The author has utilized the computer to construct life tables for seventeen Latin American countries, omitting only Argentina, Cuba, and Uruguay. In most instances it was possible to find censuses reaching back to at least 1900 and, in certain cases, several decades earlier.
Two methods are employed, designated by the author A and B. Method A embodies the standard, procedure, which is based upon an adequate census and a record of vital statistics permitting an accurate estimate of mortality rates. It could be used with only five countries, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, and Mexico, and with the first three it was restricted to the census of 1960.
Method B starts with the assumption of a stable population, one in which the birth or fertility rate and the death rate are both constant over the time interval concerned, although they are not necessarily equal. In other words, the population is increasing or decreasing at a fixed rate. In order to guarantee the validity of this assumption there must have been an almost constant fertility in the years preceding the census, and there must have been no significant. immigration. The author believes that these conditions indeed existed during at least the past several decades in most of Latin America. In order to complete the calculation of a life table by Method B, it is also necessary to know the intrinsic birth rate of the population, its intrinsic growth rate, and the proportion of the total in each 5-year age group. These parameters must be derived from the census, or, if this be impossible, they must be supplied by comparison with some other known population which, in the operator’s judgment, partakes of the same demographic character as the one under investigation.
These methods are valid and sophisticated. They will be useful to the student of past societies as a research tool. At the same time the mechanics of their application requires considerable background in statistics and modern census demography. Hence the value of the book for many historians will lie in the comprehensive life tables which fill more than half of the 324 pages. If the reader possesses sufficient familiarity with the life-table approach and its formalized expression, he will find the work extremely helpful as a source of information concerning population trends in Latin America.
Despite extensive treatment of numerous technical points relating to the construction of tables and their bearing on the validity of censuses, the author has refrained from any discussion of his results in terms of their economic and social significance. Thus, except as a treatise on methodology giving many interesting sidelights on secondary demographic problems, the work stands simply as an excellent compendium of knowledge. One feels a sense of regret that the author, with his wide familiarity with the field, did not at least briefly set forth the many important implications of the Latin American life tables which he has so laboriously constructed.