Population Pyramid

The result of these three patterns – births, deaths, and migration – can be seen in the population pyramid. Population pyramid refers to two-dimensional graph used to display the age and gender structure of a population. If the birth rate is high as it is today in the Philippines and other developing countries, the pyramid will be more triangular because of the large number of babies added to the bottom each year. As the birth rate decreases, as it is today in developed nations, the pyramid takes on a more diamond shape. It means that a great portion of the population are added to the nation’s productive labor force.

Some Characteristics of Population

Some characteristics of population include age structure, sex composition, dependency ratio, population density.

Age structure refers to the proportion of people at the different age levels. The Philippine age structure is relatively young. Most Filipinos are young and we still except our population to be youthful in the years to come. When a society has more young people, there is a smaller proportion of adult labor force, more dependents, and fewer producers. This implies that the government has to make provisions for social services to meet the needs of children like food, schools, and health facilities.

On the other hand, when a society has more aged people, provisions have to be made for their care and their services like institutions for the aged and special privileges for senior citizens. However, when a society has more persons in the labor force, provisions have to be made for more jobs and employment.

The Philippine age structure is relatively young.

Sex composition refers to how the total population is composed in terms of being males of females.

The predominance of males implies that provisions have to be made for employment opportunities for males like farming, mining, and heavy industry. On the other hand, the predominance of females implies provisions have to be made for female employment like clerical, domestic jobs and service-related work opportunities.

Dependency ratio refers to the proportion of the 0-4 and the 65-over age levels per one hundred persons aged 15-64. With the young age structure in the Philippines, our dependency ratio is high compared with the dependency ratio in developed countries. A high dependency ratio implies heavy financial support for more dependents. It also means that money which can be used for capital investments will have to be utilized to meet the needs of young dependents.

Population density refers to the number of persons that can be equally and statistically distributed per square kilometer in a given geographical area considering the population in the said area. The population density of the country has been steadily increasing brought about by urbanization, migration, and high birth rate.

The Philippines is densely populated with a national density of 202 persons per square kilometer.

Cities are generally densely populated while rural areas are sparsely populated. The NCR is the densest area where the density is 12,467 persons per square kilometer. In the provincial level, Kalinga Apayao has the lowest density with only 30 persons per square kilometer, and followed by Palawan, 35.

World Population Growth

Anthropologists have estimated that people have been on this earth for about a million or two million years. Ehrlick and Holden (1997) stated that, admittedly, accurate data of population during humankind’s early years are difficult to estimate, but information based on circumstantial evidence show that the population then was about 125,000 when people were then hunter-gatherers.

Overall, the world’s population grew slowly until about 1850 – so slowly, in fact, that several hundred thousand years were needed for the population of the earth to reach 1 billion (Wilford, 1981). The earth’s second billion were added by 1930 due to advances in medicine, farming, and transportation.

Population is estimated to cross the 6 billion thresholds in October 1999.

The third billion were added by 1960, and the fourth by 1975. Although the rate of world population growth has recently begun to decline, there are still 146 new human beings each minute, 8,790 an hour, 210,959 a day, and 77 million a year. (Nossiter, 1983)

The fifth billion was reached in 1987. World population is projected to cross the 7 billion mark in 2013; the 8 billion mark in 2028; the 9 billion mark in 2054. World population nearly stabilizes at just above 10 billion after 2200. (The World at Six Billion, UN Population Data Division)