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Niger has the fastest population growth in the world while being among the least developed countries. With an average fertility above seven children per woman in the last decades, rapid population growth will continue in the medium to long term representing a planning challenge for Niger's development whose actual population is likely to double within the next two decades. At the same time, socio-economic variables whether in terms of health, wealth, and education levels are lagging behind, also relatively to many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. While both demographic and education variables occupy a central position in the government strategy, they are not necessarily linked. However, the future of Niger will largely be a reflection of its ability to meet both challenges. Within a project piloted by the Ministry of Planning and funded by the United Nations Children’s Fund, we have derived together with local experts and stakeholders narratives about the possible future of Niger. These were further translated into five scenarios with assumptions about different future paths of demographic and educational development for Niger that were used to project the population, also at sub-national level, using multi-state population projection models with the aim to inform policy. This article reports some projection results related to educational and demographic developments.

Inclusion of additional dimensions to population projections can lead to an improvement in the overall quality of the projections and to an enhanced analytical potential of derived projections such as literacy skills and labor force participation. This paper describes the modeling of educational attainment of a microsimulation projection model of the European Union countries. Using ordered logistic regressions on five waves of the European Social Survey, we estimate the impact of mother's education and other sociocultural characteristics on educational attainment and implement them into the microsimulation model. Results of the different projection scenarios are contrasted to understand how the education of the mother and sociocultural variables may affect projection outcomes. We show that a change in the impact of mother's education on children's educational attainment may have a big effect on future trends. Moreover, the proposed approach yields more consistent population projection outputs for specific subpopulations.

Many developed countries have turned to immigration in order to mitigate the consequences of population aging, particularly the expected decline in the labor force population. Yet, few projection models take in consideration explicitly the differentials in labor force participation of population sub-groups. This paper describes the labor force participation module of CEPAM-Mic, which is a microsimulation model that projects several demographic, ethnocultural, and socioeconomic dimensions of the EU28 member countries population. Then, the microsimulation model is used to project EU labor force population for the period 2015–2060 under different scenarios illustrating how implementing sex- and country-specific dynamics of immigrants’ integration may affect the future labor force in terms of size, rates, and gender composition. We estimated the parameters of the labor force module using logistic regressions based on the EU-Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS). In addition to age, sex, and education, immigrant-related variables are also included, such as immigrant status, place of birth, age at immigration, and duration of residence in the estimation of the probability of being active. Our results demonstrate the importance of taking into account differentials in labor force participation of population sub-groups when asserting the potential of immigration as a tool for managing population aging. In the European context, adding immigration differentials in labor force participation affects mainly downward the number of female immigrants in the labor force, while smaller differences are observed for male immigrants. An increase in immigration levels leads obviously to an increase in the total labor force size, but may also widen gender inequalities in labor force participation and has limited impact on the total labor force participation rate. Our findings suggest that relying on immigration as a tool to alleviate economic issues arising from population aging must imperatively be accompanied by strong and efficient measures to promote a full economic integration of immigrants.

Recent research on the baby boom and its causes has shown that common explanations, such as the recuperation of births following the Great Depression or Second World War, are not sufficient to account for the phenomenon. However, that research has stressed the role of increasing nuptiality. In this paper, we argue that the increase in survivorship of children and young people that resulted from the epidemiologic transition accounted for a large portion of the increased number of births during the baby boom. We use a microsimulation model to assess the respective roles of mortality, nuptiality, fertility, and immigration on the size and dynamics of the boom in Quebec, Canada. Results show that decreasing mortality contributed significantly to the baby boom, along with immigration and nuptiality changes, while fertility rates attenuated the phenomenon. These results substantiate the hypothesis that the epidemiologic transition was an important cause of the baby boom.

