Essay

The Demographic Transition

How do countries develop? Why is it that countries with lower quality of living seem to be the ones with a sky-rocketing population, while developed nations seem to be decreasing, or at least maintaining, population?  Safer conditions should let more families prosper, so why is it that the opposite seems to happen? The answers to all these questions lies in The Demographic Transition. What exactly is The Demographic Transition? Demographic Transition is a model based on the concept of how a country’s birth and death rates, and subsequently its population, changes as it develops as a nation. Many countries use the four stage model while some use the five stage. In this essay I will be using the five stage model. If we want to learn about demographic transition we must first discuss the stage where all countries were for the majority of human history.

Since the first countries developed until 1750, all countries were in stage one. Stage one describes a nation with very low quality of life and extremely dangerous conditions. As you would expect from a country of low quality of life, the population didn’t increase considerably, and at times depending on the events, the population would decrease slightly. An example of this society would be medieval Britain. The life expectancy was much lower by today’s standards and death was common. Families would have multiple children for reasons such as providing extra labor for farming families. Families also had more children to increase the chance that one of their children reach an age to have children themselves. This lead to a high birth and death rate which essentially canceled each other out. This is why population growth was so low until around the 19th century, where many countries reached stage 2.

Stage 2 describes a nation where the death rate suddenly lowers, yet birth rate stays the same. This means that the population of that country gets a huge boost. How does a country enter stage 2? To enter stage 2 a country must develop a factor that decreases death rates to a great extent. For our example of Britain, that factor was the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution lead to greater production of merchandise and food. By making starvation, a leading cause of death at that time, less of an issue the death rate was lowered considerably. Currently, every country has entered stage 2. The reason that countries that we consider to be poor have such a high RNI is because they are in stage 2.