DTM Critical Thinking Practice
Scenario
Which stage of the Demographic
Transition Model do you think
the person is living in?
Chen is a 16-year-old girl
dreaming of college in a few
years. She lives with her mom,
dad, and younger twin brothers
in the suburbs. Her parents both
work outside of the home so                  
she helps around the house with
chores. Her parents met as
exchange students and
immigrated to the area to raise
a family.
Luiza is a 17-year-old mom.
Her husband works in the
village, and she stays home  
with the new baby and her three
other children. Many children
in the village have recently died
from malaria.
Pablo is one of 12 children. He
is 27 years old with three
children. He and his wife have
decided to have fewer children.   STAGE 2
They have recently moved from
their village to the big city to
pursue more job opportunities.
Koji is 25 years old and an only
child. He attends a local
university for computer
science. He lives with his
mother, father, and  
grandparents who are over 100
years old. They recently
celebrated their 75th wedding
anniversary.
Explain why you chose this stage in
2-3 sentences.
Both her parents working, tells us that
there is economic equality for males and
females. This means that this scenario is
STAGE 4                       of recent times.
They live in the suburbs which tells us
that there are also developed cities at the
time.                                                
  Luiza becoming a mother at the age of
17, tells us that at this time there wasn’t
STAGE 1 much knowledge about the topic of
marriage or parenting. The husband
worked in the village which shows there
were not many industrial job
opportunities in the city
They have moved from the village to the
big city, because this is the time when
England started to industrialize, and
bigger job opportunities opened up. This
also the time when families had many
children because the knowledge was
lacking at this time too.
 England was fully industrialized, and
jobs, colleges and schools were all
standard. Now with the high knowledge,
STAGE 3
high standards of living and
improvement in health, both death rates
and birth rates had dropped.