Pacific Atoll Populations 9780824886158

Citation preview

THE EAST-WEST CENTER-formally known as "The Center for Cultural and Technical Interchange Between East and West"—was established in Hawaii by the United States Congress in 1960. As a national educational institution in cooperation with the University of Hawaii, the Center has the mandated goal "to promote better relations and understanding between the United States and the nations of Asia and the Pacific through cooperative study, training, and research." Each year about 2,000 men and women from the United States and some 40 countries and territories of Asia and the Pacific area work and study together with a multinational East-West Center staff in wide-ranging programs dealing with problems of mutual East-West concern. Participants are supported by federal scholarships and grants, supplemented in some fields by contributions from Asian/Pacific governments and private foundations. Center programs are conducted by the East-West Communication Institute, the East-West Culture Learning Institute, the East-West Food Institute, the East-West Population Institute, and the East-West Technology and Development Institute. Open Grants are awarded to provide scope for educational and research innovation, including a program in humanities and the arts. East-West Center Books are published by The University Press of Hawaii to further the Center's aims and programs.

PACIFIC ATOLL POPULATIONS

ASSOCIATION FOR SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN OCEANIA Monograph Series Vern Carroll, Series Editor Everett A. Wingert, Associate Editor for Cartography

Other books in this series: No. 1 Adoption in Eastern Oceania, edited by Vern Carroll No. 2 Land Tenure in Oceania, edited by Henry P. Lundsgaarde

ASAO Monograph

No. 3

PACIFIC A T O L L POPULATIONS Edited by Vern Carroll

NS^AN

EAST-WEST

CENTER

BOOK

from the East-West Population Institute THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF HAWAII HONOLULU

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Pacific atoll populations. (ASAO monograph ; no. 3) Papers of a conference sponsored by the East-West Population Institute, held Dec. 27-30, 1972 at the East-West Center, Honolulu. "An East-West Center book." Bibliography: p. 1. Oceanica—Population—Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Ethnology—Oceanica—Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Demography—Methodology—Addresses, essays, lectures. 4. Ethnology—Field work—Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Carroll, Vem, ed. II. East-West Population Institute. III. Series: Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania. ASAO monograph ; no. 3. HB3693.P32 301.32'9'9 75-1264 ISBN 0-8248-0354-X

Copyright © 1975 by The University Press of Hawaii All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Maps Figures Tables Editor s Preface

vii viii x xxi

1.

The Demography of Communities Vern Carroll

3

2.

Demographic Concepts and Techniques for the Study of Small Populations Griffith Feeney

20

3.

The Population of the Outer Reef Islands, British Solomon Islands Protectorate William Davenport

64

4.

The Strength of the Land: Community Perception of Population on Etal Atoll James D. Nason

117

5.

Changing Patterns of Marriage and Migration on Namoluk Atoll Mac Marshall

160

6.

Makin and the Outside World Bernd Lambert

7.

The Central Polynesian Outlier Populations since European Contact Tim P. Bayliss-Smith

212

286

vi 8.

9. 10.

CONTENTS

The Population of Nukuoro in Historical Perspective Vern Carroll

344

Ontong Java: Depopulation and Repopulation Tim P. Bayliss-Smith

417

Conclusion: The Field Study of Small-Island Populations Vern Carroll

485

Acknowledgments

525

Contributors

527

MAPS

Endpapers 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 5.2 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 7.1 7.2 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 9.1

Oceania

Santa Cruz Islands Reef Islands Truk District, Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands Southern Truk District Etal Atoll Changes in Etal Islet Residential Areas, 1910-1968 Etal Islet Vegetation Pattern Namoluk Atoll Village Area, Namoluk Islet, Namoluk Atoll Gilbert Islands Butaritari and Makin Makin Line Islands Phoenix Islands The North Central Atolls of the Polynesian Outliers The Polynesian Outliers Ponape District, Eastern Caroline Islands Nukuoro Atoll Changes in the Nukuoro Village, 1878-1965 Nukuoro Village, 1965 Ontong Java Atoll

65 67 118 119 120 145 146 161 162 213 217 219 251 252 287 288 345 346 368 foldout 421

FIGURES

2.1 4.1 4.2 5.1 5.2 6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 9.1 9.2 9.3

Relation between Expectation of Life at Age 0 and Expectation of Life at Age 1 for Females Population Trends for Etal Atoll, 1862-1968 Births and Deaths, Etal Atoll, 1948-1968, by Year, Etal Citizen Population Population Trends for Namoluk Atoll, 1862-1972 Births and Deaths, Namoluk Atoll, 1945-1972, by Year, Namoluk Citizen Population Growth of the Butaritari and Makin Population Growth of the Population of the Villages on Makin Model of an Insular Population: Interaction of the Main Constraints on Maximum Carrying Capacity Population Change in the North Central Atolls of the Polynesian Outliers during the Historical Period Chronology of the Recent Demographic History of the North Central Polynesian Outlier Atolls, 1830-1970 Growth of the Nukuoro Population, 1878-1971 Numerical Change of the Luangiua, Pelau, and Ontong Java Populations, 1900-1972 Mean Interval between Successive Pregnancies of Luangiua and Pelau Women, Ontong Java, 1920-1972 Mean Interval between Successive Live Births of Luangiua and Pelau Women, Ontong Java, 1920-1972

42 126 132 170 176 260 260 294 298 330 372 426 447 447

FIGURES

9.4

9.5 9.6

Relationship between Probability of Survival of Women's Children to Age of One and Mean Interval between Successive Pregnancies of Women, 1921-1965, Luangiua and Pelau, Ontong Java Probability of Survival from Conception to Age 30 for the Offspring of Pelau Women, 1920-1972 Probability of Survival from Conception to Age 30 for the Offspring of Luangiua Women, 1920-1972

ix

452 461 462

TABLES

2.1 Mortality Data for Nukuoro Born from 1890 to 1899 2.2 Life Table for Nukuoro Born from 1890 to 1899 2.3 Fertility Data for Nukuoro Women Born from 1890 to 1894 2.4 Birth Rates, by Age Interval, for Nukuoro Women Born from 1890 to 1894 2.5 Births to the Nukuoro Population, 1860-1960 3.1 Population of Islands and Island Groups, Santa Cruz Group, 1 November 1960 3.2 Population, by Sex, of Outer Reef Islands (Except Matema), 1944 and 1960 3.3 Population, by Sex, of Nupani Island, 1959 and 1960 3.4 Pileni De Jure Population, by Age, Sex, and Whether Present or Temporarily Absent, 13 June 1960 3.5 Pileni De Jure Population, by Age, Sex, and Marital Status, 13 June 1960 3.6 Number of Live Births and Living Children of Living Women, by Age of Women, Pileni De Jure Population, 13 June 1960 3.7 Nifiloli De Jure Population, by Age, Sex, and Whether Present or Temporarily Absent, 15 June 1960 3.8 Nifiloli De Jure Population by Age, Sex, and Marital Status, 15 June 1960 3.9 Number of Live Births and Living Children of Living Women, by Age of Women, Nifiloli De Jure Population, 15 June 1960

30 33 46 48 51 72 77 78 85 86

87 88 89

90

TABLES

3.10 3.11 3.12

3.13 3.14 3.15

3.16 3.17 3.18

3.19

3.20 3.21

3.22 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4

Nukapu De Jure Population, by Age, Sex, and Whether Present or Temporarily Absent, 29 May 1960 Nukapu De Jure Population by Age, Sex, and Marital Status, 29 May 1960 Number of Live Births and Living Children of Living Women, by Age of Women, Nukapu De Jure Population, 29 May 1960 Matema De Jure Population, by Age, Sex, and Whether Present or Temporarily Absent, 11 August 1960 Matema De Jure Population, by Age, Sex, and Marital Status, 11 August 1960 Number of Live Births and Living Children of Living Women, by Age of Women, Matema De Jure Population, 11 August 1960 Nupani De Jure Population, by Age, Sex, and Whether Present or Temporarily Absent, 27 May 1960 Nupani De Jure Population, by Age, Sex, and Marital Status, 27 May 1960 Number of Live Births and Living Children of Living Women, by Age of Women, Nupani De Jure Population, 27 May 1960 Origin and Residence of Ever-Married Polynesian Speakers Residing in Polynesian-Speaking Communities of Outer Reef Islands on 11 August 1960 Adoptive Status of Unmarried Dependents, by Age, De Jure Population, Outer Reef Islands, 11 August 1960 Effects of Migration on the De Jure Populations of Polynesian-Speaking Communities, Outer Reef Islands, 1960 Population Indices for the Polynesian-Speaking Communities, Outer Reef Islands, 1960 Estimates of Population and Records of Significant Events for Etal Atoll, 1862-1908 Population of Etal Atoll as Reported by Various Official Sources in the Period 1925 to 1968 De Facto Population of Etal Atoll by Sex and Age, December 1930 and 1 October 1935 Births and Deaths, by Sex, for the Etal Citizen Population, 1948-1968

xii

4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14

4.15 4.16 4.17 5.1

5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6

TABLES

Age at Death, by Age and Sex, for Members of the Etal Citizen Population, 1948 to 1 December 1968 Etal Citizen Population, by Age and Sex, 1948 and 1 December 1968 Marital Status of the Etal Citizen Population, by Age and Sex, 1 December 1968 Age at First Marriage for the Etal Citizen Population, by Sex, 1 December 1968 Etal Atoll Ethnic Population Alive on 1 December 1968, by Age, Sex, and Location Reasons for Absence from Etal Atoll of the Oif-Island Population, by Sex, 1 December 1968 Etal Atoll Off-Island Population, by Sex and Location, 1 December 1968 Etal Atoll De Facto Population, March 1967 and 1 December 1968 Etal Ethnic Population Members Married to Aliens, by Sex and Place of Residence, 1 December 1968 Ethnic Identity of Aliens by Sex, at Time of Marriage to Members of the Etal Atoll Ethnic Population, 1 December 1968 Etal Atoll Land Resources, by Islet, Total Area, and Area of Breadfruit and Taro Cultivation, 1968 Estimated Yield and Consumption of Taro Plants on Etal Atoll, by Population Size of Atoll Estimated Yield and Consumption of Coconuts on Etal Atoll, by Population Size of Atoll Early Estimates of the Namoluk Population and Yearly Reports of the "Total Resident Population" of Namoluk during the U.S. Administration De Facto Population of Namoluk Atoll, Various Dates Births and Deaths, by Sex, for the Namoluk Citizen Population, 1945-1972 Namoluk Ethnic Population Alive on 1 January 1971, by Age, Sex, and Location Off-Island Namoluk Ethnic Population, by Sex and Location, 1 January 1971 Reasons for Absence of Members of the Namoluk Ethnic Population Who Were Off Island on 1 January 1971

134 135 137 138 139 140 141 142 143

144 148 149 149

167 169 177 179 181 181

TABLES

5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 5.14 5.15 5.16 5.17 5.18

5.19

5.20 5.21 5.22 5.23 5.24 5.25

xiii

Dispersal of 'Namoluk Citizens', by Age, 22 July 1970-1 August 1971 182 Passengers between Namoluk Atoll and Other Islands, by Age, between 22 July 1970 and 1 August 1971 183 De Facto Population of Namoluk Atoll, by Age and Sex, 1 January 1970 184 De Facto Population of Namoluk Atoll, by Age and Sex, 1 January 1971 185 De Facto Population of Namoluk Atoll, by Age and Sex, December 1930 186 De Facto Population of Namoluk Atoll, by Age and Sex, 1 October 1935 186 Members of the Namoluk Ethnic Population Married to Aliens, by Sex and Place of Residence, 1 January 1971 187 Age at First Marriage for the Namoluk Citizen Population, 31 December 1972 188 Marital Status of the Namoluk Citizen Population, by Age and Sex, 31 December 1972 190 Marital Status of the Namoluk Atoll De Facto Population in December 1930 and on 1 October 1935, by Sex 192 Age at Death for the Namoluk Citizen Population, 1950 to 31 December 1972 193 Ethnic Identity of Aliens Ever Married to Members of the Namoluk Atoll Ethnic Population, from about 1850 to 31 December 1972 195 Ethnic Identity of Aliens Currently Married to Members of the Namoluk Atoll Living Ethnic Population, 31 December 1972 195 Children Ever Born, by Age of Mother (Namoluk Citizen Population), as of 31 December 1972 201 Age, at Birth of First Living Child, for Namoluk Women Alive on 30 June 1971 201 Age, at Birth of Last Living Child, for Namoluk Women Alive on 30 June 1971 and over Age 50 202 Number of Marriages of Women in Namoluk Citizen Population Alive on 31 December 1972 202 Number of Marriages of Men in Namoluk Citizen Population Alive on 31 December 1972 203 Number of Marriages and Number of Children Borne by

TABLES

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 6.10 6.11 6.12 6.13 6.14 6.15 6.16 6.17 6.18 6.19 6.20 6.21

Namoluk Women between about 1870 and 31 December 1972 Resident Population of Butaritari and Makin, by Date Resident Population of the Villages of Butaritari Resident Population of the Villages of Makin Average Annual Growth Rate of the Resident Population of Makin, Various Periods Births, by Sex, for Makin, 1911-1972 Deaths, by Sex, for Makin, 1911-1972 De Facto Makin Population, by Age, Sex, and Village, 1 June 1961 De Facto Makin Population, by Age, Sex, and Village, 1 February 1971 De Facto Makin Population, by Age, Sex, and Village, 1 August 1972 De Facto Makin Population, by Age, Sex, Origin, and Usual Place of Residence, 1 August 1972 Makin De Jure Population, by Age, Sex, and Whether Present or Temporarily Absent, 1 August 1972 Makin Women by Age and Number of Children Ever Borne, 1 February 1971 Location on 1 February 1971 of 1961 Residents of Makin Location Abroad on 1 February 1971 of 1961 Residents of Makin Previous Location of Persons Resident on Makin on 1 February 1971 Previous Location of Persons Who Came to Makin from Abroad between 1 June 1961 and 1 February 1971 Location on 1 August 1972 of 1971 Residents of Makin Location Abroad on 1 August 1972 of 1971 Residents of Makin Previous Location of Persons Resident on Makin, 1 August 1972 Previous Location of Persons Who Came to Makin from Abroad between 1 February 1971 and 1 August 1972 Indigenous Population Claiming Makin as Home Island, by Place on Which Enumerated and by Age and Sex, 5 December 1968

204 214 218 221 227 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 237 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248

255

TABLES

6.22 6.23 6.24 6.25 6.26 6.27 6.28 6.29 7.1 7.2

7.3 7.4 7.5

7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10 7.11 7.12

Makin De Facto Population, by Sex and Origin of Parents, 1 June 1961 Makin De Facto Population, by Sex and Origin of Parents, 1 February 1971 Origin of Non-Butaritari and Non-Makin Parents of Makin Residents, 1 June 1961 Origin of Non-Butaritari and Non-Makin Parents of Makin Residents, 1 February 1971 Makin De Facto Population by Age, Sex, and Marital Status, 1 June 1961 Makin Households, by Village, 1947 and 1961 Makin Households, by Village, 1971 and 1972 Population of the Gilbert Islands, 1852 and 1905 The North-Central Polynesian Outlier Atolls: Physical Geography Estimated Precontact Carrying Capacity of Ontong Java, Sikaiana, and Takuu, Compared with Historical Enumerations of the Populations Sikaiana De Facto Population, by Sex, as Reported by Government Sources and Visitors, 1847-1970 Sikaiana De Facto Population, by Sex and Age, 1847-1970 Honiara De Facto Population over Age 15 Who Are Migrants from the Polynesian Outer Islands of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate Nukumanu De Facto Population, by Sex, as Reported by Government Sources and Visitors, 1870-1968 Nukumanu De Facto Population, by Sex and Age, 19091940 Takuu De Facto Population, by Sex, as Reported by Government Sources and Visitors, 1884-1969 Takuu De Facto Population, by Sex and Age, 1896-1940 Nukuria De Facto Population, by Sex, as Reported by Government Sources and Visitors, 1884-1968 Nukuria De Facto Population, by Sex and Age Group, 1922-1940 Summary Statistics of the Demographic History of the North-Central Polynesian Outlier Atolls from Effective European Contact to 1870

XV

256 257 258 259 265 271 272 274 290

297 301 303

307 314 316 320 323 327 328

332

xvi 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4

8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10 8.11 8.12 8.13 8.14 8.15 8.16 8.17 8.18 8.19

TABLES Enumerations of the De Facto Population on Nukuoro Atoll, Various Dates 350 Composition of the Nukuoro De Facto Population in 1912 351 Average Annual Growth Rate of Nukuoro Population 354 Average Number of Live Births per Woman, by Birth Cohort of Woman, Nukuoro Jural Population, 15 March 1965 360 Number of Children Born to Each Woman, Nukuoro Jural Population, by Birth Cohort of Mother, 15 March 1965 362 Age at First Marriage, Ever-Married Women in Nukuoro Jural Population, by Birth Cohort, 15 March 1965 363 Age at First Childbirth, Mothers in Nukuoro Jural Population, by Birth Cohort of Mother, 15 March 1965 364 Nukuoro De Facto and Living Ethnic Population, Various Dates 370 Nukuoro De Facto Population, by Age Group and Sex, December 1930 373 Nukuoro De Facto Population, by Age Group and Sex, 1 October 1935 374 Composition of Nukuoro Jural Population, 15 March 1965 375 Births in the Nukuoro Ethnic Population, Selected Years 376 Deaths in the Nukuoro Ethnic Population, Selected Years 376 Adoptive Status of Nukuoro Jural Population, by Birth Cohort, 15 March 1965 377 Composition of Nukuoro Ethnic Population, 15 March 1965 378 Age at Death, Deceased Members of Nukuoro Ethnic Population, by Birth Cohort, 15 March 1965 379 Marital Status of Nukuoro De Facto Population in December 1930 and 1 October 1935 380 Marital Status of Nukuoro Living Jural Population, by Age and Sex, 15 March 1965 381 Husbands Per Woman, by Birth Cohort of Woman, Nukuoro Jural Population, 15 March 1965 382

8.20

Pregnancy and Marriage Status of Mothers in Nukuoro Ethnic Population, March 1965

8.21

Age at First Marriage, Ever-Married Men in Nukuoro Jural Population, by Birth Cohort, 15 March 1965 Location of Ethnic Nukuoro at Census Time, December 1930

8.22

382 383 384

TABLES

8.23 Place of Birth (and of Registration) of Nukuoro De Facto Population, December 1930 8.24 Ethnicity of Persons Enumerated on Nukuoro, 1 October 1935 8.25 Location of Registered Nukuoro (Honseki Registration) at Census Time, 1 October 1935 8.26 Location of Nukuoro Ethnic Population Elsewhere than Nukuoro or Ponape, by Age and Sex, 15 March 1965 8.27 Reasons for Residence on Ponape of Nukuoro Living Ethnic Population on Ponape, by Age and Sex, 15 March 1965 8.28 Ethnic Status of Last Spouse, Ever-Married Members of Nukuoro Living Jural Population, by Age, Sex, and Location, 15 March 1965 8.29 Ethnic Status of Parents of Nukuoro Living Jural Population, by Age of Children, 15 March 1965 8.30 Ethnic Status of Nukuoro Known Population, by Generation Level, 15 March 1965 8.31 Ethnic Status of Nukuoro Study Population, by Birth Cohort, 15 March 1965 8.32 Location of Nukuoro Reproducing Population, 15 March 1965 8.33 Nukuoro De Facto and De Jure Population, by Age, Sex, and Ethnic Status, 15 March 1965 8.34 Yearly Official Reports of the "Total Resident Population" of Nukuoro during the American Administration, 19481971 8.35 Components of Growth of the Nukuoro Ethnic Population, 1878-1912 8.36 Cohort Fertility of Nukuoro Women 8.37 Mortality of Nukuoro Birth Cohorts 9.1 Population Estimates for Ontong Java 9.2 De Facto Population of Ontong Java, by Sex, 1921-1972 9.3 Characteristics of the Sample of Reproductive Histories from Ontong Java 9.4 Sex Ratios of All Conceptions, Miscarriages, Live Births, Deceased Offspring, and Live Offspring Recorded for a Sample of 110 Ontong Java Women in 1972 9.5 Mean Interval in Months between Successive Pregnancies and Successive Live Births, by Period in Which Event

xvii 385 385 385 387 388

389 391 398 400 401 402

405 407 408 409 425 432 440

443

xviii

9.6

9.7

9.8

9.9 9.10 9.11 9.12 9.13

9.14

9.15

9.16

9.17 9.18 9.19

TABLES

Occurred, for a Simple Population of Ontong Java, 1921-1972 445 Mean Probability of Survival from Conception to Age 30, for the Offspring of Pre- and Postmenopausal Women, Luangiua, 1972 449 Mean Probability of Survival from Conception to Age 30, for the Offspring of Pre- and Postmenopausal Women, Pelau, 1972 449 Data for Estimating Effect of the Difference in Miscarriage and Infant Mortality Rates between Luangiua and Pelau in the Average Interpregnancy Interval 450 Number of Pregnancies per Woman, for Postmenopausal Women, Ontong Java, 1972 454 Number of Pregnancies per Woman, for Premenopausal Women over Age 30, Ontong Java, 1972 455 Number of Live Births per Woman, for Postmenopausal Women, Ontong Java, 1972 456 Number of Live Births per Woman, for Premenopausal Women over Age 30, Ontong Java, 1972 457 Number of Offspring Surviving to Reproductive Age (15 Years), for Women Completing Reproduction before 1957 and Interviewed on Ontong Java in July 1972 457 Mean Percent Probability of Survival from Birth to Age 30, for the Offspring of Ontong Java Women over Age 30, 1920-1972 458 Mean Percent Probability of Survival from Conception to Age 30, for the Offspring of Women over Age 30 in 1972, for Different Periods in Which the Event Occurred, Pelau, 1920-1972 460 Mean Percent Probability of Survival from Conception to Age 30, for the Offspring of Women over Age 30 in 1972, for Different Periods in Which the Event Occurred, Luangiua, 1920-1972 463 Ontong Java Population, by Age and Sex, 1928-1972 464 Population under Age 10 as Percentage of Total, Ontong Java, 1928-1972 465 Ontong Java De Jure Population, by Age, Sex, and Whether Present or Temporarily Absent, 3 July 1970 466

