The Preindustrial Stage: High Births and Deaths in the First Demographic Phase

For most of human history, the world’s population barely grew. Babies were born in large numbers, but death rates were just as ruthless. This delicate, often tragic balance defines the very first stage of the demographic transition, the era before industrialisation reshaped how humans lived, worked and survived. Understanding this stage is essential because it sets the baseline against which every later demographic shift is measured.

What the first stage of demographic transition really means 🔗

The demographic transition model is a framework that explains how societies move from high birth and death rates to low ones as they industrialise. It was first proposed by the American demographer Warren Thompson in 1929, who studied population data from several countries between 1908 and 1927 and grouped them by their patterns of natural increase. His framework was later refined by Frank Notestein in the 1940s and remains a cornerstone of population studies today.

The first stage, often called the preindustrial or high stationary stage, describes societies where both fertility and mortality are extremely high. Because the two roughly cancel each other out, population growth is minimal and the total population stays low and stable over long periods. According to Population Education, this stage dominated nearly all of human existence until about the 18th century, when industrialisation began to disturb the equilibrium in parts of Europe.

The numbers behind the stage 🔗

In the first stage, crude birth rates typically hovered around 40 or higher per 1,000 people annually, and death rates were similarly high. The result is what demographers call a “high fluctuating” pattern, where good harvests caused short bursts of population growth, while famine, epidemics or wars wiped out those gains. Life expectancy rarely crossed 30 to 40 years, and a significant portion of children never survived past their fifth birthday.

Characteristics that define the first stage 🔗

The defining feature of this stage is the near-equilibrium between births and deaths. But several deeper conditions sustain this balance, and they cut across economy, health, culture and environment.

High birth rates and their drivers 🔗

Birth rates in preindustrial societies were not high by accident. They were shaped by both necessity and social structure. Several factors explain why fertility remained so high. There was no organised family planning or modern contraception, children were viewed as economic assets who could work in fields and care for ageing parents, and raising children carried very low monetary cost since there was no expectation of formal education. Religion, tradition and patriarchal customs also encouraged large families, with sons especially valued for inheritance and labour.

Crucially, high birth rates were also a defensive response to high mortality. When parents could not be sure how many of their children would survive, they had more, hoping that at least a few would live into adulthood.

High death rates and their causes 🔗

Mortality in this stage was driven by a combination of biological, environmental and social factors. Infectious diseases such as plague, smallpox, cholera and tuberculosis swept through populations with regularity. Sanitation was poor, clean drinking water was a luxury, and medical knowledge was rudimentary. Childbirth itself was extremely dangerous, with both maternal and infant mortality contributing enormously to overall death rates.

Famine was another constant threat. Because most people depended directly on what they grew, a single bad monsoon, drought or crop failure could trigger mass starvation. Add to this recurring warfare, and the picture becomes clear: death was a frequent, often unpredictable visitor.

The socio-economic foundations of stage one 🔗

The demographic patterns of this stage are inseparable from the economic and social structures that supported them. These societies were not just statistically different from modern ones, they functioned in fundamentally different ways.

A subsistence economy 🔗

First-stage societies operated almost entirely at a subsistence level. Agriculture was the dominant occupation, employing the overwhelming majority of the population. Farming relied on human and animal labour, with little mechanisation, no chemical fertilisers and limited scientific understanding of soil or crops. Yields were modest and highly vulnerable to weather. Most families produced just enough to feed themselves, with little or no surplus for trade or savings.

This labour-intensive economy made large families an asset rather than a burden. More children meant more hands to plough fields, gather firewood, draw water and tend animals. The economic logic of the household reinforced the demographic pattern.

Low productivity and limited urbanisation 🔗

Because productivity per worker was low, very little economic surplus existed to fuel cities, trade or industry. Towns were small, and the vast majority of people lived in rural villages. Without urban centres, there was no concentrated demand for goods, no large markets, and limited innovation. Education was largely absent for the common person, and literacy rates remained extremely low. Women, in particular, had almost no access to schooling, which kept fertility expectations high and women’s roles confined to childbearing and domestic work.

Poor living standards and minimal medical advancement 🔗

Housing was often crowded and poorly ventilated, which helped diseases spread quickly. Nutrition was inadequate, especially during lean seasons. Public health systems, in any modern sense, simply did not exist. There were no vaccines, no antibiotics and no germ theory to guide behaviour. Rural societies dependent on subsistence agriculture faced constant exposure to disease, with limited tools to respond.

