If the birth rate and death rate are almost equal, what can population growth be like?

Correct answer: Very low or nearly stable

Direct answer: Option B, very low or nearly stable. Population growth caused by natural change depends on the difference between the birth rate and death rate. If the two rates are almost equal, births add nearly the same number of people as deaths remove, so the difference is small. Natural increase is therefore low, and the population may remain nearly stable. It is not necessarily negative: negative growth occurs when deaths are greater than births. Option A is wrong because rapid growth requires a large positive difference, not an almost zero difference. Option C is wrong because the difference could be slightly positive, zero, or slightly negative; it is not always negative. Option D is not a meaningful description of growth and confuses natural change with migration. Migration may still change the total population. Memory cue: nearly equal rates produce nearly zero natural increase.