Lesson video

Hello, hello, hello and welcome.

This is geography, I'm Mr. Hutchinson.

We've been learning all about population.

If you hadn't seen the previous lessons on population, then pop back to the website and watch the first few lessons in this unit because we've already learnt so much about who lives where, around the world, in what sort of density in the UK, already got our geographical knowledge of population started.

If you haven't already, make sure that you've done the quiz to recap some of that key knowledge that's going to be really helpful to lock it into your brain, repeatedly revisiting it over and over again, just for the quick quiz question, gets you really quick at knowing those key facts, making you very knowledgeable.

So if you haven't already, pause the video and give that a try now.

Awesome, all quizzed up, got those answers in, great.

Make sure you got somewhere nice and quiet to do today's lesson.

You need a pen or a pencil, you need piece of paper or an exercise book.

If you've got a ruler today, that would be really helpful.

But don't worry if you don't.

And let's get started with today's lesson.

So in today's lesson, we're going to be learning all about population pyramids.

And we're going to need to use our math skills.

Now, your teacher might have said to you maths is so important, you'll use maths all the time, and they were right! Maths really, really helps geographers who use their different mathematical skills to gain a better understanding of the world, it's just one of the things that they do, and they use a special type of graph called a population pyramid to do that.

And we're going to learn all about 'em today so that you can understand and analyse population pyramids to help develop you as a geographer.

So our lesson will look like this.

We're going to find out exactly what a population pyramid is, and what it shows.

We're then going to have a go at analysing one together.

We'll then see how it could be useful to compare two population pyramids for different places.

And then you'll have a go at creating your own.

We'll finish with our end of lesson quiz.

So what is a population pyramid? You can see this is what this lesson is all about, what is a population pyramid? Well let me put one up on the screen for you for you to see.

Here's a population pyramid.

What can you see? Well, you can see it looks a little bit like a graph, but probably not like a graph that you've seen before.

Maybe previously, graphs that you've seen before that have bars, the bars go from the top to the bottom.

whereas on this graph, they seem to go from side to side, and there's one on either side of the Y axis.

So let's investigate it a little bit more, because there's a reason that this graph looks a little bit strange, is because it gives us a lot of information in one graph, in one picture.

So, let's take a look.

Population pyramids show us how many people there are in each age group in a population.

So the population here is the population of the United Kingdom in 2018, okay? And this population pyramid shows us how many people there were in each age group in the UK, in 2018.

This can be shown so the numbers can be shown as the number of people or as the percentage.

So you can see down the middle here, there is the age group, it's labelled the age group.

So, these numbers tell us what the age of people are in the group.

So this number here is how many people there were aged over 100.

If I go down a little bit to here, how many people aged between 40 and 44.

And the bars on either side, show us how many people are in that group.

So for age 40 to 44 for example, I can look at this bar, and it tells me that on this side, there was just over one, if I go down to the number at the bottom, there was just over 1.

8 million people, 'cause this population is in millions.

Just over 1.

8 million people aged between 40 and 44.

But that was actually just the females, because population pyramids are broken down by males and females.

Males on the left, and females on the right.

So, the males here, aged between 40 and 44, I need to look at this bar on the left hand side, and again, it's just over 1.

8 million, it's maybe about 2 million in that group.

And for each age group, it has its own bar for males and females.

So that all together it shows us the total population of the UK.

But broken down by age group, and broken down by male or female.

So it gives us tremendous amount of information 'cause it tells us exactly how many people there are in each age group, and it breaks that down in a way that we can helpfully compare and get lots of information that will be really useful.

And this will be useful to all sorts of people, it will be useful to the government, when they make policies, when they think about how many services are needed, if they think about how many buses a particular place needs, or if they think about how many hospital spaces might be needed, or if they think about how many schools need to be built.

A population pyramid can really, really help them.

It tells us how many people there are in each age group.

So let's see if you can remember the key function, the key reason why a population pyramid is so helpful, exactly what it does, I got a little question for you to get started.

What does a population pyramid show? A, how many people there are born in each year.

B, how many people have jobs.

C, how many people are in each age bracket.

Or D, how much money people earn.

Put your finger on the correct answer.