Background: Population ageing is unavoidable in Europe, but perhaps its impact on labor force is not. In the context of a new demographic regime of high immigration and low fertility, differentials in labor force participation and educational attainment can be more consequential for the labor force than either the number of immigrants or structure of the overall population. Objective: The objective of this paper is to investigate how improvements in both educational attainment (especially among children with a low educated mother or an immigration background) and labor force participation (especially of women and immigrants) could impact the future labor force in the European Union. Methods: We used a microsimulation model called CEPAM-Mic to project the labor force of EU28 countries. CEPAM-Mic incorporates heterogeneity among different groups and allows the development of alternative scenarios concerning educational attainment and labor force participation of disadvantaged groups. Results: Removing inequalities between subgroups in educational attainment and labor force participation drastically changes the prospective labor force size and labor force dependency ratio (LFDR) in the EU. Assuming perfect equality, the anticipated decline in the labor force size reduces by 54Š, while the expected increase in the LFDR narrows by 70Š. Conclusions: Population aging is a destiny in large part driven by past demographic behaviors, but its anticipated consequences in terms of labor force size and labor force dependency ratio may be avoidable. Contribution: This paper features a policy-oriented use of microsimulation population projections. The alternative scenarios developed go beyond traditional demographic scenarios that can only set assumptions on fertility, mortality and migration.

Background: Pressures to keep immigration rates at relatively high levels are likely to persist in most developed countries. At the same time, immigrant cohorts are becoming more and more diverse, leading host societies to become increasingly heterogeneous across multiple dimensions. For scholars who study demographic or socio-economic behaviours, the need to account for ethno-cultural "super-diversity" brings new challenges. Objective: The main objective of this paper is to present a framework for the prospective analysis of super-diversity in several high immigration countries. Methods: We developed microsimulation models that simultaneously project several population dimensions for Canada, the United States and countries of the European Union, with the aim of studying the consequences of alternate future population and migration trends. Results: The paper presents the projected progression of three indicators of diversity: percentage of foreign-born population, percentage of the population using a non-official language at home and percentage of non-Christians. It also examines the projected changes in the labour force by education levels and language. Using alternative scenarios, we also show that the proportion of highly educated in the US and EU28 labour force could increase by 11 and 15 percentage points respectively if future immigrants were selected as in Canada. Finally, the paper proposes a new longitudinal indicator that counts the number of years lived as active and inactive over the life course for foreign- and native-born cohorts. Contribution: The microsimulation models provide much more informative results than more traditional cohort-component models to study the future effects of ethno-cultural super-diversity on high immigration countries.

This paper presents the results of literacy proficiency projections using a microsimulation model that simultaneously projects future demographic, ethnocultural, and socioeconomic characteristics of the Canadian population. Factors linked with literacy skills of the working-age population are analyzed for both native- and foreign-born Canadians. The projection results show that literacy skills are likely to slightly decline between 2011 and 2061, as the positive effects of increasing education are canceled out by the important skill gap between native- and foreign-born Canadians. Results of the simulation suggest that plausible changes to immigrant selection policies could prevent against the associated literacy skill decline among the Canadian working-age population.

Over the recent decades, the EU has been shaped by population growth, but now its population is ageing. Together with North America and East Asia, the EU is moving towards longer-living, lower-fertility, and higher-educated societies. Facing this new demographic frontier naturally prompts the questions: Who will live and work in Europe in the coming decades? How many, and with what skills? To answer these, this report examines the key factors that will shape European demographics over the coming decades. By examining not only the role of migration, fertility and mortality, but also education levels and labour force participation rates, a more comprehensive view of possible futures can be outlined than the conventional demographic projections allow for. The first five sections of this report focus on demographic challenges inside the EU, such as population ageing, a shrinking labour force, more non-working people being dependent on working people, and showing the impact of high levels of emigration in some EU Member States. With these challenges in mind and with a view towards 2060, the report builds scenarios to understand the long-term effects of changes in key trends, and whether undesirable consequences can be limited or counteracted. As the EU and its demographics do not exist in isolation, the following sections explore the relevant trends for world demographics and for migration flows.

