NCERT Solutions Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population

F R E E S T U D Y M AT E R I A L F O R E V E R Y S T U D E N T

CLASS 8 · SOCIAL SCIENCE

NCERT Solutions

Chapter 13: Dynamics of
Population

NCERT Textbook — Exploring Society: India And Beyond

BOOK PAGES SECTIONS QUESTIONS MEDIUM

Part II, 167 – 190 10 24 English

Solutions, notes, sample papers & more at 39 pages

Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

CLASS 8 · SOCIAL SCIENCE · EXPLORING SOCIETY: INDIA AND BEYOND

NCERT Solutions — Chapter 13: Dynamics of Population
Demography is the study of how many people there are, who they are, and how that changes. This chapter
builds the whole subject out of four moving parts — birth rate, fertility rate, death rate and migration —
and then shows what they do to a country: the world’s population curve bending flat, India’s pyramid losing its
triangle, and a demographic dividend whose window closes around 2050.

TEXTBOOK BOOK PAGES

Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class 8) Part II, 167 – 190

SECTIONS QUESTIONS

10 24

MEDIUM

English

The Big Questions — Page 167
Chapter opener

THE BIG QUESTIONS

Q1 What is demography?

Demography is the study of the composition of a human population — its age groups,
sexes, levels of education, occupations and religions — and of how that composition
changes over time. The changes come from three things: births, deaths, and the movement of
people within and across countries.
Notice that demography is not simply counting heads. The chapter shows it as having three
parts (Fig. 6.2):

Size — how many people there are.
Structure and composition — how those people are made up by age, gender, education
and so on.
Pattern and trend — which way the numbers are moving, and how fast.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why the second and third parts matter as much as the first: two countries can
have exactly the same number of people and need completely different things. If
most of them are children, the country needs schools; if most are elderly, it needs
hospitals and geriatric care; if most are of working age, it needs jobs. The chapter
puts it plainly — “if a place has many young children, more schools are needed; if the
proportion of the elderly in a population is higher, more facilities for healthcare are
required.” A head count alone would tell a government nothing about what to build.

This is why governments collect the information: to plan infrastructure such as schools,
hospitals, roads and housing, and municipal services like water, energy and waste management.
Businesses use the same information to judge who their customers are, by age, gender and
income, and to design products that match people’s needs. In India the instrument for
collecting it is the census, conducted generally every 10 years.

Q2 What are some important concepts of demography?

The chapter builds the subject out of four key indicators (Fig. 6.7) and then adds the ideas that
are derived from them.

INDICATOR WHAT IT MEASURES UNIT INDIA’S FIGURE IN
THE CHAPTER

Birth rate Live human births during a year per 1,000 High birth rate → faster
population growth

Fertility rate Average number of children a children per 5.7 (1950) → 1.9 (2025)
woman would have in her lifetime woman

Death or Deaths in a population during a year per 1,000 Child mortality 271
mortality rate people (1950) → 28 (2023) per
1,000

Migration Movement of people from one place number of Grew Delhi, Mumbai,
to another, within or outside the people moving Bengaluru
country

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Birth rate and fertility rate are not the same thing: the birth rate is counted per
1,000 people of the whole population, so it depends partly on how many women of
child-bearing age happen to be in that population. The fertility rate is counted per
woman, so it measures family size directly. A country can have a falling fertility rate
and still, for a while, a high birth rate — simply because it has an unusually large
number of young women. The chapter says the two “are closely linked”: when
fertility falls, the birth rate follows.

The concepts built on top of these four are:

Replacement level fertility — 2.1. The number of children needed to replace the parents in
the population. Above 2.1 a population is likely to grow; below it, it may shrink over time.
Life expectancy at birth. The average number of years a newborn is expected to live if
conditions stay as they are today. In India it has risen from 30 years at Independence to 70 in
2024.
Sex ratio. The number of females per 1,000 males — 943 in Census 2011, up from 933 in
2001.
Census. The process of collecting, compiling, analysing and disseminating demographic,
economic and social information about everyone in a country at a specific time.
Population pyramid (population structure diagram). A graph of the population by age
group and gender, from which the whole story of a country’s past births and deaths can be
read.
Demographic transition. The three-stage path along which birth and death rates fall as a
country develops.
Demographic dividend and the youth bulge. The growth potential created by a large
young, working-age population.
Median age. The age that divides a population in half — 28 for India, 50 for Japan (Fig. 6.17).

Q3 How has the population of India and the world changed over time?

Both have grown enormously, but both are now growing more slowly every decade. Read
the two graphs together.
The world (Fig. 6.4) grew from 2.5 billion in 1951 to 8.2 billion in 2025 — that is

8.2 ÷ 2.5 = 3.28 times as many people in 74 years

The United Nations expects 9.7 billion by 2050, a peak of 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s, and a
gradual decline after that as birth rates fall. Fig. 6.4 already shows the flattening: 10.2 billion in
both 2071 and 2084, then 10.1 billion in 2100.

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as e
Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population
a g l AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The important pattern is hidden inside the numbers. Work out what each decade added:
co m
se m.
c o m POPULATION (FIG. g l a
. 6.4)
DECADE WORLD ADDED IN THE GROWTH IN THE

m aDECADE
ase
DECADE

gl →
a1951 2.5 → 3.0 billion 0.5 billion 20%
1961

. ombillion
c0.8 ag
3.7 → 4.5 billion
e m
1971 → 21.6%
1981
g l as
1991 → 5.4 → 6.2 billion
a 0.8 billion 14.8%

m
.co
2001

se m
com l a
2011 → 7.1 → 7.9 billion 0.8 billion 11.3%

e→m
2021
. ag
a s
agl
2041 9.2 → 9.7 billion 0.5 billion 5.4%
2051

m0 a s
.co agl
2071 → 10.2 → 10.2 billion 0%

se m
a
2084

a g l
The world kept adding roughly the same 0.8 billion per decade for fifty years, yet the rate of

m
growth fell from about 21% to about 11%. That is because the same addition is being made to a
. co
m
bigger and bigger base. Eventually even the addition shrinks, and the curve levels off.

m as e
.co
India (Fig. 6.5) went from 361 million in 1951 to 1,460 million in 2025:
a g l
a s em
agl 1460 ÷ 361 = 4.04 times — India’s population has just over quadrupled since 1951
se m
com g l a
.
The decadal figures are 361 (1951), 439, 548, 683, 846, 1020, 1210 (2011) and 1460 million
m a
ase
(2025). The additions rose steadily — 78, 109, 135, 163, 174, 190 million — but the growth rate

a gl
fell from about 24.8% in 1961–71 to about 14% a decade now. In 2023 India passed China to
become the most populous country. Checking the chapter’s claim that Indians are around 17
per cent of the world:
co m
m .
m as e
.co a g l
144 crore ÷ 820 crore = 0.176 = about 17.6 per cent — the chapter’s “around 17 per cent”
se m checks out
g l a
a c
m .
m a s e
co agl
Why the curve has this shape is the heart of the chapter. Population growth is not the birth

m .
e
rate; it is the gap between births and deaths.

g l as
a

co m
m .
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.co


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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

STAGE 1 STAGE 2 STAGE 3

Birth rate
Rate per 1,000

the gap = growth

Death rate

Time
both high, deaths fall first, births fall too,
no gap gap opens wide gap closes again

The three stages of demographic transition (Fig. 6.12). Population growth is not the birth rate — it is
the gap between the blue and red curves. The gap opens in Stage 2 only because deaths fall before
births do.

Why the gap opened, then closed: from the 1950s onwards, antibiotics, vaccines
and oral rehydration solution arrived, water and sanitation improved, and child
deaths from malaria and diarrhoea fell. Deaths fell first. Births, however, are
decided by family customs and expectations, which change over a generation, not in
a year — so births stayed high while deaths collapsed, and the gap between the two
curves became enormous. That gap is the population explosion after 1950. Later, as
girls’ education spread, women took formal jobs and cities became expensive,
families chose to be smaller — so births fell too, the gap narrowed, and growth
slowed. Nothing in this story requires people to have started dying more; the
slowdown comes entirely from the birth side.

Growth is also uneven across countries. China, Japan and Italy already have shrinking
populations, India’s is still growing for now, and several African nations such as Nigeria and
Ethiopia continue to grow rapidly — because they are at different points along the same three-
stage path.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q4 How do population trends shape societies and economies?

