Population Heterogeneity in Nepal’s Demography

Nepal is transitioning in many avenues, including political, socio-economic, and demographic. Politically, the country adopted a new constitution in 2015 that formally established Nepal as a federal republic with a new administrative structure consisting of seven regions (called states) and 753 municipalities. Economically, Nepal is ready to graduate from a Low Developing Country (LDC) by 2026. In parallel, Nepal has completed its fertility transition reaching a total fertility rate of 2 children per woman in 2019. Moreover, the mortality situation is improving rapidly, as indicated by the under-five mortality rate reaching 28 deaths per 1000 births. The Nepalese population is highly mobile in terms of internal and international migration. Also, there has been significant improvement in education progression. While national-level aggregates provide an average picture, it also masks inequality and variation in demographic behaviours, especially as Nepal has a considerable population heterogeneity by region, educational attainment, caste, and ethnicity. In this presentation, the focus is on showing the population heterogeneity in demography and human capital and identifying issues that have significant consequences.

Samir KC is currently leader of the Multidimenional Demographic Modeling (MDM) Research Group, in the IIASA Population and Just Societies (POPJUS) Program. His primary research interests are: developing and applying multi-dimensional multi-state population models in demographic analysis and projections, focusing on modeling human capital formation (education and health) and urbanization. He has co-developed an R package (MSDem) that can simultaneously model multi-dimensional population dynamics at sub-national levels by age, sex, and educational attainment.

You can register for the workshop here on the event website.