IB MYP Individuals and Societies – Demographics and Human Movements Study Guide

This study guide is for IB MYP Individuals and Societies and follows the International Baccalaureate Organization, Middle Years Programme Subject Brief – Individuals and societies, from 2014. It teaches demographics and human movements, the first topic the brief lists for the individuals and societies on-screen examinations, and it suits MYP years 4 and 5. MYP has no SL/HL split, so everything here applies to every student, and the page is written with the on-screen examinations at the end of MYP year 5 in mind.

MYP has no prescribed content list – schools design their own units. This page covers a topic the IB’s brief lists, using standard geography and history. Your teacher will share the task-specific clarifications.

Use it with the demographics revision notes and the demographics practice questions. For the course as a whole, see the MYP Individuals and Societies hub and the printable checklist.

What this unit covers

Area	What you must be able to do	Criterion it mainly trains
Population measures	Define and calculate birth rate, death rate, natural increase, net migration and dependency ratio	A and B
Population structure	Read and describe a population pyramid; explain its shape	A and B
Demographic transition model	Describe the five stages; place a country in a stage using data; judge the model	A and D
Causes of migration	Classify push and pull factors; use Lee’s model of migration	A
Types of migration	Distinguish internal and international, voluntary and forced, temporary and permanent	A
Impacts of migration	Explain effects on the places people leave and the places they reach	A, C and D
Sources and data	Interpret tables and graphs; judge a source’s value and limitations	B and D

The brief names four equally weighted criteria – A Knowing and understanding, B Investigating, C Communicating, D Thinking critically – each with eight achievement levels (1–8) in four bands. The on-screen examination (in history, geography or integrated humanities) has three tasks: Investigating (26 marks, A and B), Communicating (18 marks, A and C) and Thinking critically (36 marks, A, C and D).

Why this topic suits the MYP concepts

The brief gives change, global interactions, time, place and space and systems as key concepts, and causality, globalization, culture and sustainability as example related concepts. A population is a system of inputs (births, immigrants) and outputs (deaths, emigrants), and migration is a global interaction with causes and consequences.

Measuring a population

Most rates are given per 1,000 people per year.

Measure	How to work it out
Crude birth rate (CBR)	births in a year ÷ total population × 1,000
Crude death rate (CDR)	deaths in a year ÷ total population × 1,000
Natural increase rate (NIR)	(CBR − CDR) ÷ 10, giving a percentage
Net migration	immigrants − emigrants
Population change	births − deaths + immigrants − emigrants
Infant mortality rate	deaths of babies under one year ÷ live births × 1,000
Dependency ratio	(people aged 0–14 + people aged 65+) ÷ people aged 15–64 × 100
Doubling time (estimate)	70 ÷ NIR in % (“rule of 70”)

Total fertility rate is the average number of children a woman would have in her lifetime at current rates. Replacement level is about 2.1: enough for each generation to replace itself. Life expectancy is the average number of years a newborn can expect to live.

Worked example: Norland (fictional data)

Norland has a population of 12,400,000. In one year there were 186,000 births, 74,400 deaths, 52,000 immigrants and 31,000 emigrants.

CBR = 186,000 ÷ 12,400,000 × 1,000 = 15.0 per 1,000
CDR = 74,400 ÷ 12,400,000 × 1,000 = 6.0 per 1,000
NIR = (15.0 − 6.0) ÷ 10 = 0.9 %
Net migration = 52,000 − 31,000 = +21,000
Population change = 186,000 − 74,400 + 21,000 = +132,600
Growth rate = 132,600 ÷ 12,400,000 × 100 = 1.07 %
Doubling time ≈ 70 ÷ 0.9 ≈ 78 years (natural increase only)

The growth rate (1.07%) is higher than the NIR (0.9%) because Norland gains people through migration. Say which figure you are using.

Norland’s age structure is 2,480,000 aged 0–14, 8,060,000 aged 15–64 and 1,860,000 aged 65+.

Dependency ratio = (2,480,000 + 1,860,000) ÷ 8,060,000 × 100 = 53.8
Youth dependency = 2,480,000 ÷ 8,060,000 × 100 = 30.8
Old-age dependency = 1,860,000 ÷ 8,060,000 × 100 = 23.1

A ratio of 53.8 means about 54 dependants for every 100 people of working age. It is a rough guide: many 15-year-olds are in school and many 66-year-olds still work.

Population pyramids

A population pyramid is two horizontal bar charts back to back: males on one side, females on the other, age bands up the vertical axis and numbers or percentages along the horizontal axis. Check which before you describe it.

Shape	What it shows	Typical stage
Wide base, sides slope in sharply, narrow top	High birth rate, high death rate at all ages, short life expectancy	Stages 1–2
Base starting to narrow, wider middle	Falling birth rate, more people surviving into middle age	Stage 3
Straight sides, roughly column-shaped	Low birth and death rates, many older people	Stage 4
Base narrower than the middle	Birth rate below replacement, ageing population	Stage 5

Look for irregularities as well as the overall shape:

• A notch (short bar) can come from war, famine, epidemic or very low births. A second notch 25–30 years later is an “echo”: fewer people became parents.
• A bulge can come from a baby boom or from immigration.
• An imbalance between the sexes in the working ages often shows labour migration. Some Gulf states, such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, have many more men than women aged roughly 20–45 because large numbers of male workers have migrated there.
• More women than men in the oldest bands is normal: women on average live longer.

