A two-page revision cut of Class 12 Sociology Chapter 2, The Demographic Structure
of the Indian Society. Every definition, every table figure and every named fact in the
chapter, with nothing in between. Read the full notes first; read this the morning
of the exam.
1 Where the Chapter Counts
| Board | This chapter |
|---|---|
| CBSE (2026-27 curriculum) | 10 marks (theory 80 + project 20) |
Other boards set their own marks; check your board’s current scheme.
2 All the Definitions
Every definition in one place
DemographyThe systematic study of population: size, births, deaths, migration, and the structure and composition of the population
Formal demographyQuantitative; the measurement and analysis of the components of population change
Social demographyPopulation studies; the wider causes and consequences of population structures and change
CensusA systematic counting of all people in a specified territory; decennial in India
Birth rateLive births per 1000 population in a given area in a given period
Death rateDeaths per 1000 population in a given area in a given period
Rate of natural increaseBirth rate minus death rate; also called the growth rate of population
Replacement levelThe rate of growth required for new generations to replace those dying out; the population has stabilised
Fertility rateLive births per 1000 women in the child-bearing age group, usually 15 to 49 years
Crude rateA rough average for a whole population, taking no account of differences across age groups
Infant mortality rateDeaths of babies before the age of one year, per 1000 live births
Maternal mortality rateWomen who die in childbirth, per 1,00,000 live births
Life expectancyThe estimated number of years an average person is expected to survive
Sex ratioFemales per 1000 males in a given area at a specified time
Child sex ratioThe sex ratio for the 0 to 6 age group; computed since 1961
Age structureThe proportion of persons in different age groups relative to the total population
Ageing of the populationSmaller proportions in the younger age groups, larger proportions in the older ones
Dependency ratioPopulation below 15 or above 64, divided by population aged 15 to 64, as a percentage
Demographic dividendThe temporary benefit of a falling dependency ratio and a larger share of workers
SterilisationProcedures preventing conception and childbirth: vasectomy for men, tubectomy for women
Population momentumContinued growth driven by a large cohort of women of reproductive age, even as family size falls
PandemicAn epidemic that affects a very wide geographical area
3 The Two Theories
3.1 The two theories, side by side
Malthus, 1798
- Population grows geometrically (2, 4, 8, 16), food only arithmetically (2, 4, 6, 8)
- So humanity is condemned to poverty forever
- Preventive checks: postponing marriage, abstinence, celibacy. Voluntary, limited
- Positive checks: famine and disease. Inevitable, nature’s way of dealing with the imbalance. Box 2.1: “The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation”
- Disproved by European experience, and by critics who blamed unequal distribution, not numbers
Demographic transition
- Stage 1: underdeveloped; both rates very high, growth low
- Stage 2: transitional; death rate falls fast, birth rate falls only slowly, growth very high, the population explosion
- Stage 3: developed; both rates low, growth low again
- Effected in Western Europe, late 19th and early 20th century
- India’s transition is not yet complete
4 The Numbers to Carry Into the Exam
121 croresIndia’s population, Census 2011
1921-31the decade birth and death rates begin to diverge
943sex ratio, 2011
919child sex ratio, 2011
| Year | Population (millions) | Sex ratio | Child sex ratio | Literacy (%) | Urban (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1901 | 238 | 972 | – | – | 10.8 |
| 1951 | 361 | 946 | – | 18.3 | 17.3 |
| 1961 | 439 | 941 | 976 | 28.3 | 18.0 |
| 1971 | 548 | 930 | 964 | 34.5 | 19.9 |
| 1981 | 683 | 934 | 962 | 43.6 | 23.3 |
| 1991 | 846 | 927 | 945 | 52.2 | 25.7 |
| 2001 | 1028 | 933 | 927 | 65.4 | 27.8 |
| 2011 | 1210 | 943 | 919 | 73.0 | 31.2 |
The one table that carries five of the chapter’s statistical series at once. Literacy is for the population aged 7 and above; 2011 male literacy is 80.9% and female 64.6%, a gap of 16.3.
| Age group | 1961 | 1971 | 1981 | 1991 | 2001 | 2011 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0-14 years | 41 | 42 | 40 | 38 | 34 | 29 | 23 |
| 15-59 years | 53 | 53 | 54 | 56 | 59 | 63 | 64 |
| 60+ years | 6 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 12 |
Age composition as a percentage of the total population. 2026 is a projection.
