Demographic Research Perspectives on the Developing Countries. An Editorial Note

We collect and present five research articles on some urgent demographic issues affecting the population in the global south. The studies focus on child mortality, fertility tendencies, migration and the aging process, considering countries such as Egypt (Angeli, Ambrosetti and Novelli), Tanzania (Pirani, Marino and Petrucci) and Bangladesh (Puglisi and Busetta), while one article measures the effects of inequality on early life survival in 79 developing countries. Despite the international authorities’ many efforts to improve living conditions and remove social and economic disparities, at the dawn of the XXI century, too many child and maternal deaths are still registered in many developing countries, and infant and child mortality can still, sadly, be considered an active research field. Following the debate on the effects of inequality, Filippo Temporin investigates the role of poverty on neonatal mortality in 79 developing countries, showing how the absolute material conditions, such as the availability of clean water, matter more than the monetary measures. However, poverty has other dimensions that impact child mortality. As Puglisi and Busetta show using individual data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), parental education and the mothers’ education levels affect under-five mortality in Bangladesh. According to these results, to significantly reduce infant and child mortality in poor settings, economic development needs to be accompanied by a more general improvement in female social conditions. However, new issues can arise from the demographic transitions that are rapidly reaching the final stages in many countries of the global south and that are quickly changing the age structures. As a result, in the future, a growing increase in the proportion of the older population will significantly affect the fragile health and social systems of these countries that are already suffering from a lack of social services, exacerbating the poor living conditions of the older population. In fact, older people who live alone in precarious material and health conditions will need more care and social assistance. Considering Egypt, the most populous Arab country, Angeli and Novelli explore the tendencies in late-life arrangements, highlighting the association between the household types and the social characteristics of the elderly.