Tutorial-1 Population Growth

1. World population in 1850 has been estimated at about 1 billion. World population
reached 4 billion in 1975.

(a) Use the doubling time approximation to estimate the exponential rate of growth that
would produce those numbers

(b) Use the exponential growth equation to find the growth rate.

2. The world’s population 10,000 years ago has been estimated at about 5 million. What
exponential rate of growth would have resulted in the population in 1850, which is
estimated at 1 billion? Had that rate continued, what would the population have been in
the year 2000?

3. The following statistics are for India in 1995: population, 931 million; crude birth rate, 29;
crude death rate, 9; infant mortality rate, 74 (rates are per thousand per year). Find

(a) the fraction of the total deaths that are infants less than 1 year old;

(b) the avoidable deaths, assuming that any infant mortality above 10 could be avoided
with better sanitation, food, and health care;

(c) the annual increase in the number of people in India.

4. Consider the following simplified age structure: all births are on the mothers twentieth
birthday and all deaths are on the sixtieth birthday. Total population starts at 290,000
(half males, half females) and is growing at a constant rate of 3.5 % per year (Figure 1).

(a) Draw the age structure in 20 years.

(b) If the total fertility rate is a single, constant value during those 20 years, estimate it!

Figure 1
5. A forest area has a carrying capacity of 7000 deer. At the current level of recreational
hunting 300 deer per year are taken during a 2-week hunting season. After the season, the
deer population is always 2200 deer. Suppose, it is desirable to maximize the sustainable
yield of deer from the forest:

(a) What should be the population size of deer in the forest for maximum sustainable
yield?

(b) What will be the maximum sustainable yield of deer from the forest?

(c) If hunting were stopped so no further deer were taken from the forest, how long
would it take for the population size to reach the population (part (a)) that is necessary for
maximum sustainable yield?

6. Suppose we express the amount of land under cultivation as the product of four factors:
Land = (land/food) × (food/kcal) × (kcal/person) × (population)

The annual growth rates for each factor are (1) the land required to grow a unit of food, -
1 percent (due to greater productivity per unit of land); (2) the amount of food grown per
calorie of food eaten by a human, +0.5 percent (because with affluence, people consume
more animal products, which greatly reduces the efficiency of land use); (3) the per
capita calorie consumption, +0.1 percent; and (4) the size of the population, +1.5 percent.
At these rates, how long would it take to double the amount of cultivated land needed? At
that time, how much less land would be required to grow a unit of food?