6.1 – Population Growth and Decline

The One-Child Policy significantly reduced China’s birth rate. It is credited with preventing an estimated 400 million births, helping slow the country’s rapid population growth at a time when food, water, and jobs were under serious pressure.

The policy created a large gender imbalance — more males than females were born — because many families who could only have one child preferred to have a son. This caused serious long-term social problems that China is still dealing with today.

Also accept: human rights concerns about restrictions on family size; a rapidly ageing population that China struggles to support.

The DTM shows how a country’s birth rate and death rate typically change as the country develops economically over time.

In Stage 2, the birth rate stays high, but the death rate falls sharply. This creates a large gap between births and deaths, which causes rapid population growth.

The death rate falls because of improvements in healthcare and sanitation. Better medical care means fewer people die from disease. Improved sanitation reduces the spread of illness.

The birth rate stays high because cultural traditions and family expectations have not yet changed.

Strength:

The DTM provides a clear, simple framework for understanding how populations change as a country develops. It is based on real historical data from countries that have already gone through development, which gives it credibility.

Limitation:

The DTM does not include migration as a factor, even though migration can greatly affect a country’s population size. Also, not every country follows the same path or moves through the stages at the same speed — the model cannot account for this variation.

Migration is the movement of people from one country to another.

Immigration is when people move into a country. This directly adds people to the population. If large numbers of people immigrate, the total population of that country increases.

Emigration is when people move out of a country. This directly removes people from the population. If large numbers emigrate, the total population falls.

Low-income countries are more likely to experience high emigration — they tend to have a net loss of people moving out.

A pro-natalist policy encourages people to have more children, aiming to increase the birth rate.

An anti-natalist policy discourages people from having large families, aiming to reduce the birth rate.

France introduced a pro-natalist policy because it faced an ageing population with too few young people to support the economy.

The government introduced:

• Generous monthly payments to families with children
• Up to 3 years of paid parental leave
• Heavily subsidised (low-cost) childcare

As a result, France now has one of the highest fertility rates in Europe. The policy had a moderate but positive effect on birth rates, showing that pro-natalist policies can work, even if the effect is not dramatic.

China’s One-Child Policy strictly limited most families to one child to slow rapid population growth.

Positive impact:
The policy successfully reduced the birth rate. It is credited with preventing an estimated 400 million births, which helped slow China’s rapid population growth at a time when resources were under serious pressure. This shows that anti-natalist policies can be highly effective at reducing birth rates.

Negative impact:
However, the policy created serious unintended consequences. It produced a large gender imbalance (more males than females), because families who could only have one child often preferred a son. There were also human rights concerns about the restrictions placed on families. Over time, the policy led to a rapidly ageing population that China now struggles to support.

Overall evaluation:
Anti-natalist policies can be very effective at reducing birth rates in the short term, as China’s case demonstrates. However, the results are always complex. Strict policies may succeed in numbers but come with severe unintended social consequences. No policy produces only positive outcomes.

The global population growth rate has been slowing over time. It peaked at about 2.1% per year in the 1960s and has now fallen to less than 1% per year. However, because the total population is already very large (over 8 billion), the world population continues to rise in absolute terms.

Population is not distributed evenly across the world. The most densely populated regions are East Asia, South Asia, Europe, and the eastern United States, where good climates and economic opportunities attract large numbers of people. In contrast, harsh environments — such as deserts, the Arctic, and dense rainforests — have very few people.

1. Write the formula
   $$\text{Natural Increase} = \text{Birth Rate} – \text{Death Rate}$$
2. Write down the given values
   Birth Rate = 9  •  Death Rate = 12
3. Substitute and calculate
   $$\text{Natural Increase} = 9 – 12 = -3$$

The natural increase is negative (−3). This means that more people are dying than are being born each year. As a result, the country’s population is declining (getting smaller).

This country most likely belongs to Stage 5 of the DTM.

Reason: In Stage 5, the birth rate has fallen below the death rate, producing a negative natural increase and a shrinking population. A natural increase of −3 matches this pattern exactly.

One challenge is a shrinking workforce. As fewer young people are born, there are not enough working-age people to power the economy and to pay taxes that support the growing number of older, retired people.

Also accept: an ageing population that is increasingly expensive for the government to support; fewer people to fill jobs in key industries.