People

Population geography

Population geography is the shape of a country’s people: how many, how old, and whether the number is rising or falling.

CAPS

Grade 10 · Geography · People

Geography examines physical and human processes, with map skills in both papers.

The papers
Paper 1 is climate and weather, and geomorphology, with geographical skills. Paper 2 is rural and urban settlement, and the economic geography of South Africa, with geographical skills. Each paper is 150 marks.
Map work
Direction, scale, gradient, cross-section and a calculation from the map must show the formula and the substitution. A place you cannot point to on the extract is a guess.
How a marker reads it
A common mix-up is to read a wide base as “many old people”, or to treat the pyramid as a graph of income.

Paragraph questions want causes and effects in sequence. Naming a term without saying how it changes the landscape or the settlement is only the first mark.

Diagram

Worked theory

Worked theory. South Africa’s pyramid still has a relatively wide base and a narrowing top, with the mark of HIV and other adult deaths visible in the middle in older graphs. Compare that with a pyramid for Japan or Germany, narrow at the bottom and heavy at the top. The South African picture says: many young people will enter the job market, and the death rate has already fallen from the very high levels of a century ago, while the birth rate has not fallen as far as in a wealthy ageing country. Reading the pyramid is reading those two rates. It is not a bar graph of provinces.

More worked examples

Niger and Japan, then South Africa
Niger’s pyramid is a triangle: many children, few people over 70. Japan’s is a vase: few children, many people over 70. South Africa sits between them, still wide at the bottom, with a bite out of the adult ages on older graphs. Niger needs classrooms. Japan needs care for the old. South Africa needs both jobs for a large youth group and clinics for the ages where deaths rose. The shape is the policy.
A household leaves the Eastern Cape
A family in a village with few jobs moves to Cape Town because a cousin has piece work and a back room. The push is the lack of work. The pull is the room and the wage. The national population pyramid does not draw that move. It still shows a young country. The city’s informal settlement grows anyway. Migration is a flow between places. A pyramid is a snapshot of ages. They answer different questions.

In ordinary words

A population pyramid stacks males and females by age. A wide base means many children, an expansive population. Straight sides mean births and deaths are both low, a stationary shape. A narrow base means few children, a contracting population. The demographic transition describes the usual path from high birth and death rates, to falling deaths, to falling births, to both low. Migration moves people between those pyramids. A youthful population needs schools and jobs. An ageing one needs pensions and care.

In South Africa

South Africa’s youthful population, and the schools full because of it, is the pyramid in real buildings.

Part 1 / 4

What it is

Population geography is the shape of a country’s people: how many, how old, and whether the number is rising or falling.

More worked examples

Board walkthroughs on this topic. Open one, copy the working, then try the next.

Example 1 / 20

A country has a birth rate of 20 per 1 000 and a death rate of 9 per 1 000. Calculate the natural increase rate (%).

4. Step-by-step working

01
Subtract
20−9=11 per 1 000.
02
Divide
1110=1,1%.

How we got there

Read this like a teacher at the board. We go slowly, name every number, and say why we take each step.

Explain in another language · 11

1. What is the question asking?

Read the question twice. Circle the unknown. Underline every number and unit. The paper is asking: A country has a birth rate of 20 per 1 000 and a death rate of 9 per 1 000. Calculate the natural increase rate (%).

Before any working — hunt first

Given

Numbers and units already in the sentence: 20 per · 1 · 000 and · 9 per · 1 · 000. Copy each one into a column. A name without a number is not given.

Missing

After you copy the given, the letter that still has no number is missing. The paper is pointing at: the natural increase rate (%). Circle that word — that is the missing variable.

Find

We are required to find: the natural increase rate (%). Write that as a symbol on the left, with a question mark, before you touch a formula.

Calculate

What we need to calculate: NIR = (BR − DR) ÷ 10. Then substitute the given, one line at a time, to get the natural increase rate (%).

In other words — as if you have never seen this before

If you have never seen this before: NIR = (BR − DR) ÷ 10. We will name a method in words, write the formula with no numbers, then substitute one line at a time.

2. What do we already know?

BR 20‰, DR 9‰.

3. Which method — and why this one?

NIR=(BR − DR)10.

4. Step-by-step working

01 / 05
Subtract
20−9=11 per 1 000.
Why this step: We only do one job per line so a marker can follow the marks — and so you can find a slip without starting over.
02 / 05
Divide
1110=1,1%.
Why this step: We only do one job per line so a marker can follow the marks — and so you can find a slip without starting over.
03 / 05
Step G — Sense-check the size
Ask: is this the kind of number a Grade 10–12 paper would want? A speed of 3 000 ms for a learner walking, or a probability bigger than 1, means a unit or algebra slip. Estimate first: round the numbers and do the sum in your head.
Why this step: Markers write ‘unrealistic’ in the margin when the method is right but the size is wild. A 10-second head check often finds a missing 10² or a unit that never changed.
04 / 05
Step F — Box the answer with its unit
1,1% per year.
Why this step: A number without a unit is half a mark on a Physics paper, and a marker can miss a Maths answer that is buried in working.
05 / 05
Step H — What the marker is looking for
On an NSC memo you usually earn: (1) a method mark for naming the right formula or idea in words, (2) an accuracy mark for substituting the given numbers with units, (3) an accuracy mark for the boxed answer with its unit. Write those three lines even if you are unsure of the arithmetic — blank pages score zero.
Why this step: First-timers chase the final number and leave the method blank. The memo still pays out for the idea and the substitution even when the last line is wrong.

5. The answer

1,1% per year.

Copy onto your answer sheet — in this order

Answer: 1,1% per year.

6. Check it like a marker

Excludes migration.

7. A trap first-timers fall into

First-timers often grab the first formula they remember, mix units (cm with m, minutes with seconds), or drop a minus sign. Write the formula in words first: “this equals that, because…”

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