Post by cjm on Aug 10, 2019 9:42:00 GMT
SA’s national fertility rate is a respectable 2.32, by current Statistics SA estimate, compared to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where it approaches 5. That nevertheless means a substantial job creation challenge, given that GDP growth has been trending downwards for 15 years and in the first quarter of this year, the economy actually contracted by 3.2%.
As always in SA, the devil is in the demographic detail. While the national fertility rate dropped from 3.23 in 1996 to 2.67 in 2011, calculated from that year’s census, it was high among black Africans at 2.82 and coloureds at 2.57, while low among Indians and whites (1.85 and 1.7).
Whatever may have happened since then, and the postulated decrease is not based on a national census, it is in the racial fertility differences that the ANC’s quandary lies, for the radicals have weaponised baby-making. And in a country where human reproduction is turned into a political blunt instrument, population control programmes are just not going to happen.
To make matters worse, a long-cherished assumption of demographers worldwide, that rising prosperity and education levels cause women to have fewer children, is being shattered in Africa. A landmark University of Bath 58-country study predicts that contrary to trends elsewhere in the world, in Africa, greater economic development could cause population growth to accelerate, not slow.
