搜索结果：Southern African journal of demography = Suidelike Afrikaanse tydskrif vir demografie

In 1986 the South African government relaxed the law that made it illegal for blacks to live in urban areas. The author discusses some reasons why blacks might choose to remain in rural areas and continue as migrant laborers. In particular, a critique is presented of arguments that base their explanations of the continuance of migrant labor on the value system or culture of migrant laborers.

The main goal of the Population Development Programme in South Africa is to ensure a balance between resources and population size. Secondary objectives include improving the quality of life for all sectors of society, accelerating development, integrating family planning with development programs, and fostering community involvement with the program. The program has identified education, manpower training, primary health care, the economy, and housing as areas of primary importance to address in seeking to realize program goals. The rate of infant mortality, life expectancy at birth, teen pregnancy, personal per capital income, literacy, children not attending school, and room density were then identified and quantified as indicators of progressin these areas. The importance of each indicator and its influence on fertility is discussed in turn.

Demographic characteristics of the white free burgher population in South Africa during the eighteenth century and up to 1820 are studied. Data from tax files, genealogies, and parish registers are used to estimate population size, fertility, nuptiality, mortality, migration, morbidity, and family size.

Taiwan has been able to reduce its total fertility rate (TFR) from 4.7 (1966) to 1.9 (1985). Demographers have estimated that Taiwan will achieve zero population growth (ZPG) in 70 years if the TFR remains the same, and if the TFR continues to decline, ZPG may be achieved in 40-50 years. Taiwan's 25 year strong family planning program has contributed greatly to this progress. So successful has it been that many family planning researchers and policy makers from around the world have studied the program over its 25 years and it serves as a model for other developing countries. Actual family planning activities include family planning education and promotion to motivate the public to understand the meaning and importance of family planning and subsequently to practice family planning, and the provision of contraceptives to the motivated. Education/promotion consists of home visits, sending congratulatory and informative letters to postpartum parents, establishing a telephone hotline, group education, and using the mass media. The Taiwan program finds that good supervision is a key to a successful program because it links the policy making units to the field and it contributes to maintaining quality fieldwork. Due to a good record system of program inputs, e.g., number of home visits, and outputs, e.g., fertility data, the program can quantitatively evaluate its goals defined in 3-5 year plans. For example, for over 2 decades, it has motivated approximately 90% of fecund women or their husbands to accept at least 1 contraceptive. Researchers hope to soon be able to further evaluate this program by measuring the quality of the program.

The social and economic consequences of current demographic trends in South Africa are analyzed using the concept of avoidable costs. The author presents projections of the population up to the year 2000 organized under four major categories: executive and managerial; professional; semi-skilled; and the unskilled, peasants, underemployed, and very poor. Comparisons are made with projections for the same four categories for Canada to show the problems faced by South Africa, in that relatively small growth in the first two classes is contrasted to massive growth in the other, and particularly the least privileged, classes. Consideration is given to the implications for the provision of schools and for the labor force. The author concludes that "if a problem is to be tackled at its roots it is to the control of human numbers that our attention is to be directed."

In South Africa, premarital vaginal penetration was not allowed in traditional Zulu society because illegitimate children disrupted the community. Young people could have external sexual intercourse between the thighs, however, only if 1st instructed in this practice by the leader of each peer group plus the girl's group leader had to approve of a meeting between the boy and girl. In addition, men could not marry before proving themselves in the battlefield, usually between 30-35 years old. Women could not marry until all the women of an older age group had married, therefore women were approximately 25 years old when married. In years past, the Zulu believed that a large enough quantity of semen must accumulate inside the wife's body before a baby would grow. Newlyweds therefore had intercourse day and night for the 1st few weeks until they believed that the wife was pregnant. Frequency of intercourse either decreased or ceased once a women was pregnant. A breast feeding mother could not have sexual intercourse because the fetus would poison the child who was still breast feeding. Children were breast fed for 3 years. Husbands could have sexual intercourse between the thighs with a mistress during the lactational period of his wife, however. Polygynists slept with each wife for only 1 period/month, often not during her most fertile days. They therefore had fewer children/wife than men in monogamous relationships. Today females do not practice abstinence after birth and breast feed their children for 3 years. Additionally, they become sexually active at an earlier age. Only 5% of the respondents of a survey were using modern contraceptives. Due to the nonuse of traditional practices and modern contraceptives, the present levels of fertility are higher than was the case in the past.

