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Higher Education

Sociology, 4e: Chapter 21

Instructions: For each question, click on the radio button beside your answer. When you have completed the entire quiz, click the Submit my answers button at the bottom of the page to receive your results.

Question 1:


a) more than half of all first-union couples were common-law
b) there was a generalized acceptance of staying single
c) there was an increase in the total marriage rate of single persons
d) the median age at marriage started going down
e) all of the above

Question 2:


a) population increase
b) Black Death (bubonic plague)
c) increase of qualified teachers
d) increasing power of churches
e) declining mortality rate

Question 3:


a) China’s
b) India’s
c) Africa’s
d) South America’s
e) Europe’s

Question 4:


a) momentum
b) density
c) age effects
d) reproduction
e) replacement

Question 5:


a) Japan
b) Germany
c) Italy
d) Bangladesh
e) Singapore

Question 6:


a) rapidly / 30
b) slow / 15
c) medium / 10
d) constant / 20
e) slow / 5

Question 7:


a) A pre-transitional period of high birth and death rates with very low population growth
b) A transitional phase of high fertility, declining death rates, and explosive growth
c) Post-transitional phase of improvements in agriculture and better standards of living
d) A final stage of low mortality and fertility and low natural increase
e) A transitional phase where the excess of births over deaths was responsible for the modern rise of population—the “population explosion”

Question 8:


a) began to fall
b) began to increase
c) stayed about the same
d) increased more than they did in Africa
e) began to increase to Africa’s levels

Question 9:


a) Unlike much of the rest of the world, economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa increased rather than declined during the 1990s.
b) Life expectancy fell owing to the devastating effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic while the rest of the world enjoyed longevity improvements.
c) Family planning was assigned lower priority.
d) There was decline in family planning services, especially among adolescents.
e) Unwanted fertility increased.

Question 10:


a) Chinese government implemented the one-child policy in the late 1970s.
b) There is currently enough young women for the number of eligible young men to marry.
c) Given the government’s one-child directive, over the past several decades many couples have been resorting to sex-selective abortion to ensure having a sole male child.
d) The Chinese government has tried to control population by limiting most rural families to one child, two if the first is a girl.
e) Since boys are prized in rural areas—they can work the land and give more support to their families—many couples choose to abort female fetuses

Question 11:


a) incremental socio-economic advancements
b) economic modernization
c) the diffusion of medical knowledge and technologies as well as public health programs, including family planning and vaccination campaigns with the help of the industrialized countries
d) better education for children, especially girls
e) all of the above

Question 12:


a) Human beings are very strongly motivated by a desire for sexual intercourse.
b) The high fertility of humans will lead to rapid population growth.
c) Economic resources, and in particular food production, cannot keep pace with this population growth within a basically agrarian economy largely dependent on human labour.
d) Consumption and production are closely tied to a society’s cultural standards for material comfort and demand for consumer products.
e) There is an inherent tendency in humans to increase in numbers beyond the means of subsistence available to them.

Question 13:


a) two-fold / four-fold
b) geometrically / arithmetically
c) arithmetically / geometrically
d) four-fold / two-fold
e) both B and D

Question 14:


a) positive checks
b) conditions that raise the death rate and reduce population, such as famine, pestilence, war, and disease
c) preventative checks
d) the human will to deliberately curtail reproduction through celibacy, postponed marriage, and sexual abstinence
e) all of the above

Question 15:


a) Preventative checks include immoral acts such as abortion and contraception.
b) In a slow-growing population with strong material expectations, the potential for environmental and resource depletion may be greater than in a fast-growing population with lower levels of material aspirations and technological sophistication.
c) Increased consumer demand for material goods spurs economic activity and greater levels of economic activity heighten the risk of environmental damage because of increased pollution and resource depletion.
d) In industrial societies, overpopulation is no longer the threat Malthus put forward.
e) The economy now presses the population to consume, so in the long term, the spiral of consumption and production may not be sustainable

