Physiological density is the number of persons per unit of
- A.Total land area
- B.Arable land
- C.Built-up land
- D.Forest land
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is B, arable land. Physiological density divides the total population of a region by the area of its cultivable or arable land, so it measures the pressure of all the people on the land that can actually grow food, and it is far higher than ordinary density in countries such as Egypt, where most of the land is desert. Option A is wrong because population divided by total land area is the arithmetic density, which is what is usually meant by density of population. Option C is wrong because built-up land is used in urban studies but gives no standard density measure of this name. Option D is wrong because forest land is not part of this calculation. A related term is agricultural density, the farming population per unit of arable land.
Read the full article: World Population: Distribution, Density and Growth
Practice Questions
View allThe density of population is usually expressed as
- A.Persons per square kilometre
- B.Square kilometres per person
- C.Persons per thousand births
- D.Births per thousand persons
Show answer
Density of population is a ratio between the number of people and the area they occupy, and the standard unit is the number of persons living in one square kilometre; it is the simplest way of measuring the pressure of people on land.
Read the full explanation →An Essay on the Principle of Population, published in 1798, was written by
- A.David Ricardo
- B.Thomas Malthus
- C.Adam Smith
- D.Alfred Marshall
Show answer
In this essay of 1798 Malthus argued that population tends to increase in a geometric progression while the means of subsistence can increase only in an arithmetic progression, so growth must be restrained either by positive checks such as famine, disease and war, or by preventive checks such as late…
Read the full explanation →The United Nations observed the Day of Eight Billion, marking the world population reaching eight billion, on
- A.11 July 1987
- B.12 October 1999
- C.31 October 2011
- D.15 November 2022
Show answer
The United Nations marked 15 November 2022 as the Day of Eight Billion, the date on which the world population was estimated to have reached eight thousand million.
Read the full explanation →The replacement level of total fertility rate for India is
- A.1.0
- B.2.1
- C.2.5
- D.0
Show answer
Replacement level fertility is the total fertility rate at which a generation of women exactly replaces itself in the next generation.
Read the full explanation →In which stage of the demographic transition are both the birth rate and the death rate high, so that population grows slowly?
- A.The first or high stationary stage
- B.The second or early expanding stage
- C.The third or low stationary stage
- D.The stage of population explosion
Show answer
In the first stage of the demographic transition the society is rural and agrarian, life expectancy is low, medical facilities are poor and literacy is low, so both the birth rate and the death rate are high and they roughly cancel each other, leaving population almost stationary.
Read the full explanation →