Population growth

Rio de Janeiro was formally constituted into a metropolitan area (RJMA) in 1973. The RJMA contained fourteen counties: Rio de Janeiro, Duque de Caxias, Itaborai, Itaguaí, Magé, Mangaratiba, Maracá, Nilópolis, Niterói, Nova Iguaçu, Paracambi, Petrópolis, São Gonçalo and São João de Meriti.¹ With around 10 million inhabitants, the metropolitan area is Brazil's second largest city and its second most important port. It is located some 400 kilometres north of its greatest national rival, São Paulo. Together, these two cities contain over 25 million people and almost half of Brazil's manufacturing activity. They dominate the south-east, the most prosperous region in Brazil, and in recent years have maintained their combined share of the national population.

In contrast to São Paulo, however, Rio's economic situation has been in decline for some years. Its economic future was damaged when the federal capital was moved to Brasília in 1960, along with a huge amount of public investment. Rio has also suffered badly from the Brazilian economic recession and has been losing out in the struggle with São Paulo for commercial and industrial dominance. In 1985, São Paulo accounted for 26 per cent of the country's manufacturing production compared to Rio's share of 7 per cent. Many of Rio's leading banks, industries, and research and development companies either relocated or moved their headquarters to São Paulo. Earnings from tourism also declined as the media drew international attention to Rio's escalating crime rate. As a result, an increasing gap opened up between the two largest metropolitan areas. Since 1970, the population of São Paulo has grown nearly twice as fast as that of Rio. In 1988, average household earnings per capita were 22 per cent higher in São Paulo than in Rio; in 1970 the difference had been only 10 per cent; in 1976, 18 per cent. This was not just a relative decline. As a result of the national recession, Rio's population became much poorer. Between 1976 and 1988 real earnings in Rio de Janeiro fell by 29 per cent.

Over the last thirty years, Brazil's urban population has grown at an average annual rate of just over 5 per cent. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the fastest rates of growth were recorded by cities with between 100,000 and 250,000 inhabitants. By the 1980s, although the economies of many of these secondary centres were continuing to prosper, their population growth rates slowed. The fastest urban growth rates were now to be found among the large metropolitan centres, particularly those in the north-east of the country.

Table 9.1 Metropolitan growth in Brazil, 1970-1991

	Population (000s)			Annual growth (%)
Metropolitan Area	1970	1980	1991a	1970/80	1980/91
Rio de Janeiro	6,891	8,872	9,600	2.4	0.8
Capital city	4,252	5,091	5,336	1.8	0.4
Periphery	2,639	3,681	4,264	3.4	1.3
São Paulo	8,139	12,588	15,199	4.4	1.7
Capital City	5,924	8,493	9,480	3.6	1.0
Periphery	2,215	4,095	5,719	6.3	3.1
Southern citiesb	4,053	6,334	8,451	3.8	2.7
Capital Cities	2,729	3,929	4,600	3.7	1.4
Peripheries	1,324	2,405	3,851	6.2	4.4
Northern citiesc	4,629	6,692	8,959	3.8	2.7
Capital Cities	3,558	4,942	6,350	3.3	2.3
Peripheries	1,071	1,750	2,609	5.0	3.7
Brazil	93,165	119,002	146,154	2.5	1.9

Source: Demographic Census, 1970,1980, and 1991.
a. Preliminary results.
b. Includes the following metropolitan areas: Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, and Pôrto Alegre.
c. Includes the following metropolitan areas: Belém, Fortaleza, Recife, and Salvador.

Note:

Statistical information throughout this paper was obtained from two major sources: the population censuses for 1970, 1980, and 1991 (preliminary results) and the National Household Survey, which is conducted annually. The National Household Survey covers the nine metropolitan areas and the federal capital, Brasilia. Unfortunately, the sampling design prevents use of National Household Survey data at the sub-metropolitan scale. Comparison of the municipality of Rio and the surrounding counties has been based on either census information or independent surveys.

Table 9.1 compares the rates of population growth in Rio and São Paulo between 1970 and 1991 with those in Brazil's other seven metropolitan areas.² It shows that the pace of population growth slowed markedly in the 1980s in all nine areas, partly the result of a slowing of natural increase in Brazil as a whole and partly the result of economic recession. However, the falls in the growth rates of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo were much more marked than those of the other cities. During the 1980s, Rio's population grew at 0.8 per cent per annum, São Paulo's at 1.7 per cent.

Table 9.2 Metropolitan Rio de Janeiro: Migrants and natives, 1980

	RJMA	Rio de Janeiro	Periphery
			Mean	Maximum	Minimum
Migrants/total population (%)	42.2	35.2	51.5	59.1	9.4
Recent migrants/total migrants (%)	14.8	10.0	21.0	31.1	10.6

Source: State of Rio de Janeiro Yearbook, 1988.

Table 9.1 also shows that the population of the central city has been expanding less quickly than the periphery in every metropolitan area of Brazil (see chapter 4). However, this process is much more advanced in Rio and São Paulo and is reflected in the large differential in those cities between the central and peripheral growth rates.

Over the years, migration has been a significant factor in Rio's growth and, in 1980, migrants made up more than 40 per cent of the total population. Research has shown that 70 per cent of migrants to metropolitan centres in Brazil originate from urban areas (Pastore and Haller, 1993; Tolosa, 1976). Most arrivals are first absorbed into either the construction industry or the service sector and eventually move to the suburbs. Table 9.2 shows the location of migrants to Rio de Janeiro in 1980. Most of these migrants were living in municipalities outside but relatively close to the central area: Nilópolis, São João de Meriti, Nova Iguaçu, São Gonçalo, and Caxias (figure 9.1). More distant towns, such as Petrópolis, with its pleasant site in the mountains more than 80 kilometres from downtown Rio, its economic base centred upon tourism and fairly sophisticated, clean industries, and its reliance on skilled labour, attracted fewer migrants. Among recent migrants there has been a stronger tendency to move into municipalities on the eastern banks of Guanabara Bay, notably Itaborai (31 per cent) and Magé (26 per cent).

During the 1980s, Rio's population growth slowed right down. The decline is explained by Brazil's economic recession and the slowing of metropolitan growth throughout the country. Fewer migrants moved to the major cities, a trend particularly marked in Rio owing to the latter's especially serious economic problems (see next section). But the slower pace of growth was also due to longer-term demographic trends. As table 9.3 shows, fertility rates plummeted in Rio between 1970 and 1988. And, while life expectancy increased, the rate of change was far less marked. As a result, there was a substantial fall in the rate of natural increase.

Figure 9.1 Rio de Janeiro: Metropolitan area

Table 9.3 Metropolitan Rio de Janeiro: Major demographic characteristics, 1970-1988

	1970		1980			1988
Indicators	Rio de Janeiro	National	RJMA	Rio de Janeiro	National	RJMA	National
Fertility	3.5	5.7	2.8	2.4	4.3	2.1	3.5
Infant mortality	-	117	77	68	88	36	63
Life expectancy	62.1	53.4	63.2	65.2	60.1	65.6	64.8
Household size	4.4	5.2	3.9	4.5	3.9	4.3

Sources: Demographic Census, 1970 and 1980; National Household Survey, 1988.

Notes: Fertility rate per 1000 women; infant mortality rate per 1000 live births; life expectancy rate in years; density in persons per square kilometre; household size = number of persons.