Which is not a factor for decrease in population growth ?
(1) Epidemics and Pandemics
(2) Natural Disasters/Famines
(3) Wars
(4) Vaccinations
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Vaccinations
Option (4) Vaccinations — Not a factor that decreases population growth (Correct). Programmes for mass vaccination, with improvements in medical cures and sanitation, helped to control epidemics. Fewer deaths lower the death rate, and with the birth rate unchanged the population grows faster, not slower.
NCERT (2025-26): “Improvements in medical cures for these diseases, programmes for mass vaccination, and efforts to improve sanitation helped to control epidemics. However, diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhoea and dysentery continue to kill people even today, although the numbers are nowhere as high as they used to be in the epidemics of the past. Surat witnessed a small epidemic of plague in September 1994, while dengue and chikungunya epidemics are since reported in various parts of the country. Famines were also a major and recurring source of increased mortality.…” “The Malthusian Theory of Population Growth … Malthus believed therefore that ‘positive checks’ to population growth – in the form of famines and diseases – were inevitable because they were nature’s way of dealing with the imbalance between food supply and increasing population.…” |