Khmer Population Information
Hi,
I am working for CARE and CARE is engaged in a project
aiming at targeted poverty reduction among Khmer living in
a number of communes in An Giang and Soc Trang provinces.
Offical census figures put the number of Khmer living in
Vietnam at around 1.3 million (I don't have the exact
figure at hand). However, estimates of the actual number
vary between 7 and 12 million (based on a quick scan of
Internet sources). Some of these estimates seem to be
projections of population censuses from the time of the
Republic of Vietnam, which render them with some
credibility compared to some claims by nationalistic Khmer
sources.
Does anyone on the list have a reference to a credible and
authoritative source on what the actual figure may be?
Does anyone have an explanation as to how such gross
underrepresentations can occur in the Vietnamese
population censuses?
Finally, if such underestimations occur, what is the
overall credibility of Vietnamese population figures, for
instance with regard to other ethnic minority groups?
Thanks and regards,
Rolf
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Rolf Hernø
Rural Development Advisor
CARE International in Vietnam
Tel. +84-4-716 1930
Fax +84-4-716 1935
Mob. +84-(0) 9 12 39 80 28
E-mail rherno@care.org.vn
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Rolf, I bet one issue is how you define Khmer identity vis a vis
Vietnamese, since there's a lot of intermarriage in the South. Also,
there's the question of mobile populations that move back and forth
across the border. Without a fairly flexible definition, 7-12 million
(implying as much as 14% of total national population) does seem a bit
high. Regarding numbers, a good start would probably be the two
provinces' annual statistical yearbooks from their provincial
departments of statistics).
Markus
Rolf -
The population count in Cambodia's1998 census was 11.4 million (we
estimated that this number understated the true population by 4 -5
percent). Unless one is willing to believe that a nearly equal number of
Khmer are currently resident in Vietnam, the claim of 7-12 million Khmer
in Vietnam seems wildly overestimated. We found that the growth rate of
Khmer between VN's 1989 and 1999 censuses (~1.7 percent per year) was quite
close to the national growth rate. Higher expected fertility among Khmer
(compared to Kinh) may have been offset if there was more rapid emigration
back to Cambodia during that period. Thus, the 1999 count of somewhat over
1 million Khmer in VN is not necessarily a bad one.
All that having been said, it is not unusual to find large
undercounts/overcounts of specific ethnic groups (or national populations,
more generally). Ethnic groups grow not simply due to "natural" growth
(births - deaths), but also immigration/emigration, greater/lesser coverage
of that specific group over time, and the possibility that individual
"switch" their ethnicity over time - either through changing identification
or inter-marriage. If I recall, I did not find strong evidence for ethnic
"switching" in Vietnam in a paper I gave at the AAS a few years back (never
published and not in a format ready for distribution).
To evaluate the census counts, one has to consider both demographic and
other evidence for each ethnic group separately. For instance, Hoa/Chinese
may well have shrunk over the 1980s (we get negative growth of 0.4 percent
per year). But could the Khang have grown by 9 percent per year?? That
is only possible if there was massive immigration or severe under/over
counts in either 1989 or 1999. I'll be happy to take the discussion
offline if you want.
By the way, one can find estimate and projections of national population
throughout the world annually through 2050 on the Census Bureau's
International Data Base (IDB) -- http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbnew.html
We get good feedback from colleagues of the usefulnees of the IDB for
illustrating demographic principles in the classroom (e.g. there are
moving population pyramids, etc.).
Cheers,
Daniel
Daniel Goodkind,
Demographer
International Programs Center (Population Division)
Eurasia Branch
U.S. Census Bureau
tel (301) 763-6240
fax (301) 457-1539
I agree with Daniel that the "the claim of 7-12 million Khmer in Vietnam seems wildly overestimated." With reference to the higher-than-expected increase in the number of Khang between 1989 and 1999, this can be explained by the fact (known in at least some cases, speculated to have happened in others) that Khang villages were mis-identified as Khmu, through a confusion of the exonyms (names assigned by outsiders) Xa Cau and Xa Khao. Whether misheard or misrecorded, some Khang villages were described as "Xa Cau/Khao" and then rationalized as Khmu when they were in fact Khang. When I was doing research in the mid-1990s, we were sent to several villages in Lai Chau where such misidentifications were recorded in the 1989 census--these were presumably corrected in 1999, thus producing what seems to be a higher population growth. Because the Khmu population was appreciably larger (by a factor of 10?), losing a few villages didn't have a big impact on the overall growth rate, where for the much-smaller Khang population gaining a few villages made a bigger difference.
Best,
Frank Proschan
Project Director
Dear list,
I'm not an expert on this topic, but I do have a question about using projections made based on census figures of Khmer population during the time of the Republic of Vietnam.
Assuming that definitions of what makes a person Khmer are similar then and now, did the projections take into account out migration by boat during the late 70s and 80s? An Giang was one of the provinces with the highest number of people leaving Vietnam by boat during this period. What was the percentage of Khmer among these boat people? Was it large enough that projections over 30 years can cause a significant discrepancy? This issue, of course, is in addition to all the movements across the Vietnam-Cambodia border during the same period and since.
Also, the Republic of Vietnam was not very effective with their family planning programs across all ethnic groups. The current government has been more effective on this front. Does this effectiveness also apply to the Khmer population? And if so, to what degree? If it does then the above projections would be based on erroneous calculations, unless changes in the rate of population growth over time were taken into account.
That said, I do not discount the possibility that current census figures might be off one way or another.
Best,
Dieu-Hien
Data on the numbers of Khmer in Vietnam are also reflected in the Living Standards survey, which allows for calculation of correlations between various factors, including recorded ethnicity. The sample is large enough to produce statistically meaningful results down at least to province level, and so allows a relatively reliable ‘work-back’ to aggregations by regional level, such as the number of poor people of various types for the 12 provinces of the Mekong, or the total number of Khmer based upon the sampling. We used this for a consultancy done for AusAID in association with World Vision called the Mekong Delta Poverty Analysis which is downloadable somewhere on the net. About ¼ of the around 4 million ‘poor’ in the Mekong were Khmer, and about ½ of the Khmer were poor. So, as far as I recall, the broad brush results were no way in the 7-12 million range for the Mekong, which is where most Vietnamese Khmer live. The latest survey results are for 2002.
The work showed that the most important issue for poverty work in the delta was landlessness (or ‘it dat’) followed by being Khmer.
Adam
FYI, my essay on my stay last year in VN has just come out in IASSIST
Quarterly on the Web. IASSIST stands for International Association for
Social Science Information Service and Technology, a data librarians and
data providers professional association. The group's site is:
http://www.iassistdata.org.
The article, "Reflections on a Quest for Social Science Data in Vietnam,"
Iassist Quarterly, v 28, no. 1 (Spring 2004), 18-21 is here:
http://iassistdata.org/publications/iq/iq28/iqvol281tsang.pdf
The captions got erased during production; the first picture on p. 19 is
of the General Statistics Office data center in Hanoi; and the second (p.
21) was taken during a presentation at the Institute of Human Studies in
Hanoi, where the World Values Survey: Vietnam, was conducted.
dan
Daniel C. Tsang