Question

Information about birth rate, death rate, sex ratio, age distribution, etc. of a population is obtained from
A. Mortality table
B. Life table
C. Natality table
D. Both A and C

Answer 1

Hint: Life table represents the age-specific mortality rate of a population. It helps to predict the rate of population growth in the future. As, births, deaths, immigration, and emigration, affect the size and composition of a population.

Complete answer:
Mortality represents the rate of the death of individuals in a population. This means that how many individuals die in a given period is the mortality of the population.
Natality is just the opposite of mortality. Therefore, it represents the number of births in a population in a given period.

When talking about a population, we discuss a group of individuals of a species present in an area. As the new members are added to the population, the size of the population increases while deaths reduce the size.
So, now it's clear that mortality and natality tables give information about the death rate and birth rate of a population respectively.

However, to have a clear picture of the population size, age-specific information on the death rate of a population is represented in the form of a mortality table. The mortality table is also called the life table. It tells about the death rate of the individual age group of a population and thereby, helps to estimate the number of the survivors in each age-group and the sex ratio. When the same information from the life table is graphically represented, survivorship curves are obtained. These curves show the number of individuals alive in a population of various ages.

Hence, The correct answer is option (D).

Note: The population growth is affected by other factors as well. Natality and mortality alone do not determine the size of the population. For example, immigration would increase the population size while the emigration would reduce it.