Which do you think tells us.

Which of these answers is what a population pyramid shows? You've got your finger on your answer? Well done.

Did you get C? Awesome work if you did, well done.

Don't worry if you didn't.

That's what a population pyramid shows.

It shows how many people there are in each age bracket in a population.

So, let's see if you can remember exactly how we make one, exactly how we construct one, in case you ever need to make a population pyramid.

Here is a picture of a different population pyramid, this one is for Italy.

You can see at the top there, the label tells us which population we're looking at, we're looking at the population of Italy.

And there is A, B, C, D, E, these are the different labels for the different parts of the population pyramid.

Can you remember what each part shows, those numbers down the middle, the numbers along the bottom, along the X axis, and the top left and top right number.

In your books, on your piece of paper, just write A, B, C, D, E, F, and see if you can write the correct labels.

Pause the video and give that a shot now.

Awesome work, well done.

Now that you've got those labels written down, it's better for your memory if you write them down and see if you got them correct.

So if you haven't had a chance to write them down, don't just think I'll wait for the answers to come up, you won't learn as much.

Write them down and then check them afterwards.

So, here are the correct answers, you can mark your own work.

On the top left here, you should've said the left-hand side is males.

And the right-hand side is females.

The numbers along the bottom here are telling us how many millions of people each bar is.

And these numbers down the middle are the age group, the age bracket.

Great work everybody.

We're only eight minutes into the lesson, you already know exactly what a population pyramid is, and you also know what the different parts of a population pyramid shows.

So I think that we're ready to analyse some.

I think that the next step is to take a look at a population pyramid, and see what information it can tell us.

'Cause it tells us lots of different bits of information.

So, let me put one up for you.

Here is the UK, we were looking at this before.

The UK population pyramid, and there are all sorts of individual pieces of information that I can work out from this population pyramid.

Here's an example, I might want to know how many women were aged between 50 and 54 in the UK in 2018, That might be a piece of information that will be really useful to me, for some reason.

So, what I would do, is I would look at my population pyramid, I would say okay, how many women, so I'm just looking at these bars on the right-hand side which is females, it's asking me about.

How many were aged between 50 and 54? Okay so I'll go to my age groups here, and I need to go to 50 to 54, which is this one here.

The bar that I want is the one on the right-hand side for women.

And then I go all the way to the end of the bar here, and I need to go down to look at the Y axis to tell me what the population is of women aged 50 to 54, and what is that number, how many millions? You got it, 2.

4 million.

Well done if you said it before me.

2.

4 million.

That's how we can find out individual bits of information from a population pyramid.

We need to find the right bar that we need, on either males or females, and the exact age bracket, and then we go across that bar and we see which number in the population it's telling us.

I think that you could have a go at doing one all by yourself.

I bet that you could do it.

So, let's give you one.

Let's see if you can do it.

My next question to you, same population pyramid, is how many men were aged between 50 and 54, in the UK, in 2018.

Pause the video and see if you can find that answer for me, and write it down.

Let's see if you got it correct.

Okay, I'm going to show you again how I would go about doing this to see if you got it the same way that I did.

So, the first thing that I would do, is I would say how many men, oh okay so this time I'm looking at these bars over here on the left-hand side.

Were aged between 50 and 54 so it's these bars but I need to go to 50 to 54, this age group here.

And how many were there, let's go across the bar, until I get to the end, this is telling me how many but I need to find out the population in millions, see how many people there were.

Oh look! It's about the same, 2.

4 million.

It's kind of like a mirror.

There's about the same number of men and women in that age bracket.

And if you look at the population pyramid as a whole in the UK, you'll notice that it is a little bit like a mirror.

There's about the same number of men as women, in each of the age brackets.

Not the exact same number, but it's pretty even on each side.

So our answer there should have been 2.

4 million.

Okay, I think that you're getting good at this now, I think you know how to read and analyse a population pyramid.

How to look really closely at it to get new information from it.

Amazing work, well done, you're already analysing population pyramids.

How smart are you? Let's give another one a go, this time a little bit trickier because I want to challenge you.

This time, what about how many males were aged between 20 and 24 in the UK, in 2018.

