Sub-National Age and Sex Distributions: New data and methods for low-income countries

Mark Montgomery, Economics Department, Stony Brook University
Emanuel Agu, City University New York
Deborah Balk, City University New York
Alessandra Carioli , European Commission
Stefan Leyk, University of Colorado
Evgeny Noi, University of Colorado

The waves of change in age structure producing what is known as the “demographic dividend” play out not only at the national level, but also in more localized labor markets. These concerns underscore the need for sub-national socioeconomic data, ideally at fine spatial scales, especially in countries whose statistical systems have not in the past given high priority to sub-national data production. To meet such challenges, physical and social scientists have joined forces over the past two decades with the common aim of producing internationally-comparable, high-resolution population grids. For the first time, it has become possible to access credible estimates of total population and population density for finely-detailed sub-national geographic units. Now that the first generation of population grids has arrived, we are in a position to further enrich their demographic content with microdata on a range of socioeconomic indicators. Using open-source individual-level data from population censuses and surveys, together with detailed sub-national tabulations from national statistical offices to fill gaps, we have compiled a global collection of fine-resolution sub-national age and sex distributions for low- and middle-income countries, covering the period from the early 1980s to the present. This note presents the collection, with a focus on the multiple analytic challenges that such sub-national data bring to the fore. Once these census- and survey-based age and sex distributions have been vetted through comparisons with other sources, we will take steps to incorporate sub-national estimates of education and other core development indicators.

See paper

 Presented in Session 52. Flash Session Advances in Subnational and Small-Area Population Analysis