Because the age structure of a population decides what a society must build, who does
the work, and who pays for it. The chapter follows this through in three directions.
1. A young population creates growth potential — if it is invested in. India has nearly 65 per
cent of its people in the working-age group of 15–59 and a median age of 28 (Fig. 6.17). Young
people work in factories, offices and farms or start businesses, so the volume of economic
activity rises; they also earn and pay taxes, which the government uses to build schools,
hospitals, roads and parks. That growth potential is the demographic dividend. The chapter is
careful to call it a “window of opportunity”, and says developing countries must “harness the
demographic dividend through investment in good education, skilling and healthcare”.
2. An ageing population reverses every one of those arrows. When people retire there are
fewer workers to replace them, which can slow the economy; older adults need more
healthcare; and governments struggle to pay pensions and provide services because there are
fewer young taxpayers. China is the chapter’s worked example:

CHINA THEN NOW / CHANGE
PROJECTED

Fertility rate 7.5 (1963) 1 (2025) fell to about one-seventh

Population peaked at 1.43 billion 1.31 billion (2050) a fall of 120 million, about 8%
(2022)

Share aged over 14% (2023) 26% (2050) nearly doubles, +12 percentage
65 points

3. Population change reshapes families and places, not just economies. China’s One-Child
Policy left “a whole generation of children [who] do not have siblings and kinship networks” — a
social effect that outlasted the policy, which ended in 2015. Migration reshapes geography:
Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru grew rapidly because people moved there for work and
education, but concentrating a very large population in a limited area strains water, air and land,
and puts pressure on transport and housing.

The idea underneath all three: people are simultaneously producers and
dependants, and which one they are depends on their age. A country’s prosperity
therefore depends less on how many people it has than on what fraction of them are
of working age, and whether those people are educated, healthy and employed.
That is why Japan, with far fewer people than India, faces a labour shortage — and
answers it by raising the retirement age and using automation, robots and AI
assistants to care for older adults.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

One trend the chapter singles out for India: as more women take formal jobs they often face a
double burden of job responsibilities and household duties. Without childcare facilities, joint-
family support or flexible hours, many cannot stay in the workforce — so daycare centres and
supportive family systems are part of what turns a demographic dividend into lasting progress.

In-text Questions — Page 168
What Is Demography?

Q1 Have you ever wondered how many people live in the world?

8.2 billion, in 2025 (Fig. 6.4 and Fig. 6.6). In 1950 the figure was 2.5 billion; the United Nations
expects 9.7 billion by 2050 and a peak of about 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s.
Those 8.2 billion people are very unevenly spread (Fig. 6.6):

Asia: 4.8 billion → 4.8 ÷ 8.2 = about 59 per cent of humanity

Africa: 1.5 billion → 1.5 ÷ 8.2 = about 18 per cent

Europe: 744.3 million → about 9 per cent

Northern America: 387.5 million → about 5 per cent

India alone had about 144 crore people in 2024 (Fig. 6.3) — more than any other country since it
passed China in 2023, and

144 ÷ 820 = 0.176 → roughly 17 per cent of everyone alive

Why the chapter opens with this question: it is deliberately a question whose
answer is never one number. Knowing there are 8.2 billion people tells you nothing
useful on its own. You also need to know how old they are, where they live, what
work they do and how fast their numbers are changing — and that is exactly the set
of questions demography exists to answer.

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 172

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Population at a Glance

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 Ask your family members if they have observed any of the following changes
around them over the years: farmland or green spaces being turned into new
buildings for housing; more crowded streets; more cars and buses; and traffic
congestion in public spaces; changing types of homes (e.g., smaller apartments,
more single-family homes). What could be the possible reasons behind these
changes?

All three changes come from the same two causes working together: more people living in
the same place, and smaller households.
How to do this activity: ask two or three people of different ages — a parent, and a
grandparent or an elderly neighbour. Ask them to describe the same street or field as it was
when they were your age, and as it is now. Write down what they say in their own words, note
roughly which years they are talking about, and only then look for the reasons.

CHANGE IMMEDIATE REASON THE DEMOGRAPHY BEHIND IT
OBSERVED

Farmland and green More houses are India went from 361 million people in 1951 to 1,460
spaces built over needed on the same million in 2025 — and migration concentrates that
land growth in and around towns

Crowded streets, More people, and more A large working-age population earning incomes; the
more vehicles, traffic of them able to afford a chapter notes that concentrating people in a limited area
jams vehicle strains transport

Smaller apartments, Households have fewer Fertility fell from 5.7 (1950) to 1.9 (2025), so families are
more single-family members, and urban smaller; with rapid urbanisation “the cost of living is high
homes land is costly particularly in cities, so people prefer to have smaller
families”

Why the third change is the interesting one: the first two are about the
population getting bigger. The third is about the population changing shape. A house
built for a joint family of ten is not what a couple with one or two children needs, and
in a city they could not afford it anyway. So the same demographic shift shows up
twice — as more buildings, and as smaller ones.

Sample answer: “My grandmother says that when she came to this locality in 1978 there were
paddy fields behind our lane and only two buses a day. The fields are now three apartment
blocks, and the lane is parked full of two-wheelers. She says her own family had seven people in

Page 8 of 39

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population
a g l AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

one house; my family has four, and my cousins’ flat has three. The reasons seem to be that
co m
many more people now live here than before — some born here, many who came for work —
e m.
cofomland.” g l as
and that each family is smaller than it used to be, so more, smaller homes are needed on the
. a
s em
same amount
a
agl

com
ag
LET’S EXPLORE — Page 173
m .
Birth and fertility rates
as e
LET’S EXPLORE a g l

co m
em.
Why is the replacement rate 2.1 and not 2 (parents get replaced by children)? What

as
Q1

m l
.co g
are the situations in which the replacement rate can be higher?

m a
l a se
g
a Because not every baby born survives to become a parent. Two children per couple would

m a s
and exactly half of them were girls. Neither.cisotrue, so a little more than two is needed. agl
replace the parents exactly only in an imaginary country where every child lived to adulthood

a s em
agl
Two things push the figure above 2:

Some children die before they can have children of their own. Replacement is about
surviving daughters and sons, not about births. If a few per cent of children do not reach
co m
m .
e
adulthood, a few per cent extra births are needed to make up for them.
m l as
.co a g
Slightly more boys are born than girls. Since it is the daughters who will bear the next

a s em generation, a couple needs a little more than two births to be reasonably sure of one

agl surviving daughter to take the mother’s place.
Together these add roughly one-tenth of a child — hence 2.1, not 2.0.
se m
com g l a
. a
When can the replacement rate be higher than 2.1? Whenever more children die before
m
ase
reaching adulthood. Use the chapter’s own figure to see how much difference this makes. In

agl
1950 India’s child mortality was 271 per 1,000, that is, 271 of every 1,000 children died before
the age of five:

co m
Children surviving to age 5 = 1000 − 271 = 729 out of 1000 = 0.729m.
o m l a se
m
c needed to leave 2 surviving children = 2 ÷ 0.729 = 2.74
.Births ag
l a se
ag
.c
m
So in 1950 a couple in India needed nearly 2.75 births just to leave two children alive at age five

m a s e
co agl
— and more still to allow for deaths between age five and adulthood. That is one reason

m .
families were so much larger then: the fertility rate in 1950 was 5.7. By 2023, with child mortality

as e
l
down to 28 per 1,000, the same calculation gives
a g

co m
m .
m ase
.co


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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

2 ÷ 0.972 = 2.06 births — barely above 2

The replacement rate is therefore higher in places with:

high child and infant mortality — poor healthcare, unsafe water, malnutrition, malaria and
diarrhoea;
high death rates among young adults, before they have completed their families;
a sex ratio at birth tilted further towards boys, so fewer daughters are born per birth.

Why this matters for the whole chapter: the same improvement that pushed
India’s life expectancy from 30 to 70 years also pulled the replacement rate down
towards 2.1 — and it removed the reason families had for having many children.
Falling child mortality does not only save lives; it eventually lowers the birth rate as
well, because parents no longer need extra births as insurance.

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 175

Page 10 of 39

Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Birth and fertility rates (Fig. 6.11)

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 Observe fertility and literacy rates in select Indian states in Fig. 6.11. Do you find a
relationship between the two indicators? Prepare a report on your observations
and possible reasons for the same.

