Part 4: Your country’s population
You can learn a lot about your country from looking at its population.
Task 1: Classroom activity
a) Go to the CIA Fact Book by clicking on the banner below.
b) Use this website to find the following information for your country.
Population This is the number of people living in a country.
Birth Rate The number of people being born/1000 people.
Death Rate The number of people dying/1000 people
Population growth rate This tells us how quickly a countries population is increasing.
Fertility Rate: The average number of children that would be born per woman if all women lived to the end of their childbearing years.
Life Expectancy Life expectancy at birth compares the average number of years to be lived by a group of people born in the same year
Infant Mortality Rate Infant mortality rate compares the number of deaths of infants under one year old in a given year per 1,000 live births
c) Add the information to the corresponding sheets on this document.
d) Now add the information to the corresponding cards you have been given.
e) We will now use the cards you were given to physically compare the information for each country.
Essay Discussion Point
If you were going to pick one of the sets of data as the best indicator of development, which one would it be and why?
Task 2: Your countries population information.
a) Open the population information sheet below and save a copy to your country project folder. Add the data for your country to the document and save it. You must use this information in your presentation.
Population information table.docx
Essay Discussion Point
Anomalies and Surprises: Whilst you have been collecting your data, have you been surprised by any of the results? Are there countries whose data doesn’t fit with your expectations? Are there any anomalies in the data.
Which sets of data tells you the most about your country? Why did you choose to use a specific piece of data. For example if you compare Fertility rates rather than birth rates then you should explain why.
Task 3: Visualising and analysing the data
1) In your essay you must compare the population data of your country with that of the other countries. In order to do this you must produce graphs, charts and other info graphics that represent the data you are discussing in your essay. You do not need to compare every piece of data. Pick the data that you think is most relevant.
You must give every graph a title and refer to it in your text.
2) How developed? Based on the population data that you have collected, how developed is your country and how does it compare to the other countries in the list? Write a detailed comparison of your country’s data and the other countries in the list and discuss what this tells you about how developed your country is? Is this easy to do? Does the data for your country contradict itself? If so, why do you think this is? You only need to compare your country to the countries with the highest and lowest values for each criteria. Make sure you use data to illustrate your description.
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Task 4: Population Pyramid
Remember this?
and this
1) Use this website to create a current population pyramid for your country.
To create a population pyramid
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click on the drop down menu in the “select report” section and choose “Population Pyramid.”
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Select your country.
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Select the year you wish to see a pyramid for.
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Repeat for other years both before and after the present. See my example below.
2) Write a description of the population pyramid(s) you have made and explain what the pyramid tells us about your countries population and its level of development?
How does your countries population pyramid compare to some of the others in the list.