← MCAT®

Psych/Soc 9B: Demographic Characteristics and Processes

Age, gender, race, immigration and orientation as the variables that structure a society, and the curves, flows and movements that change it.

23 topics · 90 questions

Each topic is a path, not a menu: work down it in order and every question builds on the one above. Click any of them to watch the answer draw itself.

9B. Age: Aging and the Life Course

  1. How it worksHow does the life course approach treat age as a sequence of socially scheduled roles rather than a number?
  2. Worked exampleFind which life events count as on-time and which count as off-time for a first-time parent at 19 and at 45.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to the life course script when retirement ages rise and education stretches longer?
Your turneasy1 of 3
In this country the median age at first birth is 29 years. A person becomes a parent for the first time at age 20. How many years below the median is that first birth?

9B. Age Cohorts and the Social Significance of Aging

  1. How it worksHow does a cohort effect differ from an age effect when both show up in the same survey?
  2. How it worksWalk me through ageism operating as prejudice, stereotype, and discrimination against an age group.
  3. Worked exampleFind whether a drop in smoking with age reflects aging itself or the cohort that grew up with warnings.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a health system when the largest cohort in a country crosses into old age at once?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A cohort of 74 million people will cross age 65 over the next 21 years at an even pace. How many million people will reach 65 per year on average?

9B. Sex vs Gender

  1. How it worksHow does sex sort biology while gender sorts the roles, behaviors, and expectations layered on top?
  2. Common mistakeWhy isn't gender simply the social label attached automatically to a body?
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to medical research when sex and gender are collapsed into one variable?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A national survey of 10786 adults asks sex assigned at birth and gender identity as separate items. 92 respondents give answers that do not match. What percent of respondents is that?

9B. The Social Construction of Gender

  1. How it worksHow does gender get produced in everyday interaction rather than issued once at birth?
  2. How it worksWalk me through gender socialization running through toys, chores, classrooms, and media.
  3. Worked exampleFind what the baby X studies revealed when the same infant was labeled a boy and then a girl.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't a gender norm that exists in every known society proof that it is biological?
Your turnhard1 of 3
In a baby X study, 204 adults each watch the same recording of an infant crying. Of those told the infant is a boy, 46 describe the cry as angry; of those told it is a girl, 19 do. How many percentage points separate the two descriptions, if each label was shown to half the 204 adults?

9B. Gender Segregation

  1. How it worksHow does occupational segregation sort workers horizontally between fields and vertically within them?
  2. How it worksWalk me through the glass ceiling and the glass escalator acting in opposite directions.
  3. Worked exampleFind how much of a 20 percent pay gap survives after occupation and hours are controlled for.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a field's average pay when the share of women in it rises sharply?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Women in a labour market earn 24 percent less per year than men. After controlling for occupation and hours worked, the gap falls to 9 percent. How many percentage points of the gap did those controls account for?

9B. Race as a Social Construct

  1. How it worksHow does race function as a social category with real consequences and no clean biological boundary?
  2. How it worksWalk me through genetic variation being larger within so-called racial groups than between them.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't a socially constructed race harmless just because it lacks a biological basis?
  4. Ties togetherHow does a socially constructed category end up printed in a person's blood pressure?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A census form changes from a single-select race question to one allowing several selections. Of 1757 respondents surveyed both ways, 312 report a different race category under the new form. What percent changed category?

9B. Racialization and Racial Formation

  1. How it worksHow does racialization attach racial meaning to a group that was not previously seen that way?
  2. How it worksWalk me through racial formation as an ongoing process created and recreated by policy and institutions.
  3. Worked exampleFind how a single immigrant group's racial classification shifted across a century of census forms.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a group's outcomes when its racial classification changes but its members do not?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A national census offered 5 race and origin categories in one decade and 14 categories four decades later. How many categories were added over that period?

9B. Immigration Status and Patterns of Immigration

  1. How it worksHow do chain migration and existing networks steer where new arrivals settle?
  2. How it worksWalk me through immigration status creating different rights and risks for people living side by side.
  3. Worked exampleFind how the healthy immigrant effect shows up when arrivals are compared with the native-born population.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to health advantages of immigrants across their second and third generations?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Age-adjusted mortality among recent immigrants runs at 611 deaths per 100000 per year while the native-born rate is 811 per 100000. By what percent is the immigrant rate lower?