Cet article propose une methode d’estimation des substitutions linguistiques basee sur le principe de la cohorte fictive et de l’analyse de survie. A partir des donnees d’un seul recensement, cette methode permet d’obtenir des taux de substitution linguistique pour differents groupes de population au Canada (selon la langue transmise a la naissance, le statut d’immigrant, l’âge a l’immigration, le niveau d’etudes) et pour toutes les regions concernees du pays. La robustesse de la methode est validee en comparant les resultats obtenus a partir des recensements canadiens de 1991, 1996, 2001 et 2006. Les taux de substitution linguistique selon l’âge ou la duree d’immigration sont robustes dans le temps, mais varient significativement selon les groupes de population. Ils sont tres faibles chez les immigrants allophones de premiere generation arrives au Canada a l’âge adulte, mais peuvent atteindre 90 % dans la seconde generation. Ces taux varient peu d’une region a l’autre du Canada pour les allophones, mais davantage pour les minorites de langue officielle, atteignant dans certains cas des taux comparables a ceux de la seconde generation d’immigrants allophones. Au Quebec, ou le francais et l’anglais constituent deux langues de convergence pour les allophones, la hausse des substitutions linguistiques effectuees vers le francais est largement tributaire des changements dans la composition ethnolinguistique de l’immigration.

Canada is expecting rapid population aging over the coming decades, a fact that has led many observers to question the sustainability of its pension systems. The effects of population aging, however, could be mitigated by an extension of the working life. This article presents the results of a critical review of Canadian knowledge about the determinants of retirement age and labour-market participation of older workers. The determinants are grouped under ten “domains” covering micro, meso, and macro levels: labour market, legislation, financial factors, social position, domestic domain, human resource management, work-related factors, health, work ability, and motivation.

In high immigration countries, linguistic integration to the host society may constitute an important economic, social and political issue. This is likely to be even more salient in countries where two or more languages are already competing. Canada is an officially bilingual country characterized by a low fertility and a high immigration regime. This paper describes a dynamic microsimulation model projecting the population of Canada and its regions by mother tongue and language used at home. Emphasis is put on the language module of the model which allows for changes in language characteristics, namely intergenerational changes in mother tongue and intragenerational changes in home language. Mother tongue and home language are then projected for different scenarios in order to investigate the impact of changes in levels and linguistic composition of immigration. Different hypothesis with regard to language preferences of immigrants (which may be influenced through language management legislation) are also taken into account. Results are presented for two regions, the province of Quebec and the rest of Canada at the horizon 2051 as well as for the stable population. Projection results show that the population of non-official mother tongues will increase rapidly to reach 31% in 2051. More interestingly, the results show that the increase in home language is less important due to language shifts. Since these are more favourable to English than French, the ratio of English speakers to French speakers is increasing both in Quebec and in the rest of Canada, thus shifting the equilibrium between official languages.

This fifth chapter will deal with the integration of a base population into a Modgen microsimulation model, and as such will be more technical than conceptual or demographic. Up to now, the simulated population has been synthetic; all the actors and their characteristics have been generated by the model itself. A synthetic population requires statistical distributions to be created, describing the distribution of characteristics in the population. An example of this is the distribution of births by province which we included in Chap. 3. However, it may be more practical to use microdata taken directly from a real population as a starting point for the simulation. Rather than generating random characteristics for the actors, such as birth province or sex, we will be using information contained in a database representing an actual population for our simulation. In this chapter, data from the National Household Survey (NHS) will be used to make a projection of the population of Canada starting from 2011 (the year of the survey). We will start by giving a brief description of how to prepare and format the data file to be used for the base population. Next, we will see how to incorporate an external class into the Modgen project in order to read the datafile and import its content. Finally, we will modify the main file and the Start function so as to incorporate the import functions into the model code and initialize actor states using the imported data.

In the mid 1970s, Professor Andrei Rogers (1975) proposed adapting the life table methodology for regional analysis. The classic demographic approach often abstracted migration, which was considered to be a disrupting phenomenon. Rogers had the idea that migration could be taken into account explicitly by using a multi-regional table which would make it possible to calculate, for example, the share of life expectancy spent in a specific region (or country). The multi-regional model he developed is now an integral part of the demographer’s toolkit.