Pause the video, and see if you can answer that question.

Okay, so, males aged between 20 and 24, this time I'm looking at my bars on the left-hand side because it's males.

But I need to find a different age bracket, I need to find 20 to 24 this time.

I'm going to the end of the age bracket.

Of the bar, sorry.

And this is a bit tricky, because there's no number, so don't worry if you're not exact, 'cause I haven't given you exact numbers here, even if it's about then that's okay.

But I think that between 20 and 24, is about halfway between 1.

8 and 2.

4, so halfway between 1.

8 and 2.

4, well the difference is 0.

6, and so about 0.

3.

Add about 0.

3 to 1.

8 and I get 2.

1 million.

So I think that the answer is probably about 2.

1 million.

If you put 2 million, that's fine as well.

That's about correct.

Well done if you got 2.

1 million, if you got 2.

2 or if you got 2 million, that's fine as well.

Approximate figures is all right here.

I know that you're working from a screen.

That tells us how many males aged between 20 and 24 there are.

And it's straight away, you might want to combine those pieces of information so we know that for example, there are more women aged between 50 and 54, than men aged between 20 and 24.

We got two pieces of information, and that can be helpful for us to know.

So, let's have a look at an even harder one, because this time I'm going to ask you how many females were aged over 80 in the UK, in 2018? So you're going to need to add up a few different bars here.

'Cause I want to know all of the women aged over 80 in the UK in 2018.

That might take you a little bit longer, pause it, work hard on it, it will be satisfying if you get it, see if you can solve this problem.

How many females aged over 80 in the UK, in 2018? Okay, so not just one bar tells us this, we need to add up a few different bars, so let's go back to our population pyramid.

It's how many females, so it's the right-hand side, aged over 80, so it's 80 to 84, it's all of these females.

It's 85-89, well they're over 80 as well, so it's this bar as well, and this bar, and this bar, and this bar.

So let's start with 80 to 84, if I go across 80 to 84, I need to go down, and this is where if you've got a ruler, it would be helpful.

I think that that's about a million.

It's in between 0.

6 and 1.

2, but it's a bit close to 1.

2, I think it's about a million.

It's maybe 0.

9.

So I've got about a million so far.

I would jot that on my piece of paper, about a million, maybe 0.

9.

That's how many are between 80 and 84, but I want to know how many are over 80 in total, so I also need to add to that how many between 85 and 89, and that one, I think it's a bit easier because that seems to be about 0.

6.

So now I'll add that to my first one, I had about a million, about 0.

6, so I've got about 1.

6 million so far, maybe 1.

5 million.

Again, it's okay if you're absolutely precise.

But I need to add more, I also need to add 90 to 94.

Well that's about halfway between nought and 0.

6, so that's about 0.

3, so now I've got 1 million add 0.

6 million, add 0.

3 million, and on about 2 million here, so far.

With an extra 0.

3 there, and then I've also got some 95 to 99 million, now we're getting into quite small numbers, there's maybe 0.

1 million here, 0.

2 million.

And over a hundred, probably less than 0.

1 million.

If I add all of those up together, I think it's about 2 million.

It's maybe a bit over, it's maybe a bit over 2 million.

But we don't have to be absolutely precise.

I think there's about 0.

9 people in the 80 to 84, add 0.

6, and then over 90 years old, there's maybe about 0.

5 all together.

Maybe a touch over 2 million, but about that number.

Whoa, well done if you added together all of those bars and got something like 2.

2, somewhere between 2 and 2.

5 million, if you got something like that, then amazing work, well done, that's a tricky challenge, and really sophisticated data analysis.

Really proud of you for sticking with that hard problem.

But I'm not finished yet, let's have a look at one more really tricky problem.

So here's your final one, how many boys are aged under 10 in the UK, in 2018? How many boys under the age of 10, in 2018? Pause the video, and have a go at answering that question.

Okay so this time, we're looking at the left-hand side here, and we want to know how many under 10, so the nought to fours need to be in there, and the five to nines need to be in there.

Do the 10 to 14s need to be in there? No, that's right, it says under 10 so it's just these two bars that I'm going to add up.

Now, nought to four, there's about 1.

