Parfait M. Eloundou-Enyegue

Cornell University United States of America

Parfait Eloundou-Enyegue, Ph.D., is a Professor of Global Development at the Brooks School of Policy, Cornell University, New York. His scholarly interests are in population and development. He has lectured in multiple countries in North America, Africa, and Asia. Between 2007 and 2017, with support from the Hewlett Foundation, he led a network to build demographic capacity in Africa. He has consulted with the United Nations, the World Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). He has served on multiple scientific and advisory boards and was a member of a team of scientists nominated by the UN’s Secretary General Panel to draft the first quadrennial report on Sustainable Development Goals. He currently chairs the review board at the Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques (France) and is a coordinating author on the United Nations’ Global Environment Outlook (GEo7).

2chapters authored

Chapters authored

Demographic Analysis and the Decomposition of Social Change

By Parfait Eloundou-Enyegue, Sarah Giroux and Michel Tenikue

Social science has made great strides over the last half-century, with some of the most significant gains made in micro-level studies. However, analysts interested in broad societal change will not be satisfied with this micro-level detail alone. They will find the detail useful, but they still need to convert the micro-level relations into macro-level outcomes. Decomposition methods rooted in demography can help in those situations. This chapter discusses how these decomposition methods can build on other methods traditionally used in the social sciences. It specifies the kind of problems that are well suited for decomposition analysis, and it briefly reviews three basic types of decomposition approaches (demographic, regression, and mathematical). We illustrate, using mortality data as an example, and conclude with some suggestions for how this method might more broadly advance macrosocial research.

Part of the book: Demographic Analysis

Population and Inequality in the Twenty-First Century: Will Dividends Divide the World?

By Parfait M. Eloundou-Enyegue

This chapter explores the potential role of demographic change on global inequality, at a time of great concern and uncertainty over future prospects. It fills a gap in a “population-development” literature that has extensively studied the links between population and economic growth but neglected implications for inequality. It extends theories of demographic dividends and uneven transitions to predict that current demographic transitions will reduce inequality between, but widen inequality within, countries. The hypothesis is tested in part with decomposition methods that explore the role of global demographic transitions over the last half century. The approach is then used to extrapolate expected trends over the next half century, based on current demographic projections. Further insights are generated by analyzing socioeconomic differences in fertility across low and middle-fertility countries. The findings support the hypothesis of a mixed effect on global inequality.

Part of the book: Population and Development in the 21st Century [Working title]

Parfait M. Eloundou-Enyegue

Chapters authored

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