STATE/UT FERTILITY RATE LITERACY RATE AMONG WOMEN (%)

Bihar 3.0 55

Uttar Pradesh 2.4 66.1

Jharkhand 2.3 61.7

Karnataka 1.7 73.4

Punjab 1.6 79.4

Delhi 1.6 83.7

Literacy rate among women (%) Fertility rate
100 3.5
3.0

80 83.7 2.8
2.4 79.4
2.3
73.4
60 66.1 2.1
61.7 1.7
1.6 1.6
55
40 1.4

20 0.7

0 0.0
Bihar Jharkhand Uttar Pradesh Karnataka Punjab Delhi

Literacy rate among women (%) — bars, left scale

Fertility rate — line, right scale

Fig. 6.11, page 176 — “Fertility and literacy rate among women in select Indian states”.
The book prints this figure as a table; it is reproduced above exactly as printed, and the
same six pairs of values are drawn below it as a chart, with the states put in order of
female literacy.

Page 11 of 39

Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Yes — a clear inverse relationship. As female literacy rises across the six states, the
fertility rate falls. Here is the data of Fig. 6.11, arranged in order of female literacy so the
pattern is visible:

STATE/UT LITERACY RATE AMONG FERTILITY ABOVE OR BELOW
WOMEN (%) RATE REPLACEMENT (2.1)?

Bihar 55 3.0 Above

Jharkhand 61.7 2.3 Above

Uttar 66.1 2.4 Above
Pradesh

Karnataka 73.4 1.7 Below

Punjab 79.4 1.6 Below

Delhi 83.7 1.6 Below

Observations, with the arithmetic:

Every state with female literacy below 70 per cent is above the replacement level of 2.1.
Every state above 70 per cent is below it. The line falls almost exactly where the replacement
level does.
Across the six states, literacy rises by 83.7 − 55 = 28.7 percentage points while fertility falls
by 3.0 − 1.6 = 1.4 children. That works out at

1.4 ÷ 28.7 × 10 = about 0.5 fewer children per 10-point rise in female literacy

Bihar’s average woman has 3.0 children against Delhi’s 1.6 — that is 3.0 ÷ 1.6 = 1.9 times as
many, almost double.
One case does not fit neatly. Jharkhand has lower female literacy than Uttar Pradesh (61.7
against 66.1) but also a slightly lower fertility rate (2.3 against 2.4). So literacy is clearly not
the only thing at work.

Possible reasons — the chapter gives three, and each is a mechanism, not just a correlation:

Later marriage. A girl who stays in school marries later, so her child-bearing years begin
later and are shorter. Fewer years of child-bearing means fewer children even if nothing else
changes.
Formal work. Educated women “are working in formal jobs”, and a job outside the home
competes directly with the time and years that a large family needs.
The cost of urban living. With rapid urbanisation, the cost of living is high, particularly in
cities — so people prefer smaller families. Delhi, the most urban unit in the table, has both
the highest literacy and the joint-lowest fertility.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

A fourth mechanism follows from the chapter’s section on mortality: educated mothers use
health services more, so more of their children survive — and where children survive, parents
need fewer births to end up with the family size they want.

Check it yourself: a relationship between two indicators is not proof that one
causes the other. States with high female literacy also tend to be richer, more urban
and better supplied with health centres — and all of those lower fertility too. What
the table shows is that literacy and fertility move together, in opposite directions; the
chapter’s reasoning tells you why that is not a coincidence.

Sample report (the shape your own report should take — a title, the data, two or three
observations, the reasons, and a closing sentence):
Fertility and female literacy in six Indian states. Fig. 6.11 gives the fertility rate and female literacy
rate for six states and Union Territories. The two indicators move in opposite directions: Bihar
has the lowest female literacy (55 per cent) and the highest fertility (3.0), while Delhi has the
highest literacy (83.7 per cent) and the joint-lowest fertility (1.6). The three states with literacy
below 70 per cent are all above the replacement level of 2.1; the three above 70 per cent are all
below it. Roughly, every 10-point gain in female literacy goes with about half a child less. The
likely reasons are that educated girls marry later, are more likely to take formal jobs, and use
health services more, so that more of their children survive; and that families in expensive cities
choose to be smaller. Jharkhand is a partial exception — its literacy is lower than Uttar Pradesh’s
but its fertility is lower too — which is a reminder that income, urbanisation and access to health
care also matter.

THINK ABOUT IT — Page 177
Migration

THINK ABOUT IT

Q1 If many young people migrate from villages or smaller towns to cities, what
changes could take place in their native villages?

The village is left with a hole in the middle of its age structure. People migrate mostly
between about 18 and 40 — so what leaves is not a random slice of the village, it is precisely the
working-age band. Draw the village’s own population pyramid and you would find a wide base
of children, a wide top of elderly people, and a narrow waist where the young adults should be.
Everything else follows from that one fact:

Page 13 of 39

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population
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co m
m.
WHAT CHANGES IN WHY IT FOLLOWS FROM THE MISSING AGE BAND
THE VILLAGE
m as e
. c o a g l
s em
Fewer hands for farming
a
Agricultural work is done by working-age adults; when they leave, land may be

agl
leased out, cropped less intensively, or left fallow

Farm wages can rise The labour that remains is scarcer, so those who stay can ask for more

co m
e m . ag
as
Money flows back Migrants send earnings home; households can build better houses and pay school

g l
and medical bills, so the village can grow richer even while it empties

Elderly parents live alone
a
The care that adult children used to give has to be bought, or done without — and
the elderly are exactly the group that needs more healthcare
co m
e m.
m l as
.co
Fewer children over time Young couples migrate together and have their children in the city, so village

a g
em
schools and anganwadis lose enrolment and may be merged or closed

a s
a glSkills and enterprise leave Those most willing to try something new are often the ones who move; but
returning migrants sometimes bring back money, skills and new ideas

om a s
e
. c
m at once: the chapter notes that “areas agl
s
Why migration changes two places

a gla see a rise in population over time” — Delhi, Mumbai
witnessing an influx of migrants
and Bengaluru grew this way — and that concentrating a very large population in a
limited area strains water, air and land and puts pressure on transport and housing.
co m
m .
The same movement that crowds a city thins a village. Neither effect is simply good
m as e
.co a g
or bad: the city gains workers and the village gains remittances, while the city gains l
s e m
congestion and the village loses its young.
la
ag The chapter also reminds us why people move: better employment opportunities and education
se m
com
pull them towards cities, while natural disasters and political instability can push them out of
g l a
m . a
e
where they are. A village that has schools, clinics, roads and work of its own loses fewer of its

g
young people in the first place —
l aswhich is why the remedy for out-migration is usually
a restriction on movement.
investment in the village, not

co m
m .
m as e
LET’SoEXPLORE
. c — Page 180
a g l
s e m
a
agl c
m .
m a s e
e m . co agl
g l as
a

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m .
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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Improvement in India’s sex ratio

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 Census figures of 2001 as well as 2011 show the overall number of females per 1,000
males being much less than 1,000. Some states, however, had over 1,000 or near
1,000 (Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu). What might be the reasons for this?

Because the sex ratio is not a fact of biology — it is a record of how long women live and of
how they are treated, and both differ sharply between states. First, the size of the national
gap:

Census 2001: 933 females per 1,000 males

Census 2011: 943 females per 1,000 males — an improvement of 10

In 2011, women were 48.5% of the population: 1210 million × 48.5% ≈ 587 million women

and ≈ 623 million men

Difference ≈ 36 million

A ratio of 943 means 57 fewer women than men for every 1,000 men. Kerala, Puducherry and
Tamil Nadu stand near or above 1,000. Four reasons are worth weighing:

Women outlive men when both get the same care. Given equal food, healthcare and
safety, women live several years longer than men — you can see this in the very last
question of this chapter, where India’s female life-expectancy line rises above the male line
from about 1980 onwards. In a state where women receive healthcare on the same terms as
men, they accumulate in the older age groups, and the overall ratio rises. Kerala fits: Fig. 6.19
shows it has the highest share of elderly in India (12.6 per cent), and an older population
is also a more female one.
Girls survive childhood in equal numbers where daughters are valued equally. Where
girls receive the same food, medical attention and schooling as their brothers, girl-child
mortality is no higher than boys’. Where they do not, it is — and the ratio falls. The chapter
says the sex ratio “reflects the country’s socio-economic and cultural dynamics”, which is
exactly this.
Female education and health services. The states with a high sex ratio are also the states
with high female literacy — Kerala and Tamil Nadu — and Fig. 6.11 shows how strongly
female literacy is linked to other demographic outcomes. Educated mothers use antenatal
and child health services more, and their daughters are more likely to survive and to be
counted.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Male out-migration. The census counts people where they are living. A state from which
large numbers of working-age men migrate for work — Kerala is the best-known Indian
example — is left with more women per 1,000 men among the residents actually counted.

