Class 12 Sociology Chapter 2 The Demographic Structure of the Indian Society Important Questions with Answers

Q. What is demography?

Answer: Demography is the systematic study of population, covering changes in population size, patterns of births, deaths and migration, and the structure and composition of the population.

Q. Define the birth rate.

Answer: The birth rate is the number of live births per 1000 population in a given area during a specified period, usually a year.

Q. What is the sex ratio?

Answer: The sex ratio is the number of females per 1000 males in a given area at a specified time period.

Q. What does the infant mortality rate measure?

Answer: It measures the number of deaths of babies before the age of one year, per 1000 live births.

Q. What is meant by the ‘replacement level’ of population growth?

Answer: It is the rate of growth required for new generations to replace the older ones that are dying out, reached when the difference between the birth rate and the death rate is zero or very small.

Q. What is the age structure of a population?

Answer: It is the proportion of persons in different age groups relative to the total population.

Q. Name the two medical procedures the chapter gives as examples of sterilisation.

Answer: Vasectomy, for men, and tubectomy, for women.

Q. What is population momentum?

Answer: It is a situation in which a large cohort of women of reproductive age fuels population growth over the next generation, even if each woman has fewer children than previous generations did.

Q. Explain the two types of demography.

Answer: Formal demography is a largely quantitative field concerned with the measurement and analysis of the components of population change, with a highly developed mathematical methodology for forecasting.
Social demography, or population studies, enquires into the wider causes and consequences of population structures and change, holding that social processes and structures regulate demographic processes.

Q. How did Emile Durkheim’s study of suicide support the case for sociology as a discipline?

Answer: Durkheim explained the variation in suicide rates across countries and argued that the rate had to be explained by social causes, even though each individual case had its own personal reasons. Such aggregate statistics offered a concrete and strong argument for the existence of social phenomena, which gave sociology a strong argument for its subject matter.

Q. Why did Malthus think that famines and epidemics causing mass deaths could not be avoided?

Answer: Malthus held that population grows in geometric progression while agricultural production grows only in arithmetic progression, so population always outstrips subsistence. Since humanity has only a limited ability to apply preventive checks such as postponing marriage or celibacy, he believed positive checks in the form of famines and diseases were nature’s inevitable way of correcting the imbalance between food supply and population.

Q. Distinguish between preventive checks and positive checks.

Answer: Preventive checks are the voluntary measures people take in advance to limit births, such as postponing marriage, sexual abstinence or celibacy. Positive checks are famines and diseases, which Malthus considered nature’s own, inevitable way of dealing with the imbalance between food supply and a growing population. In Box 2.1 he adds that ‘the vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation’; if they fail, epidemics and finally famine follow.

Q. Why is a rising dependency ratio a cause for worry in countries facing an ageing population?

Answer: A rising dependency ratio means a relatively smaller proportion of working-age people must carry the burden of providing for a relatively larger proportion of dependants, which becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.

Q. What is the demographic dividend, and why is it temporary?

Answer: The demographic dividend is the benefit flowing from a changing age structure, when a falling dependency ratio gives a society a larger proportion of workers relative to non-workers. It is temporary because the large pool of working-age people will eventually turn into non-working old people, and the dependency ratio will rise again.

Q. Why is India’s population still projected to grow to 1.6 billion by 2050 although its fertility rate is falling?

Answer: Because of population momentum. A large cohort of women of reproductive age will fuel population growth over the next generation, even if each woman has fewer children than previous generations did.

Q. Why do the chapter’s authors call inequalities in the literacy rate specially important?

Answer: Because they tend to reproduce inequality across generations. Illiterate parents are at a severe disadvantage in ensuring that their children are well educated, so the existing inequality is perpetuated rather than closed.

Q. State the basic argument of the theory of demographic transition, naming its three stages, and say why the middle stage produces a population explosion.

Answer: The basic argument is that population growth is linked to overall levels of economic development, and that every society passes through a typical pattern of three stages.
Stage 1: an underdeveloped, technologically backward society. Both the birth rate and the death rate are very high, so the net growth rate is low.
Stage 2: the transitional stage, moving from a backward to an advanced stage, with very high rates of population growth.
Stage 3: a developed society in which both rates have been reduced considerably and the difference between them is again small.
The transition period brings a population explosion because the two rates do not fall together. Death rates are brought down relatively quickly through advanced methods of disease control, public health and better nutrition, but it takes far longer for a society to alter reproductive behaviour that evolved during a period of poverty and high death rates. For some time, therefore, few people die while many are still being born, and the gap between the two rates widens.

