12, April 2019 12/04/2019 – Posted in: Daily News – Tags: ,

World Population report 2019

For: Preliminary

Topic: Economic Development, Population related issues, Report, Facts & Findings

News Flash

According to a report by United Nations Population Fund, India’s population grew at 1.2 % average annual rate between 2010 and 2019, more than double the annual growth rate of China.

  • India’s population in 2019 stood at 1.36 billion, growing from 942.2 million in 1994 and 541.5 million in 1969.
  • The next 11 countries that are the most populous in the world each have populations exceeding 100 million.  These include the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, Mexico, Japan, Ethiopia, and the Philippines.

 

Findings

  • China’s population grew at an average of 0.5 per cent annually between 2010 and 2019.
  • In India, total fertility rate per woman was 5.6 in 1969, dropping to 3.7 in 1994 and 2.3 in 2019.
  • India recorded an improvement in life expectancy at birth. Life expectancy in India is 69 years in 2019.
  • Improvement in India’s health care system is seen, Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) in the country dropped from 488 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1994 to 174 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2015.

 

India’s population composition in 2019

  • 0-14 Years age bracket – 27% of the country’s population
  • 10-24 Years age bracket – 27% of the country’s population
  • 15-64 Years age bracket – 67% of the country’s population
  • 65 and above – 6% of the country’s population

 

For the First time in report

  • The findings, relating to women aged between 15-49 years, were published for the first time as part of United Nations Population Fund’s (UNFP) State of World Population 2019 report.
  • The report includes, data on women’s ability to make decisions over three key areas: sexual intercourse with their partner, contraception use and health care.

 

Findings in context with women’s

  • According to the analysis, women’s are unable to shape their own futures because of the absence of reproductive and sexual rights, women’s education, income and safety.
  • Early marriage continues to present a major cultural obstacle to female empowerment.
  • A girl who marries when she is 10 will probably leave school. And because she leaves school, she won’t get the negotiating skills, and she won’t get the specific skills which will allow her to then get a better-paid job.
  • Those women and girls left behind “are typically poor, rural and less educated.
  • Every day, more than 500 women and girls including in countries with emergency settings, die during pregnancy and childbirth.
  • One positive change for women’s in the last half-century, is that in 1969, the average number of births per woman was 4.8, compared with 2.9 in 1994, and 2.5 today.

 

Warnings

  • About 35 million women, girls and young people will need life-saving sexual and reproductive health services this year.
  • Also services are needed to address gender-based violence.

 

Background

  • In 2018, the world’s population grew at a rate of 1.12%.
  • By 2030, the population will exceed 8 billion. In 2040, this number will grow to more than 9 billion.
  • In 2055, the number will rise to over 10 billion, and another billion people won’t be added until near the end of the century.

 

UNFPA

  • UNFPA was created in 1969.
  • UNFPA is the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. UNFPA calls for the realization of reproductive rights for all and supports access to a wide range of sexual and reproductive health services.
  • Its mission is to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.

 

Source: Indian Express

 

 

Black hole

For: Preliminary; Mains: GS III

Astronomers unveiled the first-ever direct image of a black hole, more than 100 years after these super-dense extreme-gravity regions of space-time were theorized as a consequence of General Theory of Relativity.

Black hole

Black holes are objects so dense that no matter and not even light can escape their gravity, and since nothing can travel faster than light, nothing can escape from inside a black hole, making them extraordinarily difficult to observe.

  • Black holes are formed mainly by massive collapsing stars after they start extinguishing.
  • The black hole is at a distance of 55 million light-years from earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun.

 

Formation of Black holes

Black holes are of different sizes and are formed when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. Black holes can be small like an atom, or big like a large mountain.

Supermassive black holes are found at the centre of most galaxies, including our own Milky Way. The one in our galaxy is called Sagittarius A* .

 

Types of Black holes

  • Stellar: Stellar black holes are formed when a massive star collapses.
  • Supermassive: Supermassive black holes are equivalent to billions of suns, and expected to exist in the centres of most galaxies, including Milky Way galaxy.
  • Miniature black holes: Miniature black holes are assumed to have been formed shortly after the “Big Bang”, which is predicted to have started the universe 13.7 billion years ago.

 

Background

  • Idea of black hole first proposed by Joh Mitchell and Pierre-simon Laplace.
  • Einstine predicted the existance of black hole by his Genral Theory of relativity.
  • John Wheeler gave the term Black hole

Source: India Today