Demographic Transition Model Quiz and FRQ Practice

Quizlet decks help memorize stage labels; this page adds MCQs with explanations and FRQ rubrics so you practice exam reasoning, not only recall.

India is best placed in late Stage 3 and early Stage 4. Death rates fell long ago with expanded health care, while birth rates have dropped sharply since the 1970s—yet the population is still growing because earlier high fertility left a very large young and working-age cohort. On the exam, cite falling CBR with low CDR and a pyramid that is wide in the middle but no longer has the explosive Stage 2 base.

China functions as Stage 4 with strong Stage 5 characteristics. Fertility is very low after decades of family-planning policy, urban jobs, and rising costs of raising children, so natural increase is small and the society is aging quickly. Do not describe modern China as Stage 2; the exam expects you to link policy, urbanization, and an inverted or top-heavy age structure.

Most of Brazil aligns with Stage 4: both crude birth and death rates are relatively low, and growth has slowed compared with mid-twentieth-century levels. Inequality still matters—some northern and rural areas transitioned later than the industrialized South—so you can mention uneven development inside one country. Pair a more column-shaped pyramid with urbanization and smaller family size, not rapid Stage 2 expansion.

Bangladesh moved from late Stage 2 into Stage 3 faster than many classic European examples. Basic health gains and disaster preparedness lowered death rates, while family-planning access and girls’ schooling pulled fertility down despite extreme population density. The pyramid base is narrowing, but the country remains younger than Japan or much of Western Europe, which is a common compare-and-contrast prompt.

Thailand reached Stage 4 by the early 2000s after one of the steepest fertility declines in Asia. Public health improvements held CDR low while Bangkok-led urbanization and smaller families reduced CBR. Today policymakers worry about aging workers and rural school closures—signals of a late-transition society rather than continued Stage 2 population explosion.

Japan has had below-replacement fertility for decades, so deaths can exceed births in years with little immigration. The median age is among the world’s highest, which strains pensions, elder care, and rural communities. Exam answers should explain why pronatalist subsidies alone rarely reverse the trend—housing costs, career timing, and cultural preferences for smaller households matter as much as government programs.

Mexico has shifted from Stage 3 into Stage 4 over the last generation. Fertility fell from very high levels mid-century as families urbanized and invested in fewer, better-educated children, while death rates stay low with modern medicine. When a question allows migration, separate natural increase from total population change—out-migration to the United States affects some regions more than others.

Stage 2 keeps high birth rates while death rates have already fallen, so the rate gap—and growth—is at its widest. Stage 3 still grows, but crude birth rates are clearly trending down and the pyramid base narrows year by year. If a graph shows CBR sliding toward CDR with both already low, think Stage 3; if CBR is still high beside a newly low CDR, think Stage 2.

Yes—many Unit 2 prompts pair population stages with changing causes of death. DTM Stage 2 often overlaps ETM improvements that cut infectious disease, while Stage 4 and 5 line up with chronic and aging-related mortality. Review the epidemiological transition model when a stimulus mentions sanitation, vaccines, or heart disease replacing cholera.