Abstract
The so-called postwar ‘population explosion’ in Southeast Asia, as in many other developing regions of the world, is generally attributed to a rapid decline in mortality in the postwar years. Actual yearly trends in mortality, however, are not precisely known for most of the countries of Southeast Asia, due to the deficiency of their vital registration data. This paper deals mainly with Indonesia, Malaysia (Peninsular), the Philippines, and Thailand, for which estimated data on mortality are available for more or less extended periods of time. These countries showed diverse trends in the crude death rate during the pre-war decades as well as immediate postwar years, in terms of absolute levels and speed of decline: a particularly marked contrast was apparent between the rapid decrease in Thailand and the slow one in the Philippines during the 1920s and 1930s. The differences and similarities in the levels of mortality among the countries in recent years are thought to have been determined largely by their respective changes in mortality during the 1950s.
