 Dear students, in this module we are going to discuss demographic transition theory. The demographic transition theory explains how population changes over time as societies progress. The theory outlines basically four and possibly some would say five stages of demographic transition. First stage means the high birth rate and high death rate. In the primitive societies as you would have observed in the history that there were a lot of famines, a lot of natural calamities and because of that there were a lot of natural deaths and at the same time people were having higher birth rates. At the second stage the high birth rate but the decline in the death rates is principally because of the fact that societies do advance and because of the technological innovation particularly in the field of health and medicine they are going to cope up with different diseases and so there would be a sharp decline in the birth in the death rates. So at the third stage the declining birth as well as death rates. So you would see and rather you would observe that in the modern societies or in the developed societies there are lower birth rates and at the same time lower death rates. Fourth stage we will find the very low or rather alarmingly low birth rates and so the death rates. So in certain societies you will find that there is a sharp contrast between the birth and death rates and because of that we have a lot of rather huge older population as compared to the younger populations. Fifth stage is a bit controversial and we are going to discuss it in the second demographic transition. So as the societies develop they transition from stage 1 to stage 4 shifting from the high birth rate and death rates to the lower birth rates and the death rates. So this theory posits that economic and social development leads to the changes in different population growth and eventually achieving the population stability. When you talk about demographic transition theory then basically we see in the four stages that human societies evolve in the sense of population. In the first stage there is a high birth rate and in the same way there is a high death rate. The big reason for this is that there are a lot of natural disasters in the world and as you know in the olden days there was not so much progress in the medical field because of which the death rate was very high and there were a lot of natural calamities and there were a lot of wars and because of which there were high death rates. So to tackle that naturally the birth rate of people was also high. As the societies progress in the sense of technological advancements and as a result of which the natural calamities we see that the human being has tried to reduce the after effect of them. In the same way because of the progress in the field of medicine we have seen a lot of diseases that were first incurable and now they are curable and have been treated. So what happens in the second stage is that your birth rate is very high but your death rate also starts going towards declines. In the third stage your birth rate also starts going towards declines along with the death rate. The big reason for this is that the life ideologies of the people start to change a lot. Like we see in Western Europe that due to individualization and due to different ideologies of modernization which have affected the lives of the human being, liberalization, capitalism, these kinds of different ideologies have promoted the individualization and due to this individualization the human being starts to think of it as a burden to have more children. So ultimately that will lead to the fourth stage where the birth rate goes down a lot rather than going down to a very high level. So what happens is that there is a lot of disbalance in the population. Like in some societies we are still seeing that due to this disbalance the younger population is very less and the older population is very high. So this theory has sharp consequences or reflects the sharp consequences and critiques argue that the theory does not consider the cultural, economic and historical differences that assumes a linear progression for all the societies. Many critics of this theory also see this as an exaggerated reflection. The big reason for this is that the modern technological advancement in this demographic transition does not reflect adequately in that sense because these modern technological advancements are not ubiquitous, i.e. they are not applicable equally in every society. For example, in lower socioeconomic status countries we see that the effects of modernization and technological advancements do not appear in the way we see in the developed world. So this theory of unequally distributed reflection of population growth cannot adequately cover the critiques that reflect the loopholes of this theory. Another criticism is that this theory does not explain why some countries are stuck in certain stages and do not progress to the next stage. If we take the example of Pakistan, we see that Pakistan is at the second stage of this theory with the high birth rate and decline in the death rate. So the challenge is in managing the youth bulge and creating the sufficient job. Similarly, there is a blessing in disguise that the youth population is still in a sufficient proportion as compared to the older population. So the big advantage of the demographic transition theory on the second stage is that unfortunately the disadvantage can also be converted if we do not manage our youth population adequately. So this stage in Pakistan also has certain implications for its healthcare, education system and which needs to be kept in pace with the growing population. So for example, youth is also a potential resource for you. But along with this, we will have to see in the future how we have to dedicate our health facilities and educational facilities to this population in the future.