The result was a society where life was, in the famous phrase of philosopher Thomas Hobbes, often “nasty, brutish and short”. Yet, paradoxically, the population remained stable because the very same conditions that killed people also pushed survivors to keep producing more children.

Why the population stayed stable despite high fertility 🔗

One of the most striking features of the first stage is how it produced a slow-growing population despite very high birth rates. The arithmetic is simple but powerful: when births and deaths are roughly equal, natural increase is close to zero. Even small fluctuations in food supply, weather or disease outbreaks could tip the balance, causing short-term booms or busts.

This is why the population in this stage was essentially determined by the food supply. Any change in agricultural output translated almost directly into changes in population size. The Malthusian trap, as economist Thomas Malthus described it, kept humanity locked in a cycle where any gains in food production were quickly absorbed by population growth, returning living standards to subsistence levels.

Are any countries still in the first stage today? 🔗

This is where the model gets interesting in the modern context. Strictly speaking, no country in the world today fully meets the criteria of stage one. Even the poorest and most fragile nations have seen at least some decline in death rates due to global vaccination drives, basic public health interventions and humanitarian aid. Most demographers now classify all countries as being in stage two or beyond.

However, several countries continue to exhibit characteristics that strongly resemble the first stage, especially in terms of high fertility, fragile health systems and subsistence agriculture.

Sierra Leone 🔗

Sierra Leone is often cited in Indian textbooks as a classic example of a country experiencing first-stage demographic conditions. The country has a young population, a high total fertility rate, and historically very high maternal and infant mortality. While its death rates have started to decline due to international health support, birth rates remain elevated. According to recent demographic data, Sierra Leone is now in early stage two, with a total fertility rate of 3.7 children per woman in 2024 and a birth rate of around 22 per 1,000.

Somalia 🔗

Somalia presents an even starker picture. It has a total fertility rate of around 6 children per woman and a birth rate of roughly 35 per 1,000, among the highest in the world. Decades of political instability, conflict and weak health infrastructure mean that mortality, especially maternal and child mortality, also remains very high. A study published in Oxford Academic’s International Health journal showed that Somalia’s maternal mortality ratio dropped from 1,044 to 692 per 100,000 live births between 2006 and 2020, moving the country from stage one to stage two of the obstetric transition pathway. Still, the conditions on the ground, subsistence agriculture, limited urbanisation, fragile healthcare, mirror the first-stage description very closely.

Why the first stage still matters for students of population studies 🔗

You might wonder why a stage that almost no country occupies anymore deserves so much attention. The answer lies in what it teaches us. The first stage represents the baseline of human demographic experience. For thousands of years, this was the normal state of affairs. Understanding it helps explain why the global population was relatively small for so long, and why the explosion of growth from the 18th century onwards represented such a dramatic break from human history.

It also offers a lens through which to understand current development challenges. Countries with weak health systems, poor education, low female literacy and dependence on subsistence farming face barriers strikingly similar to those of preindustrial societies. Policymakers working on rural healthcare, maternal welfare or family planning in less-developed regions are, in essence, helping societies move out of stage one conditions.

Finally, the first stage reminds us that demographic change is not just about numbers. It is about economic structures, cultural norms, gender roles, public health systems and political stability. Each of these shapes the others. The transition out of stage one is never just a fall in death rates, it is a transformation of the entire society.

What do you think? If high birth rates in the first stage were partly a response to high mortality, what does that tell us about how families today might respond to sudden increases in child survival? And do you think any region in the world could realistically “slip back” into first-stage conditions if a major crisis like climate change or prolonged conflict disrupted its progress?

References

1. https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/thompson-warren-s
2. https://populationeducation.org/stage-1-demographic-transition-model/
3. https://helpfulprofessor.com/demographic-transition-model-stages/
4. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/social-sciences-and-humanities/industrialization-demographic-transition-theory
5. https://www.buddinggeographers.com/demographic-transition-model-dtm/
6. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/stage-1-dtm-countries
7. https://www.populationpyramids.org/sierra-leone
8. https://populationpyramids.org/somalia
9. https://academic.oup.com/inthealth/article/16/4/471/7578345