RECENT POPULATION TRENDS IN LESS DEVELOPED COUNTRIES AND IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERNAL INCOME INEQUALITY

Because of the scarcity of relevant data, and of the complex interactions between the population trends and the concurrent structural changes in the economy and society of the countries involved, any answer to the question is speculative. The author begins by stressing that the acceleration in the population growth rate in the LDC"s, and their markedly higher rate of natural increase than in the economically developed countries, are recent historical trends. The acceleration and growth excess of population movements in the LDC"s were within a relatively short span of about five decades, following centuries of growth at low rates. The second important aspect of these recent trends is that the acceleration was due almost wholly to the decline in the death rates. The discussion suggests the minimum relative magnitudes of the losses represented by deaths of children and younger adults and the large differences in these losses between developed countries and LDC"s on the eve of recent major downtrends of the death rates of LDC"s. Given the possibility of substantial intra-LDC differences in mortality one can assume that in those earlier decades the burden of economic losses of mortality were much heavier relative to the consumption and income levels of the lower income groups than they were for the upper income economic and social groups. We can also assume that the convergence in death rates and reduction in overall levels, associated with the recent technological breakthroughs in control of death and of public health, meant also reduction in the inequality of the burden of relative losses or mortality at these different economic and social levels.