Q. Define the birth rate and the death rate, and account for the fact that a death rate falls much faster than a birth rate.

Answer: The birth rate is the number of live births per 1000 population in a given area during a specified period, usually a year. The death rate is the number of deaths in a given area during a given time per 1000 population.
The death rate falls relatively quickly through control of famines and epidemics, improvements in medical cures, mass vaccination programmes, better sanitation and better nutrition.
The birth rate falls slowly because it is a sociocultural phenomenon that is relatively slow to change. It takes longer for a society to alter reproductive behaviour that evolved during a period of poverty and high death rates. Only when prosperity rises, infant mortality declines and levels of education and awareness increase does family size begin to fall.

Q. What is meant by the ‘age structure’ of the population? Why is it relevant for economic development and growth?

Answer: The age structure of a population is the proportion of persons in different age groups relative to the total population. It changes with levels of development and with average life expectancy: as quality of life improves, smaller proportions are found in the younger age groups and larger proportions in the older ones.
It is relevant for economic development because it decides the dependency ratio, which compares dependants, meaning children too young to work and elderly people too old to work, with the working age group of 15 to 64 years. A rising dependency ratio is a burden, because fewer workers must provide for more dependants. A falling dependency ratio can be a source of economic growth and prosperity, because the proportion of workers relative to non-workers is larger. That benefit is the demographic dividend, and India is currently placed to receive it, with the 15 to 59 share having risen from 53% in 1961 to 63% in 2011. But the advantage is not automatic: it becomes real growth only if the larger working-age group is also educated and employed.

Q. Explain the regional variations in the low child sex ratio in India.

Answer: As many as nine States and Union Territories have a child sex ratio under 900 females per 1000 males. Haryana is the worst at 793, the only state below 800, followed by Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi, Chandigarh, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh, Daman and Diu, Himachal Pradesh, Lakshadweep and Madhya Pradesh are all under 925. Large states such as West Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are above the national average of 919 but below 970. Kerala, despite the best overall sex ratio, stands at 964, and the highest child sex ratio, 972, is in Arunachal Pradesh.
The striking feature of this pattern is that the lowest child sex ratios are found in the most prosperous regions of India. Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Delhi have high per capita income and still have low child sex ratios, so the chapter concludes that the problem of selective abortions is not due to poverty or ignorance or lack of resources.

Q. Why did India’s death rate begin to decline after 1921?

Answer: The principal reasons were increased levels of control over famines and epidemic diseases, of which the control of epidemics was perhaps the more important.
Epidemics: the major diseases of the past were fevers of various sorts, plague, smallpox and cholera. Improvements in medical cures, programmes for mass vaccination and efforts to improve sanitation brought them under control. The single biggest epidemic, the influenza epidemic of 1918-19, killed about 5% of India’s population and was the reason the 1921 census recorded fewer people than 1911.
Famines: these were caused by continuing poverty and malnutrition in an agroclimatic environment very vulnerable to variations in rainfall, worsened by inadequate transport and communication and by inadequate efforts on the part of the state. As Amartya Sen and others have shown, famines were not necessarily due to a fall in foodgrains production; they were also caused by a ‘failure of entitlements’, the inability of people to buy or otherwise obtain food. Deaths from famine fell drastically with improvements in agricultural productivity, especially through the expansion of irrigation, improved communication, and more vigorous relief and preventive measures by the state.

Q. Why do people migrate from villages to cities in India? Give three reasons from the chapter.

Answer: Work: the city acts as a magnet for those who cannot find work, or sufficient work, in the rural areas.
The loss of common property resources: ponds, forests and grazing lands once allowed poor people to survive in villages although they owned little or no land. These have been turned into private property or are exhausted, so people must buy in the market what they used to get free, such as fuel, fodder and supplementary food, while opportunities for earning cash income in villages remain limited.
Anonymity: the city offers relative anonymity and interaction with strangers. For socially oppressed groups like the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes this offers partial protection from the daily humiliation of a village where everyone knows their caste identity, and it also allows poorer members of socially dominant rural groups to take low status work they could not do at home.

