Introduction to the Theory of Demographic Transition:

The theory of demographic transition or of population stages or of population

cycle has many versions. It has been propounded by W.S. Thomson and F.W.
Notestein. They explain the theory in three stages.
But the two famous versions are C.P. Blacker’s five stages of population growth
which have been explained here, and Karl Sax’s four stages of population growth,
namely, High Stationary, Early Explosive Increase, Late Explosive Increase, and
Low Stationary. He does not explain Blacker’s Declining Stage, while his four
stages almost resemble Blacker’s other stages.

Explanation of the Theory of Demographic Transition:

The theory of Demographic Transition explains the effects of changes in birth rate
and death rate on the growth rate of population. According to E.G. Dolan,
“Demographic transition refers to a population cycle that begins with a fall in the
death rate, continues with a phase of rapid population growth and concludes with
a decline in the birth rate.”
The theory of demographic transition is based on the actual population trends of
advanced countries of the world. This theory states that every country passes
through different stages of population development.

According to C.P. Blacker, they are:

(i) The high stationary phase marked by high fertility and mortality rates;
(ii) The early expanding phase marked by high fertility and high but declining
mortality;
(iii) The late expanding phase with declining fertility but with mortality declining
more rapidly;
(iv)The low stationary phase with low fertility balanced by equally low mortality;
and
(v) The declining phase with low mortality, lower fertility and an excess of deaths
over births. These stages are explained in the Fig. 1 (A) & (B) In the figure, the
time for different stages is taken on the horizontal axis and annual birth and
death rates on the vertical axis. The curves BR and DR relate to birth rate and
death rate respectively. P is the population curve in the lower portion of the
figure.
First Stage:
In this stage the country is backward and is characterized by high birth and death
rates with the result that the growth rate of population is low. People mostly live
in rural areas and their main occupation is agriculture which is in a state of
backwardness. There are a few simple, light and small consumer goods industries.
The tertiary sector consisting of transport, commerce, banking and insurance is
underdeveloped. All these factors are responsible for low incomes and poverty of
the masses. Large family is regarded as a necessity to augment the low family
income. Children are an asset to the society and parents. The existence of the
joint family system provides employment to all children in keeping with their
ages.
More children in a family are also regarded as an insurance against old age by the
parents. People being illiterate, ignorant, and superstitious and fatalists are
averse to any method of birth control. Children are regarded as God-given and
pre-ordained.
All these economic and social factors are responsible for a high birth rate in the
country. Along with high birth rate the death rate is also high due to non-
nutritional food with a low caloric value, lack of medical facilities and the lack of
any sense of cleanliness.
People live in dirty and unhealthy surroundings in ill ventilated small houses. As a
result, they are disease-ridden and the absence of proper medical care results in
large deaths. The mortality rate is the highest among the children and the next
among women of child-bearing age. Thus the birth rates and death rates remain
approximately equal over time so that a static equilibrium with zero population
growth prevails.
According to Blacker, this stage continued in Western Europe approximately up to
1840 and in India and China till 1900. This is illustrated in Fig. 1 (A) by the time
period HS- “High Stationary” stage and by the horizontal portion of the P
(population) curve in the lower portion of the figure.

Second Stage:
In the second stage, the economy enters the phase of economic growth.
Agricultural and industrial productivity increases, and means of transport develop.
There is greater mobility of labour. Education expands. Incomes increase. People
get more and better quality food products, medical and health facilities are
expanded.
Modern drugs are used by the people. All these factors bring down the death
rate. But the birth rate is almost stable. People do not have any inclination to
reduce the birth of children because with economic growth employment
opportunities increase and children are able to add more to the family income.
With improvements in the standard of living and the dietary habits of the people,
the life expectancy also increases. People do not make any effort to control the
size of family because of the presence of religious dogmas and social taboos
towards family planning.
Of all the factors in economic growth it is difficult to break with the past social
institutions, customs and beliefs. As a result of these factors, the birth rate
remains at the previous high level. With the decline in the death rate and no
change in the birth rate, population increases at a rapid rate. This leads to
Population Explosion.
This is an “Early Expanding” (EE) stage in population development when the
population growth curve is rising from A to B as shown in Fig. 1(B), with the
decline in death rate and no change in birth rate, as shown in the upper portion of
the figure. According to Blacker, 40% of the world population was in this stage up
to 1930. Many countries of Africa are still in this stage.
Third Stage:
In this stage, birth rate starts declining accompanied by death rates declining
rapidly. With better medical facilities, the survival rate of children increases.
People are not willing to support large families. The country is burdened with the
growing population. People adopt the use of contraceptives so as to limit families.
Birth rates decline a initially in urban areas, according to Notestein. With death
rates declining rapidly, the population grows at a diminishing rate. This is the
“Late Expanding” stage as shown by LE in Fig. (A) and BC in Fig. (B). According to
Blacker, 20% of the world population was in this stage in 1930.
Fourth Stage:
In this stage, the fertility rate declines and tends to equal the death rate so that
the growth rate of population is stationary. As growth gains momentum and
people’s level of income increases, their standard of living rises. The leading
growth sectors expand and lead to an expansion in output in other sectors
through technical transformations.
Education expands and permeates the entire society. People discard old customs,
dogmas and beliefs, develop individualistic spirit and break with the joint family.
Men and women prefer to marry late. People readily adopt family planning
devices. They prefer to go in for a baby car rather than a baby.
Moreover, increased specialisation following rising income levels and the
consequent social and economic mobility make it costly and inconvenient to rear
a large number of children. All this tends of reduce the birth at further which
along with an already low death rate brings a decline in the growth rate of
population.
The advanced countries of the world are passing through this “Lower Stationary”
(LS) stage of population development, as shown in Fig (A) and CD in Fig. (B).
Population growth is curtailed and there is zero population growth.
Fifth Stage:
In this stage, death rates exceed birth rates and the population growth declines.
This is shown as D in Fig. (A) and the portion DP in Fig. (B). A continuing decline in
birth rates when it is not possible to lower death rates further in the advanced
countries leads to a “declining” stage of population.
The existence of this stage in any developed country is a matter of speculation,
according to Blacker. However, France appears to approach this stage.
Demographic transition in Bangladesh:
At the beginning of the 20th century, the total population of Bangladesh was less
than 30 million. The annual growth rate of the population was less than 1 % until
1931 when the size of the population reached 35.3 million. After 1931, the
Population doubled in size every 40 years (Table 1). At the beginning of the
current millennium, the population of the country stood at about 130 million.
According to the latest population census of 2011, the total population of
Bangladesh was enumerated as 150 million in 2011, which is exactly double its
size in 1971 when the country achieved independence after a 9-month long
liberation war with Pakistan. Thus, with a growth rate of 1.37 % per annum,
approximately 2.0 million people are being added to the total population every
year.

