Exam essay draft day 2

Essay Draft

              Starting a very long time ago, around the 1600’s or so, there was a chart that would process the change in a country’s population. This was discovered by looking at a country’s CDR and CBR and seeing if the CBR is greater than the CDR. If it was than their population was increasing, and if it wasn’t than their population was decreasing. This process was called the Demographic transition. It has been proven for most of human history is spent in stage 1. But every country has at least gotten to stage 2. There are 4 stages in the cycle, and some say there is some country’s that could be in a stage 5. But that stage 5 isn’t considered a stage in the process.

              The first two stages are not similar at all besides the fact that they both have a high birth rate. They both had a high birth rate the whole way throughout these two stages, because women usually stayed at home and their job was to have offspring and raise the family. In stage one, there was a high CDR, and that was due to the fact that there was many families struggling to obtain food, since there were so many children being born. It was also due to the lack of medical treatment, vaccines, and Birth control. Birth control was a huge factor in stage one because it was causing these countries to have a low life expectancy without access to it. That’s why families started to have more kids because they knew that some of them weren’t going to last very long, and they wanted to make sure the raise at least one of their offspring. As a result of their birth and death rate being so high and almost equal, they had a very low NIR in their population.

              Stage 2 is when there was a huge increase in population because there were two big revolutions that occurred helping with certain countries. In the mid 1800’s was the Industrial revolution. The Industrial Revolution was an increase in factories and the manufacturing of goods to provide more food and such. This caused an increase in wealth, which makes the community and society a better place to live in. The main continents that were affected by this were North American countries and European countries. They were the first areas in the world to enter stage two. Then in the late twentieth century, came the push of developing countries into stage 2 who were struggling more than the ones that already entered. But these countries included African, Asian, and Latin American countries, and they entered because of a different revolution. Their reason was the medical revolution, which was an increase in medical treatments and buildings, vaccines, and birth-control unlike earlier. This led to a drastic decline in the death rate because people could be treated and have their live saved. One example is Gambia in stage 2. Which is a very small African country who struggled to get into stage 2, and they got in because of the medical revolution.

              Stage 3 is when the CBR begins to drop rapidly because of people moving into the cities and not needing children to do chores, as often their house is smaller than what a rural property would be like where parents need their children to work for them. Most people were moving to cities due to economic changes in society’s telling people to have fewer offspring. The CDR in stage 3 is still declining but only in a moderate fashion instead of rapidly as before. As in stage 2, the countries in North America and Europe entered stage 3 early in the beginning of the twentieth century. Then after them came the other countries in Latin America, and Asia. Then came stage 4 which was similar to stage one in the fact that the society’s population wasn’t increasing very fast. But the Birth and Death rates in this stage are opposite than stage one as they are very low now. This is due to the fact that women started to go into labor and work in offices instead of staying at home and their job is to raise a family. So now their priority was working instead having offspring which lowered the birth rates in this stage. Then the death rates were also low as the revolutions that occurred earlier are still helping society’s today with birth control and manufacturing goods. Some people say that when country’s reach stage 4 they have completed a cycle.

              Most African American countries, and more developing countries were usually entering the higher stage after the more developed countries such as North American, and European countries. But some countries entered for different reasons as stated in stage two with the Industrial revolution helping with food production, and the medical revolution, helping with people’s life expectancy and survival. In the future, in countries like the United States, we might move into a new stage that I mentioned earlier called stage five. This stage would be when countries actually have a negative natural increase rate meaning their population is decreasing. Some countries that you could argue already can be in that stage are mainly western and northern European countries.

That is my full draft essay that I finished last night pretty late. I would say that I am proud of it and how much information I covered. The not cards that we wrote on during class today is very helpful but I'm not sure if I wrote to much or not because I don't want to cheat obviously.