#1517: Demographics of Haiti : White

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: steven white <stevelong@spyral.net>

Dear Corbeteers,

I have been studying Demography, and as a sideline I looked at the
information available on Haiti.  I must say that I see some positive
trends. I did not expect to see anything like this when I accessed the
data for Haiti, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that both data for
recent years and projections for the near future indicate a decrease in
fertility.  The table immediately below this text lists the vital rates
which are moving away from the traditional high mortality, high
fertility society.  It would reflect not only on the success of family
planning efforts, but also on a change in the mindset of the average
Haitian, since family planning efforts have had less positive results in
areas where the population stills wants a large family size, and has
much better results where there is an 'unmet need'.

 One possible future benefit could be a "demographic windfall" in which
the large number of children born a few years ago will have neither a
lot of children of their own nor a lot of older folks to care for. This
relationship of working age people to the very young and the very old is
called the dependency ratio.  As this value goes down, the relative
portion of working adults is increasing. The table at the bottom of the
page is my own calculation of the dependency ratios based on the
numerical tables from the U. S. Bureau of the Census.

This information is from the web page:
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/world.html

                                                               U.S.
Bureau of the Census, International Data Base

                                                               Table
008. Vital Rates
---------------- ---------- ---------- ---------------- ---------------
-----------
                     Births       Deaths        Net number of   Rate of
natural
Country      per 1,000   per 1,000     migrants per      increase
Growth rate
Year           population  population 1,000 population  (percent)
(percent)
---------------- ---------- ---------- ---------------- ---------------
-----------
Haiti

1987                  44.53      18.05            -5.70
2.648       2.077
1988                  42.98      17.68            -5.36
2.530       1.993
1989                  41.48      17.32            -5.18
2.416       1.898
1990                  40.02      16.98            -5.79
2.304       1.725
1991                  38.49      16.52           -11.15
2.197       1.082
1992                  37.04      16.07            -5.38
2.097       1.560
1993                  35.76      15.64            -5.27
2.012       1.484
1994                  34.53      15.25            -6.12
1.928       1.316
1995                  34.01      14.93            -4.72
1.908       1.437
1996                  33.56      14.65            -4.34
1.891       1.458
1997                  33.18      14.40            -3.97
1.878       1.481
---------------- ---------- ---------- ---------------- ---------------
-----------
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, International
        Data Base.

Dependency Ratios:

1987   .92
1997   .90
2000   .83
2002   .78
2007   .70