Why an improving ratio matters: the chapter says “a balanced sex ratio is vital for
equitable development, social stability, and sustainable population growth.” The last
of those three is the demographic point: it is women who bear the next generation,
so the number of women in the child-bearing ages, not just the fertility rate, decides
how many babies are born. A society short of women is also, a generation later,
short of births.

Check it yourself: if there are 943 females for every 1,000 males, the female share
of the population is 943 ÷ (943 + 1000) = 943 ÷ 1943 = 0.4853, that is 48.5 per cent —
exactly the figure the chapter gives for 2011. Doing the same for 2001: 933 ÷ 1933 =
0.4827, or 48.3 per cent. The whole improvement over the decade was about two-
tenths of a percentage point.

THINK ABOUT IT — Page 183
India’s Demographic Dividend — A Limited Window of Opportunity

THINK ABOUT IT

Q1 If the replacement rate is less than 2, what will the population pyramid look like?
Will there ever be a situation where the number of children is less than the number
of aged people? What is likely to happen to the population of such a country over
time?

It stops being a pyramid. A population pyramid is nothing more than a stack of birth cohorts
— each bar is the group of people born in one period, thinned by the deaths that have
happened since. So the outline of the pyramid is a record of how many babies were born in each
past year.
If each woman has fewer than about 2.1 children, then every new cohort is smaller than the one
that produced it. The bar at the bottom becomes shorter than the bars above it, and the shape
inverts.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Fertility above 2.1 Fertility about 2.1 Fertility below 2.1

wide base — triangle straight sides — bell narrow base — urn
each cohort bigger cohorts roughly each cohort smaller
than the one above equal in size than the one above

What the fertility rate does to the shape. The pyramid is simply a stack of birth cohorts: its outline
records how many babies were born each year, thinned out by deaths as the cohort climbs.

The chapter describes exactly this happening to India: the pyramid “looks less like a triangle and
is more bell-shaped. The base has become narrower, which means families are having fewer
children than before.” Carry the fertility rate further below replacement, as Japan has, and the
bell becomes an urn — narrow at the bottom, widest in the middle and upper-middle.
Will children ever be fewer than aged people? Yes — and Fig. 6.18 shows when it happens
for India. The purple 65+ curve rises steadily while the red 0–14 curve, which peaked around
2010 at about 0.42 billion, falls. The two lines cross at about 2050, at roughly 0.3 billion each.
After that India has more people over 65 than under 15. Japan is already past that point: its
median age is 50 (Fig. 6.17), which means half the country is older than 50.
What happens to such a population over time? It goes through three phases, and the middle
one surprises people:

1. It keeps growing for a while. This is the important part. Falling below replacement does not
shrink a population at once, because the number of births depends on two things — how
many children each woman has, and how many women of child-bearing age there are. A
country that grew fast in the past has huge numbers of young women alive right now, so
even small families still produce a lot of babies.
2. It peaks. China’s fertility had been far below replacement for decades, yet its population
peaked only in 2022, at 1.43 billion.
3. It shrinks, and ages as it shrinks. China is projected to be at 1.31 billion by 2050 — a fall of
120 million, about 8 per cent — while the share of people over 65 rises from 14 per cent in
2023 to 26 per cent in 2050.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why the consequences bite so hard: the pyramid is also a picture of who works
and who is supported. Turn it upside down and you have a small number of workers
at the bottom supporting a large number of retired people at the top. The chapter
lists what follows: fewer workers to replace those who retire, so the economy can
slow; more pressure on healthcare, because older adults need more of it; and
difficulty paying pensions and providing services, because there are fewer young
taxpayers. The chapter also notes that this has proved very hard to reverse — China
ended the One-Child Policy in 2015 and now allows up to three children, yet its
fertility rate is still below replacement, and “policies in many nations have attempted
to revive the fertility rate but have not been very successful so far.”

THINK ABOUT IT — Page 186
India’s Demographic Dividend — A Limited Window of Opportunity

THINK ABOUT IT

Q1 Indian society has had the concept of āshrama dharma where life is divided into
four phases — brahmacharya, gṛihastāshrama, vānaprasta and sanyāsa. Though
older people begin to withdraw from economic activities, they continue to play
other important roles — share their knowledge and wisdom with family and society
as needed. Cultural continuity becomes possible through their guidance in rituals,
storytelling, etc. They hold knowledge that may not necessarily be in books. Can
you think of all the ways in which older people in your neighbourhood contribute to
their family and society?

The key idea to hold on to is the one the question itself makes: withdrawing from paid
work is not the same as ceasing to contribute. In the scheme of āshrama dharma,
vānaprastha and sanyāsa are stages of stepping back from earning, not of stepping out of
society.
How to answer this well: do not guess. Talk to two or three older people in your
neighbourhood or family. Ask them three things — what work they did before, what they do in a
normal week now, and what they know how to do that younger people around them do not.
Then group what you find under headings like the ones below, and add at least one example
that is specific to your own locality.

Page 18 of 39

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population
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co m
m.
KIND OF WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN A NEIGHBOURHOOD
CONTRIBUTION
m as e
. c o a g l
s em
Care work
a
Looking after grandchildren so both parents can go to work; nursing someone who

agl
is ill; cooking for the household

Knowledge that is not in Which seed suits which soil, when the rains usually break, how to set a bone, family

co m
. ag
books and village history, dialect words and proverbs, old recipes and remedies

se m
l a
ag
Skills and crafts Weaving, pottery, carpentry, tailoring, embroidery, playing an instrument — often
taught to grandchildren informally

Cultural continuity
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Conducting or guiding rituals and festivals; storytelling; bhajan, kirtan and folk-

e m.
song groups; teaching classical or folk arts

m l as
m .co
Holding the community
a g
se
Settling disputes, chairing temple, gurudwara, mosque, church or resident-welfare

l a
together committees, remembering who is related to whom and who needs help

g
a Continuing economic work Many older people never fully stop — running a shop, farming a small plot, tutoring,

m a s
agl
doing accounts for a business

m .co
l a se
a g
Why the first row is an economic contribution, not just a kind one: the chapter
says that as more women take formal jobs they face a “double burden”, and that a
“lack of childcare facilities, joint family support system and flexible work hours can
co m
m .
se
make it difficult for women to participate in workforce.” A grandparent who looks

o m l a
g to harness its
.c
after a child during the working day is doing precisely the job that daycare
m a
ase
infrastructure would otherwise have to do. In a country trying

agl
demographic dividend, that is not a small thing — it is one of the things that lets half

m
the workforce stay in work.

o m l a se
m .c looks after three small children every morning while ag
se — without her, two of those women would have had to
Sample answer: “In our lane, Kamala aayi
their mothers go to the tailoringaunit
leave the job. Ramesh uncle,
l
agwho retired from the post office, teaches free evening classes in
mathematics to about ten children on his veranda. My grandmother knows the words of songs

. c om
that are sung at weddings in our community, and she is the person the whole street asks when

s e
someone falls ill, because she knows which home remedy to try and when m to go to the doctor
com None of these three earns money for this work, yet the a would be poorer without
gllane
.
instead.
a
a semany of them — in money as well as in every other way.”
agl c
m .
m a s e
.co 187–190
Questions and activities — Pages
m agl
l a se
a g

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

End of chapter

QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES

Q1 Why is it important for a country to study its population through demography?

Because a country cannot plan for people it has not counted or described. Demography
turns a crowd into information a government and an economy can act on.
For the government, the chapter lists what the information is used for: planning infrastructure
such as schools, hospitals, roads and housing, and municipal services like water, energy and
waste management. The connection is direct and specific:

“if a place has many young children, more schools are needed”;
“if the proportion of the elderly in a population is higher, more facilities for healthcare are
required”;
“a higher proportion of young working-age population implies a greater need for gainful
employment generation”.

