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Is the Human Population Too Large?

Chapter 15, Problem 10

Demographic momentum refers to the tendency for                   . a. low population growth rates to continue to decline; b. high population growth rates to continue to increase; c. populations to continue to grow in number even when growth rates reach zero; d. populations to continue to grow in number even when women are reducing the number of children they bear; e. women to continue to have children even though they no longer wish to

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Hello everyone. And in today's video we have a problem that may seem very difficult, but I'm going to try to break it down to you in a way that you can understand it. So which of the following statements about demographic momentum is incorrect. Remember that we're looking for the incorrect statement and more answer choices. So now that we know this, let me just quickly remind you of what demographic momentum is in a way that is simple enough for us to understand. So it is a phenomenon occurring in populations. It usually occurs in rapid growing populations following periods of slow growth where an overshoot of the carrying capacity is observed. So what happens here is that we have population one and population one just displays a very slow growth. So the fertility rate of population one is very low. Now population One still gives birth to population to however population two is going to be a very young population. They're still growing. So while population One just their family sizes or just the population one is reducing because they're dying of old age population one is still just developing, they're still young. Once they reach the fertility age, they're going to start reproducing in a very rapid rate. So we're going to see this rapid growth occurring in population to since population one has established a carrying capacity, this rapid growth in Population two is going to overshoot this carrying capacity is going to lead to a rapid growth occurring in the population in a certain area or country. So now let's go over answer choices so we can solve this problem. Beginning by answer choice B. It is observed in rapid growing populations as we saw here. These are rapid growing populations that lead to the overshoot of the carrying capacity. So this is a correct statement. Since we're looking for the incorrect one, we're going to cancel this out. Moving on, we have c despite declining fertility rates, populations continue to grow due to a young age distribution. We talked about population to being mostly young as they came from population one. So while population one has a declining fertility rate, they did not have as many Children, or they have slow growth population too will continue to grow or they will continue to produce population too, because the declining fertility rate does not mean that they do not produce or they are not fertile at all. So population too will still be produced. So we're going to cancel it out as well. So it causes a population to grow for another 62 78 years before reaching a stable level. So this rapid growth will be maintained for a long time Until this population dies of old age, which is going to happen in 60-70 years. And at that point the stable or just the growth will be stabilized. So it is true as well. So then we have answer choice A It is observed in slower growing or stable population as we saw here. It occurs in rapid growing population. So this is going to be our incorrect answer choice, and we're going to highlight it as our final answer. So I really hope this video helped you, and I hope to see you on the next one.