Assess the extent to which population change in one country you have studied fits the demographic

transition model

PLAN:

Introduction

 The extent to which China fits the demographic transition model is significant
 This is due to the rapid increase in population China has experienced over the past years
 China is stage 4 because of a low DR and BR and a stable natural increase
 Social = Unemployment is a major problem in China with about 10% of people without work and
a disproportionate amount of state education is spend on universities rather than the country’s
primary and secondary schools
 Economic = Debt, trade war, the shift from a Labour-surplus to a labour-scarce society
 Environmental = Indoor and outdoor pollution, water shortages and desertification
 Political = One child policy, low agricultural production due to political mismanagement

Paragraph 1: China FITS the DTM

 The reason why China fits the DTM is because politically, is that they do not have a high
population growth due to the one child policy
 China is a country consisting of 2 billion people with birth rates slowing down due to the political
initiatives pursued by the government
 The current birth rate for China is 11.159 births per 1000 people, which is a 2.25% decline from
2020
 In 2020, the Chinese birth rate fell to the lowest in seven decades
 The death rate of China is 7.1 per 1000
 It is not only the local government policy which maintains low birth-rates, but also the change in
people’s mentality
 Most Chinese women do not want to sacrifice their work for children, thus younger people take
the expense of raising a child into account
 Therefore, it is likely that the government will soon consider a “three child policy” to force
couples into having more babies so that a low-cost workforce can be maintained

Paragraph 2= Does not fit the DTM

 Because the DTM is based on European and Middle-eastern countries for over 200 years, thus,
there have been more changes in much shorter space of time, such as with Iran, where there has
been a remarkable fall in population growth rate
 The one child policy has been relaxed to a two-child policy to avoid the problems it has faced
with an ageing population
 It is usually the rural villages which have established the two-child policy; therefore, this could
mean that in future China’s population may be dominated by people who are uneducated
 Also, China might miss out on a stage due to the one-child policy being stopped
 Because China is a post-transitional society, live expectancy has reached new heights and fertility
has declined to below-replacement level
 The one-child policy has only been stopped in a few districts; thus, some regions of China might
still have a significant impact on the ageing population
Conclusion

To conclude, China does not fit the DTM due to the fact that the one-child policy is not taken into
account, which is basically the main factor for China facing a shrinking population due to an ageing
population. Furthermore, this is the reason why China will probably miss out on a stage and the fact that
countries like Iran or Thailand have had a more significant fall in population growth rate in a shorter
amount of time.