What is Population Geography ? Nature and Scope of Population Geography.

INTRODUCTION:- Human geography concentrates on the spatial organization and processes shaping the lives and activities of people, and their interaction with place and nature.

Human geography consists of several sub-disciplinary fields that focus on different elements of human activity and organization. 

WHAT IS POPULATION GEOGRAPHY?

Population geography is a division of human geography. It is the study of how spatial variations in distribution, composition, migration, and growth of populations are related to the nature of places. 

Population geography involves demography from a geographical perspective. It focuses on the characteristics of population distribution that change in a spatial context. This often involves factors such as where the population is found and how the size and composition of these populations are regulated by demographic processes of fertility, mortality, and migration. 

DEFINITION OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY: - 

G. T. Trewartha, a U.S. Geographer, is known as the father of population geography. He has defined population geography in the context of the nature of geography. Trewartha stressed that ‘population geography is concerned with the understanding of regional differences in the earth’s covering of people.’                                                                                                                                  

    According to Wilbur Zelinsky, ‘the sciences deals with how the geographic character of a, its distribution and the changes taking place over some time. places are formed by and, in turn, reacts upon a set of population phenomena that vary within it through both space and time interacting one with another, and with numerous non-demographic phenomena.’ 

 So, population geography is concerned with people and their size or numbers, their structure and characteristics. 

THE MAIN CONCERN OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY REVOLVES AROUND THE POPULATION:  FOLLOWING THREE ASPECTS OF HUMANS: - 

1. Size and distribution, including the rural-urban distribution of population. 

2. Population dynamics-past and present trends in growth and its spatial manifestation; components of population change, viz. Fertility, mortality, and migration. 

3. Population composition and structure. They include a set of demographic characteristics (such as age-sex structure, marital status and the average age at marriage, etc.), Social characteristics (such as caste, racial/ethnic, religious and linguistic composition of population; literacy and levels of educational attainment, etc.), And economic characteristics (such as workforce participation rate and workforce structure, etc.) 

 Fig.- Nature of Population Geography 

POPULATION GEOGRAPHY IS SYSTEMATIC IN NATURE:-

Systematic nature in geography means general or a particular aspect of physical or human phenomena in a defined geographical space and present it in an orderly manner according to a system of the plan. After Trewartha’s presidential address of 1953, population studies in geography shifted from the realm of regional geography to that of systematic geography. 

    Under this nature, various topics or aspects of the population in a 

given area are studied systematically. It is concerned with the systematic study of distribution and density of population, population change, and composition, population and resources, population problems, planning and policies of a well-defined geographical area 

    So, it is the systematic nature of population geography, which can make generalized and formed theories and models. 

POPULATION GEOGRAPHY IS REGIONAL IN NATURE: - 

Regional geography is the study of all features of a given region. This nature gives emphasis on a particular region.                                                                                                           

Before Trewartha introduced population geography in 1953, population studies constituted a part of regional geography. Invariably each regional geography included a chapter on population while explaining the elements of regional character. For example - To analyze the population characterize of India the country is divided into various small areal units called regions and such regions may be delimited by the homogeneity of physical, political, cultural, or demographic features. 

  

POPULATION GEOGRAPHY IS DYNAMIC IN NATURE: - 

Population geography is very dynamic in nature as day by day different contemporary issues are incorporated within its periphery. The size, population growth, age composition of the population is studied under its dynamic nature. Birth rate, death rate, immigration, and emigration are also included. 

For example- In India, before the development of medical facilities and health care facilities, fertility and mortality both are high. At that time population growth is nominal. But after the improvement of medical and health care facilities, the death rate decreases, and IMR is also decreased, as a result, population growth increases at a higher rate. So, the nature of population geography is also changed with this transformation. 

                       

POPULATION GEOGRAPHY IS HUMANISTIC IN NATURE: - 

In its sense, it not only describes and explains the cause-effect consequences by quantitative statistical techniques but also intimates with qualitative categories of human geography. Concentrates on the development of human skill, knowledge, behavioral modification to produce an enriched and equipped citizen for a good society. Moreover, different value-oriented problems like exploitation child and women even manpower, slavery, unequal consumption, undernutrition, malnutrition – all kinds of problems are expressed through the humanistic nature of population geography. 

POPULATION GEOGRAPHY IS ECOCENTRIC IN NATURE: - 

With growing population quantity, pressure on the existing natural resources is increasing. To cope-up with resources, desperate resource use, violation of natural rules and principles, etc. collectively have brought some problems related to human life. In population geography also, what should be our way interaction, optimally of resource use without disturbing nature, etc. also getting proper priority. 

The nature of population geography is a wide range of synthesis among different demographic dynamics. The major elements of population study that is highly dynamic in nature. That is why a wide spectrum of the descriptive description of demographic dimensions to ecological ethics has been genetically expressed in a different section of the study. 

