Natasha Morrison
Case Study: Gambia’s Youthful Population
Gambia is located in West Africa as shown by the map below. It is a small country of only 11,000km².
Why is Gambia’s population youthful?
As Gambia is an LEDC, they lack the funds to employ a vast amount of doctors to the area. This means that for every doctor, there are 14,536 patients meaning that the inhabitants don’t receive much healthcare. This has contributed to a relatively short life expectancy of just 54 years for a man and 57 years for a woman. The lack of healthcare available has also meant that there is an extremely high infant mortality rate of 73 per 1000 people, even though it is lower than it has been in the past. As many children die at an early age, parents tend to have a large number of children to help with daily tasks, to bring a higher income to the family and to look after the parents when they reach ill health. Gambia has a high birth rate of 40 per 1000 people because of this and in 2003, the average fertility rate was 5.13.

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Teacher Reviews
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A very good case study of youthful population in The Gambia. A good use of data however this could be strengthened by comparison with other countries and also use of more up-to-date data. 4 stars
Peer Reviews
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Quality of writing
Punctuation, grammar and spelling all done to a very high level. The format and tone of the essay are all done very well.
Level of analysis
The candidate analyses the population and why the population is low very well, and shows the impact this has on the population. A range of facts and figures are used to back up their points. They also consider the situation and the impacts of these figures well. They make valid conclusions, and points and back up each point with data figures. They show procedures in place to combat this and analyse well how effective they are. The only thing missing is an overall conclusion on the situation.
Response to question
The focus on the question is done very well. The candidate sets out what the youthful population is, and then analyses the negatives and positives of the population based on the figures they have got very well. The need a ending conclusion to wrap the essay up.