PERU COMING BABY BOOMLET

There are grounds for reconsidering the United Nations' population pro jections for Peru. These projections assume that fertility will contin ue to decline after 1990 in a smooth and uninterrupted manner, but the y ignore several factors related to recovery from the economic and pol itical crises of the 1980s that could significantly alter the pace of decline. The alternative projections we present consider the possibili ty that Peru's fertility decline will temporarily slow. This alternati ve hypothesis is conservative in the sense that increases in birth rat es are not anticipated, but substantial differences in population size and age structure materialize nonetheless. Moreover, these difference s have important implications for future planning in terms of the numb er of children needing primary health care and education and the numbe r of young adults seeking first-time employment.