Population and Society in Twentieth-Century Southeast Asia

Abstract

Over the course of the twentieth century, Southeast Asia's population will have grown from 80 to 530 million. Much of this extraordinary growth is due to the very rapid decline in mortality over the second half of the century, but the socioeconomic and political attributes of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Southeast Asian societies also contributed to rapid population growth, especially in the settlement of frontier rice-growing regions. Although fertility transitions are underway in almost every country in the region, the population of the region will probably double in size before growth ceases sometime in the middle of the twenty-first century.