Demographic Bulletin No. 64. Latin America: Economically active population 1980 - 2025

The content of this bulletin has been updated by the Demographic Observatory No.2, available in Links

Introduction

This issue of the Bulletin presents the estimates and projections of the economically active population, by urban and rural areas, sex and quinquennial age groups for the 20 Latin American countries, for the period 1980-2025.

For 12 of the countries, the figures contained in this publication are a revised version of those presented in Bulletin 57 of January 1996. The new economically active population estimates and projections take accounts of the total, urban and rural population estimates and projections from Demographic Bulletin Nos. 62 and 63. In Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Uruguay, the estimates and projections also include new data on the economically active population taken from the latest population census and/or household survey.

The methodology used is based on the procedure published in "Métodos para proyecciones demográficas" (CELADE San José, Costa Rica, November 1984), in which, the economically active population by sex and age group is calculated by multiplying the population projections by the corresponding activity rates. The procedure consists in making the activity rates estimated in the projection base year by sex, age and urban and rural residence, tend towards a set of "model rates".

The evaluation of this procedure, made by comparing previous projections with the census figures available for each country, has generally been encouraging. Nevertheless, its application to a variety of situations has led to changes being made to the original version.

The most outstanding demographic features of the last decade -and which to some extent affect the revision of current estimates and future assumptions- are a bigger than expected in both female participation rates and in child activity rates, contrary to what was expected. Both of these phenomena could be related to the crisis and economic adjustments that affected the majority of countries in the region and may have obliged family members who were traditionally inactive to enter the labor force in order to increase family income.