TABLES

Ontong Java Ethnic Population Residing at Home and Abroad, by Sex, as Reported by Government and Other Sources, Various Dates 9.21 Luangiua De Facto Ethnic Population, by Age, Sex, and Marital Status, 26 August 1972 9.22 Pelau De Facto Ethnic Population, by Sex, Age, and Marital Status, 26 August 1972

xix

9.20

468 469 470

EDITOR'S PREFACE

This volume is the first report of the Pacific Atoll Populations project, sponsored during 1972 and 1973 by the East-West Population Institute. The project was designed to encourage fieldworkers to present their population data in a form suitable for comparative studies and to interpret these data in the context of nondemographic variables. The diffusion of demographic concepts and techniques was an inevitable preliminary to the final presentation of data, as was the modification of ordinary demographic practice to accord with ethnographic realities. The project was suggested by Robert Harrison—then research associate at the East-West Population Institute. A proposal written jointly by us suggesting a conference to bring together fieldworkers and population specialists was submitted in April 1971 to the EastWest Population Institute. In September 1971, the Institute accepted the proposal. Invitations to the conference were extended in July 1972, and preliminary versions of the ethnographic papers were circulated for comments in October and November 1972. The conference took place from 27 December to 30 December 1972 at the East-West Center, Honolulu. Chairmen of the sessions were Griffith Feeney, Ko Groenewegen, Robert Harrison, Alan Howard, Newton Morton, Peter Pirie, Aram Yengoyan, and myself. The ethnographers attending—in addition to those who have contributed to this volume—were William H. Alkire, Ivan A. Brady, Sachiko Hatanaka,

xxii

PREFACE

Antony Hooper, Judith Huntsman, Paul Ottino, Nancy J. Pollock, and Michael A. Rynkiewich. At this conference, the issues were clarified and goals were agreed upon. Those who were able revised their contributions for inclusion in this volume; the others will publish elsewhere. The present work begins with an effort to clarify what is meant by an atoll population and how one can begin to organize one's thinking about atoll population data. The next chapter discusses the techniques for examining some of the more interesting of the interrelationships between different sorts of demographic data. The ensuing seven chapters provide case studies of typical atoll populations. The studies illustrate how demographic data from particular societies can be organized and point to some of the conclusions that can be drawn from such data. In lieu of summary and synthesis—which would be premature in the absence of more data—we have addressed the concluding chapter to future fieldworkers. Our efforts in this volume have been directed toward breaking new ground and establishing a research tradition. If the book serves adequately as an introduction to the demographic study of small-island populations in Oceania and as a primer on method, then its main purposes have been achieved. The aim of the series in which this volume appears is to provide a framework for the systematic comparison of Oceanic societies and cultures. Our focus here is on the demographic basis for such comparisons. We hope that our efforts will succeed in encouraging the collection and presentation of comparable data so that wider comparisons will become possible. We also hope that students of population theory and policy will find here some challenges to the conventional wisdom. VERN CARROLL

East-West Population Institute July 1973

PACIFIC ATOLL POPULATIONS

NOTE Single quotes are used consistently throughout this book for glosses of native words, concepts, and conventional phrases.

1 THE DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES Vern

Carroll

INTRODUCTION

As Feeney points out in chapter 2, demographic technique has developed in association with the rise of the nation-state. Consequently, many of its more subtle refinements have been designed to compensate for defects in the data on large populations, and are therefore not helpful in the analysis of small populations.1 Indeed, scant attention has been devoted to the demography of communities; some demographers appear to be persuaded that small populations simply do not lend themselves to demographic analysis. This is a mistake. Some of the difficulties of community-level demography are no different from those encountered in any other sort of population study. There is, first of all, the problem of documentation: the difficulty of collecting accurate and adequate demographic data, especially longitudinal data, for the particular community studied. Second, there is the problem of reliability: given good documentation—and perhaps some field data as well—what confidence in these data is possible? These two matters will receive attention in chapter 10. Several difficulties, however, are distinctive to the study of small populations. One of these will be considered by Feeney in the next chapter—the question of what techniques are suitable to the analysis of very small populations, especially given the fact that our information about them tends to be greatly different in form from data concerning large populations. A second special problem, which I shall

4

DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES

discuss in this chapter, is that of population definition. It has hitherto received scant attention in the demographic literature—undoubtedly because it does not arise in the demographic study of large populations, such as those of the modern nation-state. A third problem is that of random variation: even with the most reliable and well-documented population data, what confident interpretations are possible when the data refer to only a relatively small number of instances (in comparison with the numbers usually dealt with in conventional demography)? While a full discussion of this problem is reserved for another publication, it will suffice to suggest here that the resolution of the other problems will decrease the significance of this particular one. My task in this chapter is to provide a specific methodological approach to the problem of population definition and a theoretical basis for the method. Incidentally, I shall introduce a special vocabulary—consistently employed and indicated by italicizing at first useto facilitate discussion. The single question I am concerned with is the following: At any moment in time, what fraction of the world's population, including deceased persons, is relevant to the demographic study of a single community? The chief difficulty in answering this question arises from the well-known fact that no community lives in total isolation from other communities. Were it not for this, one could study the population of a community by defining the community's boundaries and noting all present and former members. But establishing a community's boundaries in an explicit fashion is sometimes difficult precisely because a community is usually not isolated: a definition in terms of locality may be defective because some 'members' of the community may be living elsewhere at the moment, and some 'residents' may not be considered members. It will perhaps be easier to visualize the issue if we first consider the simplest sort of population, introducing the complicating factors one by one until we reach the level of complication that contemporary communities exhibit. At that point, having understood the problem, we shall be prepared to consider the solution. POPULATION BOUNDARIES

Nothing inherent in the notion of population indicates where a population boundary should be drawn. In practice, a specific population

DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES

5

is defined usually with reference to a specific locality. One can, for example, draw a line around any portion of a map, and then count the people located inside the area at a particular time. Such a population is called a de facto population. This procedure will include in the enumeration all those who are only temporarily present (i.e., "visitors"), and exclude those who are normally resident but temporarily absent. An enumeration that excludes visitors and includes all "usual residents" yields a de jure population. Here the principle of localization is less strict: it is those who are "usually" associated with a locality who are included in the de jure census, whereas a de facto census includes all those physically present and excludes all those physically absent—regardless of their usual situation. Although most national censuses try to make the enumeration areas coincide with other boundaries, in fact local census areas are highly arbitrary. Nothing in the notion of de facto census or de jure census requires that the areal boundaries mean anything particular to the people being enumerated or that they remain the same from one census to another.2 It is sufficient in such cases for the enumeration area to be carefully defined. Community demography—in contrast to other sorts—begins with the requirement that population boundaries be drawn in substantially the same way as the community defines membership. There may be a geographical focus of the population—referring to what I shall call the home community—but in no case does mere presence in a home community bestow membership (or mere absence result in the loss of membership). Rather, there are always additional criteria for membership based on relationships with other members. Such relationships may be genealogical, marital, adoptive, "client," or other. These criteria must be taken into account. Where community membership is relatively difficult to acquire—for example, where one must be born to a member to have membership —then it is conventional to think of community members as natives and nonmembers as aliens. If community membership is less difficult to acquire, then it is customary to think of members as citizens and nonmembers as noncitizens. A population limited to the members of a community (and exhaustive of its members) is called an ethnic population. All of the other sorts of populations referred to in this chapter relate to this core notion.

6

DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES

An ethnic population extends backward in time to include all former members, as well as those living at the time of inital census. Thus it is essential to the notion of ethnic population that invariant definitions of membership be employed. An important part of community demography is the establishment of such definitions, suited of course to each particular case. CLOSED POPULATIONS AND OPEN COMMUNITIES

The simplest sort of natural population is one in which there has always been strict population endogamy. In such a population—one in which all matings and marriages occur entirely among group members—all persons would have only natives for parents, would marry only natives, and would produce only native children. No one could enter the population except by birth, and no one could leave the population except by death. A population of this sort is a closed population. An endogamous population either must be strictly localized—for example on a single atoll—or it must have a strict basis for separating natives from aliens. This follows from the notion of endogamy 'marriage within the group': the group must be defined independently of the marriages for any practical system of in-marriage to sustain itself. Thus even the simplest sort of natural population must be thought of either in terms of a specific locality that defines it or in terms of a specific ethnic designation. No population of which we have any report is entirely "closed" in the above sense—at least not over any significant period of time. A large nation, however, may provide a fair approximation to a closed population. First of all, a large nation has conventional boundaries, so its residents can be differentiated from all others. Second, unambiguous (legal) definitions of citizenship serve to classify residents as either citizens or aliens. Finally, it may be supposed in a national population that citizens overwhelmingly marry other citizens, citizens' children are themselves citizens, and citizens' parents are citizens. Incidentally, it may be further supposed that the overwhelming majority of citizens are resident in the home country and that the percentage of resident aliens in the home country is very small. In a small population, none of these suppositions may be warranted. Taking a local community in the present as our point of reference, we

DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES

7

might find, for example, that a significant percentage of the population is married to aliens. In some instances the couple may live in the home community—in which case the in-marrying spouse is conveniently thought of as an immigrant to the community; in other cases, the couple may live abroad and raise their children among aliens. T h e native living abroad in these circumstances is conveniently thought of as an emigrant. In a closed population, all births, marriages, and deaths are unambiguously attributable, at the time of their occurrence, to a single population—the one to which everyone belongs. This closed population can be defined in a number of ways. If it is defined strictly with reference to the present location of persons (i.e., as in a de facto population), then a small population can remain "closed" only if it is almost totally isolated: any opportunity to mate, marry, give birth, or die outside the community might lead to a demographic event, involving a member of the home community, that could not be assigned to the home community population but would have to be assigned to the population of the locality in which the event occurred. Similarly, any opportunity for someone outside to become involved in a demographic event within the community locale would lead to the attribution of such an event to the home community population. In a de jure procedure for record-keeping, on the other hand, one could stipulate that all births, marriages, and deaths occurring to those only temporarily away from their usual residence be assigned to the home community population. 3 This would have the effect of assigning a larger fraction of the demographic events involving community members to the community population than would be assigned on the basis of a de facto procedure. In the ethnic approach, however, all relevant demographic events are assigned to the "ethnic population." Prior to deciding whether or not a demographic event is attributable to an ethnic population, one must know the ethnic status of the individual or individuals participating in the event. A demographic event is unambiguously assignable to an ethnic population only if all those involved are members of the ethnic population. Any mating or marriage between members and nonmembers leads to an ambiguity: should the event be attributed to the population of the member or to the population of the nonmember? 4 Thus the demography of communities is inevitably concerned with

8

DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES

ethnic status, by which I mean the criteria used to assign an individual to one ethnic population or another. Remembering that in a closed population, all members of the population are members at birth, marriage, parenthood, and death (as are their parents, spouses, and children), we realize that no small population, now or in the past, could have remained entirely closed for very long. Indeed, the smaller the population, the greater the likelihood that it could not have survived without at least some intermarriage. Thus the problem of theory is to develop definitions of ethnic status that will permit the construction of a nominally closed population, in which all demographic events are unambiguously classifiable as attributable either to a certain ethnic population or not, even though other criteria of a closed population are not met. Nominally closed populations can be classified according to which of the criteria for a closed population are abandoned. In other words, by stipulating for any member whether he or his parents, spouses, or children must be a member of the ethnic population or need not be, one has defined a type of population that, while not actually "closed," can at least be compared with a "closed population" in a precise manner. Historical demography can deal with a nominally closed population on the same terms as a closed population; it cannot deal with an "open population" in which the basis for membership is constantly shifting. To define any particular nominally closed population one must answer the question of whether for any member of the population each of the following must also be members of the ethnic population or need not be: parents (both, one, none); spouses (all, some, none); children (all, some, none); self at birth; self at marriage; self at parenthood; self at death. The explanation of these definitional attributes is a statement of how membership in the ethnic population can be acquired or lost. Clearly, the permutations of definitional attributes are enormous, and a fertile field of continuing research is the exploration of the dimensionality of the theoretical possibilities, the implications of the application of each possibility to empirical studies, and the relationship of these possibilities to native systems of categorization. It may be helpful at this point to provide a detailed illustration of the matters just discussed. I shall then proceed to a more methodologically oriented discussion of the general case.

DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES

9

THE POPULATION OF NUKUORO

The people who live on Nukuoro Atoll in the Caroline Islands regard themselves as a distinct ethnic community not included in any larger ethnic grouping.5 In the language they employ, one is either tangada de henua 'native Nukuoro', tangada mai moni 'alien', or tangada abasasa 'European (including American and Japanese)'. Thus, at any point in time all persons can be unambiguously classified as either natives or aliens. Nukuoro ethnic categorizations depend upon parentage and are immutable: there is no way an alien can become a native. Even over time, therefore, one is either in the ethnic population or one is not. But a simple division of the population into natives and aliens is insufficient for analytic purposes because over time the progeny of some natives are lost to the community and the progeny of some aliens become part of it. The demographer, unlike the native, must develop concepts of ethnicity that apply to such changes in ethnic status. But —to the extent possible—we should try to adapt our concepts to local realities. One is Nukuoro if one has a parent who is Nukuoro. Since there is little adoption of aliens, it rarely happens that an adopted child does not have at least one natural parent who is Nukuoro. There have been only two aliens adopted on Nukuoro. As luck would have it, they married each other; in consequence, their children are in an anomalous position: all of the children were born and raised on Nukuoro, but it is not clear whether they are 'Nukuoro', by virtue of their parents' adoptive links, or not. Even though the children have inherited land on the atoll, it is said that they are 'really' aliens. If a Nukuoro settles among aliens and takes an alien spouse, then his (or her) children are still Nukuoro. If these children remain abroad and take alien spouses, they might still be considered Nukuoro, on the principle that one is Nukuoro if one has a parent who is Nukuoro. The same is true of the children and grandchildren of these foreign-born children for as many generations as one would care to keep track. In practice, however, there is a limit to which an ethnic identity can be kept alive. A child of mixed parentage will tend to take the primary ethnic identity of the community in which he (or she) is living, especially if the child has relationships with other community members through one of the child's parents.

10

DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES

If a Nukuoro is living abroad and is married to an alien, then his or her children will tend to take their primary ethnic identity from the group in which they are living, especially if this is the group to which the alien parent belongs. (The children of two Nukuoro living abroad have no connection, of course, to any alien ethnic community; they remain Nukuoro, by default as it were.) The children of mixed parentage raised abroad can be said to have secondary ethnic identity as Nukuoro. This means that in certain contexts they are included as 'Nukuoro'; in other contexts they tend to be excluded. For example, in a community discussion of who counts as 'Nukuoro'—it being a matter of pride to count as many persons as possible—all those with secondary ethnic identity would be counted. But such persons tend to be forgotten in other contexts. The children of Nukuoro emigrants can easily reestablish themselves as full-status Nukuoro by returning to the home community or by otherwise cultivating a pattern of relationships similar to that possessed by full-status Nukuoro. But if such a child opts out of the Nukuoro community, then it will be that much harder for his (or her) children to reestablish themselves as full members of the community. Such land rights as these children might claim will have been obscured with the passage of time, and the best they can hope for is to live as permanent guests of one of their relatives in the home community. Every person in any way connected with the Nukuoro population can be considered as falling into one of five categories. (1) Nukuoro: a full-status native who was born a 'Nukuoro' and who has done nothing to qualify him (or her) for membership in the second category. (2) Nukuoro emigrant: a full-status Nukuoro (as in the category above) who has taken an alien spouse, is living abroad, and is raising his (or her) children there. This status does not correspond to any category in Nukuoro thought: all members of this category are full-status Nukuoro from the Nukuoro point of view. (3) Alienated children: children of anyone in the second category if not living on Nukuoro or adopted by a Nukuoro couple. Although these persons could claim the land rights of their Nukuoro parent and would be welcomed by their kin should they choose to return, in fact most of them seem to remain

DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES

11

abroad, marry aliens, and raise their children abroad. The children of alienated children—also categorized as alienated children—would find it still more difficult than their parents to press land claims and would not receive the same hospitality on the home atoll; they are even less likely than their parents to return 'home'. The ethnic status of individuals in this category is ambiguous. On the principle that if one parent is Nukuoro then the child is Nukuoro, these children are full-status Nukuoro; but without language, customs, and relationships—and without detailed knowledge of the home environment or the biographies of the community's members—they seem destined to be lost to the home community. This category, like the preceding one, is not part of Nukuoro thought. Both are required by the record-keeper and the student of historical demography but not by the Nukuoro themselves. (Notice that children of two Nukuoro living abroad fall into the first category above, rather than into this one.) (4) Nukuoro immigrants are 'aliens' living permanently 011 Nukuoro. They will always remain 'aliens' but are treated much like 'natives' if they are married to 'natives' (not otherwise). (5) Aliens are those who figure in the universe of known persons as alien spouses of emigrants or as parents of alien spouses or immigrants. An occasional alien is recorded not because of a genealogical connection but because he or she resided on Nukuoro without becoming an immigrant. Note that certain changes in ethnic status are possible: Nukuoro can become Nukuoro emigrants (or vice versa); aliens can become Nukuoro immigrants (or vice versa); and an alienated child can either regain full status—by returning to the home community or marrying a full-status Nukuoro—or can drift closer to occupying a position similar to that of an 'alien'.0 Thus a determination of ethnic status is a determination made as of a particular point in time. This time must be specified. Note also that, since ethnic status may change (like location or marital status), the specification of any particular population as of a particular time is possible only if account is kept of changes of ethnic status. In dealing with Nukuoro, it is usually sufficient to note ethnic

12

DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES

status at birth, at birth of first child, and at death, although in populations where ethnic status is more easily acquired and lost, keeping track of changes will be more complicated. TABULATION OF NUKUORO RECORD SETS

Each tabulation of any part of a total universe of population records should use the largest possible portion of the records (in order to consider the most cases). But a large portion of the records may belong either to individuals who never had any connection with the ethnic population or to natives who lived so long ago that there is scant information about them. If these records were routinely tabulated with records for the rest of the population, then the number of instances of "don't know" would rise until it threatened to become a significant proportion of the total. This difficulty is the rationale for establishing a Study Population (discussed below): to isolate the portion of the records for which data are nearly complete and within which we are reasonably certain to have information on everyone. The total universe of Nukuoro records is referred to as the Nukuoro Known Population. I assigned each 'native' in the Nukuoro Known Population an identification number composed in part of "generation level," that is, a number one less than that of the mother. All those too young to have children were assigned to generation level 9, their mothers to 8, the mothers of the latter to 7, and so forth. Adjustments were made so that all siblings were assigned to the same generation level. Immigrants were assigned to the generation level of their Nukuoro spouse; aliens were coded only for inclusion (or exclusion) in the Study Population (see below). Each record in the Nukuoro Known Population was assigned a sort code number, corresponding to one of the five ethnic-status categories discussed in the previous section. Every tabulation of Nukuoro population data (as of 15 March 1965) aggregates particular characteristics of the records contained in some precisely labeled subset of the records for the Known Population. Presumably, another fieldworker could replicate the data gathering and data tabulation with minimum difficulty, and the results would diverge very little from my own. The major divisions of the Nukuoro Known Population are as follows. First, there is a division into those who lived and those who never

DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES

13

lived (i.e., abortions, stillbirths, and miscarriages); the latter group is assigned sort code 0. Of those who lived, most have a genealogical connection to at least one other member of the population. All such are collectively termed the Nukuoro Genealogical Population. They are contrasted with aliens whose only connection with the community is through residence. This latter group I call the Nukuoro De Facto Aliens; they are assigned sort code 5, as with other aliens. Other sort code assignments are discussed below. In tabulating Nukuoro population data, only a portion of the total universe of records is relevant to each tabulation. Each of these fractions of the total universe has been assigned a name for convenience of reference. All of these subsets are included within the largest subset of all, the Nukuoro Study Population, which includes all those who are not aliens (sort code 5) and who are at generation levels 6, 7, 8, and 9 (i.e., all those in one of the four most recent generations). Demographic data for levels 0-5 are not usually tabulated because it is presumed that the genealogical knowledge of my informants was imperfect at this time depth and because there are few birth and death dates for individuals in these groups. The Nukuoro Study Population is presumed to include all those who were born from about 1860 through 15 March 1965. Within the set of records that constitute the Nukuoro Study Population, not all of the ethnic status categories (1-4, above) are relevant to every purpose. In considering matters of custom, such as adoption, it seems to make sense to tabulate all records for the total Nukuoro Ethnic Population (regardless of the location of the individual) and to exclude the records for all foreigners (aliens and immigrants). But the growth of the local population is owed not to the whole Nukuoro Ethnic Population but to those who live in the home community and produce children. This set, which I call the Nukuoro Reproducing Population, is the most useful one for studying the natural population increase of Nukuoro Atoll for it focuses on those segments of the population that actually contribute to the reproduction of the local population (i.e., it includes Nukuoro immigrants but excludes Nukuoro emigrants and their children). A third division of the Nukuoro Study Population that I find useful excludes alienated children and Nukuoro immigrants but includes Nukuoro emigrants. Called the Nukuoro Jural Population, it is used for

14

DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES

most tabulations of the "Nukuoro population." It includes all those who have active claims on home-atoll land, and thus it constitutes the core of the largest potential resident population of Nukuoro Atoll. The various divisions of the Nukuoro Study Population—for which all data reflect the status of individuals as of 15 March 1965—are based on the ethnic status categories explained in the previous section, which in the context of tabulation are referred to as sort codes. The Nukuoro Genealogical Population—it will be remembered—divides into two sets: the Nukuoro Ethnic Population (all records with sort codes 1-3) and the population of Nukuoro Genealogical Aliens (all records with sort codes 4 and 5). To sum up: the divisions of the record set for the Nukuoro Study Population which are employed in tabulation are as follows: (1) Nukuoro Ethnic Population: all except Nukuoro immigrants and aliens (i.e., Nukuoro, Nukuoro emigrants, and alienated children). This set includes all records with sort codes 1, 2, and 3. (2) Nukuoro Jural Population: all except Nukuoro immigrants, alienated children, and aliens (i.e., Nukuoro and Nukuoro emigrants). This set includes all records with sort codes 1 and 2. (3) Nukuoro Reproducing Population: all except Nukuoro emigrants, their children, and aliens (i.e., Nukuoro immigrants and Nukuoro). This set includes all records with sort codes 1 and 4. At any one moment in time, this population might be viewed as the Nukuoro Local Population. Other combinations of sort codes—apart from those discussed a b o v e are considered meaningless. It should be noted that none of the preceding population definitions have stipulated that the individuals included are living. Individual records are coded for ethnic status without reference to whether the individual is alive or not. If one wishes to specify only the living members of one of these sets, then one must posit a Nukuoro Living Ethnic Population, a Nukuoro Living Jural Population, or a Nukuoro Living Reproducing Population—specifying in each case the particular date from which each person was determined to be either dead or alive.

DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES

15

Similarly, none of the above populations are defined with reference to location or residence. 'Aliens' are not usually residents of Nukuoro, but one might be counted in a census while visiting. Similarly, immigrants tend to reside on the atoll, and emigrants do not; but census day might find anyone away from his usual abode. Therefore if a particular local component of a population is wanted, then a locality must be specified—e.g., Nukuoro Living Ethnic Population at Home, or Nukuoro Living Ethnic Population Abroad. Again, such designations make sense only with reference to an exact date. NON-NUKUORO POPULATIONS

The foregoing scheme may be unnecessarily complicated for those community populations in which emigrants, immigrants, and alienated children cannot be distinguished from natives. In particular, it may not be convenient to distinguish either a Jural Population or a Reproducing Population from the Ethnic Population as a whole. In chapter 5, Marshall asserts that Namoluk citizenship is easily bestowed on newcomers to the atoll. He also states that the children of those who leave the atoll are divided into two classes: the children of male citizens lose their status as citizens quite easily, whereas the children of female citizens retain it. Marshall's chapter brings up the question of whether it is better to develop existing concepts to solve culturally specific problems of definition or to invent new concepts. While there can be no general answer to such a question, it will be noted that Marshall's Namoluk Citizen Population differs from a Namoluk Ethnic Population by only a small margin. There are, of course, good arguments for establishing a separate term, especially—as here—when the new term is applicable to a wide range of situations (chapter 4 ) . But it should be kept in mind that any general solution to the problem of defining meaningful subsets of meaningfully defined populations will be just that—a general solution that will not apply in all details to every situation. Comparative work can proceed only by carefully determining the range of applicability of all general concepts and statements, refraining from introducing new terms that are not absolutely required. The Nukuoro scheme envisages a home community localized on a single atoll, but it can be applied also to populations that are not

16

DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES

localized on a single island or atoll. As Hatanaka and Ottino argued at the Conference on Atoll Populations (see Preface), the degree of circular movement in some areas may be so great that the "community" includes the populations of several islands. If this is the way that ethnic boundaries are drawn locally, then one confronts the same situation as when several villages share the same island or atoll: the study must focus on a bounded population, even if it is inconvenient to do so because the people live in widely separated places. One is wasting one's time to collect and tabulate population data that do not pertain to some well-defined universe. A slightly different sort of complication—and one that is becoming increasingly common—is that emigrants do not always live among aliens (as do the Nukuoro). If emigrants from a home community establish a daughter community in some other place, it may be possible to treat the daughter community as a separate population, or it may not be possible. For example, there is a community of Kapingamarangi people on Ponape that has been in existence since the 1920s. Emigrants from the home community on Kapingamarangi Atoll who marry aliens but who settle in this daughter community and raise their children in it are effectively in the same status as they would be had they remained on their home atoll (Lieber n.d.). Still another sort of daughter community is the one established by the Tokelau people, first in Western Samoa, and then in New Zealand (with part of the New Zealand community coming from the Tokelau community in Samoa).7 In the demography of daughter communities, an emigrant must be accounted for in one of two ways—either as "lost" to the entire ethnic population or as an immigrant to another community in the same ethnic group. In such cases, not all immigrants will be 'aliens'; some may be natives' from another community of the same ethnic group. When a daughter community disperses but retains its identity as a community—as it might when the people are absorbed into a larger society—then it is possible for individuals to choose between opting "in" or opting "out"; and the fact that such choices are possible introduces a new variable that must be reckoned with. But while these additional considerations may complicate the mechanics of record-keeping, they do not call into question the applicability of the general scheme, which I shall now go on to summarize.

DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES

17

CONCLUSION: RECORDS FOR "EVERYONE"

The population associated with a community is composed of individuals who have certain characteristics of demographic interest (such as date of birth or marital status). These characteristics, once recorded, are data. All the available data for a single individual constitute a record. A set of records is a record set. The "populations" previously defined are record sets. These record sets are defined with reference to the data about "ethnic status" included on each record. The data on ethnic status are the sort codes. Sort codes are glossed as follows: ( 1 ) natives, ( 2 ) emigrants, ( 3 ) alienated children, ( 4 ) immigrants, ( 5 ) aliens. Some expansion or contraction of this list of categories may be required—as discussed in the previous section—in the application of the scheme to specific cases. Several different types of record sets are useful in the study of the Nukuoro population, but it is not known how generally useful these particular combinations will be. It is suggested, however, that population definition for the purposes of tabulation should follow some equally rigorous and explicit procedure, preferably one that can be replicated by another fieldworker. Methods that rely upon the judgement of particular informants are probably less desirable than procedures that can be more mechanically applied. A problem that has not yet been discussed is that of deciding if we have a "complete" set of records. We obviously want records for "everyone," but who is "everyone"? The fieldworker acquires information about many persons in addition to those living in the community at the time of his or her study. There are those—close relatives of current residents—who are "from" the village but live elsewhere (e.g., John, John's sister Agnes, and John's youngest sister); there are the alien kin of the immigrants who became village residents (e.g., John's wife from Pingelap and the Marshallese father of Susan); and there are others who have no relationship with anyone in the community but figure in its history because they resided in the community at one time (e.g., the Japanese school teacher, the Yapese castaway). In addition to contemporary persons, there are all those who were once members of the community but are now dead. The records concerning all such persons constitute

18

DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES

a universe of records that I term the Known Population. Not everyone included in the Known Population must be known by name, as several of the above examples illustrate. A Known Population is complete if it contains records for everyone who by any reckoning might have been counted as part of the local population during some specified time period.8 To secure such a record set, one must pursue one's genealogical inquiries until one reaches 'foreigners' (or no information) along every pathway. This practice will insure that no relevant person is omitted. It will also lead to the inclusion of records for many persons who are not relevant to the fieldworker's interest. To exclude extraneous records is, however, a comparatively simple matter, whereas gaps in a record set may destroy the set's usefulness. Inevitably, one's records will go back in time only so far, but before one runs out of information altogether, the scope of the available information begins to attenuate noticeably. Within these limitations—which are compensated for by developing a Study Population, as explained above—a Known Population should contain a record for everyone. The field procedures that will help to develop a file of records for "everyone" are discussed in chapter 10. The Known Population is not the same as the population of a community. The population of a community comprises the community's members and those who are "like members," while the Known Population contains records for many individuals who never were and never will be members of the community. Thus, on the assumption always that the Known Population contains records for "everyone," the study of a community's population begins with a division of the total record set (i.e., the Known Population) into those who will be counted for some purpose and those who will not. NOTES

I am indebted to each of the conference participants for provoking my thoughts on the matters treated in this chapter. Valuable comments on previous drafts of this chapter were received from Griffith Feeney, Antony Hooper, Judith Huntsman, James D. Nason, and Mac Marshall. Conversations with Feeney, and extended correspondence with Hooper, Huntsman, and Marshall helped clarify many important points that might otherwise have remained totally obscure. None of those mentioned can be held responsible, however, for any remaining confusion. 1. Demographic study of local ethnic groups or other subgroups in a national population is consequently hindered by inadequate attention to

DEMOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITIES

2.

3. 4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

19

the "boundary problem" discussed in this chapter. The consequences of this neglect have been particularly well stated by Hackenberg: "Demographers customarily deal with aggregate data in which the smallest units are large cities, regions, or nations. While the effects of population change may be clearly visible at this macrolevel, both theory and common sense dictate that the efficient causes of population change are operative at the microlevel of family and community" (Hackenberg 1971:10). This statement should be qualified by noting that a de jure census is based on the notion of usual resident—a notion which may or may not mean anything to the people enumerated. In most of the communities discussed in this volume, the notion of 'usual resident' makes no sense. Except to the degree that European concepts are becoming increasingly applicable to the description of the behavior of Pacific islanders, or come into use by them, the usefulness of this concept is slight. Note, however, that, in actual practice, this is never done, even in areas where de jure census procedures are in use. Although intermarriage of this sort does not raise the same ambiguity in de facto and de jure populations, small populations of these two sorts present an even graver conceptual difficulty—the possibility that all of the different demographic events of a single individual's lifetime (and of those to whom he is related) may be distributed among a multitude of tiny populations. The population of Nukuoro is discussed more fully in chapter 8. Notice that, from the Nukuoro point of view, a 'native' cannot become an 'alien', or vice versa, although in certain respects—such as those just given—changes in ethnic status are possible. All my information on Tokelau populations—as well as the main points of my discussion of it—is owed to Judith Huntsman and Antony Hooper. Whether one can actually obtain a random sample of this universe—or whether a random sample of this sort would be of much use—are questions reserved for another occasion.

REFERENCES Hackenberg, Robert A. 1971 "Population dynamics as a field for anthropological research." Ms. (privately circulated). Lieber, Michael D., ed. n.d. Exiles and Migrants in the Pacific. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, forthcoming.

2 DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES FOR T H E STUDY OF SMALL POPULATIONS Griffith Feeney

INTRODUCTION

Births, deaths, and the population change resulting from these events are common to all human aggregates, whether small, isolated communities of fewer than one hundred persons or large nations of hundreds of millions of persons. Nonetheless, demography has evolved primarily as the study of national aggregates, and both demographic knowledge and demographic technique reflect this parochial development. Indeed, much demographic technique has developed in response to the intrinsic limitations of the census and vital statistics that are the principal sources of demographic information for national populations. Questions concerning the average duration of human life provide a case in point. It is a simple matter to calculate the average age at death for a group of deceased persons. One simply sums the ages at death of all the persons and divides this sum by their total number. Yet this simple, direct calculation is virtually never possible using census and vital statistics data. Instead, there is an immense technical literature that deals solely with translating these data into statements about the average duration of life. For the ethnographer who spends a year or more in intensive contact with a small population, many of the limitations of conventional demographic data sources do not exist. A good deal of conventional

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

21

demographic technique is accordingly unnecessary or unduly awkward. On the other hand, the analysis of ethnographic population data poses problems that are relatively unimportant for large national populations and that have received little or no comment in the demographic literature. The importance in small populations of defining unambiguous population boundaries and of random fluctuations are two major examples. This chapter offers an exposition of some basic demographic concepts and techniques relevant to the analysis of ethnographic population data. While concepts and techniques relevant to small populations are emphasized, this chapter also provides a general introduction to demographic analysis. Although it is possible to offer only thumbnail sketches of many important demographic concepts, I have been at pains to provide the reader with some basic equipment to do some actual demographic analysis. This involves a number of technical and procedural details that, for the sake of readability, have been placed in the notes to the chapter. Readers interested in the analysis of population data should read all these notes carefully and work through the numerical examples given in the chapter. THE POPULATION CONCEPT

The concept of population and the concept of society are parallel in several respects. Both a population and a society consist at any given time of a certain set of persons. A depth in time and a notion of replacement of members are essential to both concepts, and it is of paramount importance to distinguish the set of persons constituting a population or a society at any particular time from the population or the society itself. Both population and society are ultimately concepts representing relationships between persons. Despite these formal parallels, the two concepts differ strikingly in emphasis. The concept of population, as used by demographers, emphasizes the numbers of persons in a population and such various subpopulations as males, females, females of reproductive age, and so forth. A necessary concomitant of this emphasis on numbers is an insistence on clearly defined population boundaries or, equivalently, on precisely defined criteria for population membership. If one is to count the persons in a given set, one must first know who is in the set and who is not. Populations are usually specified by stating some criteria for mem-

22

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

bership. Several examples will illustrate the idea. The de facto population of a geographic area consists at any given time of all persons physically present in the area at that time.1 The membership criterion in this example is purely spatial, but criteria may also be social. It is a common practice in census taking, for example, to obtain information on the "usual residence" of each person at the time of a census. The population that consists at any given time of all persons "usually resident" in a particular geographic area is termed the de jure population of the area. "Usual residence" is of course a social as well as a geographic concept, and there are societies in which it has no meaning (see chapter 10). Membership criteria may also involve biological considerations. In chapter 1, for example, Carroll defines the Nukuoro Ethnic Population as the population of all persons with at least one Nukuoro parent. A population in which membership rests only on the biological facts of life or death and (biological) parentage is said to be closed to migration or simply closed. Persons enter a closed population only by birth and leave only by death. A population that is not closed may be referred to as open. There is a distinction between specifying and acquiring information about a population. One may specify a population by stating membership criteria (the de facto population of Antarctica, for example) and be wholly ignorant of the population's characteristics. Specification of a population serves both as a basis for gathering information (defining what one is gathering information about) and as a standard against which to judge the completeness of information gathering activity. Indeed, the concept of the "completeness' of any population enumeration has no meaning unless one has specified, independently of the actual enumeration, what persons ought to have been included. There are two fundamental modes of organization of population data. One groups together all information relating to a particular individual. This is the natural mode of organization for the ethnographer. It is used, though only rarely, for large national populations in the form of what are known as "population registers." The alternative mode groups together all information relating to a population at a particular time or during a particular time period. A census, for example, provides information on all persons who are members of a population at a particular time. A vital statistics registration system provides information on all births, deaths, or other events that occur in a population during a given time period.

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

23

These two modes of organization of population data are complementary and to some extent redundant. Time-specific population data may be derived from individual records simply by sorting the totality of individual records according to whether or not each person was present in a population at a given time. The information required to determine population membership depends of course on what the membership criteria are. For a closed population, one need know only (biological) parentage and dates of birth and death. For a de facto population, one requires dates of birth and death and a complete history of whereabouts for each person. For other populations, a variety of additional information may be required. In this connection, it is sometimes useful to define a series of benchmark dates and to record individual information sufficient to determine population membership only for this series of dates. It may sometimes be useful to choose dates that are particularly notable to the persons from whom information is to be elicited. It is possible to travel in the converse direction also. A series of census and vital statistics registration data may be translated into individual record form by bringing together all information that refers to each individual. To do this, one must be able to identify individuals, as for example by name. Modern census and vital statistics operations usually suppress individual identity as a matter of political principle, but it is often available in historical investigations. The detail of the individual information that may be generated in this way is of course limited by the number of censuses available, as well as by their content and by the content of the vital statistics registration information. DEMOGRAPHIC EVENTS

The study of population change leads naturally to the study of the events that produce this change. The primary demographic events are birth and death. To those of us who survive to reflect on the matter, these two events are perfectly distinct. When death occurs early in life, however, the distinction is blurred, for a change in numbers of fetal deaths is simultaneously a change in numbers of births. The general issue here is where the lines between birth, death, and life are to be drawn. Demographers generally use the word "birth" to mean "live birth," which excludes abortions, miscarriages, and stillbirths. The word "death" correspondingly refers to the death of someone born alive and excludes abortions, miscarriages, and stillbirths. This setting

24

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

of the line at "live birth" is due as much to convention and the exigencies of vital registrations systems as to intrinsic merit. From the biological point of view, the natural starting point is conception— with abortion, miscarriage, and stillbirth being regarded as forms of death. Bayliss-Smith's study of the population of Ontong Java (chapter 9) provides an example of just this approach. On the other hand, there is little difference between dying shortly after birth and never having been born insofar as aggregate population growth and age distribution are concerned, and one might in some circumstances regard as "births" only those persons who survive some specified period of time after delivery. This approach may be particularly useful when data sources are suspected of omitting records of the births and deaths of persons who die young. Techniques of demographic analysis usually work equally well wherever these lines between birth, death, and life are drawn. It is only necessary that they be drawn, consciously and unambiguously. The study of the incidence of births in a population naturally involves the study of those aspects of social structure that bear upon reproductive interaction. At one hypothetical extreme, all reproduction might occur within unions whose beginning is clearly marked in time and which are dissolved only by the death of one of the partners. At the opposite (and equally hypothetical) extreme, biological mating might occur without any social patterning whatever. For populations tending toward the former extreme it is often useful to regard the formation and dissolution of potentially reproductive unions as demographic events. Although the words "marriage" and "divorce" naturally arise in this context, it is important to recognize that they refer to social and legal concepts that may not coincide with the formation and dissolution of potentially reproductive unions. It is of course the latter that are immediately relevant to demographic analysis. It may be impossible to identify entry to or exit from a potentially reproductive union with a precise date. It is therefore important to know that much analysis may be carried out with information that locates these events only within a calendar year or other time period. Nevertheless, when these events can be located at precise dates, the dates should be recorded, for this information simplifies certain technical procedures and is important for refined analysis of fertility. There is an unstated, and perhaps even to some degree unrecognized, definition in demography according to which the word "migra-

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

25

tion" refers to any entry to or exit from a population that is not a birth or a death. The problem of defining migration as a demographic event is in this way reduced to the problem of defining a particular population. Once the population is defined, any entry that is not a birth constitutes a migration into this population, and any exit other than by death constitutes a migration out of the population. Migration in this sense need not involve spatial movement. By renouncing citizenship in a country, for example, one "migrates" out of the population of citizens, whether or not movement out of the political territory in question occurs. One does not expect confusion over whether a particular person's exit from a population constitutes a death or a migration out of the population. There may, however, be ambiguity between birth and migration into a population. Consider, for example, a child with one American parent and one Canadian parent. If this child's population membership is taken to be either American or Canadian, the child represents an entry to one or the other population. But whether this entry constitutes a birth or a migration into the population is a moot point. For national populations, the incidence of such ambiguous cases is small, and there are no accepted ways of resolving them. It is an issue that, like population definition, has been left open by demographers. THE DEMOGRAPHIC EQUATION

Consider the proposition that the number of persons present in a population at the end of any time period equals the number present at the beginning of the period plus the number entering during the period minus the number leaving during the period. This proposition, which expresses a mathematical truth inherent in the definition of the population concept, is often referred to as the "demographic equation" and is the simplest example of the many mathematical identities used in demographic analysis. There would be little point in enumerating these identities, for what is remarkable about them is not so much their truth or content, but their utility, and this is best illustrated by example. This section provides such an example, using several simple identities to analyze some population data for the Nukuoro. Incidentally, this section provides practical examples of many of the concepts referred to in the previous two sections. For the Nukuoro, we have both ethnographic population data col-

