Geography: Population

The Demographic Transition Model

Based on experiences of Britain, and it can be used as a predictive model to show what may happen in developing in industrialising countries. Particularly strong as a descriptive model but less strong as a predictive model.

Strengths:

• Dynamic, showing changes through time.
• Shows what has happened in UK
• Other countries when industrialising went through similar stages.
• Newly industrialising countries are going through stages at a much faster rate.
• Helps to explain what has happened and why.

Weaknesses:

• Based on experiences of industrialising countries, so cannot be relevant non-industrailisng countries.
• Assumes stage 2 follows from industrialisation, but in many cases this is not the case.
• As well it assumes stage 3 followed decade after stage 2, and that the death rate fell as a consequence of changes brought by changes in the birth rate.
• Original Model has had to adapted to include a fifth stage.
• Countries in Africa have slipped back into Stage 1, because of HIV/Aids, and model does help to predict the future of these countries.

Over and Under population

Over-population is not the same as dense population and under population is not the same as sparse population. ---> linked to availability of resources. A resource rich country can hold a large population, at a good standard of living.

Optimum population = the level of technological…