Social Sciences and History / Unit 11 SSH 1006 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Demographic Transition: Placing a Country in Its Stage
The idea
The exam describes a country's birth and death rates and asks its stage, and Dorrell's four-stage model sorts it. Stage one, pre-modern: birth rates high, death rates high, population low but stable. Stage two, industrializing: food, water, sanitation and medicine improve, death rates fall, infant mortality first, while birth rates lag, so population grows very rapidly. Stage three: birth rates fall as society finds equilibrium, but births still exceed deaths and population keeps rising, which is population momentum; the stage ends in rough balance. Stage four: stability returns at a much greater number of people. The transition is the move from high birth and death rates to low ones as a country develops.
In practice
Given "high births, high deaths, small steady population", one. Given "deaths falling fast, births still high, explosive growth", two. Given "births falling, growth slowing but continuing", three. Given "births and deaths both low, population large and level", four. Ask which rate has moved: neither, deaths only, both with births catching up, or both settled.
Where people slip
The trap is stage two's growth: it comes from death rates falling, not birth rates rising. The second trap is stage three: population still grows there, by momentum, though the rates are converging.
Your place on the trail
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Builds on
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