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1、Book 2 Chapter 1 The Population Today we re going to talk about population in the United States According to the most recent government census the population is 281 421 906 people Now this represents an increase of almost 33 million people since the 1990 census A population of over 281 million makes
2、 the United States the third most populous country in the whole world As you probably know the People s Republic of China is the most populous country in the world But do you know which is the second most populous Well if you thought India you were right The fourth fifth and sixth most populous coun
3、tries are Indonesia Brazil and Pakistan Now let s get back to the United States Let s look at the total U S population figure of 281 million in three different ways The first way is by race and origin the second is by geographical distribution or by where people live and the third way is by the age
4、and sex of the population First of all let s take a look at the population by race and origin The latest U S census reports that percent of the population is white whereas percent is black Three percent are of Asian origin and 1 percent is Native American percent of the population is a mixture of tw
5、o or more races and percent report themselves as of some other race Let s make sure your figures are right OK white percent black percent Asian 3 percent Native American 1 percent a mixture of two or more races percent and of some other race percent Hispanics whose origins lie in Spanish speaking co
6、untries comprise whites blacks and Native Americans so they are already included in the above figures It is important to note that Hispanics make up percent of the present U S population however Finally the census tells us that 31 million people in the United States were born in another country Of t
7、he 31 million foreign born the largest part percent are from Mexico The next largest group from the Philippines number percent Another way of looking at the population is by geographical distribution Do you have any idea which states are the five most populous in the United States Well I ll help you
8、 out there The five most populous states with population figures are California with almost 34 million New York with 21 million Texas with 19 million and Florida with 16 million and Illinois with million people Did you get all those figures down Well if not I ll give you a chance later to check your
9、 figures Well then let s move on All told over half or some 58 percent of the population lives in the South and in the West of the United States This figure 58 percent is surprising to many people It is surprising because the East is more densely populated Nevertheless there are more people all toge
10、ther in the South and West To understand this seeming contradiction one need only consider the relatively larger size of many southern and western states so although there are more people they are distributed over a larger area To finish up this section on geographical distribution consider that mor
11、e than three quarters of the people live in metropolitan areas like Los Angeles New York Chicago and Houston That means that only 20 percent or 2 out of 10 people live in rural areas An interesting side note is that some 3 800 000 U S citizens live abroad that is in foreign countries Before we finis
12、h today I want to discuss the distribution of the U S population in terms of age and sex Just for interest would you say there are more men or more women in the United States Well according to the 2000 census there are more women In fact there are more than five million more women than men in the U
13、S population If we consider that more males than females are born each year how can this difference be explained Well for a variety of complicated reasons that we can t go into here there is a progressively higher death rate for males as they get older This is seen in 2003 life expectancy figures th
14、e life expectancy for women is years whereas for men it is only years I don t know how these life expectancy figures compare to those in your countries but statistically women generally live longer than men worldwide Now to finish up let s look at the average age of the whole population Overall the
15、average age of the population is increasing from years in 1990 to years in 2000 The average age has been slowly but steadily increasing over the past several decades This trend toward a higher average age can be explained by a decreasing birth rate and an increasing life expectancy for the populatio
16、n as a whole Well I d like to investigate these two subjects further but I see our time is up so we ll have to call it quits for today You may want to pursue the topic of the aging U S population further so there are some suggestions at the end of the lesson to help you do so Thank you Chapter Two Immigration Past and Present The act of immigrating or coming to a new country to live is certainly nothing new Throughout history people have immigrated or moved to new countries for many different re
