Recent Epidemiological and Demographic Transition: an exploratory analysis

This paper aims to compare the evolution of demographic indicators of 196 countries in the context of epidemiological and demographic transition in the world between 1960 and 2010. In this paper we consider to analyze some characteristics: fertility, migration, mortality and epidemiological transition. Such analyses were done using the data published by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations.

The methodology consists in a factorial analysis of the indicators provided by DESA-UN. We standardized the entire period data such that the 1980s has become the reference decade. With the standardize indicators we constructed a factorial analysis aiming reduce it into two dimensions. We applied the factor loading of the 1980s to all years analyzed comparing the evolutions of continents and its countries.

The conclusions strengthen the remarks pointed in Kirk (1996) and Bongaarts (2002) with regard to the rapid transition occurred during the lasts decades, mostly in the underdeveloped countries. As we show it is possible to conclude that epidemiological and demographical transitions have been finished or are near to finish in South America and Asia. In Africa’s countries the situation is different, only 25% (14 countries) are in the same situation of the Asia and South America countries.