Demographic Transition

Stage I: Preindustrial Society

In the first stage, a traditional, rural, preindustrial society and economy, fertility rates are high and families are large and extended. In agrarian economies, children are a vital source of farm labor, helping plant, weed, and sow crops, tending to farm animals, performing chores, carrying water and messages, and helping with younger siblings.

Children also take care of their elderly parents when they are infirm. In societies with high infant mortality rates, having many children is a form of insurance that a significant number will survive until adulthood. Thus, the distribution of birth rates around the world reveals that the poorest societies have the highest rates in the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and most of the Middle East. In contrast, birth rates in North America, Europe and Russia, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand are relatively low.

Figure 1 Stages in the demographic transition. This model illustrates stereotypical changes in birth, death, and growth rates as societies industrialize.

Source: Stutz, F., & Warf, B. (2005). The world economy: Resources, location, trade and development (4th ed., p. 82). Copyright © 2005. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ.

However, in preindustrial societies, mortality rates are also typically quite high, which means that the average life expectancy is relatively low. The primary causes of death in poor, rural contexts are the result of inadequate diets, as well as unsanitary drinking water and bacterial diseases. The world geography of death rates thus closely reflects the wealth or poverty of societies. Because both fertility and mortality rates are high, the difference between them—natural population growth—is relatively low, fluctuating around [Page 709]zero. While relatively few societies in the world live in these circumstances today, Stage I may describe certain tribes in parts of Central Africa, Brazil, or Papua New Guinea, that is, the places most remote from the world system.

Stage II: Early Industrial Society

The second stage of the demographic transition pertains to societies in the earliest phases of industrialization, such as 19th-century Britain or the United States, or selected countries in the developing world today, such as Peru. Early industrial societies retain some facets of the preindustrial world, particularly high fertility rates. Because most people still live in rural areas, children remain an important source of farm labor. The major difference is the decline in mortality rates, which leads to longer life expectancies. Mortality rates decline as societies industrialize, not primarily because of better medical care but because of improved food supplies due to the industrialization of agriculture, which plays a major role in improving immune systems, including lowering infant mortality rates. Because the death rate has dropped but the birth rate has not, the natural growth rate grows explosively, a situation evident in a wide number of countries in the developing world today.

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