Q. On what grounds was the Malthusian theory of population growth criticised?

Answer: The historical refutation: the most effective refutation came from the historical experience of European countries. The pattern of population growth began to change in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and by the end of the first quarter of the twentieth the change was dramatic. Birth rates declined and outbreaks of epidemic disease were controlled. Malthus’s predictions were proved false because both food production and standards of living continued to rise despite the rapid growth of population. One reason was the substantial increase in the productivity of agriculture (in India, specially through the expansion of irrigation).
The liberal and Marxist criticism: these scholars attacked Malthus for asserting that poverty was caused by population growth. They argued that problems like poverty and starvation are caused by the unequal distribution of economic resources, since an unjust social system allowed a wealthy and privileged minority to live in luxury while the vast majority lived in poverty.

Q. Trace the development of India’s population policy from 1952 to 2017.

Answer: 1952: India announced an official population policy, probably the first country in the world to do so. It took the concrete form of the National Family Planning Programme, whose objective was to influence the rate and pattern of population growth in socially desirable directions through birth control methods, better public health standards and greater public awareness.
1975-76: during the National Emergency, normal parliamentary and legal procedures were suspended and the government introduced a coercive programme of mass sterilisation. Vast numbers of mostly poor and powerless people were forcibly sterilised, and there was widespread popular opposition. The new government elected after the Emergency abandoned the programme.
After the Emergency: the programme was renamed the National Family Welfare Programme, coercive methods were dropped and a broad-based set of socio-demographic objectives was adopted.
2000: a new set of guidelines was formulated as part of the National Population Policy of the year 2000.
2017: the Government of India issued the National Health Policy 2017, in which most of these socio-demographic goals were incorporated with new targets, including reducing the total fertility rate to 2.1 by 2025 and raising life expectancy at birth from 67.5 to 70 by 2025.

Q. Name the Indian states that have reached or are close to the replacement level of population growth and those that still grow very fast, and suggest reasons for the difference.

Answer: States at or below the replacement level: Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal had all brought their total fertility rates down to 1.7 each in 2016, which is below the replacement level. Kerala’s total fertility rate is also below the replacement level, which means its population is going to decline in future.
States with very high growth: Bihar (3.3), Uttar Pradesh (3.1), Madhya Pradesh (2.8) and Rajasthan (2.7) still had very high total fertility rates in 2016. On the Sample Registration System’s 2020 report, Bihar at 25.5 and Uttar Pradesh at 25.1 have the highest crude birth rates in the country, and the Economic Survey 2018-19 projects that these two states alone will account for almost half of the additions to India’s population up to 2041.
Possible reasons for the difference: the chapter says that increased levels of prosperity exert a strong downward pull on the birth rate, and that once infant mortality rates decline and there is an overall increase in the levels of education and awareness, family size begins to fall. Since the birth rate is a sociocultural phenomenon that is relatively slow to change, fertility follows these changes only with a lag. The chapter gives no state-by-state history, so any state-specific explanation should be offered as your own opinion. Regional differences in age structure follow the same pattern: Kerala is acquiring an age structure like that of the developed countries, while Uttar Pradesh still has high proportions in the younger age groups.

Q. Define the sex ratio, set out the implications of a declining one, and discuss whether son preference persists in India and why.

Answer: Meaning: the sex ratio is the number of females per 1000 males in a given area at a specified time period. Historically it has been slightly in favour of females, because girl babies resist disease better in infancy and women tend to outlive men, which gives a ratio of roughly 1050 in most contexts. India, however, has had a declining sex ratio for more than a century: 972 in 1901, an all-time low of 927 in 1991, and 943 in the Census of India 2011. The child sex ratio for the 0 to 6 age group has fallen even more steeply, from 976 in 1961 to 919 in 2011, dropping below the overall sex ratio for the first time in 2001.
Implications: a falling sex ratio, and especially a falling child sex ratio, points to a serious social problem. Maternal mortality has been falling, so it is difficult to see how it could be the cause; social scientists believe the cause has to be sought in the differential treatment of girl babies, through severe neglect in infancy, sex-specific abortions and female infanticide. It signals that social norms value males far more than females, and it leaves fewer women in the population of the future.
Son preference and its reasons: the evidence in the chapter suggests the preference persists. Sometimes economically prosperous families decide to have fewer children, often only one or two, and having decided that, they may also wish to choose the sex of their child, which the availability of ultra-sound technology makes possible. The chapter’s reason is prevailing social norms that value males much more than females, which leads to ‘son preference’. That the lowest child sex ratios are in the most prosperous states, Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Delhi, shows that the problem is not due to poverty or ignorance; the chapter says the long-run solution depends on how social attitudes evolve. The Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, in force since 1996 and strengthened in 2003, and the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao programme address it, even though, in the long run, the solution depends more on how social attitudes evolve.