5 Facts by Section
Everything else worth a mark
- Census history: America 1790 the first modern census; Europe early 1800s; India 1867-72 under the British Indian government; decennial from 1881; seven since 1951; latest 2011; the world’s largest such exercise, because China does not hold regular censuses
- Durkheim: suicide rates (per 1,00,000) vary between countries and must be explained by social causes, which is why a death rate is a social phenomenon
- Malthus: 1766-1834, Cambridge, trained to become a Christian priest, Professor at the East India Company College at Haileybury
- Growth rates: 1901-1951 never above 1.33%; 1911-21 negative at -0.03% because of the 1918-19 influenza epidemic (about 12.5 million dead, roughly 5% of the population, though estimates vary; Box 2.2 gives 17 million; worldwide it is thought to have killed at least 40 million; later pandemics 1957 and 1968); peak 2.2% in 1961-81; 1.63% average annual in 2011
- Epidemics of the past: fevers, plague, smallpox, cholera. Still killing: malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhoea, dysentery. Surat plague September 1994; dengue and chikungunya since
- Famine: caused by poverty, malnutrition, rainfall variation, poor transport and inadequate state effort. Amartya Sen: a “failure of entitlements”, not only a fall in production. MGNREGA is the latest state initiative
- Fertility 2016: 1.7 in Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal; Kerala below replacement; Bihar 3.3, Uttar Pradesh 3.1, Madhya Pradesh 2.8, Rajasthan 2.7
- SRS 2020: India’s crude birth rate 19.5, rural 21.1, urban 16.1; Bihar 25.5 and Uttar Pradesh 25.1 the highest. Economic Survey 2018-19: those two states will account for almost half (50%) of the additions to 2041, UP alone 22%
- Growth shares to 2041: UP and Bihar 28%, the five southern states 16%, MP-Rajasthan-Chattisgarh 15%, Maharashtra-Gujarat 13%, WB-Odisha-Jharkhand 13%, remaining states 10%, Punjab-Haryana-Delhi 5%
- Demographic dividend: total dependency ratio 79 (1970), 64 (2005); age-based ratio projected 48 (2025), 50 (2050). Average age 2020: India 29, China and USA 37, Western Europe 45, Japan 48. Like the East Asian economies and Ireland. Not automatic: needs education and employment. Employment growth for 15-30 year olds 2.4% a year (1987-94) to 0.7% rural men and 0.3% urban men (1994-2004)
- Kerala vs Uttar Pradesh: Kerala’s age structure is becoming like a developed country’s; UP has high proportions of the young and few aged; India is in between
- Sex ratio: nature gives 943-952 female babies per 1000 males, but girl babies resist disease better in infancy and women outlive men, so the ratio is roughly 1050 females per 1000 males in most contexts. Declining in some countries like China, South Korea and specially India, linked to social norms that value males much more than females, which leads to son preference
- 1991 to 2001: overall ratio up 6 points (927 to 933), its highest increase up to then; child sex ratio down 18 points (945 to 927), below the overall ratio for the first time; 2011 down another 8 points to 919 (Table 3)
- Child sex ratio by state, 2011: as many as nine States and UTs under 900; the chapter names seven: Haryana 793 (the only one below 800), then Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi, Chandigarh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh. Under 925: Uttar Pradesh, Daman and Diu, Himachal Pradesh, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh. Kerala 964; Arunachal Pradesh 972, the highest
- Causes of the fall: severe neglect of girl babies, sex-specific abortions, female infanticide. Maternal mortality has been falling, so it is difficult to see how it could be responsible. The sonogram was developed to find foetal disorders and is misused for sex selection
- The prosperity paradox: Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Delhi have high per capita income and low child sex ratios, so the cause is not poverty, ignorance or lack of resources
- Law and policy: Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, in force since 1996, strengthened 2003; Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao. Attitudes matter more than laws in the long run
- Literacy (Table 4), 2001 to 2011: female up about 10.4 points (54.2 to 64.6), male about 5 points (75.9 to 80.9), total about 7.6 points (65.4 to 73.0); 2011 gap 16.3 points. Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes lower, their women lower still. Kerala near universal, Bihar far behind. The inequality reproduces itself across generations
- Rural-urban: agriculture about one-sixth of GDP; 5,161 towns and cities holding 286 million people; more than two-thirds of the urban population in 27 million-plus cities. Non-farm rural occupations: transport services, business enterprises, craft manufacturing
- Why people migrate: work; the loss of common property resources (ponds, forests, grazing lands) turned private or exhausted; the relative anonymity of the city, which shields Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes from daily humiliation and lets poorer members of dominant groups take low status work
- Population policy: 1952, probably the world’s first; National Family Planning Programme; Emergency 1975-76 coercive mass sterilisation, abandoned by the next government; renamed National Family Welfare Programme; National Population Policy 2000; National Health Policy 2017
- National Health Policy 2017 targets: health spending 1.15% to 2.5% of GDP by 2025; life expectancy 67.5 to 70 by 2025; TFR to 2.1 by 2025; under-five mortality to 23 by 2025; maternal mortality rate to 100 by 2020; neo-natal mortality to 16 by 2025
- Population momentum: TFR 3.8 (1990) to 2.7 today, yet 1.2 billion rises to an estimated 1.6 billion by 2050. From 1950 to 1990 CBR fell less steeply than CDR; in the 1990s CBR fell faster, giving a growth rate of 1.6% today
- The chapter’s last word: the state can create the conditions for demographic change, but most demographic variables, specially those related to human fertility, are ultimately matters of economic, social and cultural change
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