What removes people from a population: The population tank has two drains: people dying, and people moving away, called emigration.
The points to remember
- The outputs remove people from a population: deaths and emigration.
- Emigration = people moving out of a place to live somewhere else.
- One person's emigration is another place's immigration.
- More deaths or more emigrants make the population shrink, unless inputs rise as much.
- Emigrants are often young adults, so a place can lose its workers and future parents.
Remember it as: Died here or moved away: both are outputs.
Real example: Bulgaria shrank from about 9.0 million people in 1989 to 6.5 million in 2021. Up to 1.5 million Bulgarians now live abroad, and more people have died than been born every year since 1990.
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Deaths are turned into a rate so that places of any size can be compared: the crude death rate.
Crude death rate
- Crude death rate (CDR) = the number of deaths per 1000 people in a population per year.
- Formula: CDR = deaths ÷ total population × 1000.
- Give the unit: per 1000 (per thousand) people per year.
- It is crude: it counts the whole population, whatever their age.
- So an old population has a high CDR even when people live long lives.
Worked example: Japan, 2024: 1,605,298 people died in a population of about 120.3 million.
CDR = deaths ÷ population × 1000 = 1,605,298 ÷ 120,300,000 × 1000 = 13.3 per 1000 per year.
Real example: Japan's 1.6 million deaths in 2024 were the most since 1945, not because life is dangerous there but because so many Japanese are old. Bulgaria has the highest crude death rate in the EU, about 15 per 1000.
High death rate does not mean short lives: A rich country with many old people can have a higher crude death rate than a poor country with many young people. 'Crude' means age is ignored.
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People moving away are measured with the emigration rate. An emigrant}} is counted in the place they leave.
Emigration rate
- Emigration rate = the number of emigrants per 1000 people in the population per year.
- Formula: emigration rate = emigrants ÷ total population × 1000.
- Emigrants are counted in the place they leave: they are an output there.
- People leave to escape war or disasters, or because there are few jobs.
- Net migration = immigrants − emigrants: positive means more arrive than leave.
Worked example: Port Ellis has 62,500 people. In 2023, 1,875 of them moved away.
Emigration rate = 1,875 ÷ 62,500 × 1000 = 30 per 1000 per year.
War
- Bulgaria's neighbours in the 1990s; Ukraine since 2022: millions fled the fighting.
Few jobs
- Bulgaria after 1989: young adults left for higher wages in Germany, Spain and the UK.
Disasters
- A hurricane or earthquake destroys homes and work, so families move away.
Real example: Bulgaria lost many of its young adults to emigration, so fewer babies are now born there too.
Put the inputs and outputs together and you get the change in a population. Births minus deaths is the natural increase; migration is the rest.
Inputs minus outputs
- Population change = (births − deaths) + (immigrants − emigrants).
- Natural increase = births − deaths only: it leaves out migration.
- If the growth rate is lower than the natural increase rate, more people left than arrived: emigration.
- If the growth rate is higher, more people arrived: immigration.
- A population can grow with more deaths than births, if immigration is large enough.
Which migration?: If a country's growth rate is LOWER than its natural increase rate, the answer is emigration (people leaving). Writing only 'immigration' is wrong there.
Real example: Germany, 2022: 0.74 − 1.07 = −0.33 million by births and deaths; but 2.67 − 1.20 = +1.47 million by migration. Total: about +1.1 million.
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Some countries are shrinking. Every reason comes back to an output going up, or an input going down.
Why a population can fall
- More emigration: people flee war or disasters, or leave because there are few jobs.
- More deaths: war, disasters, disease, or an ageing population.
- Fewer births: women educated and in work, easy access to contraception.
- Good healthcare means parents expect children to survive, so they have fewer.
- Anti-natalist policies, which push families to have fewer children.
Outputs go up
- Emigration: war, disasters, few jobs
- Deaths: war, disease, an old population
Inputs go down
- Fewer births: education, careers, contraception
- Few immigrants arrive
Real example: Bulgaria has all three: young adults emigrate, the population is old so the death rate is high, and few babies are born.
Remember it as: Leave, die, or never born: the three ways a population falls.
How this comes up: Identify or suggest why a growth rate differs from the natural increase rate [1]; read which places lost people from a chart [1]; outline factors that reduce a population [2]; calculate a crude death rate [1].
In 2022 more people died in Germany than were born, yet Germany's population grew by about 1.1 million.
Explain why Germany's population grew in 2022.
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