IGCSE Development Studies: Specimen Questions with Answers 33 - 34 of 98

Explanation

The fertility rate is not able to find out the rate of growth of population and mortality. The fertility rate is not able to provide the actual idea of the rate of population because they ignore the sex of newly born children and their mortality.

Gross reproduction rate measures the rate at which a new born female would. It shows the rate of at which mother՚s would be replaced by daughters and old generation by the new. If no mother died or migrated before reaching the upper limit of child bearing age i.e.. 15 - 49.

Explanation

The cause of death is known through the mortality rate of a country which is known as death rate or mortality rate.

For a country it is important to know the causes of death as it becomes easy to decide the allocation of resources to get the maximum impact of improving health conditions. These resources represent a considerable percentage of annual budgets of a country. Causes of death vary between countries. In a developed country the cause of death is non-communicable one whereas in less developed countries cause of death is infectious disease.

There are several reasons for high death rate in country. Some of them are:

• The leading cause of death in a country is cardiovascular diseases. It is the disease which affects the heart of a person leading to heart failure.
• The second major cause of death is cancer. Cancer is a disease in which abnormal cells divide and spread to the tissue nearby.
• Dementia is also responsible for high death rate in a country. It can take several forms, the most popular one is ‘Alzheimer՚s’ which affects the memory, judgement, learning capacity and language.
• Diarrheal disease is caused by virus and bacterial infections. Such diseases generally prevail in less developed countries.