Year 10 Geographers week...

This week year 10 will be looking at ageing and youthful populations, in Japan and the Gambia, they will need to learn the impacts that these have on the countries.

Here are some helpful places to find extra information-

A video going over the reasons The Gambia has a youthful population, the impact it has on the country and its people and the ways the problems can be tackled.

A country with a youthful population will have a Population pyramid that looks like this-


A wide base, indicating higher % of younger (youths) people and a narrow top (indicating fairly high death rate as few reach old age).

A youthful population brings many challenges, such as lack of school places, so some Gambian children have to go to school in shift.  As the Gambia lacks money they cannot build enough schools to cater for the large numbers of children in the country. Furthermore, due to the lack of wealth invested in healthcare many children die young, this means that some people have more children than they otherwise would have.
In addition to these issues, a high dependency ratio is created meaning each person of working age in the country has to pay more in tax, as they have more dependents (people 0-15 and 65+) to support this means families have less money to spend so the country can struggle to develop.

We will then look at the case of Japan which has an ageing population, some problems with an ageing population are similar to those countries which have a youthful population- such as a high dependency ration, where the amount of tax per person of working age (economically active) has to increase as the % of ageing people increases.
This is Japan's population pyramid- compare it to the Gambia's...



Other problems created by an ageing population include-

increased healthcare budgets, paid for by decreasing economically active people, which is unsustainable/
There is also a problem for younger people who need to support their ageing parents as well as children, this can place pressure on them financially and socially.

The issue is looked at in this video clips-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59tvl6mJGrQ

You will have to compare Japan and Gambia in terms of their populations for homework too!

Good luck!