For businesses, the same data tells them who their customers are — the chapter says they
“assess their potential customers based on characteristics like age, gender, and income to create
products that match people’s needs.”

Why it must be done in advance, not afterwards: a school takes years to build and
a doctor takes a decade to train, but a child needs a school at exactly the age of six.
Demography is the only way to know the size of a need before it arrives. India
already knows, from Fig. 6.18 and from the chapter’s own statement, that the
number of children under five peaked in 2007 and the number under fifteen peaked
in 2011 and is now falling. That single fact tells a planner that demand will shift over
the coming decades from primary schools towards colleges, skill centres and jobs,
and eventually towards elder care — and it tells them so early enough to do
something about it.

The instrument for collecting all this in India is the census, conducted generally every 10 years,
which records age, gender, marital status, education, languages spoken, religion, family size,
occupation, employment status and income levels. Without it, every decision above would be a
guess.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q2 How can a low fertility rate affect a country’s future economy and workforce?

A low fertility rate does not affect the economy today — it affects it on a delay, and the
delay is what makes it dangerous. A baby born this year enters the workforce in about 20
years and retires in about 60. So a fall in births works its way up the age ladder like a gap
moving through a queue:

YEARS AFTER FERTILITY WHAT IS FELT
FALLS

About 5 years Fewer children entering school; anganwadis and primary schools begin to
empty

About 20 years Fewer young people entering the workforce; employers start to compete for
workers

40–60 years The whole workforce begins to shrink, while the number of retired people
keeps rising

The chapter states the consequences of that final stage precisely: “As more people grow older
and retire, there are fewer younger workers available to work in farms, factories, and offices.
This could potentially lead to a slow down in the economic growth of the country.” Alongside
that, the government faces “challenges paying pensions and providing services because of
fewer young taxpayers”, and healthcare systems come under pressure because older adults
need more care.
The evidence is China. Its fertility rate fell from 7.5 in 1963 to 1 in 2025, and the results are
now visible:

Population peaked at 1.43 billion in 2022

Projected 1.31 billion by 2050 → a fall of 0.12 billion = 120 million people, about 8 per

cent

Share aged over 65: 14% (2023) → 26% (2050), nearly double

How countries respond, and how well it works. Japan has raised the retirement age and uses
technology and automation to compensate for labour shortages, with large-scale community
centres and robots and AI assistants to help care for older adults. China ended the One-Child
Policy in 2015 and now allows up to three children. Yet the chapter’s verdict is sober: China’s
“fertility rate still remains below replacement level, showing the policy’s lasting impact on
society and the economy,” and “policies in many nations have attempted to revive the fertility
rate but have not been very successful so far.”

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why it is so hard to undo: to raise the number of births you need women of child-
bearing age, and a country with low fertility has already produced a small generation
of them. Even if every one of those women decided to have three children, there
would be fewer mothers than before. Falling fertility is easy to start and very slow to
reverse — which is exactly why the chapter calls the demographic dividend a window.

It is worth adding the other side honestly. In the short run, fewer children per family means
fewer dependants for each worker to support, so more income can be saved, invested and
spent on educating each child well. A low fertility rate is a problem for the workforce only when
the small cohorts finally reach working age — but by then it is far too late to change it.

Q3 Do you think a high birth rate is always good for a country? Why or why not?

No. A high birth rate is neither good nor bad in itself — what matters is whether the
country can educate, keep healthy and employ the people it produces. Both sides of the
argument are real, so weigh them.
When a high birth rate helps. Babies born today are workers in twenty years. A country that
had a high birth rate a generation ago finds itself, now, with a large working-age population —
which is exactly India’s situation. Nearly 65 per cent of Indians are in the 15–59 group and the
median age is 28. That is the demographic dividend: more people working means a larger
volume of economic activity, and workers earn and pay taxes that build schools, hospitals, roads
and parks. This is what the chapter calls the youth bulge of Stage 2 of the demographic
transition.
When it does not help. A birth rate is a count of dependants today and of workers only much
later. Children need food, housing, schools and healthcare for fifteen to twenty years before
they produce anything. If the economy cannot supply those, a large young population becomes
a large number of poorly-educated, unemployed young adults — a burden rather than a
dividend. The chapter’s own example is China in the 1970s, where the government “was worried
that its fast-growing population would cause shortages of food, jobs, and housing.” Its
migration section adds the crowding problem: concentrating a very large population in a limited
area “can put pressure on resources like water, air, and land, and strain services like
transportation and housing.”

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The condition that decides which it is: the chapter says the challenge for
developing countries is “to harness the demographic dividend through investment
in good education, skilling and healthcare.” The word harness is doing all the work. A
young population is potential energy; education, health and jobs are what convert it
into growth. Without that conversion, the same numbers produce unemployment
instead.

And the reverse is not automatically good either. China and Japan show that a very low birth rate
creates its own set of problems — a shrinking workforce, unpayable pensions, and a whole
generation growing up without siblings or kinship networks. There is no single correct birth
rate. There is only the rate that a country’s schools, hospitals and job market can keep up with.

Q4 Do you think it’s better to have more people or fewer people in a country? What are
the challenges countries face in the case of a fast-growing or shrinking population?

Neither is better by itself. The size of a population matters far less than its age structure
and whether the country invests in its people. The clearest way to see this is to set the two
situations side by side.

FAST-GROWING POPULATION SHRINKING POPULATION

Examples in India (for now), Nigeria, Ethiopia China, Japan, Italy, South Korea, Spain
the chapter

Main Too many people to provide for at once Too few workers to support those who have
pressure stopped working

Challenges Shortages of food, jobs and housing (China’s Fewer young workers on farms, in
worry in the 1970s); schools and hospitals factories and offices, so growth can slow;
must be built fast enough; enough gainful more healthcare needed for the elderly;
employment must be created for a large pensions and services hard to fund with
working-age group; crowded cities strain fewer young taxpayers; labour
water, air, land, transport and housing shortages; thinner kinship networks

Responses Population-control campaigns — China’s Japan has raised the retirement age and
described One-Child Policy (1979), India’s ‘Hum do uses technology, automation,
humare do’ from 1952; and investment in community centres, robots and AI
education, skilling and healthcare to assistants; China now allows up to three
harness the dividend children

Page 23 of 39

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population
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co m
m.
Why size is the wrong variable: India has about 1.46 billion people and calls this a

m l a se
dividend, because nearly 65 per cent of them are of working age and its median age
o
.c has a far smaller population — it does not even appear a g among the ten
m
is 28. Japan

l a sepopulous countries in Fig. 6.3 — and calls its situation a crisis, because its
g
most
amedian age is 50. The same number of people can be an asset or a burden
depending entirely on how old they are and what they have been trained to do.
com
m . ag
l a se
My view, and the reason for it: the better question is not “more or fewer?” but “can the country

ag than a country can build schools, clinics and jobs creates
keep up?” A population growing faster
poverty; a population shrinking faster than a country can automate and reorganise creates
stagnation. The chapter’s own answer to both is the same — invest in human capital, that is, in
co m
education, employment and healthcare — which is why it says the demographic dividend “can
em.
m l as
.co g
boost the country’s growth through the development of human capital.”
m a
l a se
ag
s
Q5 How does the age structure of a country affect the kind of jobs and services it
m a
.co agl
needs? Explain with examples.

se m
g l a
a
Because what a person needs, and what a person can give, both depend almost entirely

co m
.
on their age. An age structure is therefore a shopping list for services and, at the same time, a

e m
as
supply list of workers.
m l
m .co a g
a s eGROUP
AGE SHARE IN SERVICES IT NEEDS JOBS THAT CREATES

agl INDIA

se m
com a
0–14 about 27% Anganwadis, primary and Teachers, nurses, paediatricians,

.
secondary schools, vaccination, school-book and uniform
a g l
e m
s water
paediatric care, playgrounds, makers
asafe
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15–59 nearly 65% Jobs above all; colleges and skill Factories, offices, farms, start-

co m
.
training; transport to work; ups, ITIs and colleges, public

e m
as
housing; childcare and flexible transport, daycare centres

m l
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hours

em 60 and a
a s
gl
about 10% (Q11 Healthcare and geriatric care, Doctors, nurses, care workers,

a over table: 9.5% of pensions, accessible housing pharmacists, physiotherapists,
c
m .
e
men, 10.7% of and transport, community assistive technology

m a s
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women) centres

m .
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g l
Examples that show the same principle in different places:
a

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

India today needs colleges and jobs, not more primary schools. In the table in Question
11 the widest bar is 20–24 (9.5 per cent of males, 9.1 per cent of females), while 0–4 is
smaller (8.6 and 8.2). The largest single group is at the age of finishing education and
looking for work — which is exactly why the chapter stresses “gainful employment
generation” and investment in “good education, skilling and healthcare”.
Different Indian states need different things at the same moment. Fig. 6.19 shows the
elderly share ranging from about 6.7 to 12.6 per cent, with Kerala the highest. Kerala and
Tamil Nadu, which are ageing first, already need more geriatric care and pension support
than Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which still need schools and jobs for a young population.
Japan, with a median age of 50, needs a different economy altogether. It has raised the
retirement age, uses automation to make up for missing workers, and has built large-scale
community centres and deployed robots and AI assistants to help care for older adults.

