What is Demographic Transition Theory? In your answer, include a description of what happens in each stage of the theory, as well as the two criticisms discussed in your text

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

According to demographic transition theory, population and technology spur each other's development. This transition has three stages:
1. Initial stage. The society has both a high birth rate and a high death rate, so the population size remains stable or else grows very slowly. Preindustrial societies were all at this stage.
2. Transitional growth stage. Industrialization leads to a better food supply, better medical care, and better sanitation, all resulting in a decrease in mortality at all age levels. However, the sociological prestige of large families has not decreased, so the birth rate remains high, and the population explodes. 3. Incipient decline stage. Social forces and cultural beliefs catch up with technology. Both the birth and death rates are low, so population growth returns to minimal levels.
This theory has been criticized for two reasons. First, it always works in the same direction, from high fertility/high mortality to high fertility/low mortality as technology increases, and then to low fertility/low mortality as social norms catch up. However, there have been many instances in history where the mortality rate moved from low to high.
Second, it is not technology that causes a decrease in the mortality rate—but rather the sociology, the changes in personal and public health practices. Several major medical discoveries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led to little change in the mortality rate. But when the public accepted the germ theory of disease, and therefore they began to sterilize implements, pasteurize their milk, immunize their children, wash their hands, and bathe regularly—then the mortality rate declined.