With the help of the Modgen wizard, we have developed and successfully run our first microsimulation program. This simple model was able to calculate life expectancy for a cohort whose risk of death remains constant throughout the simulation. For demographers, and probably for most users, this unrealistic mortality hypothesis is unsatisfactory. As a minimum, even in a simple cohort model, mortality should vary with age and sex, thus enabling us to calculate all the components of a conventional life table.

In this chapter our main aim is to introduce you to the Modgen software and to the Visual Studio programming software, guiding you through the creation of a first basic model. This model will be based on one single type of event: death. Although this will yield only a small number of results, such as life expectancy at birth, it will allow us to demonstrate and to practise the use of several of the basic ideas in Modgen. We will move on to the calculation and presentation of other elements of the life table in the next chapter.

Au Canada, les comportements et les caractéristiques linguistiques des individus sont documentés au moyen d’une grande diversité de questions d’enquête et de recensement. Paradoxalement, cette abondance unique au monde soulève des questionnements méthodologiques importants. En effet, quel indicateur privilégier pour effectuer un suivi de la situation linguistique ? Est-il légitime de s’intéresser à l’évolution de la langue parlée à la maison, qui relève de sphère privée ? Comment comparer entre eux les divers indicateurs linguistiques ? Dans cette note de recherche, les auteurs tentent de montrer que chacun des indicateurs linguistiques dépeint une facette particulière de la question linguistique. La langue étant un phénomène social complexe et multifactoriel, aucun indicateur unique ne saurait décrire à lui seul l’évolution de la situation linguistique. Une méthode permettant de comparer les indicateurs de langue maternelle, de langue d’usage privé (langue parlée à la maison) et de langue d’usage public (langue de travail) est également proposée. Les résultats montrent que l’immigration a un impact négatif sur le poids du français et que, contrairement à ce qui a été affirmé de nombreuses fois par le passé, c’est la langue d’usage public, et non la langue d’usage privé, qui est la plus affectée., Linguistic behaviours and characteristics of individuals in Canada are recorded by the means of a wide range of questions in surveys and censuses. The fullness of this coverage, which is unique in the world, paradoxically raises important methodological questions. In particular, which indicator should be preferred in monitoring the linguistic situation ? Is it legitimate to investigate the evolution of the language spoken at home, private domain ? How can the different linguistic indicators be compared to each other ? In this research note, the authors attempt to show that each of the linguistic indicators portrays a particular facet of the language question. Language is a complex and multifactorial social phenomenon, and no single indicator is capable of capturing the evolution of the linguistic situation on its own. A method is proposed which enables indicators of maternal language, private use language (the language spoken at home) and public use language (the language of work) to be compared. The results show that immigration has a negative impact on the weight of french language and that, contrary to what has often been argued in the past, it is the language of public rather than that of private use which is the most affected.

The consumer price index (CPI) is the most commonly used measure to track changes in the overall level of prices. Since it departs from a true cost-of-living index, the CPI is subject to four types of measurement bias—commodity substitution, outlet substitution, new goods and quality adjustment. The author updates previous Bank of Canada estimates of measurement bias in the Canadian CPI by examining these four sources of potential bias. He finds the total measurement bias over the 2005–11 period to be about 0.5 percentage point per year, consistent with the Bank’s earlier findings. Slightly more than half of this bias is caused by the fixed nature of the CPI basket of goods and services.

