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Peru's coming baby boomlet

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Abstract

There are grounds for reconsidering the United Nations' population projections for Peru. These projections assume that fertility will continue to decline after 1990 in a smooth and uninterrupted manner, but they ignore several factors related to recovery from the economic and political crises of the 1980s that could significantly alter the pace of decline. The alternative projections we present consider the possibility that Peru's fertility decline will temporarily slow. This alternative hypothesis is conservative in the sense that increases in birth rates are not anticipated, but substantial differences in population size and age structure materialize nonetheless. Moreover, these differences have important implications for future planning in terms of the number of children needing primary health care and education and the number of young adults seeking first-time employment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Office of Population Research, Princeton University, 21 Prospect Avenue, 08544, Princeton, NJ

    Miguel N. Rivera &  Thomas J. Espenshade

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  1. Miguel N. Rivera
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  2. Thomas J. Espenshade
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Additional information

The authors are grateful to Maryann Belanger, Luis Rosero-Bixby, and Anne Marie Wills for helpful comments, to Wayne Appleton for computer support, and to Terence Kelly for graphics design.

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Rivera, M.N., Espenshade, T.J. Peru's coming baby boomlet. Popul Environ 16, 399–414 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02209422

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