Managing growth indirectly (ESS HL)

Managing growth indirectly at Higher Level: The same ideas as SL, with different places: Bangladesh, Iran, South Korea and Ireland's Great Famine. At HL, weigh choices against resources in a [9] essay, with named places on both sides.

Managing growth without a population law: An indirect policy is not about births at all, yet it changes them. Schools, clinics, jobs and pensions change how many children people choose to have, how long they live and where they move.

Remember it as: Teach girls, heal children, pay pensions: births fall by choice.

Real example: Bangladesh never limited family size by law. Its fertility rate fell from about 6.9 children per woman in the early 1970s to about 2 by the 2010s. Tap each circle to see how.

Of all indirect policies, educating girls and raising the status of women lower the birth rate the most. It is often called the most effective long-term strategy.

Real example: in Bangladesh, a stipend paid from 1994 kept rural girls in secondary school, on condition they stayed unmarried. Millions of women took jobs in garment factories, mostly from the 1980s on, and the Grameen Bank lent small sums to women to start businesses. Women married later and gained a say over family size.

Two traps: Write 'the education of women' or 'sex education', never just 'more education lowers fertility'.

A list of words (education, jobs, empowerment) earns little. Link each one to fewer births: 'women stay in school longer, so they marry later and have fewer children'.

Better health care lowers the death rate first. Then, as child mortality falls and family planning spreads, the birth rate falls too.

Real example: in the 1980s and 1990s Iran built thousands of village health houses, about 16,500 by 2004. From 1989 they gave free contraception. Child deaths fell, and Iran's fertility rate dropped from about 7 to about 2 in only 14 years, one of the fastest falls ever recorded.

Name the rate: Health care cuts the death rate first; female education cuts the birth rate. Say which rate each policy changes.

Money matters too. As a country grows richer, children cost more and bring in less, and pensions take the place of a large family in old age.

Real example: in South Korea families pay for private after-school classes, city flats cost a great deal, and working hours are long. Most women are educated and in careers, people marry late, and very few children are born outside marriage. In 2023 women had 0.72 children each.

Not credited: 'Low income from farming means they cannot afford many children' is not credited: in farming families children are often extra workers. Give the cost of raising children in a rich, urban society instead.

Are people's numbers set by their choices or by the resources around them? It depends on how developed a society is.

Real example: in Ireland's Great Famine (1845-1852) a disease destroyed the potato crop most poor families lived on: about a million people died and about a million emigrated. Today a rich, well-fed country like South Korea shrinks by choice, not by hunger.

For a [9] essay: Give both sides with named places: social, cultural, political and economic factors (Japan, Kerala, China) and resources (a famine, a drought). Conclude: in the later stages choices dominate; only early-stage populations are still limited by food and water.

How this comes up: Paper 2, Section B (c) [9]: 'Discuss the validity of this statement' on what controls human numbers. Marked in bands: terms, breadth, named examples, both sides, a supported conclusion.