Preliminary communication
The Relations between Migration and Age Structure
Goran Penev
; Centre for Demographic Research, Institute of Social Sciences, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
Abstract
The author examines the selectivity of migration by age, and attempts to quantify this phenomenon by the construction of a “generational migration coefficient” (m). Furthermore, he states that the general rules of selectivity hold also in Yugoslavia, i.e. the age group 20–39 dominants among migrants. The author next analyses the direct effect of migration on the age structure of populations. Here he indicates the possibility of a variable effect, depending on the positive or negative migration balance and the nature of the generational migration coefficient. Due to a lack of data for an evaluation of the effect of migration on age structures, the author proceeds from the hypothetically “closed” populations of Kosovo and Vojvodina, used as paradigms for divergent types of demographic development. It is shown that in both cases migration had the same direction of effect (rejuvenation of the total population), but that the importance of the migration component in changing the age structure was less in Vojvodina than in Kosovo. In the following section, an examination is made of the influence of migration on changes in the age structure by way of an effect on fertility (the condition being that the reproductive norms of the migration contingent significantly differ from those of the indigenous population). Finally the author emphasises the need for further research on the influence of migration on changes in age structures.
Keywords
migration; age structure; Yugoslavia
Hrčak ID:
127667
URI
Publication date:
31.8.1990.
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