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Module 7 Population Distribution and Its%u00a0Consequences 113The Consequences of Population Distribution7-4 What are the consequences of population distribution and density?Population distribution has important economic, political, and environmental implications. It directly affects labor supply, infrastructure development, national security and defense, human well-being, and human vulnerability to disease and natural disasters.Economic DevelopmentBy affecting the demands for goods and services in a particular place, population distribution and density directly influence the decisions of governments and private businesses. The government uses population distribution to plan public projects, such as roads, schools, parks, and firehouses. Using the same information, private developers decide where to build new housing, restaurants, shopping centers, and grocery stores. Information about population helps companies determine whether a place has a large enough market for their products or services and a large pool of workers to draw from. For example, in parts of your city that have been growing, you may have noticed new coffee shops, restaurants, and other businesses. At the same time, businesses are closing down in places that are losing population, such as many small towns in the Great Plains of the United States.High population density also conveys many significant economic benefits, including the development of infrastructure, or as you learned in Module 0, the basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society. It is much more cost effective to build roads, railroads, bridges, airports, and communication networks in densely populated areas than in sparsely populated areas. Likewise, providing essential services such as schools, hospitals, and public utilities to a large number of people in one place reduces the cost per person. Urban areas are usually more energy efficient%u2014that is, on a per capita basis, urban residents tend to use less energy than rural residents.Physiological density is a good indicator of the pressure that a country%u2019s population exerts on its agriculture land. In the United States, 1 square mile (640 acres) of arable land needs to support only 550 people, while arable land in Japan and Egypt needs to support more than 13 and 16 times more people, respectively. It is no wonder that Japan and Egypt cannot produce enough food to feed their populations.Agricultural DensityAgricultural density, or the number of farmers per unit of arable land, measures the labor intensiveness of a country%u2019s agriculture. We calculate agricultural density by dividing a country%u2019s total farm population by the total area of its arable land. The higher the number, the more labor intensive a country%u2019s agriculture is. In developing countries, agriculture relies mostly on muscle power and simple tools, and it employs a large number of people. Hence their agriculture density is usually high. For example, India has traditionally been a country of small farmers. There were 272.82 million agricultural workers in 2015 and 616,605 square miles of arable land. Hence India%u2019s agricultural density was 442 farmers per square mile, or 171 farmers per square kilometer. The highly mechanized nature of agriculture in developed countries such as the United States and Canada means a typical farmer can farm hundreds of acres of land, so only a small number of people are needed to farm the land. Agriculture density in those countries is therefore very low. According to its 2017 agriculture census, the United States had 3.4 million farmers and 588,000 square miles of arable land, which means an agricultural density of less than 6 farmers per square mile, or just over 2 farmers per square kilometer.It is worth noting that a high arithmetic or physiological density does not necessarily indicate high agricultural density. Earlier, we noted the high population and physiological densities in Japan, but because it only had 1.52 million agricultural workers in 2020, its agricultural density is only 93 agricultural workers per square mile (36 per square kilometer).TERMS TO KNOWagricultural density: The number of farmers per unit of arable land%u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Do not distribute.