26

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

lected by Carroll (chapter 8) and reports of a series of censuses conducted by colonial governments. Since the information in these sources is partly redundant, the sources may be tested against each other for consistency. Consistency does not exclude the possibility that both sources are in error, but the analysis does provide important evidence concerning the quality of the population data available for the Nukuoro. During fieldwork in the early 1960s, Carroll collected extensive population data by attempting to determine all ancestors of the living population and all descendants of these ancestors. These data are thought to include a record for nearly all births to the Nukuoro population since 1890. The available information includes, subject to occasional omissions of detail, date of birth and, for dead persons, date of death. The procedure will be to deduce from this information the number of Nukuoro under forty years of age at the end of 1930 and to compare this result with a corresponding figure derived from data from the Japanese census taken in December 1930. The reader may recall from the preceding chapter that Carroll's population membership classification involves five categories. The two extreme categories consist of persons of unambiguous status—Nukuoro and alien. When a man and a woman from these two groups marry and raise children together, the statuses of the man, the woman, and their children are ambiguous. This ambiguity is handled by defining three categories intermediate between Nukuoro and alien—Nukuoro immigrant, Nukuoro emigrant, and alienated child. If the couple are raising their children on Nukuoro, the parent who was previously an alien is classified as a Nukuoro immigrant. The other parent and the children are classified as Nukuoro. If the couple are raising their children off the atoll, however, the parent who was previously Nukuoro is classified as a Nukuoro emigrant, and the children are classified as alienated children. The other parent retains the other alien classification. The jural population consists of all those persons who are classified either as Nukuoro or as Nukuoro emigrants. A person who is a member of the jural population at a given time will be referred to as a jural Nukuoro. The jural population cannot be left except by death (it is "closed to out-migration") and can be entered only by birth or by settlement on the atoll of an alienated child. The ethnographic records indicate that there were 144 persons born during the period 1891 to 1930 who either were members of the jural

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

27

population on 15 March 1965 or, if deceased at this time, were members of the jural population at the time of their death. To obtain the number of persons in the jural population at the end of 1930, one subtracts from this figure (1) the number of these persons who died in or before 1930 and (2) the number of those persons who were born as alienated children in or before 1930 and who entered the jural population after 1930. The records show the first of these numbers to be between 8 and 14. Since few alienated children were born before the end of 1930, the second of these numbers may be assumed to be zero. We thus conclude that there were between 130 and 136 persons aged 0 to 39 years in the jural population at the end of 1930. The Japanese South Seas colonial administration conducted censuses every five years beginning in 1920 and ending in 1940. Published reports of the census taken in December 1930 show a detailed age distribution for the de facto population of Nukuoro atoll in which the number of persons aged 0 to 39 years is 128 (table 8.9). Since this figure refers to the de facto population of the atoll, however, it is not comparable with the figure derived in the last paragraph, which refers to the Nukuoro jural population. Fortunately, the remarkable detail provided by the Japanese census reports allows further analysis of the two figures. The Japanese census shows that 7 of the total 168 persons enumerated on Nukuoro in December 1930 were not born on Nukuoro (table 8.23). Since the ages of these persons are unknown, we can conclude only that there were between 0 and 7 persons aged 0 to 39 years at the time of the December 1930 Japanese census who were members of the de facto but not the jural population. The Japanese census covered the entire Mandated Territory of the South Sea Islands (presently the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands ). Ethnic identity was inquired of all respondents, and the census showed 30 Nukuoro living off the atoll (table 8.8). It is reasonable to assume that, subject to the errors of census taking, all jural Nukuoro in the Mandated Territory are included in this figure. These results may now be combined to give an estimate of the number of persons in the jural population aged 0 to 39 years at the end of 1930. Considering only persons aged 0 to 39 years, one begins with the de facto population count of 128 persons, subtracts the number of persons in the de facto but not the jural population (between 0 and 7) and adds the number of persons in the jural but not the de

28

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

facto population (between 0 and 30). One cannot derive a single number from this calculation because of the indeterminacy of the last two figures, but one can consider the range of possibilities. If there were 7 persons in the de facto but not the jural population and no persons in the jural but not the de facto population, the total number of persons in the jural population would be 128 — 7 + 0 = 121. At the opposite extreme, we obtain 128 — 0 + 30 = 158 persons in the jural population. Note that all of these figures refer to persons aged 0 to 39 years only. We conclude that, according to the Japanese census, there were between 121 and 158 persons aged 0 to 39 years in the Nukuoro jural population at the end of 1930. The results of the preceding analysis are summarized in the following table.

Source Ethnographic Data Japanese Census Data

Number of Jural Nukuoro Aged 0 to 39 Years on 31 December 1930 120-130 121-158

In the nature of the situation, both the ethnographic data and the Japanese census data provide only a range of values and not a single number. Despite this limitation, the two data sources do give consistent results. The ranges given here could certainly be narrowed by further analysis, thus sharpening the comparison between the two data sets. LIFE TABLES: AGE INTERVAL STATISTICS

The ages at which people die are, as we know from common experience, highly variable.2 Yet when the ages at death of a group of persons are aggregated certain patterns of mortality emerge. Some of these patterns seem to be common to all human groups, whereas others show systematic variation between groups. These patterns and variations in the age distribution of mortality are the central focus of the demographic study of death. A life table is a collection of statistics

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

29

that describes the age distribution of mortality of a group of persons. Life tables are among the oldest and most thoroughly developed tools of demographic analysis, and they have served as models in the development of many other demographic techniques. For this reason life table concepts are central not only to the study of mortality but also to all demographic analysis. The basic data of mortality for a group of persons are contained in the list of the ages at which these persons die. Such a list is shown in table 2.1 for 25 Nukuoro born during the last decade of the nineteenth century. 3 The absence of any infant deaths in table 2.1 must, on the basis of previously recorded human mortality experience, be regarded as anomalous. Discussion of this issue will be deferred to a later section, however. In the present section, life table statistics will be introduced using the data in table 2.1 for illustration. The ages at death listed in table 2.1 are preeminently simple data, and a life table serves only to describe them. Yet the life table is a relatively extensive and intricate array of statistics. Why this extensive manipulation and transformation? The simplest answer is by way of analogy. A list of ages at death may be likened to a physical object— an artifact, perhaps. Examination of the object requires careful viewing from many different angles. So, likewise, does the examination of the mortality experience of a group of persons. Each of the elements of a life table brings a particular aspect of mortality experience clearly into view. The calculations described below represent a sort of statistical turning over for examination of the basic data on age at death. The first step is the classification of deaths into successive age intervals and the determination of the number of persons alive at the beginning of each interval.

Age Interval 0-14 15-29 30-44 45-59

60 and over

Deaths in Interval 0 1 1 4 19

Persons Alive at Beginning of Interval 25 25 24 23 19

T A B L E 2.1

Mortality Data for Nukuoro Born from 1890 to 1899

Index

ID

Date of Birth

Date of Death

Age at Death, Completed Years

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

14 569 849 12 127 151 257 9 476 582 229 509 629 736 207 480 520 647 18 157 656 369 1079 252 445

27/2/1890 1/1/1890 10/10/1890 14/11/1891 7/10/1891 30/6/1891 6/8/1891 8/11/1892 28/3/1892 11/10/1892 28/12/1894 12/9/1894 8/11/1895 8/5/1895 8/2/1896 7/3/1896 12/9/1896 3/10/1896 14/8/1897 15/6/1897 8/2/1897 26/11/1898 u/u/1898 b 23/7/1899 6/10/1899

na na na na na na na na u/u/1944* u/u/1933" 2/1/1946 u/u/1921" na 29/12/1952 na na na na na 10/1/1944 na na na na na

75+ 75+ 74+ 73+ 73+ 73+ 73+ 72+ 52 40 51 26 69+ 57 69+ 69+ 68+ 68+ 67+ 46 68+ 66+ 66+ 65+ 65+

Person

SOURCE: Ethnographic population data collected by Carroll and made available to the author. NOTE: See note 3 to the text for procedure for calculating age at death. In the column containing date of death "na" indicates survival to 15 March 1965. For such persons, age in completed years at that date is given followed by a " + " sign, which indicates that the age at death in completed years will be greater than or equal to the preceding number. Dates of birth and death are expressed as day/ month/year. " The clay and month of death assigned to index numbers 9, 10, and 12 are, respectively, 10/9, 15/6, and 1 / 6 . b The day and month of birth assigned to index number 23 is 2 / 7 . ID—identification; na—not available; u—unknown.

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

31

The category "60 and over" is known as an open age interval. Observe that since everyone dies eventually, the number of persons dying in the open interval 60 and over equals the number who survive to age 60. The next step is the calculation of the proportion of persons dying during each age interval and the proportion alive at the beginning of each interval.4

Age Interval 0-15 15-30 30—45 45-60 60 and over

Proportion of Persons Dying during Interval

Proportion of Persons Alive at Beginning of Interval

.000 .040 .040 .160 .760

1.000 1.000 .960 .920 .760

Each of these proportions is calculated by dividing the number of persons dying in the given age interval, or alive at the beginning of the interval, by the total number of persons in the group.5 Calculation of proportions is useful when comparing the mortality experience of two groups of persons. If one group includes more persons than the other, the numbers of deaths are necessarily different, but the proportions may be the same. Calculation of proportions may thus reveal similarities in mortality patterns that are obscured when absolute numbers are compared. For every age interval following the first, the proportion of persons alive at the beginning of the interval may be referred to as the proportion "surviving to the beginning of the interval." These survival proportions are important for the study of population growth. For a population to replace itself, each reproducing couple must produce an average of two children who survive to reproductive age. The smaller the proportion of children born who survive, the more children must be produced to insure this average of two survivors. Under the best modern mortality conditions, the proportion of children born who survive to age 15, which marks approximately the beginning of the reproductive age span, is on the order of 0.98. At the other extreme, estimates for prehistoric man, based on skeletal remains, place the

32

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

proportion surviving to age 15 as low as 0.32 (Acsadi and Nemeskeri 1970: 138-181, especially table 49). Under such mortality conditions, couples must produce an average of over six births to effect population replacement. Substantial social resources are consequently devoted to caring for many children who do not survive to adulthood—a drain on food, time, and energy, to say nothing of emotional resources. Death generally causes a disruption of social structure, and the disruption is greatest when the deceased person occupied an important social role. One example is the disruption of families by the death of a parent. To measure the extent of this disruption, one should consider only those persons who survive to become parents. Hence the relevant mortality statistics are those that show, for the persons who survive to a given age, what proportion die in some subsequent age interval. These proportions are generally called death rates to distinguish them from the proportions of the total group dying in each age interval. They are calculated by dividing the number of deaths occurring in a given age interval by the number of persons alive at the beginning of this interval. Equivalently, they may be calculated by dividing the proportion of persons dying during the interval by the proportion alive at the beginning of the interval. The following table shows death rates calculated for the mortality experience represented in table 2.1. Age Interval 0-15 15-30 30-45 45-60 60 and over

Death Rate .000

.040 .042 .174 1.000

One might add parenthetically that we all have a purely personal interest in surviving from whatever age we find ourselves at to future ages. In this case also, it is the death rate for the age interval that is the relevant statistic. In summary, three types of statistics have been introduced that describe the mortality experience of any group of persons: the proportion of the group who die in a given age interval, the proportion who

DEMOGRAPHIC

33

CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

are alive at the beginning of a given age interval, and the death rate for a given age interval." When these statistics are collected into a single table, as in table 2.2, the result is a life table or mortality table. TABLE 2.2

Life Table for Nukuoro Born from 1890 to 1899

Age Interval 0-14 15-29 30-44 45-59 60 and over

Proportion Dying in Interval

Proportion Alive at Beginning of Interval

Death Rate for Interval

.000 .040 .040 .160 .760

1.000 1.000 .960 .920 .760

.000 .040 .042 .174 1.000

SOURCE: Table 2.1.

When the mortality experience of a group of persons is complete, the life table may be extended through the entire age span, but it is often useful to construct tables that cover only part of the age span. Table 2.2 begins at age 0 and effectively ends at age 60, the reason being that many of the Nukuoro born during the period 1890 to 1899 were still alive in 1965 when the data in table 2.1 were collected. To take an entirely different example, consider the mortality experience of presidents of the United States during the nineteenth century. Since only persons who reach age 35 may become president, a life table for this group necessarily begins at age 35. The proportion of persons dying in each age interval and the proportion alive at the beginning of each interval are often multiplied by a power of 10, usually 100,000, called the radix of the life table. This practice evidently originated in the days when life tables were laboriously constructed by hand. Life tables for insurance purposes give statistics for each single year of age. Faced with the prospect of writing numbers such as 0.00035 several hundred times, one sees at once the advantage of writing 35 instead. Although this labor-saving function became unnecessary with the advent of electronic computers, the practice persists down to the present. The choice of age intervals in a life table is governed by two opposing considerations. Where sufficient numbers of deaths are involved, smaller intervals provide a more detailed description of the age pat-

34

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

tern of mortality. Intervals of one and five years are standard, though when five year intervals are used it is customary to divide the first interval into the first year of life and the following four years. When small numbers of deaths are involved, however, short age intervals will result in an erratic distribution of deaths that conveys no sense of the underlying age pattern of mortality. For the data in table 2.1, intervals smaller than fifteen years result in such an erratic pattern. LIFE TABLES: THE EXPECTATION OF LIFE

Perhaps the simplest summary statistic of the mortality experience of a group of persons is the average age at death for the group.7 It may be calculated by summing the exact ages at death of all persons in the group and dividing this sum by the number of persons. For reasons to be discussed shortly, average age at death is usually referred to in demography as the expectation of life at birth. The average age at death for any group equals the sum, over any exhaustive series of age intervals, of the product of the proportion of persons dying in the interval and the average age at death of those persons dying in the interval. This relationship is the basis for an approximate procedure for calculating average age at death in which the average age at death for persons dying in each age interval is approximated by the midpoint of the interval. This approximation is invaluable when large numbers of persons are involved, for it requires only the proportions of persons dying in each age interval and not the exact ages at death of each person in the group. The smaller the age intervals, the more accurate the approximation. It may be shown that if all the age intervals are of the same length, the absolute error in the approximation cannot exceed this common length. Suppose, for example, that we are given, for some group of persons, the number of persons dying in each single year of age. Average age at death for the group may be calculated approximately by multiplying the proportion dying between exact age 0 and exact age 1 by 0.5, adding to this the product of the proportion dying between exact age 1 and exact age 2 and 1.5, and so on through all ages at which any deaths occurred. The resulting sum of products is an approximation to the average age at death for the group that may be in error by one year at most. Average age at death is an average in the usual sense of elementary

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

35

statistics, and one might reasonably expect its calculation to require no further comment. This is not the case, however, and the reason lies in the historical development of life table techniques as actuarial tools. In the calculation of life insurance premiums, the relevant mortality statistics are those that indicate the average number of years lived after a given age by persons who survive to that age. This average is termed the expectation of life at the given age.8 The expectation of life at age 0, also referred to as the expectation of life at birth, is simply the average age at death. Since life insurance policies are sold to persons of many different ages, actuaries produce tables that show the expectation of life at the beginning of each age interval included in the table. The expectation of life at any age may be calculated directly just like any other average. For every person who survives to a given age, one determines the number of years lived after this age. One then sums these values and divides the result by the number of terms in the sum. The approximate procedure described above for calculating average age at death may readily be adapted to the approximate calculation of the expectation of life at any age. Expectations of life for the beginning of every age interval in a life table are not particularly useful for demographic analysis, yet the influence of the actuarial tradition is sufficiently strong that they are included in most life tables as a matter of course. To make matters worse for the initiate struggling with multiple columns of numbers, demographers have adopted from actuaries a special, relatively complicated method for calculating expectations of life that involves two further columns of numbers that refer to a quantity called "person years lived." Although the method is superior to the direct approach described above for hand calculation, this superiority counts for little when electronic computers and sophisticated desk calculators are used. Nonetheless, like the practice referred to above of multiplying certain proportions by a power of 10, the procedure persists, firmly imbedded in the actuarial and demographic literature. Readers interested in further details in this direction should consult any of the numerous standard demographic and actuarial works.9 The direct calculation described in this section gives precisely the same numerical results as the special actuarial techniques, of course, and the direct calculation has the virtue of simplicity.

36

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

CRUDE AND AGE-SPECIFIC DEATH RATES

In the analysis of population growth, the relevant mortality statistics are those that characterize the totality of deaths occurring to members of the population during a given time period. Such statistics are generally referred to as period mortality statistics. They are widely used in demography because the information required for their calculation is readily available for many populations. It should be noted here that although the definitions in this section are given with respect to mortality the concepts are quite general and are the basis for the calculation of rates of birth, marriage, divorce, and migration. Period mortality statistics involve the concept of the number of person years lived during a time period by a population. Consider the set of all persons who were present in a population at any time during a given time period. Some of these persons may have been in the population throughout the entire period. Others may have entered or left the population one or more times during the period. In any case, one may determine, for each person, how much time this person spent in the population during the period. The sum of all these values is referred to as the number of person years lived during the period by the population.10 The crude death rate for a given population and time period is defined as the number of deaths occurring to members of the population during the period divided by the number of person years lived by the population during the period. Crude death rates are usually expressed as deaths per thousand person years lived, so that a rate of 0.02, for example, is referred to as a death rate of 20 per thousand. This multiplication by a constant has no significance other than the avoidance of writing unnecessary zeros and decimal points. Crude death rates generally lie between about 5 and 50 per thousand, though in times of plague or famine they may rise as high as several hundred per thousand. In the calculation of crude death rates, the relevant number of person years lived is often approximated by averaging the population sizes at the beginning and at the end of the time period and multiplying this average by the length of the period. Age-specific death rates are defined in much the same manner as crude death rates. Instead of considering total population and all deaths, however, one considers only the population in a given age

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

37

interval and deaths of persons in this age interval. The number of person years lived by persons in a given age interval is often estimated by averaging the numbers of persons in the age interval at the beginning and the end of the time period and multiplying this average by the length of the period. It may be well to emphasize at this point that two very different types of statistics describing human mortality have been introduced. The life table statistics discussed in the preceding sections describe the mortality experience of the set of persons born to a population during some time period. Such a set of persons is referred to as a birth cohort, and life table statistics are referred to as cohort mortality statistics.11 This section, on the other hand, has dealt with period mortality statistics, which refer to the deaths that occur to members of a population during a given time period. It might be said that in calculating life table, or cohort, statistics one adopts the perspective of the individual, whereas in calculating period mortality statistics the emphasis is on population change. Both perspectives are important in the study of mortality in human populations. The distinction between the period and cohort perspectives is itself important for it is relevant to the study of all demographic events, not just to the study of mortality. In the study of fertility, for example, one may assume a cohort perspective by considering the fertility experience of a birth cohort of women over their reproductive years, or one may adopt a period perspective by considering the births that occur in a population during a given time period. This distinction, which applies also to marriage, divorce, and migration, has proven fundamental in modern demographic analysis. The existence of two distinct classes of mortality statistics naturally raises the question of the relation between them. For example, what expectation of life at birth corresponds to a given crude death rate? The answer is that, in general, there is no determinate relation between these two statistics. It is possible for two populations to have the same expectation of life in every birth cohort and at the same time exhibit different crude death rates. There is one special circumstance, however, in which the expectation of life at birth and the crude death rate each determine the other according to a very simple mathematical relation: this is in what is called a stationary population. A stationary population may be loosely characterized as one in which the number of persons born each year is constant and in which

38

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

every birth cohort exhibits the same age pattern of mortality. The precise definition involves some difficult technicalities that need not detain us here. A stationary population necessarily has a constant total size, hence the name "stationary." In a stationary population the expectation of life at birth for any birth cohort approximately equals the inverse of the crude death rate for any time period. For example, if the crude death rate is 10 per thousand, or 0.01, the expectation of life at birth is approximately equal to 1 divided by 0.01, or 100 years. The following table shows the relation between the two statistics for a range of values. Crude Death Rate (per thousand)

Expectation of Life at Birth (years)

10 20 30

100 50 33

It must be emphasized that this relation between the expectation of life at birth and the crude death rate is approximate and not exact. Since the quality of the approximation is extremely high for large populations, it is not widely recognized that the relation is in fact approximate. For small populations, the quality of the approximation is lower and should be recognized explicitly. PERIOD L I F E TABLES

The complete life table for a group of persons may be calculated only after every person in the group has died. Suppose, for example, that one of the Nukuoro born during the last decade of the nineteenth century dies at one hundred years of age. Then the complete life table for that group of persons will not be calculable until sometime during the last decade of the twentieth century. Aside from the purely practical difficulties of assembling information on events occurring over such a long period, this situation raises conceptual difficulties. At any given moment, the most recent complete life tables necessarily refer to mortality experience that occurred over the preceding century. The obvious way to circumvent this problem is to calculate period mortality

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

39

statistics instead of cohort mortality statistics. But this introduces the further difficulty that period statistics have no obvious relation to the average duration of life. What is required is some way of relating the two kinds of statistics, and this is precisely what is accomplished by the period life table concept. The period life table concept is based on the following mathematical property of the several columns of the life table. It can be demonstrated that, in any life table, both the column of proportions dying in each age interval and the column of survival proportions may be deduced from the column of death rates. In conjunction with the approximate procedure for calculating expectations of life discussed in the last section, this means that the entire life table is determined by the column of death rates. In short, the death rates column determines the life table. One can define period life tables most simply by describing their construction. Suppose for the sake of illustration that a period life table of one year age intervals is to be constructed. Consider the persons born during some base year. A certain proportion of these persons die before reaching their first birthday, and this proportion is a death rate for the first year of life. Consider next the persons who celebrate their first birthday during the base year. A certain proportion of these persons die before reaching their second birthday, and this proportion is a death rate for the second year of life. Continuing in this manner, one obtains a series of death rates for successive ages, all referring to deaths that occur in either the base year or the following year. By the proposition stated in the last paragraph, this series of death rates determines a life table. This life table is called a period life table for the time period in question. Life tables that are not period tables may be referred to as cohort life tables. Because of the practical difficulties of constructing cohort life tables, the unmodified phrase life tables almost invariably means period life tables. This construction of period life tables may be thought of as piecing together the death rates from a series of cohort life tables. The death rate for age 0 is taken from the cohort life table for persons born in the base year, the rate for age 1 from the cohort table for persons born in the preceding year, and so forth. It is useful in this context to regard death rates as the basic statistics of mortality. Period and cohort life tables may then be thought of as representing two different perspectives from which to analyze death rates. Cohort tables collect together