The link to money, which is easy to miss: the same working-age group that needs
jobs is also the group that pays the taxes out of which schools, hospitals, roads and
parks are built. So the age structure decides both what services are demanded and
how much a government can afford to supply. A country with a large working-age
share can fund more services than a country with the same population but an older
structure — which is why an ageing society faces the double difficulty of needing
more healthcare and having fewer taxpayers to pay for it.

Q6 Why do you think families are generally getting smaller? Does having fewer
children ensure better education and health for them? How does it affect families
and society?

Part 1 — why families are getting smaller. India’s fertility rate has fallen from 5.7 in 1950 to
1.9 in 2025. The chapter gives three reasons and a fourth follows from its own data:

Girls’ education. “One important factor is improvements in access to quality education,
especially among girls.” A girl who stays in school marries later, so her child-bearing years
start later and are fewer.
Women in formal jobs. Women “are working in formal jobs” and so “are more likely to marry
at a later stage and have fewer children.”
Urbanisation and cost. “With rapid urbanisation, the cost of living is high particularly in
cities, so people prefer to have smaller families.”
Children now survive. In 1950, 271 of every 1,000 Indian children died before the age of five
— more than one in four. By 2023 the figure was 28 per 1,000, about one in 36. When most
children died young, having many was the only way to be sure some grew up. Now that
almost all survive, parents can reach the family size they want with far fewer births.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Part 2 — does having fewer children ensure better education and health? No. It makes
both much more likely, but it does not guarantee them.
What is true: a household’s income, food, time and attention are divided among fewer people,
so each child’s share is larger. School fees, books and medical care for two children are
affordable where for six they were not.
What “ensure” gets wrong: a child’s education and health also depend on things a family does
not control — whether there is a good school and a health centre within reach, whether the
household income is enough in the first place, and whether daughters are given the same food,
medicine and schooling as sons. A small family in a village with no functioning school does not
get a better education than a large one. The chapter’s own evidence supports this: Fig. 6.11
shows Bihar with the lowest female literacy and the highest fertility, so low fertility and good
schooling tend to arrive together, as parts of the same development — one does not simply
produce the other.
Part 3 — how it affects families and society.

EFFECT ON FAMILIES EFFECT ON SOCIETY

Smaller households; more nuclear families rather than large Demand shifts towards smaller homes and flats, as
joint ones the LET’S EXPLORE activity on page 172 notices

Fewer siblings, cousins and thinner kinship networks — the Care that families once shared has to be provided
chapter notes that China’s One-Child Policy left “a whole by services instead — daycare centres, old-age
generation of children [who] do not have siblings and kinship care
networks”

More elderly parents supported by fewer adult children Pressure on healthcare, and on pensions funded by
fewer young taxpayers

More women able to take formal jobs — but facing the “double A narrowing base of the population pyramid, and
burden” of work and household duties eventually an ageing population — India’s 65+
line overtakes its 0–14 line around 2050 in Fig.
6.18

Tip: notice that the answer to this question is the whole chapter in miniature.
Smaller families are the cause; a narrowing pyramid base is the shape; an ageing
population is the consequence; and the demographic dividend is the limited period
in between.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q7 Observe the graph below showing changes in life expectancy across gender in India
and answer the questions given below: a) Has the life expectancy in India
increased? If yes, what could be the reasons? b) What was the life expectancy of
males and females in 2010?

Life expectancy at birth, male and female
80
Male
Female
70

60
Age in years

50

40

30

20
1950

1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

2020

2025

2030

2035

2040

2045

2050
Values from 2025 onwards are projections.

The graph printed with Question 7 on page 188, redrawn from the printed values — life
expectancy at birth in India for males and females, 1950 to 2050.

a) Yes — dramatically, and the rise is still continuing. Reading the graph:

YEAR MALE (BLUE) FEMALE (RED)

1950 about 43 years about 41 years

1980 about 54 years about 54 years

2010 about 66 years about 69 years

2050 (projected) about 77 years about 81 years

That is a gain of roughly 22 to 28 years in the 60 years from 1950 to 2010 — about five months
of extra life expectancy for every year that passed. The chapter’s own text gives the same story
more simply: life expectancy at birth in India “has risen from just 30 years at independence to 70
years in 2024.”

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The reasons are the ones the chapter gives for the world after 1950, and they apply directly to
India:

Medical advances — antibiotics, vaccines, and oral rehydration solution.
Better water and sanitation reaching more people.
A sharp fall in child deaths from malaria and diarrhoea. India’s child mortality fell from 271
per 1,000 in 1950 to 28 in 2023.
Better nutrition and rising incomes, as “the benefits of economic prosperity were reaching a
larger population”.

Why child survival matters more than anything else here: life expectancy at birth
is an average taken over everybody born. A child who dies at one contributes 1 to that
average; an adult who dies at 70 contributes 70. So a handful of infant deaths drags
the average down enormously. When 271 of every 1,000 children died before the
age of five, the average could not possibly be high — even for a country where most
adults who survived childhood lived into their sixties. Most of India’s early gain in life
expectancy therefore came not from old people living longer, but from far more
babies surviving their first five years. That is why child mortality and life expectancy
are two views of the same improvement.

Notice something else on the graph: until about 1980 the blue (male) line runs
above the red (female) line — Indian men outlived Indian women. From about 1980
onwards the red line rises above the blue and the gap widens to three or four years.
In most of the world women outlive men; India was an exception largely because so
many women died in and around childbirth. As childbirth became safer and women’s
access to health care improved, that natural advantage began to show in the figures.

b) In 2010, life expectancy at birth was about 65 years for males and about 68–69 years for
females — women could expect to live roughly 3 to 4 years longer than men. (Read the two
markers above the 2010 label: the blue one sits a little below the 65 gridline mark and the red
one just under 70.)

Q8 What is a demographic dividend, and how does it benefit a country? What do you
think India needs to do today to make the most of its demographic dividend before
2050?

The demographic dividend is “the economic growth potential of a nation resulting from a
younger and productive age structure of a country”. It is not money and not a payment — it
is a possibility created by the shape of a population.

Page 28 of 39

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population
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c om
Why a young age structure creates that possibility. Three separate effects add up:
.
m a s embusinesses.
1. More producers. “Young people can work in factories, offices, farms, or start
The more c
. gl helps the country
o work, the larger the volume of economic activities,awhich
grow.”em
people

2. g l as taxpayers. The working-age population “earns money and pays taxes. The
a More
government uses that money to build schools, hospitals, roads, and parks.”

o m
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3. Fewer dependants for each worker. With roughly 65 per cent of Indians aged 15–59 and
only about 27 per cent under 15 and 10 m
s e per cent over 60, each working person supports
a older or a much younger society — so more of what is
fewer non-working people than in lan
a g
produced can be saved and invested instead of simply consumed.

India’s position on this is unusual. Compare the median ages in Fig. 6.17:
co m
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COUNTRY MEDIAN AGE (YEARS)

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Japan 50

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agl peaked in 2007; the number of Indians under 15 peaked in 2011 and is now declining. In Fig.
Why the window closes. The chapter is precise about this. The number of children under five

6.18 the 25–64 curve climbs to a maximum of about 0.95 billion around 2050 and falls after that,
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What India needs to do before then — the chapter’s own list, with the reason each item is
necessary:
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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

WHAT TO INVEST WHY THE DIVIDEND FAILS WITHOUT IT
IN

Good education and A young worker who cannot read a manual or run a machine adds little to output. A
skilling large unskilled young population is a large number of unemployed people, not a
dividend.

