Talk:Demographics of the Philippines

Problems with age structure and population pyramid

This edit, which made cosmetic changes to unsupported information about age structure in the infobox, caught my eye. I noted that the Age structure section of the infobox, which the edit modifies, does not specify a validity year. I did a quick comparison of the figures given there with the figures given in the Population pyramid of the article, which also do not give a validity year, and found that these two sets of figures in the article did not agree with one another.

The table in the Population pyramid section cites this source in support. The cite for that says, "Retrieved December 4, 2015.". The source itself is titled "2018 United Nations Demographics Yearbook", but gives no figures for the Philippines on the linked web page. Some exploring beginning at the cited web page leads to this page, a search page defaulting to Afghanistan from which it is possible to search for information about the Philippines. Searching there is a bit confusing but, by searching for the Philippines and the year 2015, I was able to see figures labeled 2019 as a "Source Year"; those figures did not agree with either of the two aforementioned sets of figures in the article.

Would it be possible to get this cleaned up a bit? Perhaps the two sets of figures in the article could be brought into agreement and the source of those figures might be cited in support. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 09:53, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Why is the demographic data so poor?

Why is the demographic data so poor?

Examples 1: Section "Population pyramid" says cohorts 0–4, 5-9 and 10-14 are all over 10 millions, so need on average over 2 million births per year. However, births "Year by year" never show over 1.8 million births per year.

Example 2: In the "Year by year" table, the total population grows over the last year clearly more than the natural change. However, Philippines is an emigration country, so population increase should be below the natural change.

BenF 213.127.112.179 (talk) 11:17, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Regarding example 1, it seems like the data is old and from the UN, not the Philippine government. It could use an update. --Glennznl (talk) 12:17, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Error in population pyramid?

As I understand from the vital statistics, the Philippines had about 1.5 million births in 2020. In the population pyramid, I understand one line is one year, so the total births (both genders) of 2020 should be about 1.5 million people, but the pyramid shows about 1.2 million people for both males and females, so that's more than the total number of births in that year according the the vital statistics part. Chaptagai (talk) 17:08, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Civilian and military migration during spanish rule and "latinos"

There is some misinterpretation of the sources in regard spanish migration during colonial times in several articles related with Philippines. The spanish migration was not limited to 600 people (no source ever, said such absurdity), the 15,400 soldiers mentioned for 17th century included a good amount of european born spaniards as well and we lack any certainty about the primacy of Americas born migrants over european born spaniards during 17th century.

Firstly, in this article there is a specific problem with the interpretation of soldiers-migrants departing from Hispanic America as "latinos", which mentions should be replaced mostly by spanish or "departing Hispanic America (of diverse ancestry)" for several reasons:

- It's not the term that the source linked uses. The author just mentions "spanish soldiers" but some wikipedist transformed that in "latinos" somehow.

- It's anachronistic. Nobody used such denomination at the time outside the use of latino/a as adjetive linked to (ancient) latin language or literature.

- It's beyond misleading in this context because to the confusion excluding european born spaniards which not only are latinos but were a significant part of those soldiers we should add the fact not all soldiers were "latinos" neither, as some in later periods were native americans or african descendants.

One of the tables use as well "mexicans" as inner identification/code for each number, but as that denomination is not visible in the article I suppose that's not so relevant.

Now in regard the 15,600 soldiers studied by Mawson, there were thousands of european born people among them, specially numerous in first decades of the century when majority of those soldiers arrived to the Philippines (about half of the entire century troops arrived in first 25 years e.g.) and the author explicitely mentions a couple of times those european born spaniards in the article. On the other hand we really ignore what continental origin was the most common among those soldiers emigrated to Philippines, as the author doesn't offer specific numbers or shares by origin/ethnicity, only all soldiers totals and never suggest directly a general primacy of soldiers born in one or other place. What she does and maybe was what the wikipedist misinterpreted is to highlight two minoritary contexts of "relative" prevalence but precisely as something breaking the stereotype (at least in Anglosphere) of spanish soldiers and colonial migrants as exclusively or almost exclusively europeans:

- In first place Mawson mention the prevalence of non-european ancestries among recruits during second half of the century, with a drastic decrease of european descendants (including Americas born) in the middle century crisis, replaced with mestizos and increasingly mulatos and native americans and the low number of spaniards since then. It also discuss the increasing participation of local filipinos among spanish troops, but that would not be migration-relevant. However we can check in Table 1 how about 64% of the soldiers concentrate in the 25 years with data for first half of the century compared with 36% of all soldiers in the 30 years studied for the second half, so adjusting the difference of years it would be more than 2/3 migrating in first half of the century (and close to half of all soldiers arrived during the century concentrating in first 20 years) which means that while very relevant, that prevalence of non-europeans among soldiers in last 50 years of 17th century is not decisive to estimate the prevalence in the entire century.

- Secondly the convicts forcibly recruited in New Spain prisons the author consider should be "most likely mestizos more than pure-blood spaniards". However besides the vagueness of such consideration the same author explains previously how forced recruits were about 25% of the total and among those there would be still not just prisoners, but also illegal spanish migrants arrived to New Spain, so the percentage of prisoners among those recruits would be considerably lower than 25% independently of how many of them were truly non-spaniards. Btw the definition of "spaniard" never was "pure blood" as the author mention, the spaniard group in different regions of the Americas was full of people with some native american or african ancestry because at first most "mixed ancestry" people were considered just spaniards or native of different groups depending case and the full formation of different "mestizo" identities lasted from a couple generations to more than 100 years depending region.

In the case of those supposed 600 european spanish migrants supposedly sourced in an article by García Abásolo it seems completely made up, as that article never claims such extremely low number and mentions instead the 5,000 civilian legal migrants departing Seville that the author studied for the 1571-1799 period, about 1/3 of them in those last decades of 16th century which is what the article focus on, but about half concentrated in 1600s, so about 2,500 civilian migrants for that century (Graph Number 1, sadly the author doesn't offer specific numbers for each period), among which about 80% would migrate between 1600 and 1649 and just 20% in the second half of the century. However those numbers are less representatives of civilian migration than the previous 15,600 soldiers estimated for the same periods, because there was a huge irregular migration in Spanish Empire, but we lack sources to estimate accurately. If irregular migration of spaniards in Philippines was comparable to the most usual estimates for Hispanic America, the total civilian migration to Philippines during 1600s would range between 4,000 and 10,000 migrants, almost entirely iberian born in the case of the majority departing Seville and a completey unknown but probably prevalently american born in the case of those irregular migrants departing mexican ports.

Finally in regard chinese population the two source linked doesn't support the number claimed in the article, at least I can find the specific quote neither in Chinese Diaspora chapter, the one about Chinese in Philippines or the (wrongly linked?) chapter about chinese in Thailand. The chinese population Philippines was most likely higher than 20,000 by mid 1600s actually, but it doesn't seem to appear in that source. The closer number is the 30,000 chinese living at mid 1600s but in the tree european powers ruled cities, Manila, Fort Zelandia and Batavia (page 68). Most of those would live in Manila and surroundings so wikipedist probably "interpreted" the source, which I think is not allowed here.

I will fix the mentions in this article with the explicit info in the articles without further speculations but I suspect there are some other Philippines articles out there with the same wrong info (I already tried to fix the Ethnic Groups in Philippines article but respecting the original partially which makes it a bit confusing, probably needs fixing too). 185.137.141.3 (talk) 02:34, 14 March 2025 (UTC)