Comprehensive Essay on the Theory of Demographic Transition

It has already been seen that, in ancient times, world population grew gradually and that it was almost static for a long time because both the birth rates and death rates were high.

Later, the countries of north-west Europe England, France and Sweden began to attain a new kind of demographic stability, that is, low population growth, not through high fertility and high mortality but through low fertility and low mortality.

These two conditions are known as “the old balance” and “the new balance” respectively.

This shift in population from the old balance to the new balance, experienced by Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand and later by Japan is known as “the demographic transition” when these countries evolved “from a predominantly agrarian peasant economy to an economy with a greater division of labour, using more elaborate tools and equipments, more urbanised, more oriented to the market sale of its products and characterised by rapid and pervasive changes in technique.”

Some demographers attempted to formulate a generalised explanation of the processes of the decline in mortality and fertility and postulated a theory called “the theory of demographic transition.”

Warren Thompson, C.P. Blacker, Frank Notestein, Ansley J. Coale and Edgar M. Hoover tried to elaborate on this theory by describing the various stages of population growth as based on birth and death rates.

While discussing demographic transition, demographers have often referred to the phases or stages of the process of shifting from the stage of the old balance to the stage of the new balance, both

With the help of this typology, it is possible to categorise all populations of the world according to this three-fold classification, with a further identification of sub-stages of the middle stage.

The Pre-transitional Stage

In this stage, population growth is almost stationary, as both birth and death rates are very high though the death rates often fluctuate. During this stage, society has an agrarian peasant economy, with a traditional organisational system.

In such a society, high death rates are achieved because of wars, famines, epidemics and chronic malnutrition, while high birth rates are supported by social norms and customs regarding marriage and reproduction, with a heavy accent on prolific child bearing.

This stage is marked by man’s lack of control over both fertility and mortality, but can also be labeled as the stage of high potential growth.”

The Transitional Stage

This stage can be sub-classified by identifying three types of situations.

(a) Early Transitional Stage:

During this stage, death start decreasing, but birth rates continue to remain at a high level with the result that the population grows rapidly.

It may thus say that, during this stage, society is successful in gaining considerable control over its death rates.

But as a corresponding control over the birth rates is not achieved, the natural growth population is very high.

(b) Mid-transitional Stage:

During this stage, death rat continue to decline and a decline in the birth rates begins. The birth rates are, however higher than the death rates, resulting a fairly high rate of natural growth of the population.

(c) Late Transitional Stage:

During this stage, death rat continue to be low and further declines are only slight. The important fact is that birth rates remain at a moderate level because of the widespread practice of birth control. With low death rat and low birth rates, the population growth is once again low.

Historically, European societies went through the stage early transitional growth during the eighteenth and the nineteen centuries, following early efforts towards industrialisation are urbanisation.

During the eighteenth century, European society began to have a moderate excess of births over deaths, and the excess grew in the nineteenth century, when mortality rates dropped while birth rates generally remained high.

During the later part the nineteenth century, birth rates started declining. Death rat€ also declined at the same time, but at a faster rate.

Population growth was steady from 1851 to 1860 and from 1890 to 1900, and this situation persisted during the first year’s of the twentieth century in spite of the heavy overseas immigration.

Later, death rates continued their downward trend. Birth rate also dropped rather fast, with the result that population growth slowed down.

Today, many Asian countries India, China, Thailand, Korea the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and some Latin America countries, are in the most-transition or late transition stage because they have experienced significant reductions in their birth rates.

Most of the African countries are in the early transitional stage and still have the potentiality of high growth because their mortality rates are still very high and these may decline in the near future

Post-Transitional Stage

In this stage, birth and death rates are low following effective implementation of death control and birth control programmes.

An important point emerges out of the foregoing discussion on population growth. It is obvious that, during the earlier stages of the demographic transition, population growth was regulated by mortality rates.

Once mortality is brought to a substantially low level, however, it is fertility which regulates population growth.

This means that once a country has reached the last stage of demographic transition (that is, of low natural growth), any further changes in population growth can be brought about only by changes in fertility, which can either be increased or decreased.

The best illustration of this is provided by the “baby boom” in North, West and Central Europe and North America during the economic recovery from the Great Depression and the Second World War, when birth rates went up and the rate of population growth increased.

This scheme of describing demographic transition serves a useful purpose because it describes in a simple manner the historical trends of population growth with the help of a classification scheme.

Its value as a demographic theory, and its ability to predict future events, however, have been challenged.

Therefore, in the Chapter on Population Theories, a discussion on the Demographic Transition Theory will be undertaken in greater detail.