In conclusion, it should be pointed out that although Mexico's population is increasing very rapidly, her agricultural and industrial production seem to have kept pace accordingly. How long this will continue is problematical. Certainly there are other problems that have a bearing on the population problem. One of these is the lack of an equitable distribution of the fruits of increased production. Despite seeming prosperity in many quarters, widespread poverty still prevails throughout the country. While production has greatly increased on some farms, most are too small to provide a living for their inhabitants. As a result of overcrowding on the farms, there are constant streams of migration of population from rural areas to the rapidly growing cities. Many of these migrants move into the city slums, where they become virtually trapped in substandard and overcrowded housing. According to the census of 1960 55.6 percent of all dwellings in Mexico contained only one room per family. In the urban areas, 44.5 percent of the dwellings had only one room, as did 66.2 percent in the rural areas.7

Looking toward the future, it seems unlikely that the death rate will decline much more in the immediate future, without greatly improved living standards among large segments of the population. Future growth of population, therefore, depends largely on the birth rate which, as yet, shows few if any signs of declining. What the future will offer in this regard remains to be seen.

1 Annuario Estadístico de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos 1962-63, Mexico, 1965, p. 119.

XXVI. THE GROWTH OF POPULATION IN CENTRAL AND

SOUTH AMERICA, 1940–70

Prepared for the

Select Commission on Western Hemisphere Immigration

by

T. LYNN SMITH

University of Florida

THE GROWTH OF POPULATION IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH

AMERICA, 1940-70

This study represents an endeavor to update and supplement to some extent an earlier analysis, "The Growth of Population in Central and South America," which was prepared for Subcommittee No. 1 of the House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary in 1963.1 Special attention is focused upon the changes in number of inhabitants and the rates of growth during the decades 1940-50, 1950-60, and 1960–70, and also upon the three primary factors (fertility, mortality, and immigrationemigration) which determine the absolute and relative changes in population.

IMPROVEMENT IN THE AMOUNT AND QUALITY OF THE DATA

One who works with demographic data for the various countries of Central and South America in 1967 enjoys a vast advantage over his predecessors who attempted analyses of the populations of those areas in the 1940's, the 1950's, or even the opening years of the present decade. The principal improvements have been in the censuses. Prior to 1940 only a few of the Central and South American countries had devoted any particular attention to taking periodic censuses of their populations. As a result, as late as 1945 anyone needing comprehensive data on the number, distribution, and characteristics of the populations of these important parts of the Western Hemisphere was beset by all sorts of difficulties and perplexities, many of which were insuperable. Only for El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Chile, Colombia, and Venezuela were there available the essential materials assembled in fairly recent censuses. Older but useful data also were available for Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Brazil. Distinct advances were made in 1940 when Brazil, Nicaragua, and Peru were added to the list of the countries with fairly adequate censuses; and Guatemala also undertook a census that year, the results of which have been seriously challenged

1 Study of Population and Immigration Problems, Special Series No. 6, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963, pp. 151–176. This report, in turn, was based to some extent upon materials collected and analyzed in extensive studies of the population of the Latin American countries which began in 1950 and were reported upon in T. Lynn Smith, Latin American Population Studies, University of Florida Monographs, Social Sciences, No. 8, Gainsville: University of Florida Press, 1960, and in numerous articles in professional journals published in the United States, Europe, and some of the Latin American countries.

2 In the preparation of the first edition of his Brazil: People and Institutions, published by the Louisiana State University Press in 1946, the present writer had to rely almost exclusively upon the 1920 census for materials pertaining to the population.

Venezuela made another enumeration of her population in 1941, Honduras in 1945, and Argentina, which had not made a count of her inhabitants since 1914, moved out of the ranks of "demographic darkness" with a census in 1947.

Prior to 1950 the comparability of the data gathered in the censuses taken by the various Central and South American countries left a great deal to be desired. Each nation went its own way relying upon the ingenuity of its own technicians for all decisions with respect to the questions to be asked, the ways in which they were to be phrased, and the manner in which the results were to be tabulated and published. In not a few cases the originality exhibited in these respects proved to be a nightmare for those attempting to analyze the results. For this reason the Census of the Americas, undertaken as a cooperative venture in which all of the American countries agreed to take a census in 1950 and in which they further agreed to include certain basic questions and to tabulate the materials in comparable ways, represented a tremendous step forward. Unfortunately, not all of the Central and South American countries were able to keep the commitments they had made in the international gatherings wherein the agreements were reached. In the case of Argentina this was not serious, because the census of 1947 was recent and fairly well done. It was more serious in that of Peru, where political changes prevented the taking of the census, although even there its census of 1940 was still useful. The facts that Colombia could not carry through its plans for a census until 1951 and Chile until 1952 were of minor consequence. Extremely disappointing, however, was the failure of Uruguay to participate in the actual census taking, for its most recent enumeration was one made in 1908, and, as was proved when the results of its 1963 census finally became available, the official estimates of its population and those made by the United Nations and the Inter-American Statistical Institute were grossly inflated. All of the other countries, though, fulfilled their pledges, so that by the mid-1950's recent counts of their populations and tabulations showing many of the characteristics of their inhabitants were available for study. A repetition of the Census of the Americas was planned for 1960, and all of the countries involved in this report except Bolivia took censuses either then or shortly thereafter. (See table I for the dates.) Preliminary results from some of them were available by 1963, when the study referred to above was made, and in June 1967, the preliminary results of all were available, although the final reports by some of them, including huge Brazil, are still being awaited.

In summary, the basic sources for the primary data on the growth of population between 1940 and 1950, between 1950 and 1960, and between 1960 and 1970, for the various countries are censuses taken in the following years: Costa Rica, 1927, 1950, and 1963; El Salvador, 1930, 1950, and 1961; Guatemala, 1921 (that taken in 1940 is too suspect for use), 1950, and 1964; Honduras, 1945, 1950, and 1961; Nicaragua, 1940, 1950, and 1963; Panama, 1940, 1950, and 1960; Argentina, 1914, 1947, and 1960; Bolivia, 1900 and 1950; Brazil, 1940, 1950, and 1960; Chile, 1940, 1952, and 1960; Colombia, 1938, 1951, and 1964; Ecuador, 1950 and 1962; Paraguay, 1950 and 1962; Peru, 1940 and 1961; Uruguay, 1908 and 1963; and Venezuela, 1941, 1950, and 1961.