Population Council Scholar Says that Significant Growth in the Developing World's Urban Areas Has Important Ramifications for Global Health and Well-being

NEW YORK (27 May 2003) — Over the next 25 years most of the world's population growth will take place in the cities of developing countries. Experts from many disciplines—urban planning, economics, and international health—have explored the implications for their fields. But demographers seem to have all but ignored this projected shift in world population.

The last systematic assessment of the urban demography of less-developed countries was conducted more than 20 years ago. To address this neglected area, in 1999 the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Population created the Panel on Urban Population Dynamics. The 14-member international panel, drawn from the disciplines of anthropology, economics, geography, health, political science, sociology, and urban studies, met over a three-year period to examine the role of demography in urban studies. Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World is the book that resulted from the panel's work.

The authors assert that the tools used by demographers need to be updated in order to make a contribution to urban research. Currently there are two main sources of urban demographic information: the UN population data published in World Urbanization Prospects and the USAID-funded Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). Although very useful, these resources do not provide adequate information for demographers to analyze changes occurring in the smaller cities of developing countries-where nearly half of the urban population lives. World Urbanization Prospects examines only large cities (with populations over 750,000 people) in any detail. Until very recently, DHS data have not included geographic indicators to link information to neighborhoods and cities, and these surveys could do much more to measure access to urban services.

The authors point out that demographers themselves have tended to neglect smaller cities. Notably underserved in terms of water supply, electricity, and good sanitation, their populations are also less educated than those of larger cities. Further, fertility rates are higher and reproductive and child health can be worse in smaller cities. Generally urban residents have higher standards of living than rural dwellers, but the urban poor often have levels of health much like those of rural villagers, and the poor who live in slums and shantytowns can be decidedly worse off than their counterparts in the countryside.

As the National Academy of Sciences panel underscored, the need for accurate population data is growing even more acute as countries decentralize their health programs and governmental systems. State, regional, and municipal governments, along with nongovernmental organizations and the private sector, are being given many functions that were formerly performed by national governments and ministries. As local institutions take on new, unfamiliar roles they will need to rely ever more heavily on spatially disaggregated demographic measures to provide the foundation for good local policymaking.

Mark Montgomery is a senior associate at the Population Council and an economics professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His current research interests include the spread of fertility control; the mechanisms by which families have lower fertility and invest more in the schooling of their children; and the biases inherent in social learning (the process through which individuals comprehend their socioeconomic environments through social interaction and information exchange). Montgomery has also worked with the Office of Population Research at Princeton University and has been a Rockefeller Foundation senior fellow at the University of Lagos (Nigeria). Montgomery, who earned a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Population and served as co-chair of its Panel on Urban Population Dynamics. He has written widely on population and development issues.

Montgomery, M., R. Stren, B. Cohen, and H. Reed (eds.). 2003. Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.