40

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

the rates pertaining to a given birth cohort, and period tables collect together the rates pertaining to a given time period. The above procedure for constructing period life tables is conceptually the simplest and most direct. The exigencies of vital statistics registration data, however, have given rise to a number of indirect methods that are more widely used in practice. All these indirect methods involve the preliminary calculation of age specific death rates. The age specific death rates are then transformed into life table death rates by means of mathematical formulas. The period life table is then constructed from the life table death rates.12 The interpretation given to period life tables constructed in this manner is perfectly simple. If the death rates exhibited by the population for the base period remain constant in the future, future birth cohorts will experience, at each age, the death rates observed during the base period. Period life tables thus represent the cohort mortality experience that would be observed in the future if current mortality rates persist in future years. MODEL LIFE TABLE FAMILIES

We have seen that of 25 Nukuoro listed in table 2.1 none died before reaching the age of one year. The death rate for the first year of life, often called the infant death rate, for this group of persons is thus zero. Since infant death rates under the best mortality conditions in modern nations are on the order of 0.01 or 0.02, this finding is anomalous. The deceased persons listed in table 2.1 are those remembered by informants during the 1960s, and therefore the question must be raised as to whether some persons who were born during the decade and died in infancy were forgotten. The number forgotten would not have to be large to introduce a substantial bias. Suppose, for example, that three infants who died before reaching one year of age were forgotten. Then the correct total number of births during the decade would be 28 instead of 25 and the infant death rate would be close to 0.1, instead of zero. It is the comparison of the Nukuoro data with the recorded mortality experience of other populations that raises the question of whether table 2.1 excludes some Nukuoro who died in infancy. Further analysis of this comparison is complicated because many of the persons in table 2.1 had not died by the time at which the data were recorded,

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

41

and their ages at death are unknown. This problem may be dealt with by temporarily disregarding the " + " signs in the table and treating the numbers preceding them as ages at death. Since disregarding " + " signs is tantamount to supposing that all 19 persons surviving at the time the data were collected died shortly thereafter, mortality statistics calculated on this basis will be biased, indicating a life span shorter than the actual life span for the group. After making these calculations, we can consider the effect of the bias. Proceeding in this way we calculate 1,596 25 — 63.8 years for the average age at death for the persons listed in table 2.1. Since no deaths occurred before age 1, the average age at death for persons dying after age 1 is 63.8 years also—equivalent to an expectation of life at age 1 of 62.8 years. We may now ask: What expectation of life at birth corresponds, on the basis of previously recorded mortality experience, to an expectation of life at age 1 of 62.8 years? Consider first the example of Sweden, a country for which exceptionally complete data are available. The following statistics for Swedish females born during the indicated periods are given in Keyfitz and Flieger (1968: 604, 616, 628, 634 and 639).

Period of Birth

Expectation of Life at Birth

Expectation of Life at Age 1

1775-1779 1825-1829 1875-1879 1900-1904 1920-1924

37.9 46.1 52.2 62.4 70.1

44.9 54.2 57.7 66.5 71.7

When these values are plotted against each other on coordinate axes as shown in figure 2.1, a smooth curve may be drawn very nearly through the plotted points. Observing that the point on this curve opposite 62.8 on the vertical axis (expectation of life at age 1) lies above the value 57 on the horizontal axis (expectation of life at birth), one might predict that the expectation of life at birth for the Nukuoro born during the 1890s was about 57 years, the omission of some infant deaths inflating the average age at death calculated from table 2.1 by about 7 years.

42

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES Figure 2.1

Relation between Expectation of Life at Age 0 and Expectation of Life at A g e 1 for Females

Expectation of Life- at Age 0 Sources: S w e d e n — K e v f i t z a n d Flieger ( 1 9 6 8 ) ; Coale a n d D e m e n y ( 1 9 6 6 ) .

The obvious question to ask at this point is whether the comparison of Nukuoro with Sweden is valid. Demographers have established that certain patterns of mortality are common to many populations, and these patterns evidently reflect to some degree the biology of the human species. From this point of view, mortality data that do not conform to the established pattern may be suspected of error. On the other hand, mortality patterns reflect culture and environment as well as biology, and in these respects Nukuoro bears little resemblance to the populations from which the familiar mortality patterns have been induced. From this point of view, rejection of an unusual mortality pattern may be a case of using preconception to explain away fact. We encounter here a basic issue in the field of anthropological demography. To what extent is the mortality experience of the communities studied by anthropologists equivalent to the experience of the populations of modern nations? This general issue will not be resolved here. Indeed, it will not be resolved anywhere in general, for an unusual mortality pattern may reflect data errors in some cases and a genuine divergence from the familiar pattern in other cases. The place for a decision between these alternatives is in monographic treatments

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

43

of particular populations. The first step in analysis, however, will always be to determine whether a particular set of mortality data does in fact represent an unusual pattern. In this way, we arrive finally at the subject of this section. Model life table families are valuable tools for deciding whether a given mortality pattern is unusual in comparison with a large body of recorded mortality data. Model life table families express certain patterns that have been observed in a large body of human mortality data. To understand their nature, imagine a gallery hung with graphs of the life table death rates of the several hundred life tables available for human populations. These graphs reflect a wide range of mortality experience. The graphs for some Scandinavian countries in recent periods correspond to an average age at death of over 70 years. Those representing mortality conditions of preindustrial Europe show average ages at death of less than 40 years. Yet, despite this variation in the level of mortality, we observe certain patterns common to all the graphs. They all show, for example, a high death rate for the first year of life, declining rates until late childhood or early adulthood and steadily increasing rates thereafter. In short, although some of the graphs are higher or lower than others, they all have roughly the same shape. There are occasional deviations from this pattern, to be sure, but the existence of a pattern is unmistakable. Suppose now that one were to construct a series of templates of graphs of life table death rates, beginning with very high rates and proceeding in uniform steps to lower and lower rates. Since all the graphs in our hypothetical gallery have a common shape, it may be possible to construct these templates so that they have the following property. Having chosen any graph in the gallery, one is able to select a template that, when placed over the graph chosen, very nearly matches the age pattern of death rates. Every life table in the original data set is in this sense represented in the series of templates. Since every template provides a series of life table death rates and since every series of life table death rates determines a life table, the series of templates defines a series of life tables. It is this series of life tables that constitutes a model life table family. The model life tables in a model life table family are not necessarily the same as any observed life table. Nevertheless, every observed life table in the original data set is represented in the model family in the sense of being approximately the same as some model table.

44

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

Model life table families have been constructed from various original data sets by means of various specific techniques of construction. The United Nations has published a family of model tables based on 158 life tables for 50 countries (United Nations 1955). The techniques used in constructing the United Nations tables have since been refined and applied to a broader data base consisting of 326 life tables, including 15 tables for African populations, 32 tables for Asian populations, and 33 tables for Latin American populations (Coale and Demeny 1966:7). The Coale-Demeny model family, unlike that of the United Nations, does not include tables for both sexes combined. The absence of combined tables is a disadvantage when dealing with small populations, where it is desirable to keep numbers of cases as large as possible to attenuate random fluctuations. Model life table families constructed from a number of archaeological and anthropological populations have recently been published by Weiss (1973). Model life table families have many uses, and it is not possible to give even a small sample of them here. In the above analysis of the Nukuoro data, a model life table family would be used in much the same manner as the historical series of tables for Sweden. Model families have the advantage of being graduated in small and uniform intervals, of course, and they are free of the idiosyncracies of particular populations. They are thus more convenient to use. In figure 2.1, values of the< expectation of life at age 1 and at age 0 from the Coale-Demeny West model tables are plotted together with the Swedish data discussed earlier (United Nations 1967:81-92). One sees that the curves fitted to the two sets of points do not differ greatly; neither, therefore, would the results of the analyses based on these two possibilities. Let us return now to the issue raised at the beginning of this section. Note first that the expectation of life at age 1 does not depend on the number of deaths that occur before age 1. The expectation of life at age 1 calculated from the data in table 2.1 cannot therefore be rendered incorrect by the exclusion of infant deaths. Next, compare again the expectations of life at birth and at age 1 for the Nukuoro with the same statistics for Sweden or the Coale-Demeny West model tables. The Nukuoro expectation of life at birth is, by comparison, too low, and this low value can be explained by the omission of only two or three infant deaths. There are therefore substantial grounds for suggesting that the data may be incomplete. Incompleteness does not, however, reduce their usefulness. In practice, all data are in error.

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

45

The issue is never whether or not error is present, but what the magnitude and the direction of the error are and the significance of this magnitude and direction for any particular analysis. In conclusion, it should be pointed out that even when allowance is made for omission of infant deaths in the Nukuoro data, the Nukuoro show remarkable longevity. Since the expectation of life at age 1 calculated above is biased downward, it may be asserted that Nukuoro born during the late nineteenth century probably had an expectation of life at age 0 of at least 57 and probably over 60 years.

THE STUDY OF FERTILITY

The study of fertility is inherently more complex than the study of mortality. A person dies only once, and everyone dies eventually, but woman may conceive and bear children repeatedly or not at all. Death, moreover, involves a single person whereas conception involves both a man and a woman. Despite these dissimilarities, the most common statistics of human fertility are based on the formal similarity of birth and death as events that occur to a particular person (the woman bearing the child in the case of birth) at a particular age and time. In fact, one of the most striking characteristics of the current state of demographic analysis is the almost wholly asexual character of techniques for the analysis of fertility. This circumstance may be due in part to the peculiar historical development of the field. The life table concepts discussed above originated in the late seventeenth century and have seen nearly three hundred years of development. The commercial value of mortality statistics in life insurance, pension funds, and similar social institutions is no doubt responsible for much of this development, for it has by and large been the work of actuaries. Fertility statistics have never had comparable commercial value, and their development had barely begun by the beginning of the twentieth century. That development has perhaps been overly influenced by the advanced stage of development of mortality statistics. This section deals with fertility statistics that are more or less direct imitations of the mortality statistics already discussed. It will not be necessary to enter into so much detail as for mortality, for many of the basic concepts are now familiar. The overall purpose of these fertility statistics, like that of mortality statistics, is to provide the means for

46

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

a full description of the aggregate patterns of the incidence of birth in a population. Table 2.3 shows basic fertility information for Nukuoro women born during the period 1890 to 1894. The age of each woman at the birth of each of her children is calculated from the date of birth of the woman and the date of birth of the child in exactly the same manner as age at death is calculated from date of birth and date of death. TABLE 2.3 Fertility Data for Nukuoro Women Born from 1890 to 1894

Date of Birth

Birth Order

Sex

Date of Birth

Age of Woman at Birth of Each Child (Completed Years)

27/2/1890

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 na na na 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6

M M M F F M M M na na na M M F F F F M M M M F M

31/8/1920 7/9/1922 12/12/1924 24/5/1926 26/12/1928 26/12/1928 11/12/1930 8/12/1934 na na na 2/7/1920 12/12/1921 14/2/1925 7/10/1926 11/9/1929 30/9/1931 30/8/1920 25/8/1922 19/10/1925 12/3/1931 12/2/1934 27/12/1935

30 32 34 36 38 38 40 44 na na na 28 30 33 35 38 40 27 29 32 38 41 43

Woman Index

ID

Children

1

14

2 3 4 5

569 849 12 257

1/1/1890 10/10/1890 14/11/1891 6/8/1891

6

9

8/11/1892

47

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

TABLE 2.3 (cont.)

Woman Index

Sex

Date of Birth

Age of Woman at Birth of Each Child (Cornpleted Years)

F F M M M M F F

29/3/1917 18/7/1919 11/9/1921 u/u/u 16/12/1923 12/12/1925 9/8/1928 u/u/u

24 26 28 u 31 33 35 u

F M M M M M M

7/11/1919 4/8/1921 7/10/1923 5/11/1926 9/11/1928 14/1/1932 29/11/1935

24 26 28 31 33 37 40

Children

ID

Date of Birth

Birth Order

582

11/10/1892

229

28/12/1894

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

SOURCE: Data collected by Carrojl and made available to NOTE: See note 3 to the text for procedure for calculating

the author. age of woman at birth of each child. Dates of birth and death are expressed as day/month/year. ID—identification number; na—not applicable; u—unavailable.

The first step in analyzing the fertility information in table 2.3 consists of classifying all births by age of mother at birth and calculating birth rates. These figures are shown in table 2.4. The birth rates are calculated by dividing the number of births for which age of mother at birth lies in the given age interval by the number of women alive at the beginning of the interval. The dates of death of the women are not shown in table 2.3, for they may be found in table 2.1 using the women's identification (ID) numbers. Of the eight women whose fertility experience is recorded in table 2.3, only one died before age 45 (ID number 582). This woman died at age 40 (table 2.1), and her age at death is reflected in the first column of table 2.4, which shows seven women alive at age 45.

48

DEMOGRAPHIC

T A B L E 2.4

Age Interval

CONCEPTS AND

TECHNIQUES

Birth Rates, by Age Interval, for Nukuoro Women Born from 1890 to 1894 Number of Women Alive at Beginning of Age Interval

Number of Births to Mothers in Age Interval

Birth Rate for Age Interval

0-15 15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45 and over Age interval unknown

8 8 8 8 8 8 8 7

0 0 2 7 10 8 6 0

.000 .000 .250 .875 1.250 1.000 .750 .000

na

2

na

All age intervals

na

35

4.125

SOURCE: Table 2.3. na—not applicable.

Two statistics summarize the fertility data in table 2.3. The more

important is the average number of children ever born per woman, calculated by dividing the total number of births by the total number of women in the group. For the data in table 2.3, this gives an average of 4.375 births per woman. A closely related statistic is the average number of female births per woman, called the net reproduction rate. For the data in table 2.3, the net reproduction rate equals 12 divided by 8, or 1.5 female births per woman. Observe that both of these averages refer to all women in a particular birth cohort, not just those women who survive to reproduce. The second summary statistic is the average age at childbearing, calculated directly by summing the exact ages of mothers at childbearing for all births and dividing this sum by the number of births. The average age at childbearing may also be calculated approximately from the grouped data in table 2.4 by multiplying the number of births opposite each age interval by the midpoint of the interval, summing these products over all the age intervals, and dividing this sum by the total number of births for which age of mother is known. For the data in tables 2.3 and 2.4, the exact procedure yields an average age at childbearing of 33.97. The approximate procedure yields an

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

49

average age of 33.86. When the number of births is small, there is no reason not to use the exact procedure. The approximate procedure, incidentally, is the same as that discussed above in connection with calculating expectation of life. The average number of children per woman and the average age at childbearing refer to all births to a group of women unless explicitly specified to the contrary. It is often useful to base a calculation of these statistics only on births that occur before some specified age of women, however, particularly when one is studying the fertility of groups of women whose fertility experience is incomplete. One must, of course, take account of such cutoff ages when comparing fertility statistics. The cutoff age should be not less than 40 or 45 years if the results are to be a reasonably accurate reflection of what demographers call "completed fertility." There are two fundamental classes of fertility statistics—cohort statistics, which refer to the fertility experience of a birth cohort of women, as exemplified in table 2.4, and period statistics, which refer to the births that occur in a population during a given time period. This period-cohort distinction is analogous to that made with respect to mortality. The most widely used period fertility statistics are crude and age specific birth rates, which are analogous to crude and age-specific death rates. The crude birth rate for a given population and time period is calculated by dividing the number of births to women in the population during the period by the number of person years lived by the population during the period. The age-specific birth rate for a given population, time period, and age interval is calculated by dividing the number of births during the period to women in the population who are in the age interval by the number of person years lived during the period by women in this population who are in the age interval. Observe that the denominator of the crude birth rate includes both males and females, whereas the denominator of age-specific birth rates includes women only. Recall from the above discussion of mortality that period life tables represent the cohort mortality experience that would result if the death rates observed during some base period were to persist into the future. In the same manner, one may calculate birth rates for a given time period and derive the cohort fertility experience that would result if these rates were to continue in the future. For example, a birth

50

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

rate for age 20 may be calculated by dividing the number of women reaching their twentieth birthday during a given base year into the number of female births to these women before they reach their twenty-first birthday. The net reproduction rate that would result from the continuance of the mortality and fertility rates observed in a population during some base time period is referred to as a period net reproduction rate. The net reproduction rate that would result from the continuance of the fertility rates observed in a population during some base year and from zero rates of mortality is termed a period gross reproduction rate. Crude and age-specific birth rates are most often calculated for short time periods, but they may be calculated for any period whatever. Consider, for example, the data on Nukuoro births given in table 2.5. One finds a total of 108 births during the fifty-five-year period spanning the calendar years from 1860 to 1914. Two population counts are available for Nukuoro Atoll during the period, one in 1878 showing 124 persons, and one in 1912 showing 123 persons (table 8.1). This suggests that the population was approximately constant during the period 1860 to 1914, with the average population size being about 123.5 persons. From this average population size, one estimates person years lived during the period as 6,792.5, obtained by multiplying the average population size by the length of the period. The crude birth rate for the period 1860 to 1914 is thus 108 divided by 6,792.5, or 15.9 per thousand. A notable characteristic of the time series of Nukuoro births shown in table 2.5 is the absence of any overall trend toward increasing or decreasing numbers of births during the period 1860 to 1914. Combined with the nearly identical population counts for 1878 and 1912, this absence suggests that the Nukuoro population was stationary during the period 1860 to 1914. Since in a stationary population the crude death rate equals the crude birth rate, one infers that the crude death rate for Nukuoro during 1860 to 1914 must have been about 16 per thousand. Furthermore, since in a stationary population the expectation of life at birth approximately equals the inverse of the crude death rate, one may proceed to estimate the expectation of life at birth for the Nukuoro during 1860 to 1914 as 1 divided by 0.016, or 62.5 years. This figure is further evidence of remarkable longevity for the Nukuoro. It is largely independent of the calculation made above in the section on model life tables, which was based only on persons born

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

TABLE 2.5

51

Births to the Nukuoro Population, 1860-1960 Period

Number of Births

1860-1864 1865-1869 1870-1874 1875-1879 1880-1884 1885-1889 1890-1894 1895-1899 1900-1904 1905-1909 1910-1914 1915-1919 1920-1924 1925-1929 1930-1934 1935-1939 1940-1944 1945-1949 1950-1954 1955-1959 1960-1964

5 9 12 10 14 10 13 10 5 9 11 26 34 35 30 24 21 41 51 65 60

SOURCE: Data collected by Carroll and made available to the author. NOTE: The tabulation includes all persons classified as 'Nukuoro' or 'Nukuoro emigrant' as of 15 March 1965 or date of death, whichever is earlier.

during the period 1890 to 1899, and it refers primarily to mortality experience during the nineteenth century. One naturally asks whether the birth series is incomplete. Incompleteness would result in a calculated birth rate lower than the actual birth rate and would consequently inflate the calculated expectation of life at birth. On the one hand, it seems hardly plausible that a complete birth series going back to 1860 could be reconstructed from the memory of informants in the 1960s. Yet one would expect such incompleteness to be greater during the earlier periods, and there is no evidence of such a trend toward increasing numbers of births during the period 1860 to 1914. It is possible that fertility was in fact declining during this period and that memory bias was just sufficient to counteract this decline and produce the stationary series that

52

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

appears in table 2.5. Such coincidental cancellation of effects is hardly more plausible than the completeness of the birth series, however. In the above section on model life tables, it was concluded that, by comparison with the Coale-Demeny West model mortality pattern, Nukuoro births during 1890 to 1899 appeared to be underreported by about 10 percent. Perhaps the most reasonable conclusion at this point concerning the birth series in table 2.5 is that underreporting of persons who died in infancy has resulted in the omission of about 10 percent of the births that actually occurred during the period. If the observed figure of 108 births is inflated by this amount, yielding an estimated total of 118.8 births, the resulting birth rate is 17.5 per thousand and the corresponding expectation of life at birth is 57 years. POPULATION GROWTH AND DECLINE

The fundamental characteristic of human population growth, and of the growth of all biological populations, is the potential for what is often referred to as "geometric increase." This concept is best illustrated by example. Consider a group of twenty males and twenty females who form twenty couples, each of which produces two male and two female children. This second generation of children will then consist of forty males and forty females or a total population twice the size of the first generation. Likewise, if these hypothetical conditions of reproduction persist, every generation would be double the size of the generation preceding it. In actuality, of course, the situation will never be so neat and precise. There will typically be unequal numbers of males and females, reducing the number of reproducing couples, and these couples will have variable numbers of children. Nonetheless, the example suggests that populations have the potential of increasing by a constant fraction in each successive generation. This characteristic, called geometric or exponential increase, played a central role in the influential theorizing of Malthus (1970). The difficulty of discussing population growth in generational terms, however, is that it is not clear how the concept applies to the growth of populations over particular time periods, for human populations consist at any given time of members of many different generations. Because of this generation overlap, it is not clear how one might analyze population growth over a given period. This section discusses the several statistics used for the purpose.

