The Demography of Sub-Saharan Africa in the 21st Century. Transformations Since 2000, Outlook to 2050
Dominique Tabutin, Bruno Schoumaker
This article provides both an in-depth overview of the major sociodemographic and health changes that have occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (47 countries, 1.1 billion inhabitants) since 2000, as well as a statistical assessment using the most reliable recent data on each country. We examine developments in nuptiality and the family, fertility and its intermediate variables, child and adult mortality, migration and urbanization, and population size and age structures. We conclude by considering the population prospects and challenges to be met by 2050 in education, health, and employment. While Africa will continue to have the highest population growth and the youngest population in the world throughout the 21st century, various transformations are under way, albeit at different paces across regions, countries, places of residence, and social groups, leading to an increasing diversification of sub-Saharan demographic regimes and to significant social and spatial inequalities. Most countries have just experienced their first decline in fertility, contraceptive use has increased, but the demand for children remains high. Age at first union is rising everywhere, polygamy is declining, but age disparities between partners and the proportion of adolescent marriages are still substantial. Mortality (especially child mortality), however, has seen a remarkable decline on the regional level, and life expectancy has considerably
increased; AIDS is on the decline but far from having disappeared, maternal mortality remains high, and noncommunicable diseases are on the rise, resulting in an epidemiological double burden. Sub-Saharan Africa is urbanizing though at various paces and more slowly than was imagined 20 years ago. The number of large cities and megacities is also increasing. International migration has been rising sharply since 2000, though still mostly within the continent, with a greater diversity of destinations and a decline in traditional models of migration outside Africa. Finally, according to the UN’s medium-variant scenario, i.e. the most reasonable projection whereby the population will double by 2050 and more than triple by 2100, sub-Saharan Africa faces considerable challenges in education, health, employment, security, and sustainable development.
Gendered Mobility Patterns in Senegal
Isabelle Chort, Philippe De Vreyer, Thomas Zuber
This study explores internal migration patterns in Senegal using individual panel data from a nationally representative survey collected in 2006–2007 and 2010–2012. The data are unique in that they contain the GPS coordinates of individuals’ locations in both waves. We are thus able to calculate distances and map individual moves, thereby avoiding the problems involved in using administrative units to define migration. Our results reveal highly gendered mobility patterns and confirm their durability over the last decades. Women are more likely to migrate than men, but to rural rather than urban destinations. While education increases the likelihood of migration to urban destinations, especially for women, female mobility is mostly linked to marriage, whereas labour mobility is more frequently observed for men.
The Role of Pre-Migration Human Capital in the Economic Integration of Immigrants in France: Professional versus General Skills
Nadiya Ukrayinchuk, Xavier Chojnicki
The objective of this article is to differentiate the role played by transversal skills and professional skills, accumulated by migrants in their home country, on their chances of getting a job in France, as well as on the adequacy between different job characteristics (socio-professional category and wage) and pre-migratory
skills. To quantify the impact of the transferability of human capital, we use the data from the Trajectories and Origins survey (2008). We show that pre-migration human capital plays an important role both in obtaining employment and in maintaining or furthering one’s socio-occupational position, as well as in remuneration. Using several indicators of immigrant integration, quantitative and qualitative, we show that, with the exception of language skills, other transversal skills do not play the expected role. Conversely, professional skills allow for better economic integration. Nevertheless, we show that certain pre-migratory professional skills are not transferable and hence they are associated with low economic integration, the effect that is persistent over time.
‘Figuring’ Out the Russian Flu: A Pandemic Becomes a Statistical Event (1889–1893)
Frédéric Vagneron
The use of figures to describe the magnitude and extent of a flu epidemic constituted a scientific innovation in late 19th-century France. The article describes the role of French statisticians, such as Jacques Bertillon and Victor Turquan, in revising and revealing figures attesting to the gravity of the 1889–1890 flu episode, a feat achieved by calculating excess mortality over the period. The statistical studies done in France between 1890 and 1893 not only found an unprecedented level of mortality for the country—one that stood out at the scale of the century—but also contributed a decisive argument for the hypothesis that the flu spread through contagion. They also served to confirm the information presented by the new press of the time, which, thanks to the telegraph, had been able to follow the spread of the epidemic sooner than other institutions. But at the political level, and in light of the preoccupying trend of ‘depopulation’ in 19th-century France, the new studies’ results were also used to relegate the flu as an ‘accidental cause’ in the worrying national population situation. Because the new statistics captured the flu indissociably from the complications and lethality it causes, the excess mortality continues to be used to this day to measure the impact of flu episodes.
Can Historical Demography Benefit from the Collaborative Data of Genealogy Websites?
Arthur Charpentier, Ewen Gallic
A growing number of websites offer users the possibility of building family trees. This article analyses the data collection and entry work of these users and how their results may be used in historical demography to further knowledge on past generations. To that end, the results obtained on the Geneanet website are compared with those established in the literature, concerning the entries of 2,457,450 French or French-origin individuals who lived in the 19th century. The comparison shows a considerable bias in the sex ratio, with women underrepresented. Fertility is also substantially underestimated. Regarding mortality, the data (compared with historical values) underestimate the mortality of men up to the age of 40 and that of women up to the age of 25, after which age it overestimates both. Lastly, the wealth of spatial characteristics contained in the family trees is also used to produce new data on internal migration in the 19th century.
