by Carl Haub, senior demographer

There has been quite a bit of media coverage on the recent decline in the U.S. birth rate, including a blog I wrote in March http://prbblog.org/index.php/2013/03/26/why-has-the-u-s-birth-rate-recently-declined/.

Much of the decline was due to a surprisingly large drop in the Hispanic birth rate. But how do Hispanic teenagers compare to other ethnic groups on this measure? Simply put, just the same. Read the rest of this entry »

by Carl Haub, senior demographer

EQUATORIAL GUINEA. The 2011 Equatorial Guinea Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) summary report has measured a relatively high level of fertility. The total fertility rate (TFR, or the average number of children per woman) was reported as 5.1. Given that the country’s TFR in 1950 was estimated at 5.5 by the United Nations Population Division, there has been very little decrease over a long period. Women gave six children as their ideal, while men opted for seven children. The TFR for urban areas was 4.4, and higher for rural areas at 5.9.

Childbearing begins early in Equatorial Guinea, on average when the mother is 18 years old. Among women ages 25 to 49, 14 percent had married or were in union by age 15. Among men, however, less than half  below age 30 were married by age 15. And 17 percent of women were in polygamous unions.

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by Carl Haub, senior demographer

In a population projection, it’s customary to assume that all countries with higher birth rates will see their total fertility rate (TFR, or the average number of children per woman) drop to 2.1 children, the “replacement level” (a couple “replaces” itself by having two children, and thus doesn’t add to population growth).

While preparing the upcoming 2013 edition of PRB’s World Population Data Sheet (release scheduled for Sept. 10) and previous editions over the years, I’ve been noticing a group of countries whose rates have come down quite a bit but they seem to be resisting further decline. Here are three countries with TFRs spanning from 2000 to 2011: Read the rest of this entry »

This is the last in a series of blogs posts on the Sixth Joint Annual Meetings of the ECA Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development; and AU Conference of Ministers of Economy and Finance.

by Jay Gribble, vice president, International Programs

As I listen to people give their presentations, I continue to be reminded that high-quality data is critical to decisionmaking. Similarly, consistent definitions need to be employed that reflect the current thinking on issues. For example, the standard definition of the dependency ratio includes the population ages 0 to 14 and the population ages 65 and over in the numerator (they are the dependent populations) and the population ages 15 to 64 in the denominator (they are the population that provide support). Yet if one of the goals of investing in human capital is to keep people in school longer, perhaps the definition needs to be modified so that the people ages 15 to 19 fall into the dependent population. Our definitions need to be consistent with our goals.

The first blog I ever wrote for PRB considered the fact that national-level data cover up the disparities that exist in a country. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the fourth in a series of blogs posts on the Sixth Joint Annual Meetings of the ECA Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development; and AU Conference of Ministers of Economy and Finance.

by Jay Gribble, vice president, International Programs

Thailand often is held up as a model of success for its efforts in family planning, but it’s amazing how quickly the country has transformed from rural and very poor to the modern economic powerhouse it is today, in a matter of a few decades. Yet Dr. Kosit Panpiemras, former minister of finance and industry of Thailand, laid out the story of Thailand’s success in four succinct points. It wasn’t easy for Thailand to accomplish its goals, but the policies and investments the country made were strategic and targeted.

Infrastructure policies. In the early 1960s, Thailand began investing in infrastructure. The country was rural and the economy was based on subsistence farming. By building roads and installing irrigation, farmers produced more and had an outlet for selling their produce. By helping farmers get their produce to market, the economy became more focused on cash and less on subsistence agriculture. One result was that the need for large families to work the farm changed; as produce was sold, the desire for large families decreased and the desire for cash increased. And as a result, the demand for family planning increased. Another side effect was that people were available to work in places other than the farm.

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This is the second in a series of blogs posts on the Sixth Joint Annual Meetings of the ECA Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development; and AU Conference of Ministers of Economy and Finance.

by Jay Gribble, vice president, International Programs

David Canning, professor of economics and international health at Harvard University, said that countries need to focus on population structure—not size—to achieve a dividend. Many leaders continue to think that a large population is necessary to achieving economic growth. They cite China as an example of a large population leading to economic expansion, without recognizing that it wasn’t until China reduced its total fertility rate that it began to see high levels of growth. Canning’s point is critical to understanding the demographic dividend; the experiences of the Asian Tigers were not based on having large population sizes, but rather population structures that fostered investments in the human capital of young people.

Another key point that Canning made is that like in financial markets, a demographic dividend is a return on the investments people make. If we invest wisely, we reap larger dividends. The same holds with a demographic dividend. It won’t just happen by itself—it results from selecting areas for investment: education and health as drivers of population change, and increases in human capital. We all would love to have an investment that paid quick dividends, but generally it takes a while to see the return on the investments we make. Seeing the return on investments in human capital will take many years.

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by Carl Haub, senior demographer

Following up on some recent blogs on the drop in the U.S. birth rate, I thought it would be useful to see which groups have been most affected. In the below graph, the bulk of the decline has been clearly due to one group, Mexican Americans. For many decades, that group has had by far the highest total fertility rate (TFR, or the average number of children per woman) in the United States. Even as recently as 2006, the Mexican American TFR was as high as 3.0, even higher than the average for all developing countries. But in 2011, the TFR plunged to 2.3, the sharpest drop in decades.

U.S. Total Fertility Rate, by Ethnicity, 2000-2010

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by Carl Haub, senior demographer

NIGER. The 2012 Niger Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) preliminary report shows a continuing high level of fertility. The total fertility rate (TFR, or the average number of children per woman) was reported as 7.6, higher than in the 2006 DHS. In the 2006 survey, women had expressed an “ideal” number of children as 8.8, while men preferred 11.0, one of the highest in the world. The rate of childbearing among young women ages 15 to 19 was quite high at 199 births annually per 1,000 women. Of the women interviewed, 80 percent had no education at all.

Total Fertility Rate, Niger, in Four DHS Surveys

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by Alexandra Hervish, international education specialist

This post was originally published by Half the World, the blog of the Interagency Youth Working Group (IYWG).

In January, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and the United Nations Foundation (UNF) hosted a discussion about milestones in adolescent and youth health and development. All of the presenters emphasized the need for a holistic approach to the health and development of young people—one that enables them to delay marriage and childbearing, access youth-friendly health services, prevent the onset of mental disorders and noncommunicable diseases, and thrive in a supportive environment. Amanda Keifer of the Public Health Institute highlighted that with the creation of the Bali Global Youth Forum Declaration, the global community is moving in the right direction by putting young people’s rights at the heart of development.

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Stan Bernstein, a retired UNFPA senior policy adviser and former health adviser on the UN Millennium Project, attended the Seventh Annual Research Conference on Population, Reproductive Health, and Economic Development. During the conference, Bernstein reflected on the presence of reproductive health and population issues among the Millennium Development Goals and their indicators . He also commented on prospects for including relevant RH and population goals or indicators in the development agenda beyond 2015. Bernstein hailed the role of research from the PopPov network in the past and its potential contributions to future development agendas. He answers some questions for the PRB blog below.

Why is it important to include reproductive health and population issues in development goals? 

There are several reasons. First, access to voluntary sexual and reproductive health care facilitates the attainment of other consensus development outcomes in the MDGs and other monitoring frameworks including reduction of poverty and preventable deaths of women and children. Read the rest of this entry »