Question 16:


a) poverty arises as a result of overpopulation
b) socio-economic inequality is a root cause of human problems and suffering
c) policies need to be instituted within the capitalist system to ensure an equitable distribution of wealth and resources
d) developing countries embrace population policies that are consistent with neo-Malthusian principles and view family planning and reproductive health programs as being of critical importance
e) all of the above

Question 17:


a) the world’s population increase will be able to innovate ways to deal with the planet’s critical ecological limits
b) abstinence is a key element in population control
c) an expanding population in conjunction with excessive consumerism and economic production will, in the long term, lead to the depletion of essential resources and to ecological breakdown
d) the globalization of capital often exacerbates socio-economic disparities within and across societies
e) wealthy regions have overwhelming economic and political influence over less advantaged nations

Question 18:


a) half
b) one-third
c) one-fourth
d) two-thirds
e) three-quarters

Question 19:


a) Infectious and parasitic diseases
b) Cardiovascular disease
c) Cancer
d) Accidents
e) Violence

Question 20:


a) During stage one, in prehistoric times, life was ruled by Malthusian positive checks—famine, misery, pestilence.
b) During stage one, infectious and parasitic diseases were the leading killers, along with violence and accidents.
c) During stage four, cancer and heart disease are the leading causes of death and people increasingly survive these ailments as a result of effective medical therapies and interventions.
d) During stage two, with the advent of agriculture and, later, improved systems of food production and distribution, as well as general advances in the standard of living, humanities developed the ability to resist many infectious diseases.
e) During stage three, chronic and degenerative ailments, such as cancer and heart disease, were the leading killers.

Question 21:


a) The extent of non-marriage
b) The level of contraceptive use
c) The degree to which abortion is practised
d) The level of postpartum amenorrhea
e) The marriage laws

Question 22:


a) the economic recovery and prosperity of the postwar period
b) the fact that young men could find abundant work
c) governments creating safety-net systems to enhance the welfare of their populations
d) the church exerting a strong moral influence on the people, reinforcing pro-natalist values
e) all of the above

Question 23:


a) the tendency of women in the 1950s was to be preoccupied with marriage to a successful husband, motherhood, and a new home in the suburbs
b) in the 1950s, late marriage and late parenthood were common
c) the traditional system of gender roles began to collapse in the 1970s and was eventually supplanted by a more egalitarian system
d) at the outset of the 1970s, women began their ‘flight’ from domesticity, seeking to redefine themselves as full participants in the economic and educational spheres of society
e) all of the above

Question 24:


a) The baby boom and the baby bust represent a natural sequence in a self-regulatory process whereby periods of low fertility give rise to periods of high fertility and vice versa.
b) The driving forces of the cyclical pattern of baby boom and baby bust include how well the economy performs in meeting the material aspirations of young adults, the size of one’s birth cohort, and the strength of material preferences among young people of
c) The baby bust has resulted from the growing gap between the material aspirations of the baby-boom cohorts and declining socio-economic opportunities for this generation to satisfy their material goals.
d) The baby bust resulted from the collapse of the traditional system of gender roles in the 1960s.
e) The numerically large size of the baby-boom cohorts represents a source of insecurity because large cohorts do not fare as well as small cohorts in finding permanent work and in advancing in the workplace.

Question 25:


a) low fertility rates in advanced societies in recent decades are linked to the rising value of time for women
b) most women are now gainfully employed in the labour market, which means that the economic value of their time is now greater
c) having children means having to forego not only potential income but also career opportunities
d) a rise in the average incomes of males helps to promote increased childbearing among couples because of greater affordability
e) all of the above

Question 26:


a) late marriage and raising small families
b) early marriage and raising large families
c) cohabitation
d) diverse family forms
e) avoiding having children and foregoing matrimony

Question 27:


a) Researches have observed a tendency for migration propensities to increase in old age.
b) Almost one-fifth of Canada’s population is made up of first-generation immigrants.
c) Since the early part of the 1970s, the major immigration sources to Canada have been all regions of Europe.
d) The majority of immigrants to Canada settle in the largest metropolitan areas of Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec.
e) About 19 million interprovincial moves were recorded between 1951 and 2011.