Birth, Death & Whatever's Between
The number of live births per 1,000 people in a given year — one half of the natural-increase equation.
What is the birth rate?
In this stage of the DTM, both birth rates and death rates are very high — the pre-industrial baseline.
What is stage 1?
The average number of years it takes for a population to double based on its growth rate
What is Rule of 70?
This three-letter acronym stands for the total dollar value of goods and services produced in a country in a year.
What is GDP?
A population pyramid with this overall shape — wide at the bottom, narrow at the top — signals rapid growth and a young population.
What is a (true) pyramid / triangle?
Subtract the death rate from the birth rate and you get this — the net change in a population, not counting migration.
What is the natural increase?
Improvements in food security, sanitation, and medicine cause this rate to plummet first, kicking off Stage 2.
What is the death rate?
A systematic count of a population conducted by a government
What is a census?
The Human Development Index combines income with these two other measures of well-being.
What are life expectancy and education?
This Chinese policy, in effect from 1979 to 2015, aimed to slow population growth but produced serious gender imbalance and an aging crisis.
What is the One-Child Policy?
Geographers divide this magic number by a country's growth rate to estimate doubling time.
What is 70?
Most developed countries — Canada, the UK, Australia — currently sit in this DTM stage.
What is stage 4?
A model that explains population change over time in stages
HDI scores always fall between 0 and this number — countries above 0.8 are considered "very high" development.
What is 1?
This Indian Prime Minister's "Emergency" rule in 1975–77 included a coercive sterilization campaign that sterilized over 6 million people.
Who is Indira Gandhi?
A government's systematic head-count of its population, conducted in Canada every five years.
What is a census?
This Asian island nation is a textbook (quintessential) example of a country in DTM Stage 5, with a shrinking, aging population.
What is Japan?
The permanently inhabited, civilized, or cultivated portion of the earth.
What is Ecumene?
This oil-rich Gulf nation is a classic example of a country with high GDP per capita but a notably lower HDI than its wealth would suggest.
What is Saudi Arabia?
Often called the strongest single predictor of generational poverty in developing nations, a lack of access to this institution traps families in low-paying work.
What is education?
At a 2% annual growth rate, this is approximately how many years it would take a population to double.
What is 35 years?
This term describes the economic boost that happens during Stage 3, when a country has a large working-age population and fewer dependents to support.
What is the demographic dividend?
A measure of development based on life expectancy, education, and income.
What is the Human Development Index?
A self-perpetuating pattern where families remain impoverished for at least three generations due to a lack of resources, education, and opportunity
What is the Poverty Cycle?
A population pyramid shaped like a column — roughly equal width at every age — indicates this type of population, typical of late-stage DTM countries.
What is a stable / stagnant population?