Population Rates

Today in class we discussed different rates used to measure population. The first two rates we talked about was crude birth rate and crude death rate. Crude birth rate is the number of births per 100 of the population and crude death rate is the number of deaths per 1000 in a population. Then we talked about what rate of natural increase(RNI) is. RNI is the crude death rate in a population subtracted from the crude birth rate of that population. This is most often seen as a positive number because in most countries, the number of people being born is higher than those who are dying. This may not always be the case though. Then we talked about how migration can impact a population. Net migration rate is the number of people leaving or entering a country during year. A person who is entering a new country is an immigrant or immigration while a person leaving a country is an emigrant or emigration. When people enter a country, it is written as a positive number. When people are exiting a country, it is written as a negative number. The final thing we talked about was push and pull factors. A push factor is something that makes people want to leave their country such as civil war or unemployment rates. A pull factor is something that makes somebody want to move somewhere such as religious freedom or better employment opportunities.