Healthcare Workers who are frequently ill lose working days; poor childhood health permanently
lowers what an adult can do.

Gainful employment The chapter itself notes that “a higher proportion of young working-age population
generation implies a greater need for gainful employment generation.” Workers without jobs
produce nothing and pay no tax.

Childcare and Without daycare, flexible hours or joint-family support, women face the “double
supportive family burden” and leave the workforce. If half the working-age population cannot work, half
systems the dividend is lost.

The one sentence to remember: the age structure creates the opportunity; only
investment converts it into growth. India’s young population guarantees nothing on
its own — and unlike most economic problems, this one has a deadline attached to
it, because the cohorts that will be of working age in 2050 have already been born.

Q9 Choose two countries (for example: India and Japan, or Nigeria and Italy). Find out
their: Population size, Fertility rate, Life expectancy, Age distribution. How are they
different? What might be the reasons behind these differences? For instance, find
out how countries with ageing populations are managing this.

How to do this activity: pick one country from early in the demographic transition and one
from late in it — the contrast is what makes the exercise worth doing. Collect the four indicators
for both from a reliable source (this chapter’s own figures, the Census of India, or United
Nations population data in your school library), record the year each figure refers to, and put
them in a single table. Then look at the two population pyramids side by side, because the
pyramid explains the table.
Sample answer — India and Japan, using only figures printed in this chapter:

Page 30 of 39

Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

INDICATOR INDIA JAPAN

Population size 144 crore (1.44 billion) in 2024 — the Not among the ten most populous countries;
world’s most populous country since 2023 since Mexico, the tenth, has 13 crore, Japan
(Fig. 6.3) must have fewer than 13 crore

Fertility rate 1.9 in 2025; about 2.0 in 2023 in Fig. 6.10, About 1.2 in 2023 in Fig. 6.10, never above
down from about 3.35 in 2000 about 1.45 since 2000

Life expectancy 70 years in 2024, up from 30 at Not given in the chapter, but a median age of
at birth Independence 50 is only possible in a long-lived population

Median age 28 years 50 years

Age distribution About 27% under 15, nearly 65% aged Narrow base (about 0.4 million per single-year
15–59; bell-shaped pyramid whose widest cohort), bulges at about ages 50 and 75, wide
bars are at 20–24 top; urn-shaped

How they differ, in one sentence: India has many more people and they are much younger;
Japan has far fewer and they are much older.
Why — the two countries are at different points along the same three-stage path in Fig. 6.12.
Japan reached Stage 3 decades ago and has stayed well below replacement level ever since, so
each of its birth cohorts has been smaller than the one before, for two generations. India’s
fertility rate “began declining” only after the mid-1980s and is only now below replacement, so
India still has enormous cohorts passing through their working years. Because the pyramid is a
stack of past birth cohorts, a difference of thirty or forty years in when fertility fell shows up as a
completely different shape.
How ageing countries are managing this (from the chapter):

Japan has raised the retirement age, employed technology and automation to compensate
for labour shortages, and built large-scale community centres and deployed robots and AI
assistants to help care for older adults.
China ended its One-Child Policy in 2015 and now allows up to three children — yet its
fertility rate remains below replacement level.
The chapter’s general finding: “Policies in many nations have attempted to revive the fertility
rate but have not been very successful so far.” Ageing societies have had more success
adapting to a smaller workforce than in reversing the decline that created it.

Check it yourself: whichever two countries you choose, write the year beside every
number. A fertility rate for 2000 and one for 2023 tell completely different stories,
and Fig. 6.10 shows why — China’s rate rose from about 1.05 in 2000 to about 1.35 in
2016 and then fell to about 0.75 by 2023. Comparing across countries only works
when the years match.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q10 Imagine you are a researcher who intends to study migration patterns in your
locality. Make a questionnaire to collect data on the following questions: Name of
the person; Age of the person; Occupation of the person; Place of residence;
Number of years lived in the place; List the factors contributing to migration, such
as lack of facilities, poor infrastructure, limited job opportunities and so on.

How to run the survey. Take permission from an adult before knocking on doors, and go in a
pair. Aim for 20–25 people of different ages and occupations so your sample is not all of one
kind. Tell each person what the survey is for and ask if they are willing to answer. Record exactly
what they say, not what you expected them to say. When you write up the results, use totals and
percentages rather than naming individuals.
The questionnaire. Section A identifies the respondent, Section B measures whether and when
they migrated, and Section C asks why.
Section A — About you

1. Name (this will not be used in the report): ______________
2. Age: _____ years Age group: ☐ under 18 ☐ 18–30 ☐ 31–45 ☐ 46–60 ☐ over 60
3. Occupation: ☐ student ☐ farming ☐ daily wage / construction ☐ shop or own business ☐
factory ☐ office or service ☐ homemaker ☐ retired ☐ other: ______

Section B — Where you live and for how long

4. Present place of residence (locality, town/village, district): ______________
5. Were you born in this place? ☐ Yes ☐ No
6. If no, where did you live before? (village/town, district, state): ______________
7. How many years have you lived in this place? _____ years
8. In which year did you move here? ______
9. Did you move alone or with your family? ☐ alone ☐ with family ☐ family joined later
10. Is the move ☐ permanent ☐ temporary ☐ seasonal (a few months each year)?
11. Do you send money back to your earlier home? ☐ yes ☐ no

Section C — Why you moved

12. Which of these applied to the place you left? (tick all that apply)
☐ limited job opportunities ☐ low wages ☐ lack of facilities such as schools or hospitals ☐
poor infrastructure — roads, electricity, water ☐ small or no landholding ☐ natural disaster
— flood, drought, cyclone ☐ political instability or unrest ☐ other: ______
13. Which of these attracted you to this place? (tick all that apply)
☐ better employment ☐ higher wages ☐ education for self or children ☐ healthcare ☐
family already living here ☐ marriage ☐ other: ______
14. Which single factor mattered most? ______________
15. Would you go back if that factor changed at home? ☐ yes ☐ no ☐ not sure. Why?
______________

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why questions 12 and 13 are asked separately: the chapter describes two
different kinds of cause. People are pulled towards a place by “better employment
opportunities, education, and so on”, and they are pushed out of a place by things
like natural disasters and political instability. Most real migrations involve both, and
if you ask about them in one question you will never find out which was stronger.
Question 14 forces the respondent to choose, which is what lets you rank the factors
afterwards.

How to record and analyse it. Make a tally table with one row per respondent and one column
per question, then work out simple figures such as:

What share were born elsewhere? (e.g. if 12 out of 25 were, that is 12 ÷ 25 = 48 per cent.)
Which age group migrated most? (You will probably find the 18–30 band largest — which is
exactly what the THINK ABOUT IT box on page 177 is about.)
Which factor was ticked most often in Question 12, and which was named most often in
Question 14?
How many arrived in each five-year period? Plotting this shows whether migration into your
locality is rising or slowing.

Q11 Draw a population pyramid on graph paper for India using the data given in the
following table. Age-group-wise percentage distribution of population (estimated
for 2021).

How to draw it. Rule a vertical line down the middle of the graph paper — this is the age axis.
Mark the seventeen age groups up it, 0–4 at the bottom and 80+ at the top, giving each an
equal band. Along the horizontal axis measure the percentage, running outwards from the centre
line in both directions: males to the left, females to the right. Use the same scale on both sides,
or the pyramid will be misleading. Since the largest value is 9.5, a scale of 1 cm = 1 per cent fits
comfortably. Draw each bar as a horizontal rectangle from the centre line, label the axes and
give the figure a title.
Drawn accurately, the pyramid looks like this:

Page 33 of 39

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population
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Male Female
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Per cent of that sex’s population

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India’s population pyramid for 2021, plotted from the table in Question 11. Note that the widest bar is

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20–24, not 0–4 — the base has already begun to narrow.