8, 1.

9, about 2 million.

Nought to four.

And it's about the same, and we don't need precise numbers, so it's about the same number nought to four as five to nine, and it's about 2 million.

So altogether, I think that there's 4 million boys under the age of 10 in the UK.

Maybe a touch more, maybe a few more than that.

But well done if you.

Well done if you got that one right as well.

So, let's have a look now at how we might compare population pyramids.

This is where population pyramids can be really helpful.

We might analyse one particular population in a lot of depth like we were just doing, but if we want to know the difference between two different places, and geographers like to do this all the time, do comparisons from different countries or regions within a country.

Population pyramids can be a helpful tool to do that, because when we put them side to side, we can visually very clearly see the differences in populations.

Let me show you what I mean.

This is a population pyramid for a country called the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This is what their population pyramid shows.

Just like the others, it's got the different age groups, and it's got how many people are in each age group.

And you can see that this one really does look like a pyramid, the way that the bars stack on top of each other like this.

Let's look now at a different population pyramid for a different country.

This time I'm going to show you Japan.

And this is Japan's population pyramid.

It looks quite different, take a look at it.

Congo.

Japan.

Congo.

Japan.

Let's put them side by side.

And you can see why geographers use population pyramids because visually it makes it very clear the differences between populations.

Here, the difference between Congo and Japan for example.

And I've chosen two countries with quite different population demographic so you can see really clearly that.

So my first question is what differences do you notice? Write down any differences that you notice between the Congo, and Japan, that these population pyramids show you.

Excellent work, I would love to see what the differences that you've managed to find from analysing the different graphs and you could spend lots of time on that, because there's so much data there.

But you might've noticed that the Congo has really large population with its younger members of its population.

Whereas Japan, it's sort of the opposite.

It's quite top heavy.

The older members of the population, there's greater numbers in the older members of the population than the younger members of the population.

So if you went to Japan, or if you went to the Congo, you would likely see a slightly different demographic as you were wandering around enjoying those countries, you would see that the makeup of the different people looks a little bit different in terms of the age breakdown.

Let's see what else we can compare here.

Well, one of these countries has an ageing population.

That means there's more older people than younger people.

We call that an ageing population.

That can have implications for government, because older members of a population, for example, usually require pensions to be paid, so there's financial implications.

They might require more hospital treatments, for example.

Older people also have other implications for a particular society.

Older people might have lots of great skills that they're able to pass on to the next generation.

You might have a really experienced workforce, where people have been doing jobs for a really long time, are able to contribute.

So an ageing population can be really helpful to learn about.

So if that's what your population makeup is like.

Similarly with the Congo, there is a.

So sorry, first of all, pick out which has an ageing population.

Is it the Congo, or is it.

Sorry, is it the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the DRC, or is it Japan? Awesome work if you picked out Japan.

Japan has larger bars on the top, in the older age brackets, so Japan has the ageing population.

So, what's happened to the birth rate of Japan over the last 20 years? This was taken in 2018, so if we look at 20 years, it would be this bracket here.

What's happened each few years in Japan? What's happened to those bars? What's happened to the birth rate of Japan as time has gone on? You can write down your answers.

You can pause and write down your answer to this.

So, you can see that each time the bar is getting smaller.

If this is 2018, then there aren't many babies being born in 2018.

There's only about 2.

5 million.

If we go to 20 years ago, so the people that are 20 now, the birth rate was over 3 million.

And if we go to 65 years ago, the people that are sort of 65 to 69 now, the birth rate was 4.

5 million.

So as time has gone on, and over the last 20 years, the birth rate has decreased.

People are having fewer babies in Japan, which is giving this older population this ageing population.

So which of those countries has the youthful population? A population full of younger people.

Yes, excellent work, the Congo.

The DRC has a youthful population and has lots of people who are really young.

So if you look at how many people are under 30 for example, there are millions and millions and millions if we stack all of this up.

5.

6 so about 6 million females between nought and four, and about 6 million males so that's 12 million.

Each of these brackets shows millions and millions of younger people, but as we get toward the older age brackets, hardly any people around.

So that tells us something.

Which country has a greater life expectancy? The age that people can expect to live in that particular country.

