White South Africans Adjust To Affirmative Action...
A Google search on “affirmative action” these days turns up as many (sometimes more) articles from around the world as from the United States. For some reason this interesting report from The Pretoria News on whites adapting to affirmative action turned up today, even though it is several years old.
“South Africa's white population's growth rate is declining,” the article reports, at least in part because
there appears to be a massive surge of people reclassifying themselves coloured in order to improve their upward mobility....Although some of the white decline was probably due to emigration (itself perhaps influenced by the country’s affirmative action policies), the report on which the article is based doubted that emigration was the primary explanation.Coloureds experienced 1.17 percent per annum growth, Africans 0.96 percent and Asians 0.89 percent. But whites suffered a -0.05 percent decline.
But there are other social forces at work as well: the continuation of official race classification in the guise of affirmative action in the post-apartheid era has seen the self-defined coloured population soar from 3,6 million people in 1996 to an unlikely 4 million people in 2005.Of course the increase in the number of “Coloureds” in the wake of affirmative action should not be surprising, since it has long been known that if you subsidize something you get more of it.
Say What?
Whats so surprising or "unlikely" with these numbers?
If you take the annual population growth rate of "coloureds" of 1,17% p.a. (avg 2001-2004) and extrapolate it over the time period of 9 years (1996-2005) and a base of 3.6 mio people then you get a mathematical prediction of 3.997 mio people in 2005. I would say that the difference between the stated 4 mio people and the calculated prediction of 3.997 is neither "unusual" nor surprising.
Besides, the annual population growth rate for "coloured" south africans is far below the continental average for africa in total (1.17% v. 1.89%). In contrast to most of the continent, the south african demography is significantly influenced by the rising life expectancy due to the vast improvements in medicine and nutrition in the past two decades wheras the demography in other parts of africa is largely fertility driven. When the effect of the rising life expectancy is deducted from the south african growth rate then the fertility driven increment would be approximately at 0.9-1.0%p.a. - or in other words: half as much as in the rest of africa.
So, contrary to the notion of an "exploding" population, the intersting aspect and deriving questions are why the "coloured" south africans have a so significantly lower fertility rate than comparable populations with far less priviliges.
- andrew
PS. the decline in the white population of -.05% corresponds to the overall decline in "white" populations. Migration is usually hardly noticable herin and the numbers (ranging from +-0% to -1% worldwide) are composed of a massive drop in fertility rates that is partially covered by the soaring life expectancies. So again: nothing "unusual" or surprising here...
Posted by: andrew | May 29, 2008 6:39 AM