Population ageing in the Pacific islands: Emerging trends and future challenges

At the beginning of the twentieth century, most Pacific islands were still recovering from the high death rates that followed from the introduction of new diseases into the region in the eighteenth and nineteenth century and therefore had low rates of population growth. Some countries did not recover from high mortality until the 1930s, and colonial authorities were content with increasing fertility as it signalled a return to population health. However, fertility rates accelerated for several decades until by the 1970s the total fertility rate (TFR) had reached 7 children per woman or even higher in some countries/areas. Rapid social change and increasing government support for family planning resulted in the TFR falling steadily over several decades so that by the beginning of the twenty-first century several countries had TFRs below 3.