Understanding Demographic Transition Model

Understanding the Demographic Transition

The Demographic Transition Model (DTM) shows how the population of a country changes over time. This is explained through changes in both birth and death rates. These changes can be easily seen and mapped between five different stages of population growth, which can be seen in both More Developed Countries (MDC, and Less Developed Countries (LDC) in several ways. The DTM is broken into five different stages. Each of these stages shows a different economic transition resulting in a viewable change in the birth and death rates for the country. Stage one is the low growth stage. This stage has very high birth and death rates. The high birth rates could be caused from factors such as limited or no birth control

This is the Stage of early expanding where growth starts to really begin. The falling death rates could be factored by improved public health, lower child mortality. Moving into Stage three we see the death rate continue to fall, but now the birth rate begins to drop as well. This is may be caused by lower infant mortality rate, change in social trends, preference for smaller families. In the fourth stage we see both a low birth rate and a low death rate, the population growth slows down to almost resemble Stage one. However where there was high death we could assume that there is now medical treatments in place for disease and illness, or that there are fewer births because of either financial or cultural limitations on the number numbers of children expected in a single family.

The fifth stage is one where the death rate begins to exceed the birth rate, this is the first time we start to see population decline as the factors may include an increase in individualism, forced population control such as seen with the One Child Law in China, even an increase in non- traditional lifestyles such as