POPULATION GEOGRAPHY IS MULTIDISCIPLINARY IN NATURE: -  

Population studies are not the exclusive domain of any single social science. Apart from geography, demography, sociology, anthropology, economics, mathematics, social sciences, history are making positive contributions to understanding various aspects of the population.  

For example –the study of population size, growth, structure, and components is entirely done with the help of mathematics. Thus, it is an important tool in understanding population phenomena. Population studies and biology are closely related, as the study of fertility provides a good illustration of the relationship between population and biology. The theory of demographic transition is based on an understanding of other disciplines such as economics, sociology, anthropogeography, etc. This makes the population geography multi-disciplinary in nature. 

SCOPE:-   

The scope of population geography is quite wide. Population geography helps to understand the various facts about the spatial variation in the distribution of human population across the earth concerning the physical, cultural, and socio-economic environment. It also helps in the planning for human development. 

• Meaning of scope: - The meaning of scope is related to the three questions - 

1. Where it is applied 

2. how its knowledge is applied 

3. The opportunity 

Edward Ackerman indicates that the first set of problems in population geography involves the identification of generic relations, which includes the categorization, classification, and differentiation procedures. The next level of inquiry involves the establishment of genetic relationships or dynamic aspects (processes) of spatial distributions in which the temporal variable is highly significant. The last step is the determination of co-variant relations, i.e. The search for understanding the space relations of spatial processes, which are expressed in terms of areal association and interaction between and among phenomena. 

          The main field of population geography is the areal differentiation which is help full for solving the problem of static relationships between variables. Population study by geographers should lead to a better understanding of the processes creating areal distribution as expressed in the concepts inherent in, and by the study of spatial interaction over time. 

• According to G. T. Trewartha- The scope of population geography can be delineated as follows: - 

1. Distribution of population 

2. Density of populations

3. Migration (Movement of people across space) 

4. Growth of population 

5. Composition of population 

6. Literacy and quality of the population 

7. Rural and Urban populations

8. Technological Development and population resources ratio.

• Clarke focused mainly on three aspects of population: - 

1. Size and Distribution (Absolute Number): -  This includes the distribution of population in the rural and urban areas and the density of 

population 

2. Population composition and structure (Physical, Social and Economic characteristics): - This refers to the qualities of a population which can be either physical qualities like - Age-Sex structure, Marital status, Health, etc. Or socio-economic qualities like – Religions, Race and Ethnicity, language, Education, Occupation customs, and habitat. 

3. Population Dynamics: - An analysis of the world population and its spatial manifestation including the trends in and present growth influenced by past migration, fertility, and mortality.   

In modern society, the study of population is very much interdisciplinary in scope with contributions by Sociologists, Economists, and Anthropologists, the Geographic perspective especially valuable. 

• The quantitative aspect is concerned with a quantitative study of the size structure characteristics and traditional distribution of human populations and the changes occurring in them. (Under the planned socialist economy, the practical tasks of population geography include a quantitative and qualitative assessment of labor resources and a search for the forms of settlement most responsive to the requirements of production and the cultural and domestic needs of the population.) 

• Population geography is a study of conditions of habitation in different natural geographic regions that reveals the connection between population geography and medical geography. 

• The scope of research on ethnography and the economics of labor is closely associated and sometimes intertwined with population geography. 

• The development of methods of making a population map is very important.  Hence, while describing, comparing, or explaining the determinants and consequences of population phenomena, social phenomena, have to be taken into consideration.  

• Population geography has a special place in economic geography, because people, as the main productive force, are employed in all economic sectors, and, up to a point, their location has an all-encompassing significance in the productivity of the people and the consumption of the products. Hence the population is both the producer and consumer. 

• Population geographers’ studies, System and Structure - The forms of settlement about the spatial nature of the population, the characteristics of the geographical environment, the economic geographical condition of population employment, and, population migrations. Together with differences in the natural growth of population migrations determine the course of territorial redistribution of population. 

• Population composition and structure, including a set of demographic characteristics and social characteristics such as - Age-Sex structure, Marital status, age at marriage, caste, religions, and, linguistic composition racial or ethnic composition of people, literacy, and levels of educational attainment, etc. 

• With the advent of the Geographical Information systems (GIS) and the use of more sophisticating remote sensing technology, the study of population geography has seen a change in the availability of information and its applications.                                      

                      Over space and time, the importance of the study of geography in population studies has become prominent in all social sciences. Population geographers mainly focus on the different aspects of the population depending on the geographical and economic aspects of a region. At the end as R.J.Proyer very actually suggested that population geography deals with the analysis and explanation of interrelationship between population phenomena and the geographical character of places as they both vary.