Q. What is meant by the demographic dividend? Using Table 2 of the chapter, compare India’s age composition in 1961 with the projection for 2026 and state your inferences. Explain how a falling dependency ratio can be a source of economic growth and prosperity.

Answer: Meaning: the demographic dividend is the benefit flowing from a changing age structure, when a falling dependency ratio gives a society a larger proportion of workers relative to non-workers. It is temporary, because that large working-age group eventually becomes a large elderly group.
Comparing 1961 with 2026: in 1961 the 0-14 group was 41% of the population, the 15-59 group 53% and the 60+ group 6%. In the projection for 2026 the 0-14 group falls to 23%, the 15-59 group rises to 64% and the 60+ group rises to 12%.
Inferences: first, the young base is shrinking sharply, by 18 percentage points, which reflects the gradual fall in the birth rate. Second, the working-age middle has widened by 11 percentage points, which is the bulge visible in the population pyramid for 2026 and is the demographic dividend itself. Third, the elderly share has doubled, which reflects rising life expectancy and is the beginning of the ageing of the population. Fourth, because the change is concentrated at the two ends of the age spectrum, the dependency ratio falls now but will begin to rise again later.
How a falling dependency ratio produces growth: the dependency ratio is the population below 15 or above 64 divided by the population aged 15 to 64. When it falls, a larger share of the population is of working age and a smaller share must be supported, so more is produced and less is consumed by dependants. India’s total dependency ratio fell from 79 in 1970 to 64 in 2005; on the age-based measure it is projected to fall to 48 in 2025 and rise to 50 by 2050.
The qualification: there is nothing automatic about this. The potential converts into actual growth only if the rise in the working age group is accompanied by increasing levels of education and employment. Uneducated new entrants have low productivity, and unemployed ones become dependants rather than earners. India’s own record is a warning: employment growth in the 15-30 age group fell from about 2.4 per cent a year between 1987 and 1994 to 0.7 per cent for rural men and 0.3 per cent for urban men during 1994 to 2004.

Q. Examine the rural-urban differences in India and the pattern of literacy that accompanies them.

Answer: The rural-urban balance: the vast majority of India’s population has always lived in rural areas and still does. According to the Census of India 2011, 68.8% live in rural areas and 31.2% in urban areas. The urban share has risen steadily from about 11% at the beginning of the twentieth century to about 28% at the beginning of the twenty-first, an increase of about two-and-a-half times.
It is not a question of numbers alone: processes of modern development ensure that the economic and social significance of the agrarian-rural way of life declines relative to the industrial-urban way of life. Agriculture used to be by far the largest contributor to the country but today contributes only about one-sixth of the gross domestic product, so although the majority still live in rural areas and make their living from agriculture, the relative economic value of what they produce has fallen drastically. Many villagers now take up non-farm rural occupations such as transport services, business enterprises or craft manufacturing, or commute daily to the nearest urban centre.
The village is no longer sealed off: mass media and communication channels bring images of urban lifestyles and patterns of consumption into remote villages, creating new desires and aspirations for consumption, and rural areas are being more closely integrated into the consumer market.
Urban growth: while urbanisation has been rapid, it is the metropolises that grow fastest, drawing migrants from rural areas and from small towns. There are 5,161 towns and cities where 286 million people live, and more than two-thirds of the urban population lives in 27 million-plus cities, so urban infrastructure can hardly keep pace. The public face of India is becoming more and more urban, yet in terms of political power dynamics the rural areas remain a decisive force.
The literacy pattern: literacy has improved considerably after independence and almost two-thirds of the population is now literate, but it varies across gender, region and social group. In 2011 the overall rate was 73.0%, male 80.9% and female 64.6%, a gap of 16.3 points. Female literacy is rising faster than male literacy, partly because it started from lower levels. Regional variations are still very wide: Kerala is approaching universal literacy while Bihar lags far behind. Social-group variation compounds it, since Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have lower literacy rates and female literacy within these groups is lower still. These inequalities matter most because they reproduce themselves across generations: illiterate parents are at a severe disadvantage in ensuring their children are well educated.