Discuss in brief the following characteristics of Indian population.
(a) age structure (b) rural-urban ratio and (c) sex ratio.
Answers
(a) age structure
The age structure of a population is the distribution of people of various ages. It is a useful tool for social scientists, public health and health care experts, policy analysts, and policy-makers because it illustrates population trends like rates of births and deaths.
The rural–urban distribution is 68.84% and 31.16% respectively," Registrar General of India and Census Commissioner C Chandramouli said. The level of urbanisation increased from 27.81% in the 2001 Census to 31.16% in the 2011 Census, while the proportion of rural population declined from 72.19% to 68.84%
The sex ratio is the ratio of males to females in a population. In most sexually reproducing species, the ratio tends to be 1:1. This tendency is explained by Fisher's principle. For various reasons, however, many species deviate from anything like an even sex ratio, either periodically or permanently.