Bursts of action potentials in sensory interneurons are believed to signal the occurrence of particularly salient stimulus features. Previous work showed that bursts in an identified, ultrasound-tuned interneuron (AN2) of the cricket Teleogryllus oceanicus code for conspicuous increases in amplitude of an ultrasound stimulus, resulting in behavioral responses that are interpreted as avoidance of echolocating bats. We show that the primary sensory neurons that inform AN2 about high-frequency acoustic stimuli also produce bursts. As is the case for AN2, bursts in sensory neurons perform better as feature detectors than isolated, nonburst, spikes. Bursting is temporally correlated between sensory neurons, suggesting that on occurrence of a salient stimulus feature, AN2 will receive strong synaptic input in the form of coincident bursts, from several sensory neurons, and that this might result in bursting in AN2. Our results show that an important feature of the temporal structure of interneuron spike trains can be established at the earliest possible level of sensory processing, i.e., that of the primary sensory neuron.

For several decades, the prices of services have been rising more rapidly than the prices of goods in Canada and the other major industrialized countries. In 2002, this gap between the growth rates of these two components of the consumer price index (CPI) widened considerably, leading researchers to ask if this was the beginning of a trend. Analysis reveals, however, that the gap is based on short-term dynamics and that it appears to be independent of the trend in the development of the overall price level. Evidence also shows that the gap is eventually reabsorbed. The authors examine a number of potential causes for the prices of services to rise faster than those of goods. These include the more rapid pace of productivity growth in the goods sector, the greater openness of goods to foreign trade, and stronger growth in the demand for services.

Sommaire: Depuis le debut des annees 1990, le systeme de sante quebecois, comme celui des autres provinces, subit de profonds changements. lis se concretisent sous la forme d'une reconfiguration majeure du systeme lui-meme, des services qu'il dispense et des structures qui le composent. L'article s'interesse a ce dernier aspect, plus particulierement sous l' angle des regroupements interetablissements. II appert que la Loi sur les services de sante et les services sociaux (1991, chap. 42) a bouleverse la configuration structurelle du reseau en forcant l'unification horizontale de plusieurs types d'etablissements, tels les centres d'hebergement de soins de longue duree et les centres de readaptation. Plus recemment, la decentralisation fonctionnelle accrue au profit des regies regionales de la sante et des services sociaux (rrsss), jumelee a l'annonce de compressions budgetaires sans precedent, a donne un second souffle a cette reconfiguration de structures. Une enquete a ete menee a l'hiver 1995. Elle revele qu'a ce moment, en plus des regroupements deja prevus dans la loi, un peu plus de 110 etablissements socio-sanitaires, dont 60 centres hospitaliers, etaient egalement impliques dans divers projets de regroupements allant de l'entente de services a la fusion. Depuis le printemps 1995, certaines rrsss etudient l' option des integrations ou des fusions verticales, qui impliquent des etablissements de mission differente. Or, une revue de la litterature demontre que l' efficacite et l' efficience de ces options ne sont pas clairement demontrees dans le secteur des soins de sante et qu'il vaudrait mieux envisager des formes moins contraignantes (partenariats, ententes de services, etc.) permettant de s'apprivoiser avant de songer au mariage. Abstract: Since the early 1990s, the Quebec health-care system, as those in other provinces, has undergone major changes. These changes involved a major reconfiguration of the system itself - its services and its structures. This article describes this reconfiguration and focuses on one particular aspect: the integration of services. The Health and Social Services Act, 1991 (c. 42) created havoc in the configuration of the system by imposing horizontal integration of several types of services, such as those of long-term care facilities and rehabilitation centres. More recently, this growing delegation in favour of the Regional Health and Social Services Boards (rhssbs) together with the announcement of unprecedented budget cuts, has led to further restructuring. A survey carried out during the winter of 1995 showed that 120 health-care establishments, including 60 hospitals, were involved in inter-establishment relationship projects, ranging from service agreements to mergers. Since the spring of 1995, some rhssbs have been studying the option of integration or of vertical mergers, i.e., how to integrate facilities with different services. However, a review of the literature shows that the effectiveness and efficiency of these options has not yet been clearly proven in the health-care sector, and that it would be wiser to consider, as a first stage, less constraining relationships (e.g., partnerships, service agreements, etc.) as a way of testing compatibility before getting involved in permanent partnerships.

