Size of population means number or quantity to have less or more population of a certain place, at a certain time. Size of population is always changing.
Population growth rate means increase in total number of population by birth and net migration. It is calculated in percentage. Nepal's population growth rate is 1.35%. It means the population is increasingat the rate of 1.35 .
|Year (in AD)||Population||Intercensal changing |
|Population Growth (%)||Average Annual |
Growth Rate (%)
|1920||55,73,788||- 64,961||(-)0.2||(-) 0.13||----|
In the last census, population growth rate was 2.25 . But it is decreased by 1.2% because of following reasons:
Population growth rate more than two percent is defined as rapid population growth. In Nepal, population growth rate is always more than two and at present, it is accounted as 2.24 percent per annum. These two statistics show that the growth rate of population is in increasing rate. This is probably due to rapid decrease on mortality , slow declination of facilities and increase in natural disasters. Due to all these reasons, we are having the problem of rapid population growth.
The rapid growth of population is due to the high fertility. To reduce fertility, there are two ways: one is direct and another is indirect.
In direct way, we can delay for marriage, use contraceptives and force for birth control. Besides these, we can go through indirect ways which reduce fertility by changing behavior and mortality. For example, education reduces family size. Similarly, knowledge, communication and urbanization also reduce the number of children.
Population growth rate means increase in total number of population by birth and net migration. The four causes of population growth in Nepal are:
In Nepal, there is a tendency in a family to have a son. Our social values encourage families to have at least a son to continue their family tree. Son is also important for a family as he will be the caretaker of the parents during their old age. With these ideas, people tend to produce children until they have a son, no matter how many girl child they produce. If one partner cannot give them a son then they will remarry leading to polygamy.