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Peru Demography of Growth, Migration, and Work
Significant in different ways were the divisions
according to
the major ecological zones. In 1990 the coastal region
held 53
percent of the nation's peoples; the highlands, 36
percent; and
the Selva, the other 11 percent. This distribution pattern
marked
an abrupt change from almost thirty years earlier when the
figures for coast and highlands were nearly the reverse.
These
shifts obviously had significant implications for the
nation in
terms of government, the economy, and social relations.
For
example, the agricultural sector had two parts: the
mechanized
high-export production of the coastal plantations and
cooperatives, and the intensively farmed small-holdings of
the
Sierra, which have depended most heavily on hand labor and
were
essentially unchanged in technology since the colonial
period.
Although the highland farm technology was effective,
Andean
production was undermined by urbanward migrations and the
revolution and repression of the 1980s.
Within the contexts of these significant demographic
changes,
the general growth of the population has been constant
since its
low point at the end of the colonial period. Between 1972
and
1981, the country grew by 25 percent. The increase may
have been
greater between 1981 and 1991, reaching over 30 percent,
if
projections were correct
(see
fig. 7). The increase ran
counter
to the anticipated benefits stemming from the continued
drop in
fertility rates, which declined from 6.7 children born per
woman
in 1965 to 3.3 in 1991, and in birth rates, which dropped
from a
high of 45 births per 1,000 in 1965 to 27 per 1,000 in
1992. The
crude death rates, however, despite the many problems in
health
care, fell over this same period from 16 to 7 per 1,000,
basically matching the decline in the birthrate and
retaining the
actual rate of population growth near its same level as
before.
Life expectancy for males in Peru has increased from
fifty-one
years in 1980 to estimates of sixty-three years in 1991,
second
lowest in South America after Bolivia. Demographers
projected
that Peru's population would reach 28 million by the year
2000
and 37 million in 2025 if these rates continued.
Contemporary
dilemmas paled before the problems posed by such
estimates. A
significant lowering in infant deaths would markedly
increase the
overall growth rate and accompanying problems posed to
institutions, services, and resources.
Data as of September 1992
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