Challenges and opportunities practice questions.

Female literacy and secondary school enrolment in Kerala, India have long exceeded the Indian average, and the state's total fertility rate was below the national figure in 2020. Which mechanism best explains this link at the regional scale?

• Formal schooling directly reduces a woman's biological capacity to conceive
• Educated women are more likely to emigrate before childbearing
• Later marriage and better contraceptive knowledge lower fertility
• State health spending raises infant mortality and so family size

Answer: Later marriage and better contraceptive knowledge lower fertility

Education works through timing and agency rather than biology: girls who stay in school marry later, know more about contraception and face a higher opportunity cost of leaving paid work. Falling infant mortality lowers desired family size, so the claim that health spending raises infant mortality reverses the actual relationship.

A country's total fertility rate has been below 1.5 for two decades and its population is ageing rapidly. Which combination of consequences follows most directly?

• A rising old-age dependency ratio and a shrinking workforce
• A rising youth dependency ratio and pressure on school places
• An immediate fall in total population regardless of migration
• A demographic dividend as the working-age share expands

Answer: A rising old-age dependency ratio and a shrinking workforce

Sustained low fertility narrows the base of the population pyramid, so after a generation the working-age cohort shrinks while the number above 65 grows. Total population may still rise for years through momentum and migration, which is why the dependency ratio changes before the total does.

A country's working-age share of the population is unusually large because fertility has fallen while the larger cohorts born earlier are still of working age. Which statement correctly describes this situation?

• A demographic dividend, realised only if there are jobs and education for that cohort
• A demographic dividend, which raises income automatically once it occurs
• A demographic transition, which always ends in population decline
• A dependency crisis, since a large workforce increases the burden on services

Answer: A demographic dividend, realised only if there are jobs and education for that cohort

The dividend is an opportunity created by age structure, not an outcome: a large working-age cohort raises output only if it is employed and skilled. Where jobs are scarce, the same structure produces unemployment and emigration instead.

A government raises the state pension age by two years. In which situation is that change least likely to reduce the cost of its ageing population?

• Where most employment is office-based and healthy life expectancy is long.
• Where employers offer part-time contracts to workers in their sixties.
• Where older workers can retrain for growing service industries.
• Where many older workers do manual jobs and leave early through ill health.

Answer: Where many older workers do manual jobs and leave early through ill health.

The saving depends on people actually working the extra years. Where poor health forces early exit, the cost simply moves from the pension budget to health and disability budgets: the policy changes who pays, not how much is paid.

A government concerned about its ageing population introduces a payment for each new baby. Why does its total dependency ratio rise before it can fall?

• Because the payment is financed from taxes on people of working age.
• Because the extra children are themselves dependants for about 15 years.
• Because older people live longer once family support has improved.
• Because the policy encourages some workers to leave employment permanently.

Answer: Because the extra children are themselves dependants for about 15 years.

The ratio counts the young and the old together as dependants, so a birth today enters the numerator at once and the denominator only some fifteen years later. How the payment is financed changes the budget, not the ratio.

In a high-income country with low child mortality, the replacement level of fertility is conventionally taken as ___ children per woman (to 1 d.p.).

Answer: 2.1

Slightly more boys than girls are born, about 105 to 100, so a couple needs marginally more than two children for two of them to replace the parents. The remaining allowance covers the few girls who die before the end of their reproductive years; where child mortality is high the replacement level rises well above 2.1.