Yemi Kale, partner and chief economist at KPMG Nigeria has said Nigeria’s growth trends based on a fixed population growth rate for over a decade are not taking into consideration changing death and birth rates.
Kale said this on Tuesday in a tweet where he cited an example of the impact of education on attitudes to bearing kids and family size and also the ‘japa’ economy effect.
‘I don’t believe we are near 200m,” Kale said in a tweet.
Birth rates have definitely changed significantly in the south and middle parts of the country, Kale said, adding that even in some parts of the north, the number of kids per household, though still high, has reduced.
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“Average household size across the country has also been reducing,” he said.
Kale tweeted that “also I know that with surveys on fertility, I’m fairly certain this was a survey not from admin records, higher income households where kids per women have dropped tend to refuse participation so it’s usually biased in favor of lower income households which tend to push up rates.”
“This shows continuously declining fertility rates, if the trend is a persistent decline then adopting a fixed growth rate is problematic.”
