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El Salvador Population Growth and Age Distribution
Unavailable
Figure 4. Estimated Population Distribution by Age and Sex, 1985
Source: Based on information from Robert W. Fox and Jerrold W.
Huguet, Population and Urban Trends in Central America and
Panama, Washington, 1977, 103-4.
The population of El Salvador increased from 1.9 million
inhabitants in 1950 to 4.1 million in 1975 and 4.7 million in
1984. It was projected to increase to 8.8 million by the year
2000. In other words, the population would have doubled in each
quarter-century since 1950. This high growth rate was a result of
three main factors characteristic not only of El Salvador but
also of Central America as a whole: a rapidly falling death rate,
a continued high birth rate, and a very young population, i.e., a
high proportion of the national population under age twenty
(see
fig. 4).
Although there was some variance in figures between El
Salvador's census reports and estimates by the United Nations
Latin American Center for Demography (Centro Latinoamericano de
Demografia--CELADE), there was agreement on basic birth and death
statistics. The crude birth rate (the annual number of births per
1,000 inhabitants) declined from a relatively s;
table 49 through
the 1950s to 44.4 in the late 1960s. In the major industrial
nations the rate is commonly below 20. The annual death rate per
1,000 inhabitants, however, declined by approximately one-third
during the same period, falling from 21.3 to 13, and this decline
contributed to the high rate of national population increase.
From 1970 to 2000, a continuing decline in both birth rates
and death rates was anticipated. Studies projected a gradual fall
in the crude birth rate from 42.2 in 1970-75 to 33.5 in 1995-2000
and in the crude death rate from 11.1 in 1970-75 to 7.2 in 1985-
90 and 5.6 in 1995-2000 (see
table 2, Appendix). These two trends
would operate more or less in tandem, however, so that the rate
of natural increase, though declining, would still hover at
around 3 percent. The overall population was very young; the
median age in the country declined from nineteen in 1950 to
seventeen in 1975, and 41.3 percent were projected to be under
age fifteen by the year 2000. It is noteworthy here that life
expectancy at birth improved from approximately forty-six years
in the 1950s to fifty-nine years in 1977 and to sixty-five years
in 1984 (sixty-three years for males and sixty-six for females),
largely as a result of mass immunization schemes and control of
disease-bearing insects. Life expectancy was expected to reach
sixty-nine to seventy years in 1995-2000.
Birth rates showed that total fertility rates (the number of
children a woman would bear in her lifetime if she experienced
average fertility) ranged from approximately 6.1 to 6.3 in the
mid-1970s, down from 6.7 in 1961. Analysts projected that this
rate would drop to 4.4 in 1995-2000. The decrease in the level of
fertility since 1961 was seen in the twenty-to thirty-nine-year-
old age-group.
Family planning programs of both the privately organized
Salvadoran Demographic Association, which was founded in 1962 and
began operations in 1967, and (after 1971) government agencies
under the Ministry of Public Health and Social Services probably
contributed to this decline in fertility rates. The groups
lobbied for family planning programs, provided family planning
clinics, and dispensed birth control information and devices.
Female sterilization was the most common birth control method
because it is final and does not require frequent checkups or
visits to clinics for additional supplies. The need for clinic
visits has associated use of oral contraceptives in the popular
mind with illness. In addition, there were fewer religious
objections to sterilization. At the same time, abortions also
were widely practiced. Abortion was illegal in El Salvador, and
improperly performed abortions were common. They were the third
leading cause of hospital admissions in 1975, constituting 24 of
every 1,000 admissions, according to a sample survey.
Fertility rates showed significant contrasts between urban
and rural settings. In 1975 the birth rate per 1,000 women in
rural areas was estimated at 46 to 47, whereas in urban areas it
stood at approximately 34 to 35 (31 to 33 for the San Salvador
metropolitan area). On average, by age thirty-five, rural women
had seven children while urban women had only five. By the end of
their childbearing years, rural women, on average, had eight
children, and urban women had six. Given the markedly inferior
health conditions of the countryside, however, of the two
additional children born to rural women, only one would survive.
The number of children under age one per 1,000 women between ages
fifteen and forty-four declined by 16.5 percent in urban areas
from 1961 to 1971, while it remained essentially unchanged over
that same time period in rural areas.
Disparate fertility rates underscored the point that El
Salvador continued to be a rural country in the late 1980s,
"rural" in this context including all population in towns of less
than 20,000. In fact, El Salvador showed the highest rural
population increase--82 percent from 1961 to 1980--in Latin
America.
Data as of November 1988
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