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This chapter may be freely cited, provided proper citation is given.  See bottom for notice.

In this review, we describe world social characteristics and changes in those characteristics .

Specific characteristics include:

Urbanization: 1960 and 1999, data from the WorldBank.

Education: Illiteracy in 1970, 80, 90, 2000, data from Unesco , and percent of population without any schooling in 1960, 1980 and 2000, data from Barro and Lee International Data on Educational Attainment .

Ethnolinguistic Fractionalization : 1961 and 1985, data from Philip Roeder.  This basically is a measure of the countrys ethnic fractionalization, or the number of major race/ethnic groups.  Data from  http://weber.ucsd.edu/~proeder/data.htm

I Summary

Urbanization.

First,  there have been large increases in urbanization.

On average, MDCs are much more urbanized than are LDCs.  MDCs are almost three times as urbanized in 1960 as are LDCs, and almost twice as urbanized as are LCDs in 1999.

Second, urbanization increased. From 1960 to 1999, urbanization increased among LDCs, on average, by 18 percentage points, while urbanization increased among MDCs, on average, by 14 percentage points.

Finally, urbanization varies widely .

 There has been large decreases in illiteracy.

 
Illiteracy and percent of population without any schooling decreased in the past several decades .  For example, percent of population without any school decreased from 36% in 1960 to 25% in 2000.

Among developing countries, illiteracy and percent without school in 2000 were about half of what they had been in 1970.  Among developed countries, illiteracy rates decreased from 6% to 1 percent, and percent without school decreased from 5% to 2%.

Illiteracy rates were about 10 times larger in less developed countries than they were in more developed countries in 1970, and about 20 times larger in 2000.  As shown, illiteracy decreased greatly in LDCs, but was virtually eliminated in MDCs.  Percent without any school showed similar patterns.

Percent of population with no school varied greatly among LDCs in 2000, from less than 10% to over 65 percent.  Variation among MDCs was much less, varying from less than 2% to 17%.

        Ethnolinguistic fractionalization has not changed very much over time.

 

Table 3 Summary, Ethnolinguistic Fractionalization

		Number of countries with low fractionalization		Number of countries with high fractionalization
	N	1961	1985	1961	1985
LDC	109	7.3%	8.3%	30.3%	32.1%
MDC	28	46.4%	39.3%	3.6%	7.1%

                                                                    http://weber.ucsd.edu/~proeder/

In 1961, 30% of LDCs were highly diverse, as compared to only 3.6% of MDC countries.  The number of LDCs that were highly diverse in 1985 remained unchanged. The number of MDCs that were highly diverse in 1985 increased slightly, up to 7%.

As with other variables, Ethnolinguistic Fractionalization varied greatly among LDCs, from less than .2 to more than .8 both in 1961 and 1985.  ELF varied slightly less among MDCs, from less than .1 to .8 in both 1961 and 1985.

A. Urbanization

Table 4 shows urbanization in 1960 and 1999.

There are several main patterns to be seen.

First, on average, MDCs are much more urbanized than are LDCs.  MDCs are almost three times as urbanized in 1960 as are LDCs, and almost twice as urbanized as are LCDs in 1999.

Second, urbanization increased , although more for LDCs than for MDCs. From 1960 to 1999, urbanization increased among LDCs, on average, by 18 percentage points, while urbanization increased among MDCs, on average, by 14 percentage points.

Another pattern, not shown in the table above, is that urbanization varies widely .

Among LDCs, for 1960, 13 countries had urbanization rates below 5%.  These countries included Bhutan, Botswana, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal, Oman, Papau New Guinea, Rwanda, Swaziland, Tanzania.  None had urbanization rates below 5% in 1999. Three of these, Burundi, Bhutan, Rwanda, still had urbanization rates below 10% in 1999.

Six LDCs in 1960, had urbanization rates above 75%, including Bahrain, Hong Kong, Israel, Macao, Singapore and Uruguay.  All of these countries had urbanization rates above 90% in 1999, and 10 others had urbanization rates above 85%.

B.  Iliteracy

Tables 5 and 6 below show illiteracy rates from 1970 to 2000, and percent of population without any school, 1960 to 2000.

* The 1960 data did not include China, Benin, Congo (Brazzaville), Egypt, Gambia, and Rwanda.  Excluding China from the 1980 and 2000 analysis made substantial difference in LDC totals, while excluding the other 6 countries had only minor impact.  Thus, the table above uses the 74 LDCs with 1960, 1980 and 2000 data, and also shows China data for 1980 and 2000.  In addition, the 1960 data did include Yugoslavia, while the 1980 and 2000 data did not.

C.  Ethnolinguistic Fractionalization (ELF)

Ethnoclinguistic Fractionalization is the ethnic diversity of a country, in terms of number of different ethnic groups.  According to Dr. Roeder, it is the likelihood that two individuals, chosen at random, will be from different ethnic groups.  Thus, the higher the ELF, the more ethnically diverse a country, and the more ethnic groups in the population.

Table 7 shows that, in 1961, 30% of LDCs were highly diverse, as compared to only 3.6% of MDC countries.  In contrast, almost half of MDCs had very low ethnic diversity, that is, had few main ethnic groups.  The number of LDCs that were highly diverse in 1985 remained unchanged. The number of MDCs that were highly diverse in 1985 increased slightly, up to 7%.