The population growth rate reached an all-time high in the 1950s and 1960s
(Table 1; Fig. 1). During the 1970s, the growth rate temporarily fell due to many
natural calamities such as a cyclone in 1970 and famine in 1974, as well as the
liberation war in 1971 that killed three million people (Razzaque et al. 1990; Roy
and Dasgupta 1976). The population growth rate continued to be over 2 % until
the 1990s and then started declining in the 2000s and reached close to 1 % in the
2010s
(Fig. 1). The main driving force behind the declining population growth rates of
the 1990s onward was the rapid decline in fertility and slow but steady decline in
mortality. In the absence of major improvement in the socio-economic conditions
in the country over the period, most researchers believed that an effective family
planning program played a major role in the rapid decline of fertility in
Bangladesh (Lapham and Mauldin 1984; Cleland et al. 1994). Despite a continued
decline in the growth rate, the in-built population momentum due to the young
age structure of the population will keep forcing its number to increase in the
coming years.

The total fertility rate (TFR) of the country also declined remarkably from 6.3
births per woman in the mid-1970s to 3.3 births in the early 1990s (NIPORT et al.
2013), a huge decline of three births per woman (i.e. a decline of 48 % in the TFR)
within a short period of two decades. However, the TFR was static at around 3.3
births per woman during the 1990s, despite the steady increase in contraceptive
use (Fig. 2). After a decade-long stagnation (Islam et al. 2004), the TFR started to
decrease again at the beginning of 2000s, reaching 2.7 births per woman in 2007
and 2.3 births in 2011 (NIPORT et al. 2013). On the other hand, the infant
mortality rate has declined from 87 infant deaths per 1000 live births in 1993–
1994 to 43 in 2011 (NIPORT et al. 2013). All other mortality indicators such as the
child mortality rate, under-five mortality rate and crude death rate also showed
declining trends. Consequently, life expectancy at birth has also improved from 55
years in 1981 to 68 years in 2011 (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics 2013a). The
population growth rates also declined from 2.5 % in 1974 to 1.4 % in 2011.
As can be seen in Fig. 3, the demographic transition in Bangladesh has followed a
typical pattern of decline in mortality followed by decline in fertility. However,
there is a time lag between the two causes of population change in Bangladesh
that has accelerated population growth. Data in Table 1indicate that the pre-
transitional phase of demographic transition in Bangladesh continued until the
1960s. Bangladesh entered into the first phase of demographic transition in the
1960s with a sharp decline in mortality while birth rates showed a slow decline
until the 1980s. The second phase of demographic transition in Bangladesh began
around 1980 when the decline in fertility became more rapid. Bangladesh is now
at the beginning of a third phase of its population transition.
It is evident from Table 1and Fig. 1that the population growth rate in Bangladesh
was much lower during the pre-transition period (until the 1950s) than it is now.
This does not mean that the fertility rate at that time was lower than it is now
(Fig. 1). In fact the population growth rate was much lower than 1 % until 1931
because of high mortality as well as high fertility during the period. The
population growth rate was considerably higher after 1950 as a result of
impressive decline in the mortality rate, when fertility rate also declined but at a
slower rate. Further decline in fertility and mortality will further reshape the age
structure of the Bangladesh population, until fertility reaches replacement level
(i.e. the TFR reaches 2.1 births per woman). At the same time, if the mortality rate
continues to fall and reaches a level closer to the level of fertility, and then both
the fertility and mortality rates remain constant for a longer period, the
Bangladesh population will attain a stationary condition. Results of the UN
medium-variant population projection indicate that the total population of
Bangladesh will cross the 200 million mark in 2050, even if it achieves
replacement-level fertility within the first quarter of the current millennium
(Table 2). This will mean a huge number of people within a small area of 147,570
sq. km, with 1355 people per sq. km. With such a huge number of people,
Bangladesh is likely to exceed the limits of its ecological footprint and bio
capacity. Its person-to-land ratio will be virtually saturated as the country has
limited agricultural land, leaving very limited capacity to expand food production
(Streatfield and Karar 2008). However, the population growth rate will continue
to come down to a very low level (e.g. 0.14 % in 2050) and the population is likely
to stabilize at around 250 million in 2080 (United Nations 2014).
Age structural transition in Bangladesh:
The changes in age structure, or age-structural transition (AST), are an essential
consequence of demographic transition. A population pyramid is an efficient and
widely-used method of graphically depicting the age-sex structure of a
population. Figure 4presents the population pyramids of Bangladesh for the
