World Population Class 12 Geography NCERT Solutions 2026-27

Two anchors carry this entire MCQ set: the continent-wise growth-rate ranking and the demographic transition diagram. If you can recall Africa as highest-growth and sketch the three-stage diagram from memory, every Stage-related MCQ becomes a one-line answer.

• (i) Africa's growth rate (~2.3%) is the world's highest. It is in Stage II - death rate has crashed, birth rate is still high. The question asks which continent has the highest growth, so the answer is (a) Africa.
• (ii) Sparseness comes from physical constraints: extreme aridity, thick rainforest and disease load, or extreme cold. South-east Asia has none of these - it has fertile alluvial soils, monsoon rains and a long history of wet-rice cultivation. Answer: (b).
• (iii) Push at origin, pull at destination. Medical and educational facilities are clearly destination-side attractions (pull). Answer: (b).
• (iv) Draw Stage I on rough paper: both BR and DR are high and close together. The gap is narrow, so net growth is slow. High net growth is a feature of Stage II (when the gap widens). So (b) is the statement that is not a fact. Answer: (b).

(i) (a); (ii) (b); (iii) (b); (iv) (b).

A 30-word brief is best written as a crisp list. Use the chapter's exact phrases - "availability of water", "net migration", "natural change" - because examiners reward students who show they read the textbook, not just a summary.

• (i) The textbook names four geographical drivers: water, landforms, climate and soils. Any three earn full marks. Quote them by name and add a half-line example for each.
• (ii) Use the stack-up principle as your scaffold. A place is dense when water + flat land + fertile soil + mild climate + economic activity all coincide. The Ganga plain, Nile delta and Yangtze plain are all examples of this stack-up.
• (iii) Frame as an equation: Population change = (Births - Deaths) + Net Migration. Births and deaths together are called natural change; migration is the third component. Each can be positive or negative.

Examiners also give credit for writing one numerical fact: Africa's growth rate is about 2.3% per year (Stage II of demographic transition). Including one such number in a 30-word answer distinguishes a good answer from an average one.

Both contrasts share the same skeleton: a pair of opposite-direction forces. Birth adds, death subtracts. Push sends out, pull brings in. Frame each contrast around four rows - what it is, where it operates, what drives it, and an example - and the answer writes itself.

(i) Four-row contrast, birth vs death rate:

• What: CBR counts live births per 1,000 per year; CDR counts deaths per 1,000 per year.
• Direction: CBR is additive (grows population); CDR is subtractive (shrinks population).
• Drivers: CBR responds to fertility, female education, contraception, age structure. CDR responds to sanitation, medicine, nutrition, war, disasters.
• Stage role: Both high in Stage I; death rate falls first in Stage II; birth rate catches up in Stage III.

(ii) Four-row contrast, push vs pull:

• Location: Push at origin (place being left), pull at destination (place being moved to).
• Sign: Push = negative conditions at home (drought, job loss, conflict). Pull = positive conditions elsewhere (jobs, schools, safety).
• Direction of movement: Push sends people away from a region; pull draws them towards it.
• Realistic mix: Most migrations have both a push and a pull component working together.

Board tip: the examiner frequently asks students to name examples. Use "drought in rural Rajasthan (push) + IT jobs in Bengaluru (pull)" as your Indian example for push-pull. It is specific, real and scores the application mark.

(i) Distribution and density - picture-first approach:

Before writing, draw a world map mentally and locate the three classic dense belts: the East Asian rice bowl, the South Asian Indo-Gangetic plain and the European industrial core. Now ask: what do all three share? Answer: flat land + reliable water + fertile soil + long urban history. That is your scaffold.

• Geographical layer: Water is the single biggest predictor of where people have lived historically. River valleys are always dense. Flat plains (Indo-Gangetic, North European) carry far more people than steep terrain. Moderate climates attract; polar, hot-desert and very wet equatorial climates repel. Fertile alluvial soils make farming productive and populations dense.
• Economic layer: Minerals (Katanga, Damodar), urbanisation (mega-cities of Asia draw millions every year) and industrialisation (Kobe-Osaka, Ruhr) create the economic magnet that pulls people in.
• Socio-cultural layer: Peace, political stability, religious significance (Varanasi, Vatican) and active government settlement policies all add to density at specific places.

Dense regions of the world are dense because all three layers overlap. A region with only one favourable factor is rarely very dense.

(ii) Demographic transition - narrative approach:

Sketch the Stage I-II-III diagram on rough paper before writing: a BR curve running high, and a DR curve starting high, diving in Stage II, and meeting BR again in Stage III. Now write the narrative from this picture.

• Stage I (High Fluctuating): Pre-industrial life keeps both rates high. Epidemics and famines spike the death rate up and down. The gap between BR and DR is small, so net growth is slow and erratic.
• Stage II (Expanding): A public-health revolution - vaccination, antibiotics, clean water - crashes the death rate quickly. Cultural and economic forces keep birth rate high. The widening gap produces a population boom. Contemporary India and much of sub-Saharan Africa are here.
• Stage III (Low Fluctuating): Female education, urbanisation and contraception push the birth rate down to meet the already-low death rate. Growth becomes slow or even negative. Japan and many European countries are good examples.

Use the chapter's exact phrases (Stage I High Fluctuating, Stage II Expanding, Stage III Low Fluctuating). Add one country per stage. These small moves push the answer from 4/5 to 5/5.