Analyzing the Relationship between Egg Production and Population Growth in South Africa from 2013 to 2022

Abstract

Eggs offer nutritional benefits and are a vital source of proteins for humans globally. Therefore, the study examined the relationship between egg production and population growth in South Africa using secondary time series data from the year 2013 to 2022. The number of observations amounted to 10 and the data was obtained from Statistics South Africa and the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform, and Rural Development in South Africa. The data was analyzed using various analytical models, such as the descriptive statistics and Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test to assess the unit root. In addition, the Johansen cointegration test, Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model to test for the relationship was employed. The results show that egg production displayed a significant variation with population growth. The average tons is between 445 and 594 per annum while the average population growth is 1.195 annually. The cointegration results confirmed a long-term relationship between the variables. The VAR model demonstrates that past population growth predicts egg production which suggests that population trends forecast the output of agricultural production in South Africa. Therefore, this emphasizes the need for strategic planning to meet the yearly demand for products such as eggs in South Africa as the population grows.