a. In three ways, explain how each of the following factors has affected world population: 1. advanced technology 2. improved medical care b. Highlight four...

(a) How the following factors have affected world population

1. Advanced technology

• Improved agricultural technology (machines, fertilisers, high-yielding seeds) has raised food production, allowing more people to be fed and reducing deaths from famine, so population grows.
• Industrialisation created jobs and higher incomes and better living standards, encouraging population growth and rural-urban migration.
• Better transport and communication move food and medical help quickly to areas of shortage, lowering death rates.

2. Improved medical care

• Immunisation, drugs and better hospitals have controlled killer diseases, sharply reducing death rates and raising life expectancy.
• Improved maternal and child health care has cut infant and maternal mortality, so more children survive.
• Family-planning services, on the other hand, can lower birth rates where they are widely used, slowing growth in some countries.

(b) Four factors accounting for the high density of population in Java (Indonesia)

• Very fertile volcanic soils that support intensive, high-yielding agriculture, especially wet rice, feeding many people.
• Favourable equatorial/tropical climate with high temperatures and abundant rainfall all year, permitting continuous cultivation.
• Intensive rice cultivation (padi) which supports a very large population per unit area.
• Well-developed transport and long history of settlement, with many towns and good communications.
• Government concentration of administration, industry and commerce on the island, attracting people.