9B. Intersections of Immigration Status With Race and Ethnicity

  1. How it worksHow do immigration status, race, and ethnicity stack into one position rather than three separate labels?
  2. Worked exampleFind which barriers a patient faces when language, documentation status, and racialization all apply at once.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to a group's assimilation path when its members are racialized on arrival?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
At a clinic serving 539 patients, 172 need an interpreter, 135 lack documentation, and 37 of them report both. How many patients face at least one of the two barriers?

9B. Sexual Orientation

  1. How it worksHow do attraction, behavior, and identity separate into three measures that do not always agree?
  2. Worked exampleFind why a survey that asks only about identity undercounts people relevant to a health screening.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to health disparities data for sexual minorities when the survey never asks the question?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A national survey asks three separate questions: 13 percent of adults report same-sex attraction, 8 percent report same-sex behaviour, and 4 percent adopt a lesbian, gay or bisexual identity. How many percentage points separate the attraction measure from the identity measure?

9B. Malthusian Theory

  1. How it worksHow does exponential population growth outrun linear growth in food production on a graph?
  2. Worked exampleFind when a population doubling every 25 years overtakes a food supply rising by a fixed amount each year.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't the Malthusian catastrophe visible in the countries that grew fastest since 1800?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to Malthus' argument when technology makes food production grow exponentially too?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A population of 29 million doubles every 25 years. Following Malthus' arithmetic, how many million people will there be after 4 doubling periods?

9B. The Demographic Transition

  1. How it worksWalk me through the four stages with the birth rate and death rate curves crossing and closing again.
  2. How it worksHow does the population pyramid morph from a wide-based triangle into a column across the transition?
  3. Worked exampleFind which transition stage a country with a death rate of 8 and a birth rate of 32 per thousand sits in.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't a falling death rate enough on its own to cause the population boom?
  5. Going furtherWhat happens in a proposed fifth stage where births fall below deaths for decades?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A country records a crude birth rate of 33 per 1000 and a crude death rate of 14 per 1000 in one year. What is its rate of natural increase, in percent per year?

9B. Population Growth, Projections, and Population Pyramids

  1. How it worksHow does a population pyramid encode a country's whole demographic history in one shape?
  2. How it worksWalk me through population momentum carrying growth forward through a large cohort of young adults.
  3. Worked exampleFind the dependency ratio of a country with 30 percent under 15, 60 percent working age, and 10 percent over 65.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a pyramid's shape after a war removes one cohort of young men?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A country has 25 million people under 15, 59 million of working age, and 17 million aged 65 and over. What is its total dependency ratio, expressed per 100 working-age people?

9B. Fertility and Mortality Rates

  1. How it worksHow do crude rates, age-specific rates, and the total fertility rate measure different things?
  2. Worked exampleFind the crude birth rate for a country with 900000 births in a population of 45 million.
  3. Worked exampleFind the total fertility rate needed just to replace a population and why it sits above 2.0.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't a higher crude death rate evidence that a country is less healthy?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A country records 948 thousand births in a year in a population of 49 million people. What is its crude birth rate, in births per 1000 population?

9B. Patterns in Fertility and Mortality

  1. How it worksHow does the epidemiologic transition swap infectious killers for chronic ones?
  2. How it worksWalk me through fertility falling as female education and child survival rise together.
  3. Worked exampleFind what an infant mortality rate of 45 per thousand versus 4 per thousand says about two health systems.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to life expectancy at birth versus at age 60 when infant mortality falls sharply?
Your turneasy1 of 3
One country records an infant mortality rate of 52 deaths per 1000 live births and another records 6 per 1000. How many times the second country's rate is the first country's?

9B. Push and Pull Factors in Migration

  1. How it worksHow do push factors at the origin and pull factors at the destination combine into one migration flow?
  2. How it worksWalk me through a flow map where arrow thickness tracks the size of each migration stream.
  3. Worked exampleFind which factors are push and which are pull for a family leaving a war zone for a city with jobs.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a migration flow when a barrier raises the cost of the move but the push factors stay?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A family leaves a region where conflict has closed 9 of the local schools and moves to a city advertising 14 thousand vacancies in construction. Which factors are push and which are pull?

