Asian Urban Growth Since 1950: Demographic Components, Including Transnational Redistribution

Abstract

How does the population of a city grow? The simple answer is that growth occurs by means of natural increase (the excess of births over deaths) and via net migration (the excess of immigration over emigration). The prime concern of this paper is the contribution of these demographic components to Asian urban growth between 1950 and 1980, both in absolute terms and relative to their contributions to urban growth elsewhere. A second concern is to separate domestic rural-to-urban migration from transnational urbanward migration. The former redistributes population within countries; the latter redistributes potential urban growth among countries, reducing the growth rate of some and increasing it for others. Such a separation is not straightforward. Transnational urbanward flows are not reported, but must be estimated via demographic analysis. Details of this analysis are discussed below.