Ratios (cont.)

Exercise 2

The child-woman ratio tells us how many children aged under 5, ie. aged 0-4 (both male and female) there are for every woman aged 15-49.

A census was conducted in Burkina Faso in 1996. Population numbers by age and sex are displayed in the table to the right.

interaction Calculate the child-woman ratio. Submit your answer as a number of children (rounded to nearest digit) per 1,000 women.

The correct answer is 876 children for every 1000 women. Child-woman ratios are most commonly expressed per 1000. This is calculated by dividing the total number of children aged 0-4 by the total number of women aged 15-49 (and multiplying by 1000).
2016960× 1000
2303180

Please attempt the answer.

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Remember that we are looking for the ratio of all the children to women of reproductive age.

 

Age Total Population Male Population Female Population
Total 10220180 4967734 5252446
0-4 2016960 1013757 1003203
5-9 1562670 782946 779724
10-14 1297216 648163 649053
15-19 1106861 550633 556228
20-24 915338 452504 462834
25-29 758646 371376 387270
30-34 577433 284317 293116
35-39 435420 202692 232728
40-44 344841 145975 198866
45-49 293658 121520 172138
50-54 252841 103817 149024
55-59 212230 88828 123402
60-64 169584 74370 95214
65-69 125850 56617 69233
70-74 81866 37969 43897
75-79 44501 20906 23595
80-84 18010 8469 9541
85-89 5106 2360 2746
90-94 1028 462 566
95-99 115 50 65
100+ 6 3 3

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, International Database
(URL: http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/region.php External link)

Interaction Think about why demographers may use the child-woman ratio.

 

In certain situations there may be no data available on demographic events, such as births and deaths, or the data which is available may be unreliable. If this is the case, demographers may use the child-woman ratio as a rough indicator of fertility. You will learn more about this in (PAPP101_s04: Measuring Fertility external link).