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agl Check
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Males: 8.6 + 8.9 + 8.7 + 9.3 + 9.5 + 9 + 8.1 + 7.1 + 6.3 + 5.7 + 5 + 4.2 + 3.2 + 2.4 + 1.8 +

1.2 + 0.9 = 99.9
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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

GROUP MALE FEMALE WORKING

Children, 0–14 26.2% 25.2% 8.6 + 8.9 + 8.7 | 8.2 + 8.4 + 8.6

Working age, 15–59 64.2% 64.2% 99.9 − 26.2 − 9.5 | 100.1 − 25.2 − 10.7

Elderly, 60+ 9.5% 10.7% 3.2 + 2.4 + 1.8 + 1.2 + 0.9 | 3.3 + 2.7 + 2.1 + 1.4 + 1.2

The working-age figure of about 64 per cent is the chapter’s statement that “nearly 65 per cent
is in the working-age group (15–59 years)” — you have now verified it from the raw data
yourself.
Three things to notice in the shape:

The widest bar is 20–24, not 0–4. Males: 9.5 at 20–24 against 8.6 at 0–4. So the base has
already begun to narrow — this is the “bell shape” the chapter describes, no longer the plain
triangle of 1950 in Fig. 6.16. It is the fertility rate falling to 1.9 that has done this.
Above age 35 the female bar is longer than the male bar in every single band (7.4
against 7.1, 6.7 against 6.3, and so on up to 1.2 against 0.9), while below 35 the male bar is
longer in every band. That is the life-expectancy graph of Question 7 showing up in a
different form: more boys are born, but women live longer, so the female share rises steadily
with age.
The wide middle is the demographic dividend, and the narrow base is its deadline. The
large bars at 15–29 are today’s and tomorrow’s workers; the smaller bars below them are the
workers of the 2040s. When those small cohorts reach working age, the wide middle will
move upwards and become a wide top.

Q12 Observe the population pyramid for Japan in 2023 below. What can you infer from
this? Write your observations and share in the class.

The first observation is that it is not a pyramid at all. The narrowest part of the graph is the
bottom, and the widest parts are in the middle and upper-middle. Its shape is an urn — almost
exactly the opposite of India’s 1950 triangle in Fig. 6.16.
Observations, reading values off the graph:

1. The base is very narrow. The youngest single-year cohorts measure about 0.4 million on
each side, while the largest bars reach about 1.0 to 1.1 million. So each new cohort of
Japanese children is only

0.4 ÷ 1.05 = about 38 per cent the size of the biggest cohorts

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

2. There are two bulges, not one. The upper bulge is at about ages 74–78, that is people born
around 1945–1949, just after the Second World War. The second is at about ages 49–54,
people born around 1969–1974 — the children of the first bulge.
3. There is no third bulge. The 1970s generation did not produce a bulge of its own. Fig. 6.10
explains why: Japan’s fertility rate has stayed between roughly 1.2 and 1.45 throughout
2000–2023, far below the replacement level of 2.1.
4. The top is wide, and it is more female than male. Above about age 75 the right-hand
(female) bars are visibly longer than the left-hand (male) bars — Japanese women outlive
Japanese men.
5. It matches the median age of 50 given for Japan in Fig. 6.17: half of Japan is older than 50,
which is why the graph’s centre of gravity sits so high.

What can be inferred from all this:

Japan’s population must be shrinking. Each cohort arriving at the bottom is far smaller
than the large cohorts now reaching the end of life at the top, so deaths outnumber births.
This is what the chapter means when it lists Japan among the countries “already seeing
shrinking populations”.
Japan’s workforce is about to shrink sharply. The 1969–74 bulge is now around 50. During
the 2030s it will pass 65. At that moment Japan loses its largest working cohort and gains its
largest retired one simultaneously — the labour shortage the chapter describes is about to
get much worse.
This is Stage 3 of the demographic transition, carried far past replacement level. Deaths
are low and births have fallen below them.
It explains Japan’s policies. Raising the retirement age, using technology and automation
to compensate for labour shortages, and building community centres with robots and AI
assistants to care for older adults are all responses to this exact shape.
It is a preview for India. The chapter says India’s pyramid “may start to age slowly, like
what’s already happening in countries such as Japan or China”, and Fig. 6.18 puts a date on
it: India’s 65+ curve overtakes its 0–14 curve at around 2050. Japan’s graph is what India’s
could look like several decades after that.

Why the two bulges are the key to the whole graph: a bulge in a pyramid does
not stay where it is — it climbs one year for every year that passes. The post-war
bulge of 1947 was Japan’s young workforce in the 1970s, its middle-aged workforce
in the 1990s, and is its retired population now. The bulge of the early 1970s is Japan’s
workforce today and will be its retired population in the 2040s. Reading a population
pyramid is really reading the future, because everyone who will be of working age in
twenty years is already on the graph.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Chapter at a glance
Demography is the study of the composition of a human population — age, sex, education,
occupation, religion — and of how it changes over time through births, deaths and the
movement of people. Governments use it to plan schools, hospitals, roads, housing, water,
energy and waste services; businesses use it to work out who their customers are. India’s
census, held about every 10 years, is the official count.
Four indicators drive everything else (Fig. 6.7): the birth rate (live births per 1,000 people in
a year), the fertility rate (average number of children a woman would have in her lifetime),
the death or mortality rate (deaths per 1,000 people in a year) and migration. A fertility
rate of 2.1 is the replacement level: above it a population grows, below it it eventually
shrinks.
World population grew from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 8.2 billion in 2025 and is expected to
reach 9.7 billion by 2050, peak at 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s and then decline. India’s
population went from 361 million in 1951 to 1,460 million in 2025; in 2023 India passed
China to become the most populous country, holding around 17 per cent of the world’s
people.
Countries pass through a demographic transition in three stages (Fig. 6.12): both rates
high and growth slow; death rates fall first while births stay high, so growth is rapid; then
births fall too and growth slows again. India was in Stage 1 from 1901–1921, grew rapidly
after 1951, and since the mid-1980s its fertility has been falling — it is now below
replacement level.
India’s own indicators have improved sharply: child mortality fell from 271 per 1,000 in 1950
to 28 in 2023, life expectancy at birth rose from 30 years at Independence to 70 years in
2024, fertility fell from 5.7 in 1950 to 1.9 in 2025, and the sex ratio improved from 933
females per 1,000 males in 2001 to 943 in 2011.
About 27 per cent of Indians are under 15 and nearly 65 per cent are in the working-age
group of 15–59; India’s median age is 28 against Japan’s 50. This young age structure is
India’s demographic dividend — but it is a limited window. The under-5 population peaked
in 2007 and the under-15 population in 2011, and after 2050 India begins to move towards
an older population.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 13 Dynamics of Population AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Quick revision

TERM WHAT IT MEANS WHERE THE NUMBER TO
CHAPTER USES IT REMEMBER

Demography The study of the composition of a “What Is Three components: size;
human population — age, sex, Demography?”, p. structure and composition;
occupation, religion — and how it 168 pattern and trend (Fig. 6.2)
changes over time

Census The official count of everyone in a DON’T MISS OUT, p. India conducts one about
country at a particular time, recording 169 every 10 years
age, gender, marital status, education,
language, religion, occupation and
income

Birth rate The number of live births per 1,000 Fig. 6.7, p. 172 Measured per 1,000
people in a year people, per year

Fertility rate The average number of children a “Birth and fertility India: 5.7 in 1950 → 1.9 in
woman would have in her lifetime rates”, p. 173 2025

Replacement The fertility rate at which children p. 173 2.1 — not 2.0
level fertility exactly replace their parents, keeping
the population stable

Death or The number of deaths per 1,000 people “Death or mortality India’s child mortality: 271
mortality rate in a year; child mortality counts deaths rate”, p. 176 per 1,000 (1950) → 28
under age 5 per 1,000 live births (2023)

Life expectancy The average number of years a newborn p. 176 India: 30 years at
at birth is expected to live under today’s health, Independence → 70 years
safety and living conditions in 2024

Migration Movement of people from one place to “Migration”, p. 176 Grew Delhi, Mumbai and
another, within or outside a country, to Bengaluru
settle temporarily or permanently

Demographic The three-stage sequence of birth and Fig. 6.12, p. 177 Stage 1 both high · Stage 2
transition death rates a country passes through as it deaths fall · Stage 3 births
develops fall

Sex ratio The number of females per 1,000 males “Improvement in 933 (Census 2001) → 943
in a population India’s sex ratio”, p. (Census 2011); women
180 were 48.5% of the
population

Population A graph of a population by age group Fig. 6.15, p. 181 Wide base = young and
pyramid and gender, males on one side and growing; wide top = ageing

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productive age structure against Japan’s 50

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