CBSE 8 Geography Ch 5 Human Resources Notes

Chapter 5 Human Resource Notes

→ Click for Human Resource Questions and Answers

Human Resource

Human Resources means the people of a country who use their skills, abilities, and ideas to make natural things useful. They are the most important resource because, without people, natural resources would have no value. People’s efforts, knowledge, and needs help turn nature into something valuable for everyone.

Healthy, educated, and motivated people develop resources per their requirements, but they are not equally distributed worldwide, they are different in their education, age, and gender. It also describes the department responsible for managing employee-related tasks like hiring, training, and support.

Distribution of population

How people are spread across the earth’s surface is known as the pattern of population distribution. Over 90% of the world’s people live on only 30% of the land, showing an uneven spread of population. The crowded areas are south and south-east Asia, Europe and northeastern North America. Very few people live in high-latitude regions, tropical deserts, high mountains and places of equatorial forests. Many people live north of the Equator than south of the Equator. Almost three-quarters of the world’s people live in two continents Asia and Africa. Sixty per cent of the world’s people live in just 10 countries. All of them have more than 100 million people.

Density of population

Population density is the number of people living in specific areas of the earth’s surface, measured per square kilometre. The world’s average population density is 51 people per square kilometre, which means that, on average, 51 people are living within one square kilometre of land area. South Central Asia has the highest population density, followed by East and Southeast Asia.

→ Click for Human Resource Questions and Answers

Factors Affecting the Distribution of Population

Geographical factors

A. Topography: People always prefer to live on plains over mountains and plateaus because these areas are ideal for farming, manufacturing, and service activities. The Ganga plains are the most densely populated areas of the world, while mountains like the Andes, Alps, and Himalayas are lightly populated.

B. Climate: People usually avoid extreme climates that are very hot or very cold like the Sahara desert, and polar regions of Russia, Canada and Antarctica.

C. Soil: Fertile soils provide suitable land for agriculture, the Ganga and Brahmaputra in India, Hwang-He, Chang Jiang in China and the Nile in Egypt are densely populated, examples of fertile soil land.

D Water: People always prefer to live in areas where fresh water is easily available, river valleys around the world have high populations, whereas deserts have very few people.

E Minerals: Mineral-rich areas usually have higher populations, for example, diamond mines in South Africa and oil discoveries in the Middle East have encouraged people to settle in these regions.

Social, Cultural and Economic Factors 

A Social: Areas with better housing, education, and health facilities are more densely populated, for example- Pune.

B. Cultural: People are drawn to places with religious or cultural importance, like Varanasi, Jerusalem, and Vatican City.

C: Economic: Industrial areas provide employment opportunities, attracting many people. Osaka in Japan and Mumbai in India are two densely populated areas.

→ Click for Human Resource Questions and Answers

Population change

Population change refers to a change in the number of people during a specific time, and it is not stable, due to changes in the number of births and deaths. Large numbers of babies were born, but they died too early because of poor health facilities and insufficient food. Farmers could not produce enough food to meet the needs of the people, As a result, the total population growth was very low.

In 1804, the world’s population reached 1 billion, but by 1959, it had grown to 3 billion, which is called a population explosion. The main reason for this growth was better food supplies and medicine, births and deaths are the natural causes of population change. The world’s population is growing mainly because the natural growth rate is increasing quickly.

Migration is another way population size changes, When a person enters a new country is called Immigration, and When a person leaves a country, is called Immigration.

Countries like the United States of America and Australia have gained in numbers by in-migration or immigration. Sudan is an example of a country that has experienced a loss in population numbers due to out-migration or emigration.

Patterns of Population Change

Population is rising rapidly, not all countries are experiencing this growth. Some countries like Kenya have high population growth rates, they have both high birth rates and low death rates by improving health care, death rates have fallen, but birth rates remain high leading to high population, in some countries like the United Kingdom population growth is slowing because of both low death and low birth rates.

Population Composition

How many people live in a country doesn’t affect how developed its economy is, for example, Bangladesh and Japan are very densely populated but Japan is far more economically developed than Bangladesh. Population composition refers to the structure of the population and it helps us to know how many are males or females, which age group they belong to, how educated they are, what type of occupations they are employed in, what their income levels and health conditions are, etc.

The population pyramid shows 
• The total population is divided into various age groups, 5 to 9 years, and 10 to 14 years.
• The percentage of the total population is subdivided into males and females, in each group.

The shape of the population pyramid tells how the people live in that particular country. The
numbers of children (below 15 years) are shown at the bottom and reflect the level of births. The size of the top shows the numbers of aged people (above 65 years) and reflects the number of deaths.
The population pyramid also tells us how many dependents are in a country. There are two groups of dependent

A. young dependents (aged below 15 years)
B. elderly dependents (aged over 65 years)

In a country where many people are born and many die, the population pyramid is wide at the bottom and gets thin at the top, because many children are born, a large percentage of them die in their infancy, few become adults and there are very few old people. This situation is typified by the pyramid shown for Kenya. 

In countries where death rates especially the very young are decreasing, the pyramid is broad in the younger age groups, because more infants survive to adulthood. This is seen in the pyramid for India. 

In countries like Japan, fewer births make the bottom of the population chart smaller, and fewer deaths mean more people live longer. Young people who are talented, energetic, and positive are the future of any country. In India, we are lucky to have many such young people. They

→ Click for Human Resource Questions and Answers

Related Links

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *