The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0012/00126.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 37KB | 590 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00126}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Brazil
Chapter 2B.   Population}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{P. A. Kluck}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{population
percent
portuguese
brazil
immigrants
slaves
growth
brazilian
government
racial
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{1982}
$Log{See Age-Sex Pyramid, 1980*0012601.scf
}
Title:       Brazil
Book:        Brazil, A Country Study
Author:      P. A. Kluck
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1982

Chapter 2B.   Population

     The 1980 decennial census reported the number of Brazilians at 119
million, making Brazil the world's sixth most populous country. This figure
compared with 93 million counted in 1970 and 71 million in 1960, and it
represented about one-third of the total population of Latin America. On
the basis of reported data, the average annual rate of growth during the
1970s was 2.4 percent, reduced from 2.8 percent during the previous decade
and 3.1 percent in the 1950s. The effect of a sharp decline in the birth
rate in reducing the rate of increase still further is offset, however, by
a significant rise in life expectancy and by an expanding number of women
of childbearing age, estimated to reach 35 million in the 1980s. Projections
indicate that Brazil's population will pass the 200 million mark by the turn
of the century and that growth will continue at a gradually slowing rate,
eventually stabilizing, according to the minimum estimates, at about 300
million.

Structure and Dynamics

     Brazil's population in 1980 was characterized by its youth, but a decline
was noted from the 1970 census in the percentage of Brazilians under the age
of 20 in the country's total population. About 37 percent of those counted in
the 1980 census were under the age of 15 and 48 percent under the age of 20,
compared with figures of 43 percent and 53 percent for the same age brackets
reported in 1970. More than 12 percent of the total were 50 years old and
over, and 6.4 percent were over 60, representing increases in those categories
from the previous census (see fig. 5). The changes reflected a dramatic
lowering of official birth and death rates, which were calculated at 34 per
1,000 and 7.3 per 1,000, respectively, in 1980. During the same decade, life
expectancy rose from 59 years to an estimated 63 years, 60 for men and 65 for
women. A particularly impressive increase in female life expectancy has been
credited to the substantial reduction in deaths related to childbirth. The
IBGE pointed out, however, that the incompleteness of birth and death
registrations, particularly in the more remote areas of the country, has been
such that considerable allowance must be made for margins of error in reported
data.

[See Age-Sex Pyramid, 1980: Source: Based on information from Brazil,
Secretaria de Planejamento da Presidencia da Republica, Fundacao Instituto
Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatista, IX Recenseamento Geral do Brasil-1980, 1,
Pt. 1, Rio de Janeiro, 1981, 12.]

     Brazil's population doubled in size during the three decades 1930 to
1959, and it increased from 50 million in 1949 to an estimated 100 million by
1972. The best indicator that the rate of population growth has passed the
peak registered during that period is the sharp reduction in fertility among
women of potential childbearing age sustained during the 1970s. Estimates made
in 1976 showed that an average of 2.4 offspring had been born to each woman in
the 15-to-49 age bracket; an average of two children survive the first year of
life. Of greater consequence, the projected total fertility rate dropped from
5.3 children per woman reported for 1970 to a figure estimated at between 3.9
and 4.3 children per woman in 1980, depending on reports from various sources.
Studies also concluded that women were having their first child at a later age
in the 1970s than in the previous decade. It is expected, however, that the
optimum effect of the trend toward fewer offspring per childbearer on reducing
the rate of population growth will be offset for some years by the greater
numbers of women entering the birth cohort in the 1980s, as a result of the
considerably higher birth rate that prevailed in the 1960s.

     Overall population density in 1980 was calculated at a relatively sparse
13 persons per square kilometer, but 90 percent of Brazilians were
concentrated in three regions-the Southeast, the Northeast, and the
South-which together constitute only 35 percent of the country's total area.
Several underpopulated areas-Parana in the South, the states in the
Center-West, and the remote Amazon region in the North-have been especially
targeted for new settlements and more intensive development. Despite
government-backed projects to attract settlers to these areas, internal
migration has been characterized principally by population transfers from a
rural to an urban setting, and the greatest rate of growth has occurred in the
urban centers of the Southeast (see Urbanization, this ch.).

Population Problems and Policy

     Traditionally, Brazilians have looked favorably on rapid population
expansion, and official policy, insofar as one existed, was defined as
pronatalist. Tax incentives and maternity bonuses encouraged large families.
Sustained population growth was deemed essential for the settlement and
development of the "new lands" on the Brazilian frontier. Furthermore, the
effective occupation of that sparsely populated area was linked to Brazil's
ability to maintain sovereignty there and, thereby, to considerations of
national security. As industrialization progressed, political and business
leaders cited a close correlation between income growth and population growth,
and the perception was commonly stated that a reduction in the population
growth rate during a time of rapid economic development would not be
desirable. Popular resistance to population planning was also related to the
status derived from producing big families. The Roman Catholic Church opposed
contraceptive birth control on theological grounds, although in practice
the church in Brazil gave greater emphasis to other issues. Brazilian
attitudes toward population growth and opposition to population control,
therefore, were based to varying degrees on political, economic, cultural and
moral grounds. By the 1960s, however, a small but growing number of critics
were arguing that unrestrained population growth was impairing the quality of
life.

     Limited support for the introduction of population measures surfaced in
1965 when members of the medical profession took the lead in urging family
planning as an alternative to the widespread incidence of induced abortion.
The following year medical groups cooperated in founding a private
organization, the Family Welfare Society (Sociedad de Bem Estar
Familiar-BEMFAM), to publicize the need for family planning and to sponsor
birth control clinics. By 1978 BEMFAM was assisting 280,000 women annually in
adopting and maintaining birth control regimens through community-based
programs operated in several states with government cooperation. In addition,
it concluded both formal and informal agreements with government agencies and
other private groups to provide advice in organizing family planning services.
BEMFAM clients, who in 1978 represented about 1 percent of all married
Brazilian women of childbearing age, came largely from upper and middle-class
backgrounds. Outreach to women in the lower socioeconomic strata was hampered
by the magnitude of the problem in relation to BEMFAM's resources. There
nonetheless were some indications in the early 1980s that the poor were having
fewer children.

     In 1973 a working group composed of representatives of various government
ministries prepared for the first time a definite national population policy
statement in preparation for Brazil's participation in the United
Nations-sponsored World Conference on Population, held the following year in
Bucharest. Although strongly denouncing foreign-inspired population control