The natural growth of population in a given period is obtained by
- A.Adding births and deaths
- B.Subtracting deaths from births
- C.Adding in-migration to births
- D.Subtracting out-migration from in-migration
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is B, subtracting deaths from births. Natural growth is the increase that comes from the balance of births over deaths alone, so it is births minus deaths in the period, and it is negative when deaths exceed births. Option A is wrong because adding births and deaths has no demographic meaning; the two work in opposite directions. Option C is wrong because adding migration to births gives neither natural growth nor actual growth; actual growth is natural growth plus in-migration minus out-migration. Option D is wrong because the difference between in-migration and out-migration is net migration, which is the induced component of growth and not the natural one. Keep the two words apart: natural growth ignores migration, while actual growth includes it, and this distinction is the reason a city may grow fast even where births barely exceed deaths.
Read the full article: World Population: Distribution, Density and Growth
Practice Questions
View allThe density of population is usually expressed as
- A.Persons per square kilometre
- B.Square kilometres per person
- C.Persons per thousand births
- D.Births per thousand persons
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Density of population is a ratio between the number of people and the area they occupy, and the standard unit is the number of persons living in one square kilometre; it is the simplest way of measuring the pressure of people on land.
Read the full explanation →An Essay on the Principle of Population, published in 1798, was written by
- A.David Ricardo
- B.Thomas Malthus
- C.Adam Smith
- D.Alfred Marshall
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In this essay of 1798 Malthus argued that population tends to increase in a geometric progression while the means of subsistence can increase only in an arithmetic progression, so growth must be restrained either by positive checks such as famine, disease and war, or by preventive checks such as late…
Read the full explanation →The United Nations observed the Day of Eight Billion, marking the world population reaching eight billion, on
- A.11 July 1987
- B.12 October 1999
- C.31 October 2011
- D.15 November 2022
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The United Nations marked 15 November 2022 as the Day of Eight Billion, the date on which the world population was estimated to have reached eight thousand million.
Read the full explanation →The replacement level of total fertility rate for India is
- A.1.0
- B.2.1
- C.2.5
- D.0
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Replacement level fertility is the total fertility rate at which a generation of women exactly replaces itself in the next generation.
Read the full explanation →In which stage of the demographic transition are both the birth rate and the death rate high, so that population grows slowly?
- A.The first or high stationary stage
- B.The second or early expanding stage
- C.The third or low stationary stage
- D.The stage of population explosion
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In the first stage of the demographic transition the society is rural and agrarian, life expectancy is low, medical facilities are poor and literacy is low, so both the birth rate and the death rate are high and they roughly cancel each other, leaving population almost stationary.
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