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

53

The number of persons present in a population at the end of any time period minus the number of persons present at the beginning of the period is referred to as the population increase for the given population and time period. The percent increase of population for a given period is the number obtained by dividing the population increase for the period by the number of persons in the population at the beginning of the period and multiplying this by 100. Consider, for example, the following data for the de facto population of Nukuoro atoll (table 8.1).

Date (day/month/year) u/u/1912 1/10/1935 u/u/1946

Population Size

Population Increase over Preceding Period

123 191 235

na 68 44

na—not applicable; u—unavailable.

The percent increase for the period 1912 to 1935 is calculated as 100 times 68 -r-123, which equals 55.3. For the period 1935 to 1946 the percent increase works out to 23.0. In this example, percent increase for the first period is more than twice as great as percent increase for the second period. Can the difference between the two figures be explained solely by the length of the time periods? To answer this question, one calculates average annual growth rates for the two periods. The average annual growth rate for a given population and time period is calculated by dividing population size at the end of the period by population size at the beginning of the period, determining the natural logarithm of this number, and dividing the resulting figure by the length of the time period. The natural logarithm may be obtained from tables published for this purpose, or it may be determined directly by means of some electronic calculators. The average annual growth rate for the Nukuoro population for the 1912 to 1935 period, for example, is calculated as follows. The data in the text table above show a population of 123 persons for 1912 and 191 persons on 1 October 1935. When the exact date to which a population count refers

54

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

is unknown, standard procedure imputes the midpoint of the year or month of the count as that date. The four steps in the calculation of the average annual growth rate are: (1) length of period = 23.25 years; ( 2 ) population at end of period divided by population at beginning of period: 191 -r- 123 = 1.553; (3) natural logarithm of 1.553 = .4402; (4) .4402 - 23.25 = 0.0189. This procedure may be summarized in the formula =

In (P'/P)

r

where r denotes the average annual growth rate, P and P' represent, respectively, population size at the beginning and the end of the period, In (P'/P) denotes the natural logarithm of P'/P, and T represents the length of the period. The average annual growth rate is often expressed as a percent, so that the result of the above calculation is given as 1.89 percent. It is important to know how greatly this result differs from the figure that would be obtained if the exact date of the 1912 population count were known. The difference is readily determined by repeating the calculation for the two extreme possibilities. Had the first count referred to 1 January, the length of the period would have been 23.75 years and the resulting growth rate 1.85 percent. Likewise, had the first count referred to 31 December, the resulting growth rate would have been 1.93 percent. The difference between 1.93 and 1.85 must be regarded as a range of possible "error" in the original result of 1.89. The final result should thus be expressed as 1.89 ^ .04 percent. Reconsider now the issue that motivated the introduction of the average annual growth rate. The de facto population of Nukuoro increased by 55 percent during 1912 to 1935 and by 23 percent during 1935 to 1946. Can this difference in percent increase be attributed to the length of the time periods involved? Calculation of average annual growth rates yields rates of about 1.9 percent per year for both periods. One concludes that the difference in percent increase is indeed accounted for by the length of the time periods. STABLE POPULATION THEORY

The distinction between cohort and period population statistics has recurred throughout this chapter, appearing first in the discussion of

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

55

mortality statistics, then with respect to fertility statistics, and finally in relation to population growth statistics. The existence of these two different types of statistics naturally raises the question of whether any relation holds between them. In the case of mortality, it has been observed that in a stationary population a simple relation obtains between the expectation of life at birth, a cohort statistic, and the crude death rate, a period statistic. The utility of such relationships has been illustrated in the discussion of Nukuoro mortality during the nineteenth century. Do similar relationships exist between cohort and period statistics of fertility and population growth? In the case of fertility, the answer is no. With respect to population growth, however, the answer is yes. In a population that experiences no in- or out-migration, population growth is the net result of mortality and fertility. Stable population theory consists of a series of propositions that relate fertility and mortality to population growth. The entire theory, developed primarily by Alfred J. Lotka, is rather extensive, and only the bare outlines may be set forth here. Even these bare outlines are useful, however, for they indicate the considerable unity and structure shared by the various statistics that have heretofore been discussed independently in this chapter. Stable population theory is most often formulated in terms of the female population only. Thus, one considers only the female members of a population at any given time and only the female births that occur during any time period. The female age distributions of mortality and fertility are each determined by the mortality and fertility rates to which they correspond. These series of rates are often referred to as age schedules of mortality and fertility. In a closed population that exhibits constant age schedules of mortality and fertility for a sufficiently long period of time, the average annual growth rate tends toward a fixed value, called the intrinsic growth rate. The age distribution likewise tends toward a fixed distribution, called the stable age distribution. A population that exhibits such a fixed rate of increase and age distribution over some time period is said to be stable during the period. Consider a population that is stable over some period of time but then experiences a period of out-migration of large numbers of persons in the intermediate ages, followed by a period in which migration is negligible. If persons remaining in the population continue to marry

56

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

and bear children as before, the age schedule of fertility will remain unchanged. The crude birth rate will therefore decline, for the numbers of females in the childbearing ages will have declined relative to total population. Likewise, if mortality conditions do not change, the age schedule of mortality will remain constant. The crude death rate will therefore increase, for the numbers of persons in the ages of highest mortality will have increased relative to total population. These shifts in birth and death rates will result in relatively low rates of population growth. These changes are of necessity temporary, however, for as the deficiency of persons in the intermediate ages becomes a deficiency in the older ages the argument applies in reverse. Birth rates will rise, death rates will fall, and relatively high growth rates will ensue. The fundamental proposition of stable population theory asserts that these fluctuations of growth rate and age distribution will grow smaller and smaller as time passes and that the population will eventually return to the stable state corresponding to the age schedules of mortality and fertility. It is to this property of return to equilibrium following a disturbance that the adjective "stable" refers. Both the intrinsic growth rate and the stable age distribution may be calculated directly from the age schedules of fertility and mortality. Although the details of these calculations are beyond the scope of this chapter, there is a simple approximate formula that is useful in many contexts. To any given age schedules of mortality and fertility, there correspond a particular net reproduction rate and average age at childbearing. The intrinsic growth rate determined by given age schedules of fertility and mortality may be calculated approximately by taking the natural logarithm of the net reproduction rate and dividing the resulting value by the average age at childbearing. This may be expressed in symbols as

r =

In NRR

where r denotes the intrinsic growth rate, NRR production rate, and T denotes the average age example, the net reproduction rate for Nukuoro 1890 to 1894 (table 2.3) is 1.5 female births

denotes the net reat childbearing. For women born during per female and the

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

57

average age at childbearing is 33.97 years. Taking the natural logarithm of 1.5 yields 0.4055, and dividing this by 33.97 gives 0.012 as the approximate intrinsic growth rate. Intrinsic growth rates are often multiplied by 100, the preceding result thus being expressed as 1.2 percent. RANDOM VARIATION

Questions concerning random variation occur in the context of comparison of two or more population statistics. These statistics may represent conditions in different populations, or they may represent conditions in the same population at different times. In either case, the question that arises is whether or not a given difference between two statistics may be attributed to random variation. What exactly does this mean? One may say that a difference reflects random variation if it could not have been predicted, but this characterization involves several subtleties requiring elaboration. It may be useful to think at this point of a phenomenon, with which we are all familiar that involves a random outcome—coin tossing. A coin tossed in the air may land with the head or the tail up, and neither the tosser nor an observer can consistently say which outcome will occur on any given toss. One therefore says that the outcome of tossing a coin is random. Strictly speaking, however, this assertion of randomness should be qualified. The movement of a coin as it leaves the hand and spins through the air is governed by certain physical laws. Given the precise configuration of forces impinging on the coin as it leaves the hand, it is in principle (and in practice, if one cared to take the trouble) possible to predict successfully whether the coin will come down "heads" or "tails." Coin tossing in this sense is in fact predictable—given the requisite information. In most coin-tossing situations, however, the available information does not allow prediction of the outcome. A particular phenomenon is said to exhibit randomness with respect to particular information if, given this information, one cannot predict the phenomenon. It might be suggested on the basis of this characterization that all assertions of randomness can be verified or refuted simply by examining the given phenomena and information for patterns. This position is too extreme for two reasons, however. First, patterns may exist without being discerned, particularly when

58

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

the information is extensive and complex. There is always the possibility that future study will uncover a pattern unrecognized in the past. Second, and equally important, it is common to assert the randomness of a particular phenomenon (coin tossing is one example) without any explicit specification of the information with respect to which randomness is asserted. In practice, therefore, one cannot always regard randomness as a wholly intrinsic property of a given phenomenon, for it is to some extent a point of view that one chooses to adopt toward the phenomenon. It has been implicit since the beginning of this discussion that the extent of random variation in a population depends in some manner on the size of the population being studied. Why should random variations be greater in small populations than in large ones? To answer this question it will be useful to return to the example of coin tossing. Consider tossing a coin one hundred times in succession and counting the number of times the toss comes down "heads." This activity may be repeated, just as a single toss may be repeated. Although there is an element of randomness in one hundred tosses just as there is in a single toss, one can predict with considerable success the range within which the number of heads will lie: heads come up about half the time. Why is the unpredictability of coin tossing attenuated when large numbers of tosses are aggregated? The answer lies in the concept of 'independence'. If it were somehow possible for one toss of a coin to say to the next "Come up the way I do and pass it on," the outcome of a series of one hundred tosses would be determined by the first toss and would therefore be as unpredictable as the outcome of a single toss. But successive tosses of a coin are independent of each other in the sense that knowing the outcome of one toss does not aid one in predicting the outcome of a subsequent toss. Or, put another way, each toss is random with respect to knowledge of how preceding tosses came down. Demographic events, like tossed coins, exhibit an element of unpredictability in individual cases and considerable regularity in the aggregate. As in coin tossing, the larger the aggregate, the lesser the degree of unpredictability. Moreover the explanation for this is the same as for coin tossing. Events occurring to different persons are in some degree independent of one another. Knowledge of one person's death, for example, does not enable us to predict successfully another person's death. There are some exceptions to this rule, such as mortal-

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

59

ity of members of the same family or epidemic mortality, but some degree of independence holds nonetheless. Random variation may be said to be present in all population statistics, those of large populations as well as those of small populations. When studying large populations, it is usually tacitly assumed that the magnitude of random variations is negligible. When studying small populations, it will sometimes be desirable to take explicit account of random variation. The analysis of random variation involves two basic steps. First, one should minimize random variation by aggregating as many events as possible given the particular question to which the analysis is directed. Second, one must form a judgment of whether the difference observed between population statistics is so small that it might be accounted for entirely by random variation or whether it is so large as to require further explanation. Unfortunately, detailed discussion of either point lies beyond the scope of this chapter. The statistical theory of hypothesis testing provides many useful techniques, and, for those with some previous experience in statistical analysis, it may be useful to observe that considerable progress can be made with nothing more elaborate than a chi-square test. It should be noted in conclusion that all techniques for analyzing random variation are based upon probability models for demographic processes. For some recent work on demographic probability models, see the excellent series of papers by Hoem (1969, 1971a, 1971b). CONCLUSION

It should hardly be necessary to point out in concluding that the techniques discussed in this chapter are tools that must be applied with intuition and judgment. Recognizing the importance of intuition and judgment, however, one should not disparage technique in and of itself. Many issues arise in the course of any demographic analysis that are resolvable by more or less rote application of technique. It is precisely because intuition and judgment are so important that they should not be dissipated upon matters that can be resolved through skillful application of technique. NOTES I am grateful to Ivan A. Brady, Vern Carroll, Stephanie Feeney, Robert W. Gardner, Nancy Howell, Bess Kaufman, Nancy Kleiber, James D. Nason, Robert D. Retherford, Robert C. Schmidt, and Jane Hainline Underwood

60

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

for comments on an earlier version of this paper. I am grateful also for many invaluable conversations with Vern Carroll. 1. Throughout this chapter, the occurrence of italics signifies that a word or phrase is being defined by the sentence in which it occurs. 2. The age of a person at any given time is the time elapsed since the person's birth. The age of a person in completed years at a given time is the age of the person at his or her most recent birthday. Since the word "age" is often used in conversation to mean "age in completed years," the phrase exact age is sometimes used to distinguish age in this sense from age in completed years. More often, however, only the word "age" is used, and the reader is expected to pick up the appropriate meaning from context. This convention, when recognized, is not as confusing as one might expect, and it avoids the awkwardness of repeatedly writing "exact age" and "age in completed years." 3. Exact age at death may be calculated from date of birth and date of death as follows. The decimal form of both dates is first calculated according to the formula

year +

, month — 1 . day — 0.5 12— + 365-

The result should be rounded to three decimal places. For example, the decimal form of the date of birth in the first line of table 2.1 is 12

365

which, rounded to three decimal places, equals 1890.156. When month or day is unknown, it should be assigned randomly by means of a table of random numbers or, if the calculations are done on an electronic computer, by internally generated random numbers. For unknown months an integer between 1 and 12 inclusive should be selected; for unknown days, an integer between 1 and 30 inclusive. When birth and death occur in the same year, month of birth should be assigned first and month of death should be selected from those months greater than or equal to month of birth. For example, if the month of birth assigned is 12 (December), the month of death assigned will be 12 also. If the month of birth assigned is 11 (November), the month of death assigned will be either 11 or 12. Similarly, when birth and death occur in the same year and month (whether in the original data or by random selection of either or both months), day of birth should be assigned first and day of death should be selected from those days greater than or equal to day of birth. When such random assignments are made, the resulting decimal form of the date should be entered permanently on the record to which it applies and used in all further

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS A N D TECHNIQUES

61

calculations. The information that month or day of birth is unknown should not be expunged from the record. Once decimal forms of time of birth and time of death are obtained, exact age at death is calculated by subtracting time of birth from time of death. 4. A proportion is a decimal number between 0 and 1 inclusive that refers to a subset of some specified set. It is calculated by dividing the number of elements in the subset by the number of elements in the set. The latter number is called the base of the proportion. The numerators of proportions are sometimes referred to in this context as absolute numbers, and the proportions themselves as relative numbers. 5. There is no hard and fast rule concerning the number of decimal places to which proportions should be rounded. A reasonable rule is that the number of decimal places should not exceed by more than 1 the number of digits required to express the base of the proportion (see note 4 ) . 6. By actuarial convention, these three quantities are denoted by the symbols n d x , lx and u q x , respectively, where x denotes the beginning of the age interval and n the length of the interval. 7. The average of any set of numbers is defined as the sum of all the numbers in the set divided by the number of numbers in the set. Averages and proportions (defined in note 4) are basic statistics that occur over and over in many different contexts in demographic analysis. 8. Actuarial convention denotes the expectation of life at age * by the symbol 6X. The expectation of life defined here is referred to by actuaries as the complete expectation of life at age x. For reasons peculiar to the insurance business, actuaries also define a statistic called the curtate expectation of life at age x, denoted by e x . This actuarial notation is not invariably followed in the demographic literature, which has no use for the curtate expectation of life. In the demographic literature the phrase "expectation of life" generally refers to the complete expectation of life, and this is often denoted by e x , defying the actuarial convention. Unfortunately, there is no consistent usage. For example, the (complete) expectation of life is denoted by e x in Keyfitz and Flieger (1968) and by e x in Pressat (1972). 9. The American and British actuarial tradition is well represented in the classic work of Dublin, Lotka and Spiegelman (1949), which contains a wealth of interesting material not found elsewhere as well as a reasonably readable treatment of life table concepts. This tradition is quite naturally addressed to actuarial purposes, however, and these do not always coincide with the purposes of demographic research. An example is provided by the practice of smoothing series of mortality rates. One actuarial justification for such smoothing is that irregular series of mortality rates (and hence of insurance premiums) "would tend to arouse an entirely justifiable skepticism" on the part of insurance customers (Miller 1949:6). 10. This concept is discussed in Barclay (1958:37-38). It is inexplicably absent in Pressat (1972).

62

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

11. A very interesting and useful discussion of cohort mortality statistics is given by Case (1956). 12. See, for example, Barclay (1958:113-116); Dublin, Lotka, and Spiegelman (1949:312); or Pressat (1972:135-138). The exposition given by Pressat is by far the clearest. REFERENCES

Acsadi, Gy., and J. Nemeskeri 1970 History of Human Life Span and Mortality. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado. Barclay, George W. 1958 Techniques of Population Analysis. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Case, R. A. M. 1956 "Cohort analysis of mortality rates as an historical or narrative technique." British Journal of Preventive Social Medicine 10: 159-171. Coale, Ansley J., and Paul Demeny 1966 Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Dublin, Louis I., Alfred J. Lotka, and Mortimer Spiegelman 1949 Length of Life: A Study of the Life Table. Revised Edition. New York: Ronald Press. Hoem, Jan M. 1969 "Fertility rates and reproduction rates in a probabilistic setting." Biometrie-Praximetrie 10:38-66. 1971a "On the interpretation of the maternity function as a probability density." Theoretical Population Biology 2:319-327. 1971b "Point estimation of forces of transition in demographic models." Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, series B, vol. 33:275. 289. Keyfitz, Nathan, and Wilhelm Flieger 1968 World Population: An Analysis of Vital Data. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Malthus, Thomas Robert 1970 An Essay on the Principle of Population, and a Summary View of the Principle of Population. Penguin Edition, edited by Antony Flew. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books. Miller, Morton D. 1949 Elements of Graduation. Actuarial Monographs No. 1. The Actuarial Society of America, American Institute of Actuaries. Pressat, Roland 1972 Demographic Analysis: Methods, Results, Applications. Trans-

DEMOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

63

lated by Judah Matras. [A translation of L'analyse démographique (Paris, 1961) with the addition of two chapters from the second edition of the same work (Paris, 1969).] Chicago and New York: Aldine-Atherton. United Nations. Department of Economic and Social Affairs 1967 Methods of Estimating Basic Demographic Measures from Incomplete Data. Population Studies, No. 42. Manuals on methods of estimating population, Manual 4. ST/SOA/Series A/42. New York: United Nations. United Nations. Department of Social Affairs 1955 Age and Sex Patterns of Mortality: Model Life-Tables for Under-Developed Countries. Population Studies, No. 22. ST/SOA/ Series A/22. New York: United Nations. Weiss, Kenneth M. 1973 Demographic Models for Anthropology. Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology No. 27. Issued as American Antiquity 38, no. 2, part 2.

3 THE POPULATION OF THE OUTER R E E F ISLANDS, BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS PROTECTORATE William

Davenport

INTRODUCTION

The populations described in this chapter are located on five small, low islands called the Outer Reef Islands. The Outer Reef Islands are part of the Reef Islands, also known as the Swallow Islands, which in turn are a constituent group of the Santa Cruz Group and are politically a part of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate. The Santa Cruz Group is made up of several kinds of islands, large and small, high and low (see map 3.1). Racially, the peoples of the Outer Reef Islands are of Polynesian origin, while those on most of the other islands in the Santa Cruz Group are Melanesian. The Outer Reef Island peoples speak dialects of Polynesian while several non-Austronesian and Melanesian languages are spoken on nearby islands of the Santa Cruz Group. Despite the racial and linguistic differences between the Outer Reef Island peoples and the Melanesian peoples of the Santa Cruz Group, they all share a common stratum of culture. Moreover, the Outer Reef Island communities have always been interdependent parts of a tightly integrated economic system in which all peoples of the Santa Cruz Group participate. It is the purpose of this chapter to delineate the most important aspects of the complex milieu that have influenced and are continuing to influence the populations of the Outer Reef Islands.1

166° E Source: AMS: SC 58-5. 58-6. 1942.

