FEDERAL UNIVERSITY BIRNIN KEBBI

DSS 201

COURSE TITLE
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL DEMOGRAPHY

GROUP PRESENTATION

TOPIC

RELEVANCE OF SOCIAL DEMOGRAPHY IN UNDERSTANDING

OF POPULATION AND ENVIRONMENT

3RD GROUP

S/N NAMES MATRIC NO.

1. NURADDEEN IBRAHIM 2020607004
2. MUSA ABDULRAHMAN 1910103022
3. JABIR NATA’ALA 1910109025
4. KABIRU SANI ALHASSAN 1910103017
5. ASHIRU GARBA 1910103023

INTRODUCTION
Social Demography is the study of the ways environmental, economic, political,
and cultural factors influence, and are influenced by migration, fertility (births),
aging, mortality (deaths), and morbidity (disease). Social Demography seeks to
understand the causes and consequences of population change and population

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health. Although Social Demography is a discipline in its own right, it is heavily
interdisciplinary, drawing from fields such as economics, epidemiology, and
geography.

Population
Population is defined as a group of individuals of the same species living and
interbreeding within a given area. Members of a population often rely on the same
resources, are subject to similar environmental constraints (limited), and depend on
the availability of other members to persist (exist) over time. 

Population Size
The most fundamental demographic parameter is the number of individuals
within a population (Lebreton et al. 1992). Population size is defined as the number
of individuals present in a subjectively designated geographic range. 

Population Density

Density is usually expressed as the number of individuals per unit area or

volume (Lebreton et al. 1992).
density is a dynamic characteristic that changes over time as individuals are added
to or removed from the population.
Birth and immigration of new individuals from other areas — can increase a
population's density, while death and emigration — the movement of individuals
out of a population to other areas — can decrease its density (Lebreton et al. 1992).
Age Structure
Not all individuals contribute equally to a population. Occasionally, researchers
find it useful to characterize the different contributions made by different

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individuals. First, individuals are sorted into age-specific categories called cohorts,
such as "juveniles" or "subadults" (Dodge 2006). Researchers then create a profile
of the size and age structures of the cohorts to determine the reproductive potential
of that population, in order to estimate current and future growth. Usually, a
rapidly expanding population will have larger reproductive cohorts, stable
populations show a more even distribution of age classes, and rapidly declining
populations have large older cohorts (Lebreton et al. 1992).

Fecundity
As age structure suggests, some individuals within a population have a greater
impact on population-level processes, such as growth. Fecundity describes the
number of offspring an individual or a population is able to produce during a
given period of time (Martin 1995) (Figure 4). In demographic studies, fecundity is
calculated in age-specific birth rates, which may be expressed as the number of
births per unit of time, the number of births per female per unit of time, or the
number of births per 1,000 individuals per unit of time. Maximum (or
physiological) fecundity is the theoretical maximum number of offspring
produced in a population assuming no ecological constraints. However, since
every ecosystem implements constraints on its populations, ecologists prefer to
measure realized (or ecological) fecundity, which is the observed number of
offspring produced in a population under actual environmental conditions.

Environment
 The circumstances, objects, or conditions by which one is surrounded

 The aggregate of social and cultural conditions that influence the life of an
individual or community

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Environment meaning

Environment can be defined as a sum total of all the living and non-living elements
and their effects that influence human life. While all living or biotic elements are
animals, plants, forests, fisheries, and birds, non-living or abiotic elements include
water, land, sunlight, rocks, and air.

Environment functions

(1) Provides the supply of resources

       The environment offers resources for production.

       It includes both renewable and non-renewable resources.

       Examples: Wood for furniture, soil, land, etc.

(2) Sustains life

       The environment includes the sun, soil, water, and air, which are
essential for human life.

       It sustains life by providing genetic and biodiversity.

(3) Assimilates waste

       Production and consumption activities generate waste.

       This occurs mostly in the form of garbage.

       The environment helps in getting rid of the garbage.

(4) Enhances the quality of life

       The environment enhances the quality of life.

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        Human beings enjoy the beauty of nature that includes rivers, mountains,
deserts, etc.

       These add to the quality of life.

Population and Environment

Recent years have been among the warmest on record. Research suggests that
temperatures have been influenced by growing concentrations of greenhouse gases,
which absorb solar radiation and warm the atmosphere. Research also suggests that
many changes in atmospheric gas are human-induced. The demographic influence
appears primarily in three areas. First, contributions related to industrial production
and energy consumption lead to carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use;
second, land-use changes, such as deforestation, affect the exchange of carbon
dioxide between the Earth and the atmosphere; and third, some agricultural
processes, such as paddy-rice cultivation and livestock production, are responsible
for greenhouse gas releases into the atmosphere, especially methane.

Health and mortality

Life expectancy has increased globally over several decades, breaking earlier
predictions of upper limits to life expectancy. This trend has not, however, been
monotonic, with mortality increases in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union and
more recently, in the United States (and possibly elsewhere). Mortality and health
are socially patterned: those in lower socioeconomic groups have poorer health and
die younger than those in higher socioeconomic groups. At the same time, research
on health and mortality have identified different paradoxes. For example, women
often have worse health than men, but live longer, and many migrant groups have
better health and lower mortality than natives. Social demography investigates

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social inequalities in and the social determinants of health and mortality, as well as
the impacts of health on social status and functioning.

Migration and migrants

Migration is changing the face of populations as well as their social, economic,
and political dynamics. Social demography analyzes the dynamics of migration
and how migrants shape the demography of receiving and sending countries.
Social demography also studies how the migrant populations change in size and
character and whether they integrate and assimilate to host populations, and which
social and demographic factors affect these processes.

Population and policy

Population processes are of interest to many policy-makers, who may want to limit
or boost fertility, improve population health, or curtail migration. The intended and
unintended consequences of these policies have thus caught the attention of
demographers and other social scientists. Population processes can also be affected
by other policies that do not directly aim to influence them.

REFERENCES
Lebreton, J-D. et al. Modeling survival and testing biological hypotheses using
marked animals: A unified approach with case studies. Ecological
Monographs 62, 67-118 (1992).

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Andren, H. Corvid density and nest predation in relation to forest fragmentation:
A landscape perspective. Ecology 73, 794-804 (1992).
Bull, J. Evolution of environmental sex determination from genotypic sex
determination. Heredity 47, 173-184 (1981).
Caughley, G. Directions in conservation biology. Journal of Animal
Ecology 63, 215-244 (1994).
Delmas, V., Pieau, C. & Girondot, M. A mechanistic model of temperature-
dependent sex determination in a chelonian, the European pond
turtle. Functional Ecology 22, 84-93 (2008).
Dodge, Y. The Oxford Dictionary of Statistical Terms. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press, 2006.
Benrey, B & Denno, R. F. The slow-growth-high-mortality hypothesis: A test
using the cabbage butterfly. Ecology 78, 987-999 (1997).
Girondot, M. et al. "Implications of temperature-dependent sex determination for
population dynamics," Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination in
Vertebrates, 148-155, eds. N. Valenzuela & V. Lance. Smithsonian Books,
2004.