period 1980–2050. The age pyramids in Fig. 4reveal that a number of changes
have occurred in the age structure and that this will continue due to the various
phases of demographic transition in Bangladesh. A pyramid with a very broad
base that tapers rapidly towards the older age groups suggests a typical
population in an early stage of demographic development with relatively high
birth and death rates and a youthful population. The broad-based triangular-
shaped population pyramids of Bangladesh for the period 1980–2000 indicate
such a typical age structure. The reduction in mortality and steadily-declining
fertility caused a rapid transformation in the age structure between 2000 and
2010. The sharp fall in fertility during this period produced a reduction in the
number of children under age 5 years, which is reflected in the narrowed base of
the pyramids. The proportion of children under age five decreased from over 16
% in 1980 to about 8 % in 2010. Similarly, the population of age groups 5–9 and
10–14 also dropped during this period (Fig. 4). The projection results indicate that
the intensity of this process will further increase in the next four decades. During
this period the base of the population pyramid will be slimming both in relative
terms and in absolute numbers. As a result, the age structure will lose its
pyramidal shape and will emerge as a beehive or barrel shape.
Such a pyramid is typical of a population having low birth and death rates and a
large proportion of the population surviving to older ages. In such a situation, the
working age (15–59 years) population will increase due to the momentum of the
past rapid population growth and later the old age (60 years and above)
population will also increase.
The age structure of a population can broadly be classified into four life-cycle
stages with their distinct economic implications. The four life cycle stages are
young (age 0–14), young working age (15–24), mature working age (25–59) and
elderly (60?). The young population of age group 0–14 years is an economic
burden to the family as children depend on the adult working population for their
food, health care, education and other social needs. The young working age
population (15–24) also incurs expenses, but its needs are different from the
young population of age 0–14 years. The mature working age population (25–59)
is likely to earn more and have a higher saving rate. On the other hand, most of
the elderly population depend on others for their health care, food and other
social needs, and thus become an economic burden to the family. Table 2shows
the age structural changes in terms of the above-mentioned four life cycle stages
from 1950 to 2050 in Bangladesh. Due to fertility decline that started in the early
1980s in Bangladesh, the proportionate share of the population under 15 years of
age began to decline from 44 % in 1980 to 32 % in 2010. According to UN
projection results, the proportionate share of the child population under age 15
will continue to decline further and will fall to 17 % in 2050. Such decline in the
dependent population will reduce the potential economic burden on families and
increase opportunity to improve human capital and quality child care services in
Bangladesh.
Since 1980, Bangladesh has been experiencing a youth (age 15–24 years) bulge
with a 20 % share of the total population. This is expected to continue until 2020,
and after that the youth share of the population is expected to decline. However,
the absolute size of the youth population will continue to increase until it
stabilizes. Bangladesh is currently facing and will continue to face many
challenges in meeting the needs and services of this huge youth bulge. In
Bangladesh, the relative share of the prime working age population of age 25–59
years declined to 31 % in 1980. Since then it has been increasing and this is
expected to continue until 2040, when almost half of the total population will be
of effective working age. As since 1980, the size and share of the old age
population (60?) will continue to increase in Bangladesh at a slow but steady
pace. However, the increase will be rapid and large after 2020 due to increases in
life expectancy. The share of the old age population will increase from 5.7 % in
1980 to 8.1 % in 2020 and to 22.3 % in 2050.
Conclusion to the Theory of Demographic Transition:
The theory of demographic transition is the most acceptable theory of population
growth. It does not lay emphasis on food supply like the Malthusian theory, nor
does it develop a pessimistic outlook towards population growth. It is also
superior to the optimum theory which lays an exclusive emphasis on the increase
in per capita income for the growth of population and neglects the other factors
which influence it.
The biological theories are also one-sided because they study the problem of
population growth simply from the biological angle. Thus the demographic
transition theory is superior to all the theories of population because it is based
on the actual population growth trends of the developed countries of Europe.
Almost all the European countries have passed through the first three stages of
this theory and are now in the fourth stage.
References:
1. www.researchgate.net
2. www.academia.edu