Session 4: Population Geographies

1) Meet your participant observation assignment group

2) Population geography (Chapter 4: 4.3): How does the geography of health and influence population dynamics?

3) Population geography (Chapter 4: 4.4): How do governments effect population change?

New York, NY

January 23, 2015

Fouberg, E. H., Murphy, A. B., De Blij, H. J. and C. J. Nash (2012). Human Geography: People, Place, and Culture. John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd., Mississauga.

Fishing village festival, Japan

Participant Observation Groups Groups 1-3: March 13; Groups 4-6: March 20

1. Commerce: Laura, Tracy, and Jolene

2. Health: Brenda and Francine

3. The Arts: Belinda and Katie

4. Family: Mik; Amanda

5. Sports and Gaming: Audrey, Ben, and Josh

6. Knowledge: Willie, Monica

Today’s objective: Meet with your group member(s) to discuss the places that you will conduct your participant observations, and discuss some initial ideas for your presentation.

Section 4.3 - How does the geography of health influence population dynamics?

• Important to consider the welfare of the people with relation to place

• Access to: health care, clean water, healthy food, good sanitation, education, etc.

Factors that geographers look at:

Infant mortality rate (IMR): A figure that describes the number of babies that die within the first year of their lives in a given population.

Number of deaths for every 1000 births

Child mortality rate (CMR): A figure that describes the number of children who die between the first and fifth years of their lives in a given population.

Infant and child mortality are reflections of the overall health of a society

Major threats to infant and child health: #1 is malnutrition, also poor sanitation

IMRs and CMRs generally correlate with poverty

Countries with the lowest IMR:

Japan - 3.0 deaths per thousandSingapore – 3.0 Sweden – 2.9

Canada’s IMR: 5.0 on average

Depends on province and how location of populations – rural vs. urban

Counties with high IMRs, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan: 165

Globally, IMRs are declining

Within countries, different populations can have different IMRs

Example: South Africa – the black population has a higher IMR, which is similar to the African average

Child mortality (CMR) remains high in Africa and Asia – this is related to the lower amounts of available protein in these regions

Kwashiorkor – term for protein malnutrition in early life

Marasmus – inadequate protein and calories

In Canada, CMR is dropping: 8 per 1,000 in 1990 to 6 per 1,000 in 2007

The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) is a major agency that focuses in many development areas, including reducing CMR.

- Children and Youth Strategy

- claim that CMR can be reduced by providing immunizations, micronutrient supplementations, HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, malaria control, etc.

Organizations meeting micronutrient needs:

Canadian Foodgrains Bank: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZnZk2Xd3Ik

Organizations working with CIDA towards meeting nutrition needs:

World Food Programmehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh80hOssSHY

Canadian Foodgrains BankVideo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZnZk2Xd3Ik

Community Food Security: ‘exists when all community residents obtain a safe, personally acceptable, nutritious diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes healthy choices, community self-reliance and equal access for everyone’ (Hamm and Bellows, 2003)

Food desert: an urban area in which it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food.

Many poor people live in food deserts where they have plenty of food but none of it is healthy.

Community Food Security Assessment (CFSA): approach ideal for informing the future development of programs and policy – is meant to be a collaborative and participatory process that systematically examines a broad range of community food issues and assets so as to inform and build capacity for collaborative change (Cohen, 2002)

Source: international Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2006

Questions in the Health Canada Household Food Survey Security Module (HFSSM)

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/surveill/nutrition/commun/income_food_sec-sec_alim-eng.php#appa

Break

Community Food Security Group Work: Reflect on your community and answer the following questions:

1. What kinds of food options do you have access to in your community?

2. Would you consider these options to be healthy? Why or why not? Explain.

3. What kinds of distances do you need to travel in order to obtain food? Is this distance different for food options that you consider to be healthy?

4. How does the cost of food in your community compare with other costs of living and earnings? Is there a difference between the cost of healthy and non-healthy food options?

5. What kinds of improvements do you think would benefit your community?

Some local solutions to community food insecurity

• community gardens

• food buying clubs

• food cooperatives

Examples/Videos

1. Al Jazeera: Indian community tackles food security issuehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPIFrYAukrk

2. Fighting Food Insecurity in Detroithttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlBBbv2kzIc

Life expectancy: A figure indicating how long, on average, a person may be expected to live. Normally expressed in the context of a particular state.

• generally a longer life expectancy for women

• life expectancy can drop quite drastically under certain circumstances

Geography’s Influence on Health and Wellbeing

• Health and wellbeing are closely related to location and environment

• Medical geographers study diseases

Categories that describe the risk that diseases pose:

Infectious disease: Diseases that spread by bacteria, viruses, or parasites. Infectious diseases diffuse directly or indirectly from human to human.

Chronic or degenerative disease: Generally, long-lasting afflictions now more common because of higher life expectancies.

Infectious diseases can be vector borne or non-vector borne

e.g. of vector borne: malaria. With malaria, the vector is the mosquito.

non-vector borne is transmitted directly from the host to the victim – e.g. HIV / AIDS

Geographic terms used to describe the spatial extent of a disease:

Endemic: When a disease prevails over a particular locality or region.

Epidemic: Regional outbreak of a disease.

Pandemic: An outbreak of a disease that spreads worldwide.

• Are of particular interest to medical geographers because they are transferred from one generation to the next

• Display clustering patters

• Raise questions about environment and long-term adaptation

Example: Sickle-cell anemia – causes many health problems, but also prevents malaria infection

Genetic or inherited diseases: Diseases caused by variation or mutation of a gene or group of genes in a human.

AIDS

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS): Immune system disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which over a period of years weakens the capacity of the immune system to fight off infection so that weight loss and weakness set in and other afflictions such as cancer or pneumonia may hasten.

• Rapid diffusion worldwide in the 1980s, is a pandemic

• Canada’s first known case in 1982

• medical geographers estimated 200,000 people worldwide

• by 2007, 33.2 million (68% of cases in Sub-Sahara Africa)

• Botswana, in 2006, 24% people 15-49 yrs of age were infected

• Education has been important for curtailing AIDS

• Uganda used intensive government-sponsored campaigning –primarily the distribution of condoms

Section 4.4 - How do governments effect population change?

Expansive population policies: Government policies that encourage large families and raise the rate of population growth.

• increase the RNI (Rate of Natural Increase) of a nation

• Example: in Russia birth rates plummeted after the collapse of the Soviet Union

• Putin calls the demographic problem “Russia’s greatest current problem”

• Russian government offers cash subsidies of $10,000 to women who give birth to a second or third child

Eugenic population policies: Government policies designed to favour one racial sector over others.

• Nazi Germany is a drastic example

• Policies can be practiced covertly through:

• discriminatory taxation• biased allocation of resources• other forms of favoritism

Restrictive population policies: Government policies designed to reduce the rate of natural increase.

One-child policy: A program established by the Chinese government in 1979 to show population growth in China. Under the policy, families having more than one child were penalized financially and denied educational opportunities and housing privileges.

• 1970s: growth rate of 3%• 1980s: growth rate of 1.2%• today: 0.7%

Video: The unintended consequences of China’s One Child Policyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0BPWFnL_jY