Uganda: a ticking population timebomb
In the Eighties, when his country was at war with Iraq, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, spoke of wanting to create an army “20 million strong”, and implored Iran’s women to reproduce. A decade later, officials realised it may not be wise to have an apparently infinite flow of people into the country’s labour market, and began preaching family planning instead.
Iran has had one of the fastest demographic transitions of any nation in history, reducing its fertility rate to what is called “replacement level”: 2.1 children per woman. India, too, slowed what was a worrying trajectory. It now has a fertility rate of below three.
Uganda has not been as fortunate. Its vehemently “pro-natalist” President, Yoweri Musevini, and a lack of support for contraception, mean it has the youngest age structure of any country. There is an average 7 children per woman in Uganda, and 77 per cent of the population is under 30.
Of course, things can go too far the other way. Japan has a worryingly low fertility rate: a product, population experts say, of government policies that don’t support child-rearing. “Much of this comes down to what we would think of as work/life balance issues,” says Elizabeth Leahy Madsen, a research associate at Population Action International. “Many East Asian countries have no generous policies on maternity and paternity leave, so parents more carefully factor in the projected economic costs of bringing up children.”
Immigration, too, can cause a significant skew. Just look at the United Arab Emirates, and the effect that floods of migrant workers - from east and west - have had on the new powerhouses of Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
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One Response to “Uganda: a ticking population timebomb”
Your charts a re nice, but none of them are comparable along th y-axis, as all the scales are completely different - misleadingly so. Is the proportion of the population in the Uk aged 0-5 the same as that in Japan? I don’t think so, but the charts would indicate that this is the case.
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