Mediciones FO-DTS: exactitud y precisión

urbanised in 2011 – approximately 317 million urban dwellers.7 The Pakistan Economic Survey of 2014-15 (GoP, 2015)), ‘estimates’ the total population of the country to be almost 192 million with just over 75 million of them classified as urban (39% urban).8 Afghanistan is somewhat unique in terms of population distribution; as of July 2015, it is estimated that 948,000 people were internally displaced by violence and conflict: “… these figures tend to be underestimates, because they do not include all IDPs living in urban areas, who are often dispersed among economic migrants and the urban poor and so are difficult to identify” … “40 per cent of the country’s IDPs make up part of the urban poor in Kabul, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad and Kandahar.9 It is worthy of note that given this population distribution and the sizeable proportion of IDPs in Kabul in particular, seemingly none of the

respondents to the UCMnSA research project were IDPs. This lends support to the conceptualisation of employment in large-scale construction as a ‘closed’ labour market (Chapter 4).

2.2.3 Urban and rural population change – 1990 and 2014

At a more macro level, Table 2.1 contains estimates from the latest UN-DESA World Urbanization Prospects: The 2014 revision.

TABLE 2.1 | Urban and Rural Population, 1000s, urban population (%) and average annual change (%): 1990, 2014 and 2050

Population (thousands) Proportion Urban 2014 (%)

AARC (%) Urban Rural 1990 2014 2050 1990 2014 2050 1990 2014 2050 2010-15 Afghanistan 2149 8221 25642 9583 23059 30909 18 26 45 1.6 Population Increase 1990-14 6072 17421 13476 7850 Bangladesh 21275 53127 112443 86111 105386 89504 20 34 56 2.4 Population Increase 1990-14 31852 59316 19275 -15882 India 221979 410204 814399 646911 857198 805652 26 32 50 1.1 Population Increase 1990-14 188225 404195 210287 -51546 Nepal 1604 5130 12979 16508 22991 23501 9 18 36 2.0 Population Increase 1990-14 3526 7849 6483 510 Pakistan 33967 70912 155747 77124 114221 115353 31 38 57 1.1 Population Increase 1990-14 36945 84835 37097 1132 Source: UN-DESA (2015). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2014 Revision.

http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/highlights/wup2014-highlights.pdf

The figures suggest that between 1990 and 2014, there was a significant absolute increase in the urban populations of Afghanistan10 and Bangladesh, relative to rural increases. Nepal’s rural population increased almost twice as much as its urban population. India and Pakistan have witnessed almost similar increases in both their urban and rural populations. If the projections for 2050 hold true, between 2014 and 2050, all five countries would have an absolute increase in their urban populations, ranging from a low of 7.85 million in Nepal to a staggering 404 million in India. In this period, Bangladesh and India would have witnessed, respectively, a 15.88 and 51.55 million decrease

in their rural populations.

What these population changes – urban as well as rural – mean for the urbanisation-

construction-migration nexus in 2050 is an interesting question. Large-scale construction is most likely to remain buoyant – dependent on income increases amongst the middle and upper classes as well as

Literature Review |CHAPTER 2

PO 6425 | Final Report Urbanisation-Construction-Migration Nexus |5 Cities|South Asia

Commissioned by DFID’s South Asia Research Hub, New Delhi, India Dr Sunil Kumar and Dr Melissa Fernandez, LSE 37 the state of the national as well as the global economy; the availability of migrant rural labour for employment in large-scale construction is another question altogether.

This report does not suggest whether rural or urban interventions should take precedence. Increasing rural and urban livelihood opportunities, ensuring equitable working conditions and wages in both rural and urban employment and striving to ensure an equitable distribution of gains on all fronts – not just economic – should be the agenda. If rural livelihood opportunities are as attractive as those in urban areas, especially construction, one could argue that labour would be ‘relatively’ free to make migration decisions blurring the boundaries between strategies of accumulation and coping. 2.2.4 Urbanisation and economic growth

For some time now, it has been argued that urban areas in the global South, despite possessing a smaller urban than rural population, make a significantly greater contribution to GDP than rural areas. For instance, it is estimated that India’s current 30 per cent urban population contribute 63 per cent to its GDP; a figure expected to rise to 70-75 per cent by 2020, despite a modest 5 per cent increase in its urbanisation level. At a global level, a recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute (Dobbs, et al, 2011: 1) notes:11

“Today, major urban areas in developed regions are, without doubt, economic giants. The 380 developed region cities in the top 600 by GDP accounted for 50 percent of global GDP in 2007, with more than 20 percent of global GDP coming from 190 North American cities alone. The 220 largest cities in developing regions contributed another 10 percent”…. Over the next 15 years, the makeup of the group of top 600 cities will change as the center of gravity of the urban world moves south and, even more decisively, east. One of every three developed market cities will no longer make the top 600, and one out of every 20 cities in emerging markets is likely to see its rank drop out of the top 600. By 2025, we expect 136 new cities to enter the top 600, all of them from the developing world and overwhelmingly (100 new cities) from China. These include cities such as Haerbin, Shantou, and Guiyang. But China is not the only economy to contribute to the shifting urban landscape. India will contribute 13 newcomers including Hyderabad and Surat …”

FIGURE 2.2 |Relationship of proportion urban to GNI per capita

Source: UN-DESA (2015). Adapted from, World Urbanisation Prospects – The 2014

Revision. New York: Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, p. 55.

Estimates and trends of the contribution that urbanisation makes to economic growth need to be tempered with some caution, as an equitable distribution of the benefits of economic is as, if not,

Urbanisation-Construction-Migration Nexus |5 Cities|South Asia Final Report | PO 6425

38 Dr Sunil Kumar and Dr Melissa Fernandez, LSE Commissioned by South Asia Research Hub, New Delhi, India