Research Planned by the Center of Studies of Population and Development in Peru

Abstract

The general public as well as the professional conscience was awakened in Peru to the problems posed by uncontrolled population growth, with the diffusion, during 1964, of the 1961 census results and of the social-economic analysis made by the National Planning Institute, and which led to the Developmient Plan for 1967-1970. The publication of the National Statistics and Census office, a branch of the National Planning SysteIn, exposed the basic trends for the Peruvian population. During the interim of the last two censuses, 1940 and 1961, population increased at an annual mean rate of 2.24 per cent; during 1961, the increase was three per cent, one of the highest rates in Latin America; the highest for the countries grouped in the region that Miro 1 considers Tropical South America, and certainly over the general rate for Latin America as a whole. At the same time, it was made known that the proportion of population below 15 years of age had increased in that period from 42.5 to 43.6 per cent with all the economic and social problems involved. Also, a gross analysis of population mobility disclosed a considerable internal migration from the rural to the metropolitan urban areas, from the highaltitude places mostly devoted to agriculture to the lowlands in the process of initial industrialization. The purely demographic outlook for the country was felt to be a great cause of concern, especially when projections were made on the basis of the 1961 census. If, as was evident at that time, the progressive trend were to continue, the population would be expected to double