9B. Social Movements and Relative Deprivation

  1. How it worksHow does relative deprivation measure the gap between what people expect and what they get?
  2. Worked exampleFind which of two groups is likelier to mobilize when one is poor and stable and one just lost ground.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't absolute hardship the best predictor of who starts a movement?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to mobilization when expectations keep rising while conditions stall?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Over two years Group A's median household income falls from 64 thousand dollars to 39 thousand, while Group B's holds steady at 30 thousand throughout. How many thousand dollars did Group A lose?

9B. Organization, Strategies, and Tactics of Social Movements

  1. How it worksWalk me through a movement's life cycle from emergence to coalescence to bureaucratization to decline.
  2. How it worksHow does resource mobilization theory explain success by money, members, and media rather than by anger?
  3. Worked exampleFind which stage a movement is in once it has offices, paid staff, and a lobbying budget.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a movement that achieves its goal and keeps its organization running?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A movement has 6875 dues-paying members contributing 34 dollars a year each, plus 190 thousand dollars a year in foundation grants. What is its annual budget in dollars?

9B. Globalization: Factors and Perspectives

  1. How it worksHow do communication technology, transport costs, and economic interdependence knit markets into one system?
  2. How it worksWalk me through the same trade flow read as shared prosperity and as extracted advantage.
  3. Worked exampleFind the path of a single manufactured product across four countries before it reaches a buyer.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a national labor market when capital can move and workers cannot?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A garment retails for 125 dollars. Of that, 43 dollars stays with the retailer and 29 dollars covers shipping and brand costs. How many dollars reach the country where the garment was sewn?

9B. Social Changes in Globalization

  1. How it worksHow does global interconnection speed the spread of both goods and pathogens along the same routes?
  2. How it worksWalk me through civil unrest and terrorism framed as reactions to rapid global integration.
  3. Worked exampleFind how an air travel network turns a local outbreak into a multi-continent one in days.
  4. Ties togetherHow does globalization connect the demographic transition in one country to labor migration in another?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A city's airport handles 7 hundred departures a day carrying an average of 185 passengers each. How many thousand travellers leave the city by air per day?

9B. Urbanization: Industrialization and Urban Growth

  1. How it worksHow did industrialization pull labor off farms and concentrate it around factories?
  2. How it worksWalk me through a city growing outward in rings as transport technology changes.
  3. Worked exampleFind what share of a country is urban when 6 of 10 million people live in settlements over 50000.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a city's growth pattern when jobs decentralize to its edges?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Of a country's 14 million people, 7 million live in settlements of more than 50000. What percent of the country is urban by that definition?

9B. Suburbanization and Urban Decline

  1. How it worksHow did highways, mortgage policy, and white flight move households outward together?
  2. How it worksWalk me through a shrinking tax base and deteriorating services feeding each other downward.
  3. Worked exampleFind what happens to a city's per-resident revenue when a third of its households move past the boundary.
  4. Ties togetherHow does suburbanization set up the residential segregation that shapes health decades later?
Your turnhard1 of 3
A city's tax base is 609 million dollars. Households moving past the city boundary take 211 million dollars of it with them, leaving 311 thousand residents inside. How many dollars of revenue per remaining resident does the city have?

9B. Gentrification and Urban Renewal

  1. How it worksHow does reinvestment raise rents faster than incomes and push out long-term tenants?
  2. How it worksWalk me through a block's rents, demographics, and businesses changing across fifteen years.
  3. Worked exampleFind who leaves when average rent rises 60 percent in a tract where median income rises 5 percent.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't gentrification the same as urban renewal planned by a government?
  5. Going furtherWhat happens to displaced residents' health when they move to a lower-cost neighborhood farther out?
Your turnhard1 of 3
In one census tract average monthly rent rises 59 percent from 1248 dollars while median monthly household income rises 8 percent from 2735 dollars. By how many dollars a month does the rent increase exceed the income increase?

AP®, SAT® and PSAT/NMSQT® are trademarks registered by the College Board (PSAT/NMSQT® jointly with the National Merit Scholarship Corporation). ACT® is a registered trademark of ACT Education Corp. GRE® is a registered trademark of ETS. LSAT® is a registered trademark of the Law School Admission Council. MCAT® is a registered trademark of the Association of American Medical Colleges. ISEE® and SSAT® are registered trademarks of their owners. None of these organizations is affiliated with, or endorses, Jentoo.