Auditory receptor neurons of crickets are most sensitive to either low or high sound frequencies. Earlier work showed that the temporal coding properties of first-order auditory interneurons are matched to the temporal characteristics of natural low- and high-frequency stimuli (cricket songs and bat echolocation calls, respectively). We studied the temporal coding properties of receptor neurons and used modeling to investigate how activity within populations of low- and high-frequency receptors might contribute to the coding properties of interneurons. We confirm earlier findings that individual low-frequency-tuned receptors code stimulus temporal pattern poorly, but show that coding performance of a receptor population increases markedly with population size, due in part to low redundancy among the spike trains of different receptors. By contrast, individual high-frequency-tuned receptors code a stimulus temporal pattern fairly well and, because their spike trains are redundant, there is only a slight increase in coding performance with population size. The coding properties of low- and high-frequency receptor populations resemble those of interneurons in response to low- and high-frequency stimuli, suggesting that coding at the interneuron level is partly determined by the nature and organization of afferent input. Consistent with this, the sound-frequency-specific coding properties of an interneuron, previously demonstrated by analyzing its spike train, are also apparent in the subthreshold fluctuations in membrane potential that are generated by synaptic input from receptor neurons.

Signal processing in the auditory interneuron Omega Neuron 1 (ON1) of the cricket Teleogryllus oceanicus was compared at high- and low-carrier frequencies in three different experimental paradigms. First, integration time, which corresponds to the time it takes for a neuron to reach threshold when stimulated at the minimum effective intensity, was found to be significantly shorter at high-carrier frequency than at low-carrier frequency. Second, phase locking to sinusoidally amplitude modulated signals was more efficient at high frequency, especially at high modulation rates and low modulation depths. Finally, we examined the efficiency with which ON1 detects gaps in a constant tone. As reflected by the decrease in firing rate in the vicinity of the gap, ON1 is better at detecting gaps at low-carrier frequency. Following a gap, firing rate increases beyond the pre-gap level. This “rebound” phenomenon is similar for low- and high-carrier frequencies.

l’immigration prend une importance accrue dans la croissance démographique québécoise et, selon Statistique Canada, 30 % des résidents de la région métropolitaine de recensement de Montréal pourraient être nés à l’étranger en 2031. Les allophones sont appelés à prendre une place plus importante numériquement et leurs choix linguistiques auront donc un effet accru sur l’équilibre du Québec. L’objectif de cet article est d’analyser les facteurs démographiques, ethnoculturels et socio-économiques associés à une transition linguistique intergénérationnelle vers l’une ou l’autre des deux langues officielles, au moyen d’une régression logistique appliquée aux microdonnées du recensement canadien de 2006. L’analyse porte sur les familles composées de deux parents de sexe opposé et au moins d’un enfant âgé de moins de 15 ans. Les résultats mettent en évidence l’effet des dispositions de la Charte de la langue française (loi 101) pour expliquer les choix linguistiques des allophones, ainsi que l’importance de la sélection d’immigrants francotropes. Néanmoins, l’attrait de l’anglais demeure important pour les allophones s’établissant au Québec, surtout chez les plus éduqués et parmi les classes socioprofessionnelles les plus favorisées., Immigration is playing a larger part in demographic growth in Quebec ; according to Canada Statistics, by 2031 30 % of residents of the metropolitan census area of Montreal may be born outside the area. Allophones will be numerically more important, and their linguistic choices will therefore have an increased effect on the demolinguistic balance of Quebec. The aim of this article is to analyse the demographic, ethno-cultural and socio-economic factors associated with intergenerational linguistic transfer to one or the other of the two official languages, using a logistic regression applied to the micro-data of the 2006 Canadian census. The analysis is of families made up of two parents of opposite sexes and at least one child aged under 15. The results demonstrate the effects of the provisions of the Charte de la langue française (law 101) in explaining the linguistic choices of allophones, and also the importance of the selection of Francotrope immigrants. However the attraction of English remains significant for allophones settling in Quebec, especially for the most highly educated and for the better-off socio-professional classes.