Question

Economists often refer to the slow down in population growth that started (in developing countries) as the “demographic transition.” What are the key causes of the demographic transition? What policies should a developing country follow to reduce population growth?

Answer 1

When a country goes through high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates with the development of its economy from pre industrial to fully industrialised, demographic transition is achieved through this economic development. The main causes of demographic transition are

1) People with higher income are more educated and focussed to their career which urge themto limit their family size. They have a higher opportunity cost of rearing children and parenting rather than focussing on their careers and earnings. Besides increasing the quantity will take a toll on the quality for whatever they for their children and their savings. On the other hand, most of the female workers want to become self dependent which delay their marriage and reduce their fertility level. So income and fertility are inversely related. Higher the income, lower the fertilityrate which finally lead a country to achieve demographic transition from higher birth rate to lower birth rate.

2) Decline in mortality rate with the development of improved health fecility also contributes to the increased numbers of population. Better medical teatment has increased the life expectancy of people and lowered the infant moratality rate. So the number of old age people will keep growing compared to the number of young population. The rate of child birth has also reduced with the better medical fecilities as there will be fewer cases of infant mortality rate.

3) The rising trend for human capital in the process of production system in economy has increased the competition in this world where people always hanker after a luxurious life have lesser time for personal commitments. Heneceforth the increasing human race for the betterment of life and luxury make people opt for smaller family size.

4) Religion also plays a significant role in demographic transition. For eg. Islamic nations have higher numbers of birth rate as Children are considered as the gift of god. Besides the practice of polygamy among Muslims also provides the impetus for having lot of children causing population burst.

5) The urge to have a boy among many communities around the world also lead to the increasing number of population. In these communities, people opt for several child birth till the arrival of boys.

6) Less educated people opt for bigger family size as large numbers of children can work in their agriculture field, construction sites or others for income opportunities which lead to increasing numbers of population and a key cause to demographic transition.

To reduce the population size of developing countries, they should make some stricter policies which help in bringing the population size within its ecological balance. For this some policies which developing countries need to formulate are as follows-

1) Limiting the number of child birth in a family to 1 or 2 which can save the country from population explosion whcih otherwise would exceed the feeding point of natural resources.

2) Use of contraceptives for preventing childbirth.

3) Making people educated about the negative side of over population.

4) Making higher education free or subsidised which will enable more people to come under the arena of education system which will help in preventing early marriage and child birth.

5) Raising the age bar for marriage for both girls and boys will help in limiting the numbers of population as fertility rate decrease with increasing age.

6) Improving medical fecilities will help in reducing the infant mortality rate and birth of healthy child will lower the chance of child death rate which convince people to limit their family size.