Thabo Mohlala
How many secondary schools should the government plan to build in 2010? Declining human fertility and the impact of the HIV/Aids pandemic probably mean that fewer people will be entering high school then, so that fewer schools will be needed.
And South Africa’s tax base? As HIV/Aids takes more economically active people out of the workforce, what implications does this have for the country’s tax revenue? The Ministry of Finance needs reasonably reliable projections for any medium- to long-term planning it considers.
Such projections are the business of population studies the scientific study of human populations (demographics). “No rational government planning for the future is possible without this,” says Professor Robert Shell of the University of the Western Cape’s (UWC) statistics department.
The Department of Social Development, he points out, needs to take into account how the Aids pandemic will affect pensions, and how many disability grants will be needed for people with Aids. “And Home Affairs needs to revisit its immigration policies as Aids and emigration take their toll on the skilled and educated workforce,” Shell argues.
All government departments need demographic data and the skills required to interpret them. Enter UWC’s new BSc Honours in statistics with a specialisation in population studies. The degree offers accredited and recognised courses in population studies, demography, historical demography, quantitative methods and expository writing skills, and training in research techniques involving statistics and actuarial and graphics software, for example.
In the past population studies tended to be the preserve of white, Afrikaans universities and served apartheid aims of population control. The discipline needs to be progressively re-oriented, Shell says. “The discipline is now much broader and needs to be studied at a diverse range of tertiary institutions. For example, women have to be trained in the new demography following the Cairo Conference of 1994, which emphasised the role of women in contrast with top-down, male-dominated government programmes.”