Cambridge A-Level Geography: Core Human Geography (9696)

This guide covers the full content of Paper 2 Core Human Geography, for Cambridge International AS & A Level Geography (9696), 2025–2026 series. Like Paper 1 (Core Physical Geography), Paper 2 is compulsory for every candidate and forms 50% of the AS award and 25% of the full A Level. It is examined in a 1 hour 30 minute paper worth 60 marks.

Where this fits in 9696

AS Level candidates sit both Paper 1 and Paper 2 in their first year of study, giving a balanced physical/human foundation before A Level candidates go on to choose two options each from the more specialised Paper 3 (Advanced Physical Geography) and Paper 4 (Advanced Human Geography). Core Human Geography is built around three topics — Population, Migration and Settlement Dynamics — each of which the syllabus expects candidates to illustrate with real examples and case studies drawn from low income countries (LICs), middle income countries (MICs) and high income countries (HICs).

Syllabus coverage

CAMBRIDGE A-LEVEL GEOGRAPHY (9696) — PAPER 2 CORE HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

• 4.1 Natural increase as a component of population change — natural increase rate, birth rate, death rate, fertility rate and infant mortality rate; the social, economic, environmental and political factors affecting fertility and mortality; interpreting age/sex structure diagrams; population structure, dependency and the dependency ratio
• 4.2 Demographic transition — changes in birth and death rate over time; critical appreciation of the demographic transition model, Stages 1–5; youthful and ageing populations; links between population and development through changes in infant mortality and life expectancy
• 4.3 Population–resource relationships — food security and the causes and consequences of food shortages; the role of technology and innovation in food production; constraints such as war and climatic hazards; carrying capacity; critical evaluation of optimum population, overpopulation and underpopulation
• 4.4 The management of natural increase — a required case study of one country’s population policy on natural increase, including attempts to alter the natural increase rate and manage its results
• 5.1 Migration as a component of population change — movements excluding those under one year’s duration; push and pull factors; processes including chain migration; patterns by distance and age; constraints, obstacles and barriers such as cost and national borders
• 5.2 Internal migration — rural–urban and urban–rural movements and their causes and impacts on source and destination areas; stepped migration within the settlement hierarchy; urban–urban movements; intra-urban movements
• 5.3 International migration — voluntary and forced (involuntary) movements; causes and patterns including economic migration and refugee flows; impacts on source and destination areas
• 5.4 The management of international migration — a required case study of one international migration stream: its causes, character, scale, pattern and impacts
• 6.1 Changes in rural settlements — contemporary issues such as depopulation and service provision in LICs, MICs and HICs; impacts of internal migration and urban growth; a required case study of a rural settlement or area
• 6.2 Urban trends and issues of urbanisation — urban growth and the process, causes and consequences of urbanisation including counterurbanisation, re-urbanisation, competition for land and urban renewal; the concept of a world city and the hierarchy of world cities
• 6.3 The changing structure of urban settlements — factors affecting the location of activities within urban areas; the changing central business district; competition for space, bid rent and functional zonation; residential segregation, its causes and processes
• 6.4 The management of urban settlements — a required case study covering both a shanty town (squatter settlement) in an LIC or MIC and the provision of infrastructure (power or transport) for a city

How to approach it

The three topics build on each other — population change (Topic 4) sets up why people move (Topic 5, Migration), and both feed into how settlements change shape and grow (Topic 6). Revising them in that order, rather than jumping between them, makes the links between population structure, migration flows and urban change easier to hold onto.

Each topic ends with a “management” sub-topic requiring a named case study — 4.4, 5.4 and 6.4 are not optional extras but examinable content in their own right, so prepare specific, locatable case studies (a real country’s population policy, a real migration stream, a real rural settlement, a real shanty town and a real infrastructure project) rather than generic description. Examiners reward named places, real data and an evaluation of how well the response worked, not just a description of what happened.

Because the syllabus explicitly expects examples across LICs, MICs and HICs, avoid building a case-study bank drawn entirely from one income group — a question may ask you to contrast experiences across income levels, and having only high-income-country examples (or only low-income-country examples) leaves you unable to answer that kind of question well.

Assessment objectives

Paper 2 is weighted identically to Paper 1: 30% AO1 (knowledge of terms, principles and located places), 30% AO2 (understanding how processes bring change, and applying knowledge to unfamiliar contexts), 28% AO3 (interpreting and communicating geographical data) and 12% AO4 (evaluating the success of initiatives and the viewpoints of different groups). The AO4 weighting is exactly where the four management sub-topics (4.4, 5.4, 6.4) earn their marks — a case study that only describes what a policy or scheme did, without assessing how well it worked or whose interests it served, is answering AO1 when the question is very often testing AO4.

Official syllabus

Cambridge International AS & A Level Geography (9696) syllabus for 2025 and 2026 — cambridgeinternational.org.