6.2.2

Factors Influencing Death Rates

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Factors Influencing Death Rate

There are lots of factors that influence the death rate of a country. These can be split up into education and health-related factors.

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Education

  • The best-educated people generally live in the most developed nations and they have the highest life expectancies.
    • E.g. UK life expectancy is 81 years whereas Nigeria’s life expectancy is 53 years.
  • The UK has a society which educates women whereas Nigeria does not.
  • The key to developing a country is educating girls as this encourages fewer babies.
  • Fewer children improves the standard of living for all as there is more food for all.
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Health

  • After World War 2, vaccines and cures for tropical diseases decreased death rates significantly around the world.
  • Initially, richer nations benefited first so their life expectancy increased significantly but the developing world has now caught up except in a few pockets of the world.
    • E.g. Sub-saharan Africa, which still has life expectancies 20 years below Western Europe.
  • In LICs people are more likely to die from poverty and lack of effective treatments for water-borne illness such as cholera and typhoid.
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HIV/AIDS

  • AIDS and HIV have been a large part of the disparity in life expectancies globally.
  • HIV can be passed on to babies through their mothers or through sex.
  • Countries with uneducated people or large Muslim or Catholic populations do not use condoms as much to stop transmission of the disease.
  • Because it is a stigmatized topic, it is not often spoken about.
  • South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana are worst hit with 15% of people of childbearing age (15-49 years) having HIV or AIDs.
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Consequences of HIV/AIDS

  • The loss of working age people means a weakened labour force and underproduction, causing starvation through food insecurity.
  • Orphaned children are likely to be in a poverty trap as they have no one to provide for them.
  • Countries are less able to develop education, infrastructure or business as they are paying for medicines, so development is not able to happen at a sensible rate or at all.
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HIC health problems and the future

  • HICs have a range of other health issues such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and cholesterol issues.
  • This is because of poor diet (and genetics in some instances), and a non-active lifestyle.
  • Mental health issues due to a stressful lifestyle also occur in HICs.
  • Future large-scale issues might be:
    • Antibiotic resistance of superbugs.
    • New infectious diseases spreading more quickly to pandemic proportions because of migration and travel patterns using planes (e.g.SARS/H1N1).

Jump to other topics

1Paper 1 - Changing River Environnments

2Paper 1 - Changing Coastal Environments

3Paper 1 - Changing Ecosystems

4Paper 1 - Tectonic Hazards

5Paper 1 - Climate Change

6Paper 2 - Changing Populations

7Paper 2 - Changing Towns & Cities

8Paper 2 - Development

9Paper 2 - Changing Economies

10Paper 2 - Resource Provision

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