African historical demography using parish registers. (360G-Wellcome-095724_Z_11_Z)

Little is known about the historical demography of sub-Saharan Africa before the 1960s because of the lack of data. This hampers understanding about population development in the region, making it difficult to predict future change. Without demographic knowledge we cannot document the true impact of colonialism on African health or fully understand the relationship between health and environment in Africa. I propose to adapt the sources and methods of European historical demography to produc e a comparative historical demography of Africa using micro-data from parish registers. Parish registers of baptism, marriage and burial from seven research sites in five countries during 1900-2000 will be digitised. A longitudinal dataset will be constructed (for c.300,000 individuals) using family reconstitution. Event history analysis will be used to estimate trends in fertility, mortality and marriage age during the 20th Century. At the national-level, indirect techniques have been applie d to post-1970 censuses and surveys in Africa to reconstruct trends in child mortality and fertility from the 1950s onwards. I will apply indirect methods to censuses of the 1940s-1960s (adjusted on the basis of later data), to establish national-level trends dating from the 1920s. I will compare these national estimates with the micro-level estimates from parish data.