The author uses an anthropological perspective to analyze fertility in South Africa, with a focus on the impact of sociocultural factors on reproductive behavior. The socioeconomic value of high fertility for Black Africans, particularly men, and its effect on contraceptive use and the implementation of family planning programs are discussed.

"In the present paper...socioeconomic factors affecting the fertility of the developing population groups in South Africa, are discussed and compared with findings [for developing countries] from the WFS [World Fertility Survey]." Data for South Africa are from an independent survey conducted during 1981-1982. "The relationship between socioeconomic factors and three dependent variables (marital fertility, desired family size, and current contraceptive use) is analysed.... The analyses are restricted to the examination of the extent to which the wife's differentials in fertility and associated variables related to education, employment status, and rural/urban residence persist, when other socioeconomic characteristics of the couple are controlled statistically."

Recently demoted by the World Bank from an upper middle-income to lower middle-income country, on the basis of per capita income, South Africa is failing to tackle the dualism between high-productivity, high-wage modern sectors and low-productivity subsistence sectors. South Africa is an economically less developed country with a weak economy. Unless economic growth increases markedly, poverty, unemployment, and the informal sector should be expected to continue expanding. In support, this paper forecasts employment for the period 1989-2000. Much dualism exists in the country, with a relatively small portion of the labor force fully participating in the modern consumer market. Not only contrary to present national needs, this phenomenon represents deterioration from the early 1970s. The labor force in South Africa grows faster than the creation of formal employment, and is confirmed by forecasts indicating absolute and relative growth in the peripheral labor force contrasting against stagnation in the core labor force.

This is a report on a theoretical model called PROJUSE, which was designed "to determine whether the proposed reduction in the growth rate of the South African population is a viable proposition." The model calculates the number of users of a family planning program needed to achieve certain population targets. An example is demonstrated using the black population in South Africa.

Parents, teachers, and community leaders almost universally consider teen pregnancy to be a serious social problem for which a solution is urgently needed. Black teens in KwaZulu/Natal may not, however, view the phenomenon with equal concern and urgency. This paper discusses teen pregnancy in a supportive cultural context. Christian and conservative Zulu parents may openly advocate chastity outside of marriage. Beyond espousing and voicing this view, however, parents tend to ignore the probability that daughters may be engaging in premarital sexual activity. When the daughter eventually becomes pregnant and bears the child, the infant is welcomed into the family, with the family generally providing for the daughter to return and finish her formal education. Teen pregnancy is so prevalent in this society that it has virtually become institutionalized. These parents treat teen pregnancy much as western Middle Age populations dealt with the plague; they dread its entering the family, yet ultimately accept it once it does. Further supporting teen pregnancy is the high value placed upon fertility and childbearing and the role model of successful single women with children who are neither ostracized from nor ridiculed by society. With women delaying the social and economic commitments of marriage, births are increasingly viewed as separate from marriage. Programs targeted at parents and communities must combine with broad sociocultural change to alter cultural rules currently guiding adolescent sexual behavior and fertility.

The author describes the evolution of South Africa's Population Development Programme since its conception in 1984. The objectives, principles, and scope of the program as well as an overview of the monitoring procedures are explained.

A method to improve census accuracy using air photography is introduced and the application of the method in the 1985 sample census of Transkei, South Africa, is described. The author relates how results obtained from detailed air photographs were checked with data collected in the traditional way by enumerators.

The author analyzes the relationships among sociocultural factors and fertility levels in South Africa. Attention is given to the transition to low fertility, fertility trends, and fertility differences by region. Race or ethnic group, religion, educational status, and employment are the major factors considered.

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