To describe a pyramid, work from overall shape, to base, to top, to irregularities (naming the age bands), and quote figures: “about 6% of the population are males aged 0–4”.

The demographic transition model

The demographic transition model (DTM) shows how birth rates, death rates and total population change as a country develops. It was based on what happened in European countries.

Stage	Birth rate	Death rate	Population	Main reasons
1 High stationary	High	High, fluctuating	Low, little growth	Disease, famine, poor hygiene; many children needed for farm work
2 Early expanding	High	Falling fast	Rapid growth	Better food supply, clean water, sanitation, vaccination and medical care
3 Late expanding	Falling	Low, still falling	Growth slows	Family planning, lower infant mortality, more women in education and paid work, urban living
4 Low stationary	Low	Low	High, stable	Children are costly; people choose smaller families
5 Declining	Very low, below death rate	Low, rising slightly	Slowly falling	Ageing population; later marriage and parenthood

Worked example: placing countries (fictional data)

Kestria: CBR 38, CDR 12. NIR = (38 − 12) ÷ 10 = 2.6%; doubling time ≈ 70 ÷ 2.6 ≈ 27 years. Births still high, deaths well below: stage 2.

Soria: CBR 9, CDR 11. NIR = (9 − 11) ÷ 10 = −0.2%. Deaths exceed births, so without immigration the population falls: stage 5.

Evaluating the model

• Strengths: simple; fits many European countries’ history; allows comparison and prediction.
• Limitations: ignores migration; assumes every country follows the European path, though some moved through it far faster; no timescale; ignores policy, such as China’s one-child policy (from 1980, replaced by a two-child policy in 2016), and disease.

Why people move

Migration is a change of usual home, across a boundary, for a significant time. Tourism and commuting are not migration.

Push factors make people want to leave a place (unemployment, conflict, persecution, drought, poor services). Pull factors attract people to a place (jobs, higher wages, safety, family already there, education). Group them as economic, social, political and environmental – this makes explanations clearer and helps you compare.

Lee’s model of migration

The geographer Everett Lee’s 1966 model adds two ideas to push and pull:

• Intervening obstacles between origin and destination: distance, cost of travel, border controls and visas, language, a sea or mountain crossing.
• Personal factors: age, family ties, skills and attitude to risk. The same push factor affects different people differently.

This explains why the poorest people are not always the ones who migrate: they may not afford the journey.

Types of migration

Type	Meaning	Example
Internal	Within one country	Rural-to-urban migration; the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to northern US cities in the 20th century
International	Across a national border	Emigration from Ireland after the Great Famine of 1845–1852
Voluntary	The migrant chooses to move	Moving abroad for a better-paid job
Forced	People have little or no choice	The movement of millions of people across the new borders at the Partition of India in 1947
Temporary or seasonal	For a limited period	Farm workers who move for the harvest
Permanent	Settling for good	Families who join relatives abroad

Know these terms exactly. A refugee has fled their country because of a well-founded fear of persecution, as defined in the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. An asylum seeker has asked for protection as a refugee but has not yet had a decision. An internally displaced person has been forced from home but is still inside their own country. An economic migrant moves mainly for work or higher income.

Impacts of migration

Balance the effects on the place of origin and the destination, and on the migrants themselves.

	Place of origin	Destination
Economic	Remittances (money sent home) support families; loss of skilled workers (“brain drain”)	Fills labour shortages; migrants pay taxes; some pressure on wages in low-paid jobs is often argued
Social	Fewer young adults; ageing population; families separated	Cultural diversity; pressure on housing, schools and health care in some areas
Demographic	Lower birth rate as young adults leave	Younger workforce; birth rate may rise
Political	Returning migrants may bring new ideas	Migration can become a divisive political issue

Effects on the destination are debated. In extended writing, set out more than one view with evidence and reach a judgement that depends on the case: the scale of migration, the migrants’ skills and the receiving country’s policies. The arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury in 1948 is often used to study post-war migration from the Caribbean to Britain.

Working with sources and data

With tables and graphs, quote figures, calculate changes and describe trends before explaining them. Judge written sources by origin, purpose and content: a migrant’s letter shows one experience vividly but not how typical it was. On flow maps, line thickness shows the size of a movement. For a full method, read source-evaluation exam preparation.

Common errors

• Writing NIR as “15 − 6 = 9%” instead of 0.9%. Divide the difference per 1,000 by 10.
• Confusing growth from natural increase with total growth, which includes migration.
• Describing a pyramid without any figures, or reading percentages as numbers of people.
• Calling any migrant a “refugee”. Use the exact term.
• Giving only negative impacts of migration, or only positive ones, in a “to what extent” answer.

Next steps

Test yourself with the revision notes and practice questions. For the criteria and tasks, read the MYP Individuals and Societies subject guide, the four criteria in practice and the disciplines in MYP Individuals and Societies. Related unit: settlement and urban morphology.

Official syllabus

This page is aligned to the International Baccalaureate Organization, Middle Years Programme Subject Brief – Individuals and societies, from 2014. The brief lists “demographics and human movements” among the topics explored in the individuals and societies on-screen examinations. The full MYP individuals and societies guide is available to schools through the IB.