Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DEMOcrises (Demographic consequences of humanitarian crises in Latin America)
Période du rapport: 2021-05-01 au 2023-04-30
Latin American countries are vulnerable to a range of natural hazards; to political and economic crises; and to armed conflicts. Since 1994, the European Commission has provided over €1 billion in assistance to Latin American countries facing humanitarian crisis. However, little is known about the demographic impacts of those crises and the humanitarian aid outreach. The reason could be attributable to official data lacks good quality or it is interrupted, and most specialized demographic studies remains within national state boundaries ignoring the feedback effects among neighboring nations. Inadequate estimates of a crisis’s impact have implications on the attention that a humanitarian crisis receives – in terms of both advocacy and resource allocation, as policy makers need to be aware of the sensitivity of changes in accurate figures and rates. The main objective of this project is to produce accurate demographic estimates that enlighten our understanding of the complex dimensions of a humanitarian crisis in Latin America, and to do so using Venezuela as an example. Venezuela is currently undergoing a profound social and economic crisis with far-reaching consequences for its demographic trends. As migration became the only survival strategy possible for most Venezuelans, the crisis has been spilling over the continent, leaving no country in Latin America unaffected. Studies on the demographic consequences of a catastrophe usually refer to events in the distance past, in this regard; the main innovations of this project is to produce accurate updated estimates for keeping track of the demographic consequence of an ongoing crisis. To achieve this, I will make advances in linking demography, epidemiology, political science, and conflict sociology, with humanitarian emergency preparedness by: (1) applying advanced statistical techniques and demographic (in)direct methods to ensure high-quality and updated demographic estimates of an ongoing crisis; (2) forecasting demographic responses to the crisis in order to shed light on public policy design and on developing more effective humanitarian aid preparedness plans in the region; and (3) using a cross-country comparison and regional perspective to account for the feedback effects among neighboring nations when analyzing the demographic estimates.
The work carried out during the reporting period consisted in three main tasks, which aimed to reach the objectives planned in the action: (1) Data source review: data inventory and analysis for potential international comparison; (2) establishing collaborations with colleagues at the beneficiary institution and in other institutions; (3) data analysis and the estimation of demographic indicators.
1) A thoroughly review of potential data sources in Venezuela and neighboring countries have been conducted. The review included administrative records, vital statistics, thematic surveys, population census and international demographic estimates. This first data inventory is useful when aiming international comparisons and to guide the research on migrant’s events (births, deaths, migration) in Latin America. The project has undergone the revision accessing the potential usefulness of less traditional demographic sources to produce real time data in need when humanitarian crises are taking place.
2) The second important task of the action has been to establish collaborations within and outside the beneficiary institution. At Johns Hopkins University, the researcher joined the Centre for Humanitarian Health (CHH), a global leader in humanitarian crisis assessment, including that of the current Venezuelan crisis. Further collaborations have been stablished with researchers in the Department of Social Sciences at New York University Abu Dhabi, and the Research Institute for Economic and Social sciences (IIES for its acronym in Spanish) at the Andrés Bello University in Venezuela (UCAB for its acronym in Spanish), among others ongoing collaborations with Latin American and European scholars.
3) The third task is the actual empirical analysis of the data. The main deliverables of the action (data management plan [DMP], Protection of personal data plan [POPDR], Ethics Requirements [NEC]), have been submitted on time, and approved. The researcher has focused on the analysis of publicly available data coming from the main destinations for Venezuelan abroad, such as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Mexico, United States and Spain, especially, data coming from the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics systems, Population Census and administrative records of Venezuelan stocks.
Three main conclusions derive from the results of the action. First, despite the fact that the crisis in Venezuela remains slightly below the limits of a humanitarian crisis (doubling of mortality over baseline rates), the protracted nature of the crisis has severely impact the population who remains in the country, e.g. there are over 40,000 excess infant deaths and 4.73 million displaced persons due to the crisis. The demographic changes brought about by the crisis in Venezuela have undermined the functionality of its future labor market and called into question the intergenerational healthcare system. Second, the heterogeneous characteristics of the outflows from Venezuela resulted in a diversity of outcomes on how population experiences their vital events amidst the migration. Whereas inflows of middle and upper classes at the beginning of the crisis (up to 2016) have benefited of better health outcomes in their main destinations than natives; more recent inflows (2017-2020) have performed worse off than the native population. Third, despite large improvements in quality and completeness, the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics systems in Latin America still lack well-referenced data for keeping track of migrant’s vital events. The main bottleneck comes from the data collection; migratory status or nativity of the parents is not always included in the official forms nor adapted to the national legal framework.
1) A thoroughly review of potential data sources in Venezuela and neighboring countries have been conducted. The review included administrative records, vital statistics, thematic surveys, population census and international demographic estimates. This first data inventory is useful when aiming international comparisons and to guide the research on migrant’s events (births, deaths, migration) in Latin America. The project has undergone the revision accessing the potential usefulness of less traditional demographic sources to produce real time data in need when humanitarian crises are taking place.
2) The second important task of the action has been to establish collaborations within and outside the beneficiary institution. At Johns Hopkins University, the researcher joined the Centre for Humanitarian Health (CHH), a global leader in humanitarian crisis assessment, including that of the current Venezuelan crisis. Further collaborations have been stablished with researchers in the Department of Social Sciences at New York University Abu Dhabi, and the Research Institute for Economic and Social sciences (IIES for its acronym in Spanish) at the Andrés Bello University in Venezuela (UCAB for its acronym in Spanish), among others ongoing collaborations with Latin American and European scholars.
3) The third task is the actual empirical analysis of the data. The main deliverables of the action (data management plan [DMP], Protection of personal data plan [POPDR], Ethics Requirements [NEC]), have been submitted on time, and approved. The researcher has focused on the analysis of publicly available data coming from the main destinations for Venezuelan abroad, such as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Mexico, United States and Spain, especially, data coming from the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics systems, Population Census and administrative records of Venezuelan stocks.
Three main conclusions derive from the results of the action. First, despite the fact that the crisis in Venezuela remains slightly below the limits of a humanitarian crisis (doubling of mortality over baseline rates), the protracted nature of the crisis has severely impact the population who remains in the country, e.g. there are over 40,000 excess infant deaths and 4.73 million displaced persons due to the crisis. The demographic changes brought about by the crisis in Venezuela have undermined the functionality of its future labor market and called into question the intergenerational healthcare system. Second, the heterogeneous characteristics of the outflows from Venezuela resulted in a diversity of outcomes on how population experiences their vital events amidst the migration. Whereas inflows of middle and upper classes at the beginning of the crisis (up to 2016) have benefited of better health outcomes in their main destinations than natives; more recent inflows (2017-2020) have performed worse off than the native population. Third, despite large improvements in quality and completeness, the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics systems in Latin America still lack well-referenced data for keeping track of migrant’s vital events. The main bottleneck comes from the data collection; migratory status or nativity of the parents is not always included in the official forms nor adapted to the national legal framework.
The project will shed light on the demographic sources with potential use of tracking humanitarian crises in Latin America, and the regional comparability when studying migrant’s events. This will have an impact on future research in this field; and will be also useful for decision-makers and stakeholders to advocate for the explicit disaggregation of migrant’s events and their characteristics in the national statistical system. In addition, the project will provide an evidence-based threshold on the number and demographics of Venezuelans abroad, enabling further study of this diaspora. In this sense, specific rates and probabilities can be used for measuring vital events and any other phenomena linked to these outflows. Even more, the project will provide an estimate of the crisis-induced changes in the size and composition of the population that remains in Venezuela, which is useful for deploying futures aids and policies aiming at overcoming the crisis.