As with other variables, Ethnolinguistic Fractionalization varied greatly among LDCs, from less than .2 (e.g., Paraguay, China, Haiti) to more than .8 (e.g., Uganda, Tanzania, Liberia), both in 1961 and 1985.  ELF varied slightly less among MDCs, from less than .1 (Greece, Japan, Portugal) to .5-.8 (e.g., USA, Canada, Belgium) in both 1961 and 1985.
 

III Appendix

A. Comparisons with reports from other sources

Brockerhoff, Martin. 2000. An Urbanizing World. Population Bulletin, 55(3).  Retrieved 3/5/01 from
http://www.prb.org/Content/NavigationMenu/PRB/AboutPRB/Population_Bulletin2/An_Urbanizing_World.htm
Describes increasing urbanization, and problems associated with urbanizations, especially in less developed countries. The urbanization trends are similar to those described above.

World Bank's on line book Beyond Economic Growth, chapter VII, p2 http://www.worldbank.org/depweb/beyond/global/chapter7_2.html    describes increases in school enrollment in low and high income countries.

Unesco Institute for Statistics   http://www.uis.unesco.org   also has a brief report on the recent decline in the number of illiterate adults.  The report is listed on their home page as of 10/16/02.  It is also listed at this address.   http://portal.unesco.org/uis/ev.php?URL_ID=5063&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201&reload=1034828362
 

B. Data

*Urbanization data was from the Global Development Network Growth Database, by William Easterly and Mirvat Sewadeh, which used to be available at
http://www.worldbank.org/research/growth/GDNdata.htm,   retrieved 2/16/03.  This data set used to be available from World Bank's set of research data sets,   http://econ.worldbank.org/    click on "Research Datasets", but seems no longer there. One sample table from the WDI, available at    http://www.worldbank.org/data/databytopic/urban.html   shows urbanization for 1980 and 2000, and shows similar results.
 

Literacy data was from the Unesco Institute for Statistics, http://www.uis.unesco.org     for 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000.  These data are available from the UNESCO Statistical Yearbook of 1999.    According to the Unesco Institute for Statistics, "a person is literate who can, with understanding, both read and write a short simple statement on his everyday life."  (Facts and Figures 2000, page 23.  Report available at  http://www.uis.unesco.org   then click Facts and Figures, then click Publications).  Literacy data was obtained by sending surveys to officials from 200 countries (source...)  The literacy table is also at  http://www.uis.unesco.org/en/stats/statistics/yearbook/YBIndexNew.htm

Percent of population with no schooling is from Barro and Lee's, International Data on Educational Attainment, 1960 to 2000. http://www.cid.harvard.edu/ciddata/ciddata.html     (near the bottom)

Ethnolinguistic Fractionalization is from: Philip G. Roeder.  2001.   "Ethnolinguistic Fractionalization (ELF) Indices, 1961 and 1985." February 16.      http://weber.ucsd.edu/~proeder/data.htm      Retrieved 12 September 2002.  Dr. Roeder (personal communication) defines ELF as "the probability that two individuals chosen at random from the population (country) will be from different ethnic groups."  Further, "It increases as the number of groups increases and their proportionate sizes decrease.  So a country with many ethnic groups, each of which has about the same number of members, would have the highest ELF. As one ethnic group comes to occupy a larger share of the population, the ELF declines."

The ELF table used in this report was constructed showing the number of countries that had ELFs at varying levels, rather than summing within LDCs and MDCs.  That is, we didn't calculate total ELF for the group of LDCs, and total ELF for the group of MDCs.  Rather, within all LDCs, how many countries had ELF greater than (or less than) a particular value. With ELF, it is difficult to 'average' or sum across countries.  For example, a group of neighboring countries might all have many ethnic groups within each of them,  but the total number of ethnic groups in this group of countries may not be the sum of the number of ethnic groups in each country,because of overlap among ethnic groups.  Suppose countries A, B and C each had 10 ethnic groups. If all ethnic groups are different from all the others, then the total number of ethnic groups in this group of countries is 30.  On the other hand, if the 10 ethnic groups in country A are the same as the 10 in countries B and C, then the total number of ethnic groups in this group of countries is 10.  Because of this overlap issue, we used number of countries with ELF at varying levels.  This example was provided by Matthias Kretschmer (personal communication).

More/Less developed countries: We also compare some population results by less/more developed country status.  The less/more developed is defined in the report "World Population Profile: 1998" available at http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/wp98.html  , in full report, see appendix D.
 

Prepared by gene shackman, ya-lin liu and wang xun.
First Copyright June 2002.  May be used provided proper citation is given.
Cite as
Shackman, Gene, Ya-Lin Liu and Xun Wang. 2002. Brief review of world socio-demographic trends.   Available at
http://gsociology.icaap.org/report/socsum/

These tables are being prepared using   lotus 123     Star Office, the Sun Microsystems office package.  StarOffice isn't offered by Sun anymore, but we got a copy from Twocows. We also used OpenOffice , the successor to StarOffice.

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