges we’ll face – they can also tell us a lot about where we’ve been. Take the United States as an example. If you want to figure out what will happen in the future, cover up most of the top of the population pyramid. I usually have students use their hand or a piece of paper. Grab a piece of paper and cover up the top half of the U.S. population pyramid. It makes it easier to see what’s happening now, right? Okay, now cover up the bottom half. More than half really. Cover up everything below the 55 year olds. So if I asked you, “How was the U.S. population changing 60 years ago?” you could now answer, “It was increasing rapidly.”

Remember that birth rates are connected to a variety of developmental factors within a country, connecting back to our discussion of the Demographic Transition Model, so go back and review these notes if you don’t remember why a birth rate would change over time. Another thing to remember is that students often think population pyramids also tell us about the death rate. They don’t really. You can infer a bit about the death rate from it, if you see hardly any old people for example, but that also might have just been because fewer people were born in those cohorts, so be very careful making these inferences.

Lastly, population pyramids can also tell us a lot about gender dynamics within a country. So let’s go back to the population pyramid for India:

Notice that last cohort – look how much more males there are than females in that age range. And you might think, well it’s just a few percentage points. What’s the big deal? We wouldn’t expect it to be perfectly even, but this .4% difference is a difference of over 5 million people in a country with 1.38 billion! So population pyramids also tell us a lot about gender dynamics within a country and where you might have a more patriarchal society and a cultural preference for male children.

So what’s going to happen to India’s population in the future? Think about what the next few cohorts might look like. Also think about what effect this gender imbalance might have on India’s population.

Great work on Chapter 8! Don’t forget to go back to the chapter questions and test yourself!