Assess the validity of the DTM

Assess the Validity of the DTM regarding Global population pressure[15]
In this Essay I am going to talk about how valid the Demographic Transition Model is. That means whether it is too predictable , old fashioned or if it doesn’t work with every country due to some Factors being left out. It has to be remembered that the DTM is only a model and cannot predict the future. It does give an indication though of what the future birth and death rates may be for an „underdeveloped“ country, together with the total population size. Most particularly the DTM makes no comment on change in population due to migration.
The first important factor is that it has no timescale, which makes it very difficult to make any specific predictions on global population change . On the other Hand it allows countries who develope at different rates and are therefore not on the same stage to fit into the same model , which makes it easier to compare two economically totally different countries. In my Opinion the point that you can compare any country with any other just looking at population change over time is amazing and highly more serious than the fact that you can’t make specific predictions , which you couldn’t make accurately anyways due to every country „going through“ the model at its own speed.
This Directly leads into the next point which is that the DTM was orginally designed for western industrialised countries and due to it assuming that every country driving population change will follow the same patterns , it does only very little or not at all apply to newly industrialising countries such as China already is and India ,according to some demographers, will soon be. However you can easily understand the population changes of some countries because of them being based on real data. I personally think that there are surely some countries which differ heavily from the ones which the DTM was originally designed for but in general every country ( at least until this day ) follows the DTM more or less strictly if you do not take temporary events such as war or disease into account.
If for example a countries death rate would rise and total population would therefore decrease due to temporary disease or war, like it is happening and has happened in some parts of sub-saharan Africa due to HIV/AIDS for example, it should realistically go back to a stage it has already been in before (possibly also a post-war baby-boom happening) . But this is according to the DTM not even possible and can’t be taken into account due to it being uni-directional. I think this is a strong indicator showing that it is only a generalised model and shouldn’t be used to make precise arguments on future population growth in all countries but rather to forecast some countries comparing them to relatively similar countries that already went through most stages.

The last and possibly most frequently demonstrated as a sensitive point in the past is that the DTM doesn’t take any Governmental and/or Migrational changes into account . This lead to many mis-predictions in the past. The biggest probably being Chinas One-Child Policy. Before this governmental law enforcement demographers saw Chinas population at 3 billion and above until 2000. Another very important example of this is probably the USA which should have entered stage 5 for some time now but didn’t due tot he Government actively controlling Immigration and holding the Population stable in stage 4 like this.
To conclude one could say that the DTM is not very specific due to it seeing Global population as a whole and not every single country for its own however this makes it fairly useful when looking at global population pressure. It has many strengths as well as many weaknesses which are rather important, but I think that for every point against its validity you can find , there is also a point for it . In the End I think due to the DTM being a very generalised model it cannot necessarily predict the future . However it can show us some very clear Indications for the Future Birth and Death rates for some countries , but clearly not for every single one due to it being very unspecific. Therefore if you look only at a global scale I think the DTM is mostly very valid to apply although it has some exceptions if you look at specific countries.