Super.

So, the life expectancy in Japan is quite high, you can see that there are lots of people, millions and millions of people, living well into old age.

Into their 70s, and their 80s, and especially women into their 90s.

Over a million women in Japan aged between 90 and 94.

About half a million aged between 95 and 99.

And a decent chunk get into over 100 years old.

If we look at the DRC on the other hand, you will see that to get to a million, well, once we start to get to about 55 years old, there's fewer than a million people in both men and women.

And so the life expectancy in the DRC is lower than the life expectancy in Japan.

So, we've compared population pyramids to give us useful information.

We've analysed population pyramids to give us new information.

Now let's have a go at creating one.

Now, this is going to be quite tricky online, but there are a few different ways that we can do this.

So first of all, I put a worksheet on the next screen, if you do have a printer available, or you can download this onto a tablet that you're using, then you can download that worksheet and that will be helpful for you to be able to do this task.

Otherwise, if you're feeling really keen, you can draw out this whole population pyramid that we're going to have a go at.

If that isn't really an option, then what you can do is just use your finger on the screen to show where the different bars would go.

So a few different options there, you can print out the sheet, you can draw the whole population pyramid, or you can just use your finger on the screen.

But join in with seeing if we can create this population pyramid together.

So this is the USA, the United States, and this is their population pyramid from 2018.

You'll see roughly similar numbers in each of the age brackets up to about 65, 69.

And I'm going to.

You'll see I've blanked out the females over 75, that's not because there aren't any, it's because I've blocked them out because they're the bars that I would like you to add.

So I'm going to give you the data.

Here's the data.

So, 75 to 79.

Here's 75 to 79, so this is how many females aged between 75 to 79, and I've given you the number there, it's 5 million.

So what you need to do, is you need to, if you printed this off, on your sheet you need to draw a bar that goes to 5 million.

If you haven't had a chance to print it off, you can just use your finger on the screen to draw up, and show me where you think the bar will go.

And if you're feeling incredibly keen and like you really want to be an amazing geographer, you can pause the video and you can go drawing out the whole population pyramid.

I'm sure that some of you will do that, there are thousands and thousands of people out there, and so I think that somebody will do that because some people will think "I want to be the absolute best.

I want to draw this whole thing".

If that's you, you're awesome, well done.

You're going to go far.

So, let me show you, 75 to 79 in this table so here's the age along the left-hand side and how many people along the right-hand side.

The age bracket 75 to 79, there's 5 million so I need to draw the bar from 75 to 79 and the bar is going to go all the way across, it's not quite going to 6 million.

So it's going to go to about here.

That's where your finger should be.

And there it is.

There it is.

Well done if you got that right.

What about 80 to 84? If you're doing all of these, pause the video because I'm going to show the answers for each one now.

80 to 84, 4 million.

Put your finger on the screen where it should be.

Where will that bar be? 4 million.

Get ready.

3.

2.

1.

Awesome work, well done! Finger in the correct place, brilliant.

4 million so 3 million here, is a bit more so it should be about there.

What about 85 to 89, there's 2 million women aged 85 to 89 in the United States.

Well done if your finger is there.

There are about 1.

5 million women aged between 90 and 94, so where would that bar be? Great work, so you can see there's fewer people as we get older and older and older.

There's only about 0.

5 million people aged between 95 and 99.

So what would that bar look like? If this is zero to three, 2 million's about here, 1 million's about here, so half a million, we're really getting into a small bar now.

Just here.

And only 0.

1 million or a hundred thousand people, women, aged over 100 in the United States.

So that bar, can barely see it there if we're looking at the millions of people in the population.

That's today's lesson done, I'm really, really impressed with you.

You've got a quiz to complete, which will go over some of this information and just recap that you've got the core knowledge about population pyramids.

But I'm so impressed with you, that was quite a maths heavy lesson, and you stuck with it.

And you now have a new skill.

If you ever see a population pyramid, then you're going to say, "oh I know how to analyse that, I know how to read that.

I can understand this.

Geographically I can understand this population in a way that I couldn't before.", that's awesome, great work, well done.

I'll see you in the next lesson.

Bye.