DUFF ISLANDS 4 (Taumako)

-10° S

..jNupani i j Naloko

..... Nukapu

MAP 3.1

Màkalobu:;> :\Pileni REEF ISLANDS (Swallow) Materna .• d Tenakula

Temotu

jf

Santa Cruz Islands

'j Santa Cruz Island (Dèni)

ojij;;--. Utupua Island

VANIKORO ISLANDS

20

30

40

50 Kilometers

-H-L 167°

_L

66

POPULATION OF THE OUTER REEF ISLANDS

GEOGRAPHY

The Outer Reef Islands are the atolls and atoll-like islands in the western part of the Reef Islands. Each island has several names, depending on which dialect of the Santa Cruz Group is used; they are best known by the names used by their Polynesian-speaking inhabitants, however. From east to west they are: Pileni, Makalobu, Matema, Nukapu, and Nupani (map 3.2). These five are distinguished from the larger and higher eastern islands, which are called the Main Reef Islands. The distinctions implied in the contrast between Outer and Main Reef Islands are both geographic and sociocultural. The atolls, of course, are smaller and more dispersed than the Main Islands. Both the Main and Outer Islands are composed entirely of limestone, but the Main Islands have been raised as much as 50 meters above sea level in some places whereas the Outer Islands have been raised but a meter or so in some places and possibly depressed slightly in others. On the Main Islands there is a strand zone and an interior that supports some rain forest, while the natural vegetative cover of the Outer Islands is restricted to species that thrive in a strand environment. The Main Islands support luxuriant yam gardens, but the Outer Islands have no mature soils on which yams or Alocasia and Colocasia taros can be grown. In a sociological sense the Outer-Main distinction signifies the linguistic difference between the Polynesian language (PN) of the Outer Islands and the Reef Island language (RI) as well as the racial differences that, although blurred by liberal mixing, signify the different genetic histories of the inhabitants. The Reef Islands as a whole derive their English name from an extensive reef formation, called the Great Reef (Te Akauloa in PN, Ngamalo in RI), that extends westward from the Main Islands and partly encloses a large lagoon. It appears that the Main Islands, the Great Reef, and three of the outer atolls at one time formed a single large atoll. Geological forces raised the eastern margin of the atoll to form the elevated Main Reef Islands but left the Great Reef either unchanged or depressed. About one kilometer off the continuous northern arc of the Great Reef are Pileni and Makalobu islands. Both are table reef islands, which is to say they are atolls with no barrier reefs and no protected lagoons. The southern part of the Great Reef is

68

POPULATION OF THE OUTER REEF ISLANDS

made up of patches and barely exposed table reefs. Matema is one of these table reefs that have been permanently exposed, probably as a result of some uplift. Nukapu is located twelve to thirteen kilometers northwest of the Great Reef. It also is a table reef island with only a shallow central depression that is filled at high tide. The main islet, called Nukapu and from which the atoll takes its name, is located at the eastern side; a second sandy and barren islet is located at the western side of the island. Pileni, Makalobu, Matema, and Nukapu are protected from the heavy seas that come from the southeast and east during the half of the year (May through October) when the southeast trade winds are strong. The natural shelter makes canoe traffic possible among these Outer Islands and the Main Islands in all but the stormiest conditions. Located another thirty-seven kilometers westward of Nukapu is Nupani, the only atoll in the Outer Reef Islands with an encircling reef, and a deep, spacious lagoon. It has two islets—Nupani at the north and Naloko at the south. The atoll stands in mid-sea, and during the southeast trade wind season it can be totally isolated from outside contact. During this season heavy seas pile up on the barrier reef with such turbulence that no canoe or small craft can enter or leave the placid interior lagoon or cross the reef to land at either of the two islets. No accurate maps or land surveys have been made of the Outer Reef Islands. I paced off a rough measurement of Nupani islet, and on the basis of this and comparative estimates of the other islands, I believe the dry land areas of the five to be about as follows:

Island

Hectares (approximate)

Pileni Makalobu Matema Nukapu Nupani

15 5 8 30 60

Recent geological changes have affected both the land areas and the distributions of soils on all of the outer islands. There has been a slight subsidence on all four of the northern outer islands (Pileni,

POPULATION OF THE OUTER REEF ISLANDS

69

Makalobu, Nukapu, and Nupani) during the last thirty years. As a result, heavy seas during the southeast trade wind season have eroded parts of the islets. Nupani atoll has been the most severely damaged and has lost from one-fourth to one-third of its best agricultural soils. Nukapu and Pileni have also suffered losses of agricultural lands, and Makalobu has been eroded so badly that now it is not much more than a dry spit of beach sand with a few trees and bushes. At Nupani, Nukapu, and Pileni, however, the soils washed away from exposed parts of the islands have been redeposited as beach sand on the protected sides. This did not occur at Makalobu; at Matema there was no erosion, but there has been deposition of sand from somewhere else to such an extent that the islet has gained an additional one-fourth of its dry land area. These changes in vital land resources have had measurable effects on the lives of the Outer Island people; some of which will be discussed below. The principal islands of the Main Reef Islands are Nifiloli, Fenualoa (same names in P N ) ; Ngabelipa, Ngagaue, Nananiebuli (collectively known as Ngailo in P N ) ; Nibange Tema (Pangani in P N ) and Nibange Nede (Pokoli in PN). Nifiloli in the north lies but three kilometers east of Pileni; Ngailo and other smaller islands in the main group are but sixteen kilometers east of Matema. As we will see, the proximity between the Outer and Main Islands has led to significant consequences for the societies and their populations (map 3.2). One of these is that Nifiloli is occupied exclusively by Polynesian-speaking people who have very close ties to Pileni. According to the geographical distinction between Outer and Main Reef Islands, Pileni is one of the former and Nifiloli is one of the latter. According to the sociological and population distinction between Outer and Main islands, however, both are to be considered as belonging to the Outer Reef Islands. Nifiloli is a raised coral island that has been elevated eight to ten meters above sea level in some places. Of all the Main Reef Islands it is the poorest from the point of view of root-crop gardening. It has only a few pockets of mature soil in which yams will grow and a narrow fringe of sandy beach. Nifiloli is mainly made up of hard limestones that are fringed by reefs. Its area is perhaps equal to the combined areas of all the Outer Reef Islands, but, it is a relatively barren island. Northeast of the Main Reef Islands by 110 kilometers is another

70

POPULATION OF THE OUTER REEF ISLANDS

small group called the Duff Islands, or in Polynesian, Taumako (map 3.1). It is a short chain of small, broken volcanic peaks and pinnacles that are well endowed with fringing reefs. Taumako is also inhabited by Polynesian speakers who maintain close social and economic ties with all of the Outer Reef Islands. The Taumako population is excluded from comparative consideration in this chapter, because the islands are in no way atoll-like. Directly south of the Reef Islands are Tenakula, an active volcano that rises steeply out of the sea in the shape of a nearly perfect cone (map 3.2), and Santa Cruz Island (Deni in PN), a high island which is the largest in the Santa Cruz Group (map 3.1). Both of these islands are of signal importance to the Outer Reef Island people. South of Deni by 150-160 kilometers are Utupua and Vanikoro (map 3.1). Both are high islands of volcanic origin that have encircling barrier reefs and massive enclosed lagoons. Utupua and Vanikoro are the southernmost of the Santa Cruz Group. Vanikoro has stands of kauri pine that an Australian company has been extracting for years. This operation has provided a nearby source of wage labor for men of the entire Santa Cruz Group. To the south of Vanikoro are the Banks and Torres islands of the New Hebrides group, but in precontact times these islands were barely known to peoples of the Santa Cruz Group (map 7.2). East of Vanikoro by 230 kilometers are Tikopia and Anuta (map 7.2). Contacts between Tikopians and Santa Cruz Group peoples were infrequent and often involuntary (owing to drift voyages); nevertheless, the two groups are well known to each other. To the west lie the Solomon Islands, the closest of which are Santa Ana, Santa Catalina, and San Cristobal, which because of frequent involuntary drift voyages and successful returns are well known to the Santa Cruz Group people (map 7.1). In fact, throughout the northern Santa Cruz Group the peoples of Santa Ana and Santa Catalina were held in extremely high regard, because the former succored so many of their canoe crews who survived the ordeal of drifting across over 300 kilometers of open seas. Malaita in the Solomons was known but hated and feared because canoe voyagers rarely escaped alive from its shores. Ontong Java (Luangiua) and Sikaiana were both known vaguely in the Outer Reef Islands and at Taumako, probably because there had been some drift voyages from there (map 7.2). Since intensive European contact, and particularly since the end of

POPULATION OF THE OUTER REEF ISLANDS

71

World War II, the horizon of the traditional geographic universe has broadened considerably. Nevertheless, in the Outer Reef Islands detailed information about places beyond the traditional limits are known to only a few persons. Guadalcanal (map 7.1) and its environs are now known as Solomoni (which formerly meant Tulagi Island, which was the pre-World War II seat of the Protectorate Administration); but the place, or island, that dominates outer geographic space is Matangi (or, in Pidgin English, Big Place), which is the generalized name for the place where Europeans and Chinese—the traders in the Protectorate—originate. In summary, the peoples of the Outer Reef Islands are seen by themselves and by others in the Santa Cruz Group as being racially and linguistically different, as occupying a special low-island and geographically marginal habitat, but not as having subcultures that are greatly different from those found in the Main Reef Islands, at Taumako or on Deni. The Outer Reef Island peoples do not form a geographical population isolate. Rather, they are integrated parts of the larger population unit that occupies the Santa Cruz Group. This larger population unit is, however, a geographical isolate, because until very recent times there was only minor interaction between it and the populations of islands outside the Santa Cruz Group. COMMUNITIES AND SOCIAL IDENTITIES

In the six Outer Reef Islands (socially defined) there are five communities: Nifiloli, Pileni, Nukapu, Matema and Nupani. (The status of Makalobu is explained below.) By community is meant a population with a common domicile that controls resources as a group and possesses social identity that is also recognized by outsiders. In social anthropological jargon the five are corporate communities. The corporate community with a compact village is a social unit that is common throughout the Santa Cruz Group. In 1960 in the Santa Cruz Group there were sixty-five such corporate communities with a total de jure population of 6612. The distribution by island groups is summarized in Table 3.1. The physical resources controlled by Nupani are its entire atoll as well as rights over the nearby volcano of Tenakula. Nukapu controls only its home island. Pileni controls the home island, and has certain rights over large areas of the Great Reef; it also controls Makalobu,

72

POPULATION OF THE OUTER REEF ISLANDS

TABLE 3.1

Populations of Islands and Island Groups, Santa Cruz Group, 1 November 1960

Island or Group

Number of Communities

Number of Persons

Main Reef Islands Deni Outer Reef Islands Taumako Utupua Vanikoro

20 33 5 1 2 4

3,086 2,516 490 220 172 128

65

6,612

Total SOURCE: Author's census.

which is uninhibited. Nifiloli controls its home island as well as adjacent parts of the Great Reef. Matema controls its home island and several large reef patches in the southern part of the Great Reef. The resource controls are rights that the communities, as jural personalities, defend against outsiders, and there are ample historical instances of such collective defenses. There are also social identities larger than the community which are based more upon cultural similarities than upon enforceable jural rights. For example, Nupani and Matema consider themselves to be aligned in some way against a similar alignment of Nukapu, Pileni, and Nifiloli. These somewhat opposed social identities are based upon dialect sharings of the same language. The Pileni-Nifiloli-Nukapu identification is further reinforced (and manifested) by the merger for one generation in this century of the populations of the three communities into a single village on Pileni. The merger was caused in part by a series of epidemics, commencing with amoebic dysentery (and possibly cholera), that hit the entire Santa Cruz Group just around the turn of the century. The population of Nifiloli was so reduced by these epidemics that the survivors decided to move to Pileni. Community mergers of this kind occurred all over the Santa Cruz Group at this time of rapid and serious depopulation.2 Later in the 1920s Nukapu was further harassed by a blight and serious food shortage, so its inhabitants also moved to Pileni. However, the period of common residence on Pileni did not wipe out the corporate identities

POPULATION OF THE OUTER R E E F ISLANDS

73

of the Nifiloli and Nukapu communities, however. Movement back to Nukapu began just before the outbreak of World War II in the Pacific and was still not completed by 1960. Nifiloli was reoccupied in 1950 in a more abrupt manner following a dispute that had divided the common village on Pileni. The Polynesian speakers as a whole—that is, all of the Outer Reef Island communities and Taumako—also recognize themselves, and are reciprocally viewed by others, as a single ethnic group. This is not surprising in view of their linguistic and racial distinctiveness. On Deni, at least, the ethnic designation of the Polynesian speakers is thought of in ecological and economic terms as much as it is a racial and linguistic distinction. The Polynesian speakers are regarded as "small-island dwellers" and this carries with it the recognition that they have limited economic resources and are not as well-off economically as communities on the large islands. The Outer Reef Island peoples readily acknowledge their less advantageous economic position and in some instances use it to obtain gifts and other gratuities from their richer neighbors. THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM OF THE SANTA CRUZ GROUP

Despite the separate and reciprocally recognized social identities of the small-island people, there is a shared set of cultural values from Deni to Taumako, so that one can speak of a northern Santa Cruz Group culture. Fewer of these values are shared with the Utupua and Vanikoro peoples, and for this reason these latter should be thought of as having a southern version of Santa Cruz Group culture. The Outer Reef Island people want just about the same things as do the people of the Main Reef Islands and Deni, but they do not have the resources to obtain them in the quantities they desire. These common economic desires are the bases upon which an integrated economic system developed in the northern islands. The economic system that developed prior to intensive contact with Europeans and colonial administration had the following features: ( 1 ) no community was economically self-sufficient; ( 2 ) by exploitation of scarce resources that were unique to local environments or through the pursuit of specialized skills, each community became a semispecialized producer of commodities for export to other communities; ( 3 ) marine specialists of several kinds maintained an interisland trad-

74

POPULATION OF THE OUTER REEF ISLANDS

ing network that linked every coastal village to every other; and (4) all exchange was transacted in a standardized currency. Until European economic influences made significant inroads into the traditional economic system, the boundaries of that system were congruent with the geographic boundaries of the Santa Cruz Group. The Outer Reef Island communities fitted into the economic system by processing marine products, by manufacturing goods from raw materials obtained from strand trees, and by manning the large sailing outrigger canoes that carried cargoes throughout the group. The sailing canoes they used were often purchased from elsewhere (especially from Taumako). In their capacities as canoe owners, the seafarers of the Outer Reef Islands were also traders. The profits gained in their enterprises were used to purchase commodities from the large islands that were not available on their small islands but nevertheless were deemed essential. The most important of these commodities were staple foods from the gardens and orchards of the large islands. Thus, although well adapted to their atoll environments, the Outer Reef Island people had many tastes (i.e., cultural values) that were the same as those of the high-island people. Women throughout the Santa Cruz Group are the principal gardeners, and, on the high islands, womens' work in their gardens is never done. On the atolls of the Outer Reef Islands, however, gardens are small and require very little work. Freed of heavy garden responsibilities, atoll women spend large amounts of time at various manufacturing skills such as plaiting, cord- and rope-making and processing of preserved foods. In the traditional economic system, the products made by women were valuable exports for the atoll communities. In spite of their well-established niche in the economic system, the Outer Reef Islanders and Taumakoans never controlled wealth on an equal basis with the richest communities of the Main Reef Islands and Deni. Neither did the Main Reef Islands command the economic power that the north and west coast communities of Deni did. The rich men of both the Main Reefs and Deni had a taste for extra women—a taste that on Deni was probably reinforced by an excessively masculine population3—and they had the economic power to contract virilocal marriages with Polynesian-speaking women. In these transactions, substantial wealth in bride-price payments was received by the Polynesian-speaking communities. Some brides were brought back from the Main Reef Islands (especially daughters of Polynesian-

POPULATION OF THE OUTER REEF ISLANDS

75

speaking women), but brides were never brought back from Deni. Taumako and the Outer Reef Islands exported some of their women for economic gain. The Main Reef Islands also exported women to Deni. Some women went there as brides, but of more economic importance were those who were exported as concubines and whose purchase prices were ten times the normal price paid for a wife. Concubines were so expensive that only a group of wealthy men acting together could raise the necessary price. Some concubines were held by Main Reef Island men but usually only until they could be sold for a profit to the richer men of Deni. None of the Polynesian-speaking communities permitted their women to become concubines. Concubines on Deni had inferior social status. They could not be mistresses of households, could not manage gardens, and were not recognized as mothers of the children they bore. Concubines could be sold more or less as chattels, their sexual favors could also be sold to men willing to pay the owners, and they could be killed without fear of retaliation from their kindreds. On the other hand, concubines were always dressed in the finest clothing and ornaments, they were never allowed to do menial or dirty work, and they were pampered and spoiled by their owners and the owners' wives. Whether or not the economic system ever reached a stable state before it was thrown into disequilibrium by European influences cannot now be determined. It is abundantly clear, however, that the balance of population to resources in the Outer Reef Islands was partly maintained by this economic system, in which imports of basic food stuffs and the export of female reproductive capacity are two powerful regulators of the small populations. RESPONSES TO EUROPEAN INFLUENCES

The oldest persons alive in 1960 had survived the great epidemics that began about 1900. They had experienced the rapid decline of population that resulted. They could remember times when steel tools were still scarce. The first jolts to the economic system occurred before they were born, however. It was in the 1870s, two decades after the Melanesian Mission (Anglican) yacht Southern Cross commenced making regular calls in the Santa Cruz Group, that labor recruiters came seeking men for work in Fiji and Queensland. Not much is re-

76

POPULATION OF THE OUTER REEF ISLANDS

membered about the early recruiters, for they called in the Santa Cruz Group infrequently and lured few men away. This was the period of unregulated recruiting, or blackbirding. The few Santa Cruz men who were taken away were rarely heard of again. A few instances of violence against recruiters who tried to abduct men are still remembered, but these stories could have been heard elsewhere and incorporated into local oral history. There is one notable instance, however, that has supportive documentation and concerns the abduction of men from Nukapu, their escape, and their return home from Fiji by canoe. This was the incident behind the killing of the Melanesian Mission Bishop, John Coleridge Patteson, at Nukapu in 1877 and the retributive shelling of that island by a British naval ship.4 Such early recruiting efforts only hardened the attitudes of the Santa Cruz people against Europeans, whom they had known vaguely and disliked intensely ever since Mendana brutalized Deni villagers in 1595 and de Quiros tried to kidnap Taumakoans in 1606. But the intense desire for iron tools and other attractive articles of industrial manufacture, plus England's putting an end to the inhuman labor trafficking of the blackbirders, attracted labor for plantation work on other Melanesian islands. Most of the men from the Santa Cruz Group worked in the New Hebrides where conditions were relatively good, and by 1900 there was a small but steady flow of steel tools and other durable goods into the islands. According to the old men, the effect that steel tools had on the economy was nearly revolutionary. The tools greatly increased the efficiency of labor. Less time and effort were needed for making gardens, more canoes were built because it was comparatively easy to cut and shape them with steel blades, and interisland trade increased accordingly. If we can believe these secondhand memories, then it can be assumed that productivity and trade increased commensurately. The economic growth must have made a difference in the standard of living, but whether it had any effects on the populations is not known. POPULATION DECLINE AND GROWTH

With increased travel in and out of the group and increasing numbers of small ships calling to recruit and repatriate labor, exotic diseases were introduced. As mentioned already, the population on all islands had plummeted. Everywhere, villages were abandoned and

77

POPULATION OF THE OUTER R E E F ISLANDS

remnant communities were consolidated. There are no population figures for any of the islands until 1924, and none for the Outer Reef Islands until 1944. 5 Nevertheless, free interpretation of what figures are available suggests that the Main Reef Islands reached their minimum population around 1928 and since then have more than doubled their numbers. The decline on Deni appears to have ended about the same time, but the population did not begin to show an increase until after World War II. Taumako's population reached its nadir about 1940 and has since risen sharply. Utupua hit the lowest point about 1940, but it is still not showing a strong increase. Vanikoro slid until 1930, when it was feared that its population was doomed to extinction (there being only sixty persons) but it has nearly doubled in numbers since then. The best guess that can be made about the Outer Reef Islands is that they followed the Main Reef Island trend because the resettlements of Nukapu, commencing before World War II, and of Nifiloli, in 1960, suggest a population increase from before 1942. In 1960, both Taumako and Deni had just begun to resettle areas that were abandoned during the decline. Utupua had made still another consolidation a few years prior to 1960, and Vanikoro communities seemed to be holding their own. The official data is summarized in tables 3.2 and 3.3. T A B L E 3.2

Population, by Sex, of Outer Reef Islands Matema), 1944 and 1960

(Except

Persons Males

Females

Both Sexes

1944

u

u

343

1960

232

213

445

Year*

Sources and Remarks BSIP (1944), probably a de facto census Author's de jure census

* No exact date is given for the 1944 census. Census figures for 1960 are as of 15 June 1960. u—unavailable. RELATIONS WITH EUROPEANS AND BRITISH ADMINISTRATION

Missionaries from the Melanesian Mission first visited the Santa Cruz Group in 1852, but amicable relations between them and the islanders

78

POPULATION OF T H E OUTER R E E F ISLANDS

TABLE 3.3

Population, by Sex, of Nupani Island, 1959 and 1960 Persons

Year' 1959 1960

Males

Females

Both Sexes

Sources and Remarks

67 69

73 78

140 147

BSIP 1959 census" Author's de jure census

* The effective date of the 1959 census is 9 December 1959. The effective date of the 1960 census is 27 May 1960. b Matema, Pileni, Nukapu, and Nifiloli populations are unavailable because they are merged with Main Reef Island populations in report.

were not to be realized for many years. The occasions of the Spanish visits of 1595 and 1606 set a precedent of violence in dealing with Europeans that was to be repeated in 1768 when The Swallow, under the command of Captain Carteret, surveyed Deni and the Reef Islands. La Perouse met disaster at Vanikoro in 1788, and the survivors of his expedition were eventually massacred. The Mission ship Duff, commanded by Captain Wilson, stopped briefly at Taumako in 1797 and departed without incident, but in 1827 and 1828 Captain Peter Dillon and Dumont d'Urville had difficulties at Vanikoro in their attempts to investigate the fate of the La Perouse expedition. In 1864, the Melanesian Mission lost two missionaries in a violent encounter on Deni, and in 1871 Bishop Patteson and his boat's crew from the Southern Cross were attacked on Nukapu. Four years later, Commodore Goodenough, R. N., was mortally wounded on Deni. The break in this ugly relationship came in 1877 when the Melanesian Mission yacht Southern Cross discovered some drift voyagers from Nifiloli who were being held captive on the island of Malaita in the Solomons. The Nifiloli voyagers were ransomed and returned to their home island. In return for this, the Nifiloli community permitted the mission to put a missionary ashore there and start a school. The teacher was a Melanesian convert from the New Hebrides. Although there was strong initial resistance to his teachings, especially from the people of Pileni, a few converts were made. Despite this modest success, the school was moved to the north coast of Deni, where the mission hoped to get a foothold in a more important locality. It soon failed there, and after several other abortive attempts to set up schools

