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Demographic Factors and Economic Integration in Central America*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2018

Julian S. Duncan
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Extract

The purpose of this paper is to examine public discussion in Central America of its rate of population growth, and to consider the related question of international migration into the region. These will then be considered within the setting of the problem of economic integration in Central America.

The first of the published discussions to be considered is the writer's Reporte preliminar: Necesidades y recursos de El Salvador relacionados a diferentes tasas de crecimiento de población, published in San Salvador in 1956, and which will be hereafter cited as the 1956 Progress Report. The second is a study prepared under the auspices of the Economic Commission for Latin America of the United Nations on Los recursos humanos de Centroamérica, Panamá y México en 1950-1980 y sus relaciones con algunos aspectos del desarrollo económico. The third is a paper entitled La población salvadoreña, presented to the Primer Seminario Latino-Americano de Planificación de Familia in New York (June 4 to 15, 1962) by Drs. Roberto Pacheco and José Francisco Molina.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Inter-American Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , October 1963 , pp. 533 - 543
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1963

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Footnotes

*

This paper is a part of a study of economic integration in Central America. The writer is indebted, in its preparation, to the University of New Mexico Committee on Research for financial and moral support. Dr. Aristides Palacios, formerly Director, Instituto Tropical de Investigaciones Científicas de la Universidad de El Salvador, has aided the writer from the inception of the project. Two University of New Mexico students, Angel David Sandoval and Jasin W. Edwards, assisted in its completion.

References

1 Duncan, Julian S., Comunicaciones del Instituto Tropical de Investigaciones Científicas de la Universidad de El Salvador, No. 1, enero-marzo, 1956.Google Scholar

2 Estudio preparado por Louis J. Ducoff, experto del Programa de Asistencia Técnica de las Naciones Unidas, 1960. It bears the imprint of the Comisión Económica para América Latina, Naciones Unidas, but no place of publication is given.

3 The Seminario was sponsored by the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Western Hemisphere Region.

4 It was not the writer's intention to produce a comprehensive study of the relationship of population growth to economic development in Central America. For an excellent comprehensive analysis, the reader is referred to Robert S. Smith's “Population and Economic Growth in Central America,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, January, 1962.

5 The exchange value of the colon is forty cents U. S. currency. The “high” estimate of the United Nations was used because, in the writer's opinion, it most nearly corresponds with actual rates of natural increase then and now.

6 The one exception was the Diario Latino, a morning newspaper. Its comment was brief but favorable.

7 This ECLA study was prepared by Professor Louis J. Ducoff. Ducoffs report mentioned the investigation of Coale and Hoover which employed the method of demographic-economic projections based first on a continuation of present fertility rates and a second group of projections based on a fifty per cent decline in fertility. See Coale, Ansley J., and Hoover, Edgar M., Population Growth and Economic Development in Low Income Countries (Princeton: 1958).Google Scholar

8 ICOR is an abbreviation for “incremental capital output ratio.” It means the added units of capital investment which will be required to produce a given number of added units of annual income. For example, if it requires five dollars of added investment to produce one dollar of added annual income, the ICOR would be five dollars divided by one dollar, or five. ICOR will be lower for agriculture than for industry. A list of ICOR's given by Benjamin Higgins varies, according to country and stage of economic development and industry, from one to eight. Higgins, Benjamin, Economic Development (New York: 1959), pp. 645–649.Google Scholar

9 Coale, and Hoover, , op. cit., p. 333 Google Scholar A population with a high rate of natural increase is also a population with a high ratio of dependents to producers.

10 La Secretaría Permanente del Tratado General de Integración Económica Centroamericano (SIECA), Centro América y su Mercado Común (Guatemala: 1962), p. 3.

11 United Nations, Economic Commission for Latin America, Press Release, Santiago, Chile, April 17, 1961.

12 The writer, it is true, was invited to give his views before a United Nations Central American Seminar for junior-grade Central-American government personnel and before the San Salvador Association of Social Service Workers, but these were not reported in the public press.

13 The Ducoff report, as previously stated, does ask the question: “What would be the required increase in GNP if per capita GNP is to be doubled by 1980?” But, as the writer views it, as an hypothesis, this belongs more in the class of an arithmetic calculation. It does not belong in the same universe of discourse as the Coale-Hoover hypothesis or the Pacheco-Molina hypothesis.

14 The author has taken the liberty of omitting the fifth point in the Pacheco- Molina report. These deals with family disorganization in El Salvador. Family disorganization does exist in El Salvador, but as Kingsley Davis has pointed out, the possibilities of birth control being adopted in such societies are greater in the long run than in those in which there is no family disorganization. It is possible that the short-run effect may be to increase average fertility. The writer's 1956 Progress Report is mentioned in the bibliography. Information is not presently available on whether or not the article resulted in any discussion of demographic problems in El Salvador.

15 See Busey, James L., “Central American Union: The Latest Attempt,” Western Political Quarterly, March, 1961, p. 59.Google Scholar While Costa Rica is not at present a signatory to the Common Market Treaty, it is hoped that she will ultimately sign it.

16 El Diario de Hoy (San Salvador), March 28, 1962.

17 Ibid., April 18, 1962.

18 Ibid., June 8, 1962. Also attending the meeting were the Ministers of Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. It is possible that the meeting was called at the request of the Secretary-General of ODECA who also attended.

19 Source: “Areas,” United Nations Statistical Yearbook, 1959, New York, 1960, pp. 26-27.

20 For Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, estimate of Economic Commission for Latin America. For El Salvador and Honduras, preliminary data from 1961 Census. As cited in Centro América y su Mercado Común.

21 Notestein, Frank W., “Problems of Policy in Relation to Areas of Heavy Population Pressure,” Population Theory and Policy (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1956), p. 470 Google Scholar, reprinted from The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, 22 (October, 1944).