Demographic data is NOT important for which of the following?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Preventing disintegration of joint families
Option (1) Planning and implementation of state policies — Important (Incorrect). Demographic data are important for the planning and implementation of state policies; the state needs to know how many people there are, where, and of what age to plan schools, hospitals or food supply.
Option (2) General Public Welfare — Important (Incorrect). Policies for general public welfare are among those the data serve, since welfare schemes must reach the people who need them.
Option (3) Preventing disintegration of joint families — Not important for this (Correct). Demographic data are numbers about the population: its size, births, deaths, migration and age and sex structure. They can show how households change, but holding a joint family together is not a task of state planning, so this is not a use the data are put to.
Option (4) Economic development — Important (Incorrect). State policies specially those for economic development depend on demographic data, for example to know the size of the workforce.
NCERT (2025-26): “Demographic data are important for the planning and implementation of state policies, specially those for economic development and general public welfare. But when they first emerged, social statistics also provided a strong justification for the new discipline of sociology. Aggregate statistics – or the numerical characteristics that refer to a large collectivity consisting of millions of people – offer a concrete and strong argument for the existence of social phenomena.…” |