Suchergebnisse

The continuing high fertility rate in Kenya is of considerable concern as the resulting high rate of population growth makes improvements in living standards difficult, if not impossible. In this paper, the determinants of fertility in urban and rural areas of Kenya are examined through estimation of a probit model which includes variables in three categories: economic, biological, and social or cultural. Also simulated is the effect of increasing the levels of female education on the total fertility rate and the total number of births. Results show that improvements in female education can result in a substantial decrease in the number of births in Kenya, thereby suggesting that formulation of government policy in this area is desirable.

In this paper the determinants of internal migration in Kenya are analyzed on the basis of a human capital model. Explanatory variables included in the specification are both economic (wage rates and employment rates) and noneconomic (for example, population density and educational attainment). Also incorporated are variables which reflect intervening opportunities. These variables are defined as distance-weighted averages of the variables in all of the districts in Kenya except the origin and destination districts. The econometric results show that destination variables are important determinants of internal migration, as is distance between the districts. Further, the variables for the intervening opportunities add significantly to the explanatory power of the model.

This paper is a description of the structure of a multiregion economic-demographic model for the Canadian provinces. An important part of the demographic model is the estimation of net migration equations based on a human capital approach and incorporating the adding-up constraint that arises since the sum of the net migration flows across all provinces must be 0 in each period. These endogenous migration flows allow for variables from the economic model (wage rates and unemployment rates) to influence the source population, the labour force and, therefore, the unemployment rate and other variables in the economic model. This economic – demographic model is then used in simulation experiments designed to show the economic – demographic interactions and how these lead to a moderation in the effect of policy.