Nicaragua - Stage 3
Nicaragua is in Stage 3 of the demographic transition model due to a decreasing natural increase rate (1.9%), mid level birth rate (23), and low death rate (5). The population pyramid for Nicaragua appears similar to Stage 3 and by 2025 will look very close to that of Stage 4 showing a rather fast growth rate compared to the other four countries. The average life expectancy is high (74) which shows that access to public health facilities and assistance is helping the population in terms of years but the lack of education to both genders (secondary average school attendance is 68%) and the low pay (32% live on less than $2) has kept the infant mortality rather high at 19 and the undernourished percentage at 27%. Many people do not know how to access certain resources to reap benefits and they also do not get paid enough to support large families. Fertility rate is at a low mark (2.6) because it is hard to feed a large family so keeping it down to 2-3 kids allows a family to work to provide for everyone and still take care of the parents as they age. Men are very economically active (78%) in comparison to the women (47%) and woman comprise hardly a fifth of the legislature (21%) however women tend to have more of an education (those that have school available to them) because the young men often go straight to work very young to tend the field. Because of resources being widely available to most of Nicaragua they have the education and supplies to live quite long while reducing their natural increase, birth, and death rate and once woman can play less traditional roles and men have more opportunities to make money and receive a better education then the country will see a much higher growth on a already quickly developing country. These details put Nicaragua in 3rd place of all four of my countries.