Test: World Population - UPSC MCQ

• The demographic transition model was propounded by F.W. Notestion.

• Frank Wallace Notestein (August 16, 1902 – February 19, 1983) was an American demographer who contributed significantly to the development of science.

• He was the founding director of the Office of Population Research at Princeton University, and later president of the Population Council. He was also the first director of the Population Division of the United Nations, 1946–1948.

• The term, ‘intensive subsistence agriculture’ is used to describe a type of agriculture characterised by high output per unit of land and relatively low output per worker.

• Sometimes it is also known as ‘monsoon type of agriculture’. It is found in China, Japan, Korea, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the greater part of continental South- East Asia. This is why the largest population of peasants is found in this area.

China and India are the two most populated countries in the world. Population density of India is 325 people per square km compared to 153 of China. So, India is 2.58 times denser than China.

• Demographic transition (DT) refers to the transition from high birth and death rates to lower birth and death rates as a country or region develops from a pre-industrial to an industrialized economic system.

• The theory was proposed in 1929 by the American demographer Warren Thompson, who observed changes, or transitions, in birth and death rates in industrialized societies over the previous 200 years.

• Most developed countries have completed the demographic transition and have low birth rates; most developing countries are in the process of this transition.