The mother earth has been blessed with a large variety of resources, like land, water, soil, forests, animals and minerals. These resources can be discovered, exploited, developed and converted into useful articles. This implies that human beings are the greatest resource on earth. They develop these resources as per their requirements.

Ancient times did not witness machines and equipment and therefore most of the work was done manually. Thus, the total number of people living in a country determined the strength of the country. More people meant more production and thus more prosperity. Nowadays, emphasis on human skills is laid rather than number of people involved in a certain task. Skills here mean the very ability and capability to convert natural resources into useful products. This capacity of people to convert natural resources into useful articles for the mankind depend on certain factors. These are listed below :

1. Literacy plays an important role. Possession of technical, vocational and professional skills is also important.
2. Must be provided with proper tools and equipment for successful fulfilment of the task.
3. The chosen labour must be hard working and must understand dignity of labour.
4. A balanced and diet full of nutrition is also important for energy to be supplied in order to complete the task at hand.

POPULATION DISTRIBUTION –  Population is not distributed evenly anywhere in the world. People prefer residing in areas that are better suited to accessibility, are productive and rich in natural resources. More than 90% of the world’s total population live in about 10% of the total land surface available. Density of population ( number of people living in one sq.km area of land) varies from one area to another.

On the basis of density of population, the world can be divided into three regions

• Thickly populated areas – Industrial regions and fertile river valleys are densely populated. Eastern and southern Asia are densely populated. This is because of the intensive cultivation suitability in these areas. The warm climate and fertile soil available help cultivate crops almost throughout the year, resulting in more population.
• Moderately populated areas- These areas are, as the name suggests, mainly found between densely populated and sparsely populated regions. Most of these areas have developed new industries, facilities for irrigation and mining. Thus people start migrating and settling in these areas. In these regions, people have migrated from other areas due to favourable natural and economic factors.
• Sparsely populated areas- These are the hot deserts, cold deserts and the high mountainous areas. They do not favour crop growth and irrigation and that is the primary reason a very minimal fraction people decide to reside in such areas.

SOURCES – Google, Quora