Achievers and Laggards in Demographic Transition: A Comparison of Indonesia and Nigeria

over the last 50 years many developing countries have experienced demographic transitions from high to low death and birth rates; others have barely begun that process. what explains that delay? among broad regions the most striking contrast in this respect, as also in development performance more generally, has been between east asia and sub-Saharan africa-regions that many observers in the 1950s and even 1960s would have seen as similarly placed in development level and prospects. Such a comparison, however, is necessarily blurred. a sharper focus can be attained by narrowing its scope, looking at pairs of countries, one from each region, that share some similarities in their initial conditions but diverge in their subsequent paths. thailand and Ghana are often paired on that basis: starting at comparable levels of real income around 1960, the first showed a six-fold rise by 2000, the second, virtually no improvement; both saw gains in life expectancy but with thailand maintaining a significant advantage; and from fertility levels of 6 children per woman in the 1960s, thailand currently averages about 1.8, Ghana still about 4.