POPULATION OF THE OUTER REEF ISLANDS

79

in other places on Deni, a permanent school with a European teacher was established in the Main Reef Islands in 1925. From this time on, the Melanesian Mission has maintained a conspicuous presence in the Santa Cruz Group. The Polynesian-speaking islands came over to Christianity slowly, but they made the change before notable successes were scored on the Main Reef Islands and Deni. During the period of rapid population decline, about which the mission was greatly concerned, the Southern Cross brought some medical services in the course of its regular visits. The treatments rendered were mainly for yaws, which had always been a debilitating scourge throughout the group. How much effect this, the first medical attention given to the people, had on the declining population cannot be determined, but because the treatments were so visibly effective it created much goodwill between the people and the Mission. It also laid a firm foundation of faith in the efficacy of European medicine, which would become important later when the protectorate began to deliver medical services to the group. Meanwhile, more and more young boys were taken away for schooling, first to Norfolk Island, later to the Banks Islands in the New Hebrides. Sometime before World War I, an Australian trader and labor recruiter for Lever's Plantations in the Solomons, set up a trading station on Deni. Although continually threatened, and virtually quarantined in an unhealthy and uninhabited part of the island, he was tolerated because he was a source of trade goods and occasional employment around the trade station, and a means for gaining plantation work in the Solomons. Other European traders, who" also acted as recruiters, began to visit the islands looking for shell and trepang. Those who were legitimate were welcomed, but among them were poachers and renegades with whom there was always trouble. Guns appeared on Deni and in the Main Reefs, but because of the perennial shortage of ammunition and a lack of ability with firearms, they did not alter the outcomes of the perennial feuds and the occasional wars. Although the Santa Cruz Group was brought under the jurisdiction of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate in 1899, it was not until the early 1920s that Britain established direct administrative control over the islands. The occasion for this was the granting of permission to an Australian company to cut kauri pine on Vanikoro. The British administration set up a district office at Vanikoro con-

80

POPULATION OF THE OUTER REEF ISLANDS

sisting of one European district officer, a small detachment of Solomon Island police, and a jail. The initial administrative task was to bring the entire group under the protectorate rule of law and order. By then, Vanikoro and Utupua were so depleted of people that the main task on those islands was to preserve the populations rather than to pacify them. The Outer Reef Islands and Taumako accepted the authority and the ban on violence without resistance, in part owing to the influence of Christianity there. The Main Reef Islands and Deni were another matter, and it took nearly ten years to bring them to heel. The district office on Vanikoro was severely handicapped because it had no ship, so that visits to the northern islands by the district officer and his police were infrequent. The police force was small and no match for the local forces that could be mustered against it. Nevertheless, government headmen were appointed throughout the northern islands, and the jail at Vanikoro was kept fully occupied with violators of the Pax Britannica. One Pileni man, who had been arrested for participating in a Main Reef Island feud, died in jail there. The pacification of the Main Reef Islands and Deni was finally accomplished by the collaboration of the mission and of traders who had arrived after the district office was established, by strong police action, and by the use of methods that were, by protectorate regulations, illegal. Villages were razed by police patrols, and religious structures were singled out for periodic destruction. The police killed several island men in incidents that were never fully recorded in district reports. The final confrontation came on Deni when, at the request of the Melanesian Mission, a trader and the district officer with a police detachment forcibly rounded up all of the Reef Island women who were living on Deni as concubines and returned them to their natal islands. Of course, the Deni men resisted and fought with bows and arrows. More than one hundred women were brought back to the Reef Islands. Among them were many who were not concubines at all, but legitimate wives. This incident did end the practice of concubinage, but it did not staunch the flow from the Reef Islands of women as brides. With the enforcement of law and order (British style), the continued operation of the small timber company at Vanikoro, and the competition of several European trader-recruiters for shell and labor, the local economy in the 1930s shifted more toward money and the

POPULATION OF THE OUTER REEF ISLANDS

81

import of manufactured goods from outside. Leaving home islands for one- and two-year contracts on plantations in the Solomons became an established practice for young men. The desire for money and imported goods diminished the demand for products of local manufacture. Local trade declined. In the competition among the European traders, all but one, Captain Fred L. Jones, failed; even he began competing with the local canoe traders by transporting and trading local goods in addition to buying shell, selling imported goods, and recruiting. The Outer Reef Islands were in a disadvantaged position for this shift toward greater participation in the world monetary economy, because none of them had much trochus or green snail (which thrive best oif high islands), and no pearl oysters. Their male labor force was small, and the trader, Jones, who had won a monopoly was threatening their traditional economic roles as cargo carriers and traders. Jones was a unique man, however, who had a genuine fondness for the Santa Cruz Group people, especially the Polynesian speakers of the Outer Reef Islands and Taumako. He had a Taumakoan wife and he recognized his children by her. Because of his personal involvement with the Polynesian speakers, Captain Jones made a special effort to recruit men from the Outer Reef Islands for work at Vanikoro and at plantations in the Solomons. When the fury of World War II burst upon the Solomons in 1942, the district office and the timber company at Vanikoro were shut down. Jones withdrew and the Melanesian Mission yacht stopped calling at all the islands of the Santa Cruz Group. Fortunately, few men who were working away from their islands were left stranded when the group lost economic and administrative contact with the rest of the world. Japanese and U. S. Naval patrols passed through the group checking on each other. After the Americans placed a small observation post on Deni and on one of the Main Reef Islands, the Japanese bombed the one in the Reefs. A major naval engagement was fought in Santa Cruz waters. The local people had little knowledge of what was going on, but they were terrified by it all. Every village throughout the group was abandoned and people scattered into gardens and orchards to live in dispersed family groups. They suffered this ordeal for more than two years. On Deni, a messianic social movement swept over the poorer parts of the island. During this period there was a resurgence of specialized crafts and

82

POPULATION OF THE OUTER REEF ISLANDS

interisland trading as people were forced to revive the traditional economic system. As before, there were involuntary drift voyages, and one of these carried a hapless crew from the Outer Reef Islands across the Coral Sea, under close scrutiny by Allied naval patrols, to New Guinea. Three Pileni men and one woman were lost in another canoe that disappeared altogether. After the Americans won the battle for the Solomons, a military ship came to the Main Islands to recruit laborers for the American military base on Guadalcanal. Many men answered the call, but the men of the Outer Reef Islands did not have an opportunity to go, because the ship did not call there. When the recruits returned in 1945 and 1946, they were ladened with cases full of cast-off military issue that they had scavenged off the military trash heaps. The men came back well-fed, cured of malaria and other infections, and with a totally transformed idea of what the outside European world was like. Their stories and interpretations of events were accepted without question, whereas earlier reports by individual travelers who had reached Australia and New Zealand had been dismissed as false. From this time on there could be no return to an adaptation of the kind that was achieved just prior to the war. In 1946 and 1947, the administration resumed control over the Santa Cruz Group. The administration was maintained directly from the Eastern District office, however, which is 350 kilometers to the east at Kira Kira on San Cristobal (map 7.1). The timber company resumed operations on Vanikoro much as before, and the Melanesian Mission returned with more determination than ever to convert the remaining pagans. The trader, Jones, however, was more interested in his investments in the New Hebrides than in resuming his trading monopoly in the Santa Cruz Group and so his business lapsed. The post-World War II administrative policy pushed new judicial, political, and economic programs. Local courts (called native courts) were instituted and given jurisdiction over minor criminal cases and all civil suits. Local elective councils were organized to replace the old regime of appointed government headmen. None of these innovations had much effect on the Outer Reef Islands, because they were removed from the court and council center that was set up in the Main Reef Islands. The government headman for the Outer Reef Islands, a resident of Pileni who had been appointed by the first dis-

POPULATION OF THE OUTER REEF ISLANDS

83

trict officer on Vanikoro, was retained, but as before he rarely toured the other islands under his jurisdiction. A public health program was instituted. No health survey was ever made, but villages were forced to clean up, and pigs were put behind fences. Two medical aid stations (locally called hospitals) were set up in the Main Reef Islands and on Deni and staffed with hospital-trained aides (called dressers). An attempt was also made to have a medical officer tour the entire group along with the district commissioner and his police patrol. But, as usual, the Outer Islands were frequently bypassed either because bad weather prevented landings or because the tour was behind schedule and time was made up by skipping them. In 1957 the protectorate yaws campaign reached the Santa Cruz Group: every man, woman, and child received heavy doses of penicillin, and in the following year some antibiotic drugs were made available to the dressers at the aid stations. The campaign against yaws, which had always been a crippling disease throughout the group, was extremely successful, and if there had been gonorrhea anywhere it would have been eradicated too. The Outer Reef Island people, however, were not able to utilize the services of the medical aid stations, because they were too far away. Birth and death statistics were never kept for the Outer Islands. There were also new economic programs designed to develop cash crops. All of these failed but one—planting more coconuts for processing copra. Copra production would have gone ahead long before, had there been ship transportation to carry the product to buying centers. (In fact there was a fumbling beginning in the 1930s under the guidance of a trader, but low prices caused by the world depression killed it.) In 1958, the protectorate government agreed to provide transportation at subsidized freight rates and sent experts to the islands to give instructions on selecting seed nuts, planting techniques, and building and operating simple copra driers. Materials for copra driers were also made available at reduced cost. In the same year a trading monopoly was granted to a European who made his headquarters in the Main Reef Islands. The first protectorate-wide population census was taken in 1959. This was not a complete enumeration of every individual in the protectorate; rather, it was a sample census selected from various geographic areas. The Outer Reef Islands, Main Reef Islands, Taumako,

84

POPULATION OF THE OUTER REEF ISLANDS

and Deni were selected for complete enumeration, however, and the census was taken there during November and December 1959. These islands were subdivided into enumeration areas, usually composed of several villages, and thus statistics for individual communities were lost through aggregation with the other communities in the same enumeration area. In the Outer Reef Islands, all the communities but Nupani were included in enumeration areas that also included communities of the Main Reef Islands; thus the population statistics for them cannot be recovered.6 It is for this reason that the data from the 1969 census that are included in table 3.3 refer only to Nupani. From the end of World War II to 1960, as economic activity moved even more radically away from the traditional orientations to heavy reliance upon wage labor and copra production, the relative economic situation of the Outer Reef Islands actually worsened, even though the economic position of the Santa Cruz Group as a whole (as measured by monetary income) improved. This economic deterioration occurred because there was no way for any of the Outer Reef Island communities to increase their coconut plantings, and all of the coconuts they grew were needed for consumption. Never fully self-sufficient in the production of food, and geared to obtaining what they needed by trading, the Outer Island communities were confronted with negligible demand for the homely products they could produce. Increasing population aggravated the deteriorating economic situation. PILENI, NIFILOLI, AND NUKAPU

At the time of the Pileni census (13 June 1960) the population (of 134) was distributed among twenty-nine households (4.6 persons per household). (See tables 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6.) Of the eleven men temporarily absent, seven were single, three were married, and one was widowed. There were no visitors on extended stays, although canoes from Nifiloli, Nukapu, Matema, and the Main Reef Islands came and went almost daily. Pileni has a single village, which is located on the south side of the island. In front of the village is an extensive fringing reef and to one side are fine protected canoe landings that can accommodate the largest of the interisland sailing canoes. As far as anyone knows, the village site has always been at this locality. Due to the reoccupation of Nukapu and Nifiloli, Pileni has been declining in size. It was not

85

POPULATION O F T H E OUTER R E E F ISLANDS

T A B L E 3.4

Pileni De Jure Population, by Age, Sex, and Whether Present or Temporarily Absent, 13 June 1960 Temporarily Absent

Present Age

Both Males Females Sexes

Both Males Females Sexes

0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 2 4 1 1 2 1 0 0 0 0 0

2 13 8 11 10 4 7 2 4 0 2

13 11 7 5 8 4 0 0 3 5

1 1

0 3

3 26 19 18 15 12 11 2 4 3 7 2 1 4

7

0

0

0

3

4

7

123

11

0

11

69

65

134

Under 1 1-4 5-9 10-14 15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64 65 and over

2 13 8 9 6 3 6 0 3 0 2 1 1 1

13 11 7 5 8 4 0 0 3 5 1 0 3

3 26 19 16 11 11 10 0 3 3 7 2 1 4

3

4

All Ages

58

65

l

Both Males Females Sexes

Total De Jure Population

0 0 0 2* 4b 1" 1" 2° la

1 ±

l

1 X

SOURCE: Author's census. * One at mission primary school, Main Reef Islands; one at mission secondary school, Ugi Island, Eastern Solomons. " At Vanikoro on one-year contracts. c One at Vanikoro on one-year contract; one on trading trip to Matema. d On trading trip to Deni.

clear in 1960 whether or not the resettlements had been completed. The only unmarried mother with her own household to be found in any of the Outer Reef Island communities lived on Pileni (see table 3.6, note a ) . The community regarded her situation as somewhat disgraceful. Illegitimacy is usually avoided by pressuring a couple having sexual relations to marry, or, if this is not possible, through adoption of their children by a married couple or a widow. The Nifiloli population of 102 (on 15 June 1960) was distributed among seventeen households (6.0 persons per household). (See tables 3.7, 3.8, and 3.9.) Of thirteen persons temporarily absent, two men

PH

Œ

fe

N I CO

^

1 0 CO

S

^ O - F N O L T F O W H H H K L CO • - !

OL CO

PH

O O L - H O O O I - L R H O O O O

CO

fe

O O I - I O O O L - H I - F O O O O

CO

o o o o o o o o o o o o

o

P4

O O O O I - H O O C O O O - ^ I - L

OS

fe

O O O O O O O E O O O C O R - (

»

S

O O O O I - H O O O O O I - H O

(M

PLI

O W T S H H I F C Q M C Q H O F F L CQ I-L TU

fe

O C 0 T > - ^ < 0 0 < M 1 - I ' - I 0 0 C 0

1-H

O

TO TOO

^ H C Q C Q C O N ^ T F I N M ΠL L L L L L I I L L

S

CO I - I

T>0


H H « « CO W

o tf •S « a .s S a -8 s -s§ 2 3 •s G . 'S sSQ) a 8 ¡2'S s ^13 «60-bo . « ~ sJ s > S T3 H ^ £o -g ß S G te o •-sí ? g •s-S'ana ° . íh § oK > o a h w 3 fJ3 J5 >3 rta» 05 G h-, a) • § g > s O T í H'rj S 'k s s M e •S h a t>0 o < .2 bo -"S

S £ ë * s> h *J ^ -H G 4-» C/3 «

O L C I L B Ö H H ^ M O H H H r—I

IN

OOOIOEOOOOQR-IOOI-II-T

I-H C M

H C D M C O H H W H O H O O •-(

TT< (N

0 0 0 1 - 1 0 0 0 1 - 1 0 0 0 0

CQ

O O O I - H O O O I - I O O O O

OQ

O O O O O O O O O O O O

O

O O O O O O O O O I - I I - I I - I

CO

© O O O O O O O O O I - I R - H

O I W - F F H O O O O O O O O >-I

CO CQ

O O O W O O O O O O O O O R-ICQOJ^HOOOOOOOO

W RH

u « > O

R !GA>'R-iooooooo

IN

»FFIOOOONATO'IINIOWIINH« HO)H I-H

o CO

SÍ

A

¿

*g§ 'S £ a S Oo RT J JG IG

U-l S O>.2 Sog "SJi «

§ 8 8 B ¡A JT « C

C Q O O W H M ® I N I > M T T I C O ( M C Q H M TO I-L F-L I>

.

E J -è o

IH I-I

IN

C A B Á«OSG •S3 .3» Fk O ES » ^ 53 .3 O RT S S G AR U .HI1 5 U A> O

-

«M**

°

O 8 « G I-H

< >U O W O

¿ H W O M O I I O M O I , T I O, I C I O » I-* HHM(NCOW1 ' g .S a -S -M o>OZ- "f

M O B C M S T f C O M M H O CO

00 t-

o n c D t - o o c q H N N H O H co

œ co

0 0 0 0 - - I 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

1-1

0 0 0 0 - - I 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

r-l

O O O O O O O O O O O O

o

oooo

4-» a. CD

"es S

G tu 13

W

o co

cq co

1-1

w T3

W S M

o CD 05

00 «M •FaH es V ifa C/1 3 a a) •ri W n> £ a,

cq

o u 1,9 •a S ci CD i-" T1 fi TI io CD a o o co IO itf 2 e tH § m o a; PH >B S 'H'Í'SÜ e s td inow«JN«)iiin®NMfflOMMn' 00 S o o o » CDCOCD C D C S cNcoco-^'^'^mmioioiniocDcocDCDco T > hQ£PL,W < u 050ï0)0)050)0)0ï0)0>0î0ï01030î0)0)CT5C505< ID

V

Í

4-1 2 S Lukan V . Namoluk "-Nv^N ;


-h oq

Ö'B

s TO® o S S 3 W g®H

CO

CO (M OJ

es Q

s 03

© O

«a wS, •es > o

co «M

3

3

3

3

o c % ce -o g CS hJ

10

CO CO

QV ge .'S eain t) fet S? > X >N J2-Q HW J•as i

S «5 o •S « esB T3 < ¡h (D 4-* S c •s « 'S a 'O f •S ^ ß -a ® — OiO S b 03 p « Ä2 C> Ö^ e_d Ih o s  "8 1

CS e

m g

1—1 co co 03 03 i-H rH

O IO 03 rH

i-H t^ 03 1—1

Tf (M b1>

O co

00 O C3

Tf CO

g o 0>

s

s c o

s

es s ce V •S tao s •ß 'S 'S

ses

Ph

O Cl a>

o co a>

co o>

05

S ^®

C" o CS « a ° «co

1 " ° £"3 S)g « t03 t'es i-H CS 3 3 u

-s

Cu

I SCL) es 0 a 1 es El

£

^^ s

CS 6

t> e 10 2 Oî g

g S § gei g B u g S a> > S > > o « es CO

3

03 ¿A öS S IH O

o - H 0 i — i r H O O O O O O

00

O i - ' O O O O I - ' O O O O O O O O O

N

© r - t e g © © f - H © © i — 1 1 — I O O O O O ©

SO

0 « 0 H « f N T f 0 0 i - t O > - í í - H O O O

t— I—I

© 1 - H O i - H f — l © W © © f H ® i — I r H O O ©

00

O

O

ON

O H H H t W N r O H H N O N C Î O C C

Os C4

H

NO

B

o

O

CS s 13

3 3

»

S S T > 5 CD

3

"O

M

S

O

O

N

O

O

n

^

M

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

C 'So •C O ¡«r

s

u

o

H

Ifa e

0

0

0

©

©

©

O

O

0

0

0

©

0

©

0

O

O

O

O

0

©

0

"

-

l

^

-

l

0

©

i

-

H

O

O

-

t

r

H

0

©

0

©

4>

O

O

O

c

q

O

i

O

o m

S3 >

w

g S

o m

a

3 U

T 3

CS Ci

W )




-

H

0

0

0

C

q

c

q

©

i

-

l

©

O

00

-

I

«

O

O

I

-

H

O

o

co

H

O

co cq

H

co

t cq

O

|

I

i

-

© O © c o c q c q c q i - H © © i - |

w

Ip

0

o o o o r H T j i i - H c q O r t i - i

S

a

0

ID j a

S 3

o

o

o

œ

O

O

O

B

œ

n

l

O

n

n

n

O

N

H

H

M

O

© 0 c 0 t > i - i c q c 0 i - l l 0 c 0 i - l

i> eq

©

o cq

©

l ß

Oi

^

i — l i - H O O O O

E O

Cl H bftS ö C §•>H M .2 « c S s a u O o t> u .3 d H • » ~ £ -a * 3 S eM« *fi H »OS ce S-9 | . b.. ' .3

mî

g I" 3 a

OL

H

4 3

£

T3

A

G

A

«

H

ID >

O

O

—

B rS ® o> "O rf! f u - tH O

c J3 «i ü cii ñ « fS

C ctf C C3 V O O

£

00 n. fi ni ^3

fi es

m

O O

O

cq

00

ÏO CO 00

F 1 3 > PS

S3 ^ 'o ^ -M D t* a; tío QjtO VH o o •O .fl J *0 a O CS S

New

Ellice ' v

«V ^

Islands' "

.

-

Guinea

.

Bellona.

I

.Taumako

.2 « g ri c3 i H

ffäi S .3 ß es o

co

C _

* en

%

p i

.a

z co

^

« S

g

es c/î

g

ß

M

S S

i , es | H

M

O oo eg V co

S

g

m

O

2

es

O

S ¿3

i-i

es i-i

i—T

1 3 S

W

C

e

O

* 0

o -M

o

f s

..

«

¡z; ©

^ es

Ç es

Ph

a

^ es C

I

j ä

•S co ID

1

' S J5 O

vi