Pacific Territories
The Cost of Territories
French Demographer Jean-Louis Rallu Does the Numbers
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Jean-Louis Rallu is fascinated by what numbers can tell us. As director of research for the Institut National D’Études Démographiques in Paris, Rallu has had plenty of experience crunching numbers about human populations. On a recent visit to the East-West Center in Honolulu, Rallu took a look at what the numbers tell us about the differences between Pacific Islanders living in the not-quite post-colonial French and American jurisdictions in Oceania.
In crisp, lightly-Francophone English, Rallu takes us through his conclusions. “There is a higher population density in the American Territories of Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas and American Samoa than in French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna and New Caledonia. Guam and New Caledonia have the most ethnically diverse populations and American Samoa has the highest natural growth rate in their population.” (Natural growth is demographic jargon meaning the population increase due to births, excluding immigration.)
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Rallu also says that the life expectancy for individuals living in American territories is higher than for those who live in the French territories. And the dependency ratio—another demographic term referring to the number of children and elderly in a population who must be supported by the working-age population—is the highest of all the territories, both American and French, in American Samoa. There is also more Asian immigration, Rallu says, in the American territories. (This is partly due to the “sweat shop” and sex work industries in places like Saipan and American Samoa.)
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Historically, Rallu adds, the Chamorro population in Guam and the Melanesian (Kanak) peoples in New Caledonia made up a majority of their respective island populations until the 1960s. Guam had a high percentage of U.S. military in their population until a rapid decline between 1990 and 2000, when there was a downsizing in military personnel stationed on Guam. (This trend may now be reversing as the U.S. repositions forces in the Pacific and around the world.)
The main differences between populations in the French and American territories?
“It’s social,” Rallu declares. “The education of the population is much better in the American territories, as is the healthcare. On Guam, for instance, 25 percent of the Chamorro adults have been to college. This is not the case in the French Territories where there is little access to higher education.”
The American territories depended heavily on public sector employment through the 1970s and 1980s, but there was a rapid decline in government employment between 1990 and 2000.
Public health indicators show up as another big disparity between the French and the Americans. “In French Polynesia,” Rallu says, “there is no treatment for waste water even in the more populated areas of Tahiti and Bora Bora. Only 14 percent of the French Polynesian population has access to safe drinking water and few rural or outer island French Polynesians have any access to basic healthcare.”
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In the French territory of New Caledonia, according to Rallu, one nickel mine there uses more electricity than the whole population of the territory. “The world market for nickel looks good over the next 20 years, so there are going to be increasing environmental, and human problems generated by the development of nickel mines in New Caledonia and PNG.”
And there will be population consequences as, for instance, the New Caledonia mining companies bring in Filipino workers to man the jackhammers and shovels. Management positions, of course, are filled by French, American and Canadian employees.
The French territories have been especially neglectful in developing local human resources. In addition to the lack of access to higher education and training, the French government pays a 1.8 wage differential to French citizens taking jobs in the Pacific territories—and these workers do not have to pay taxes. “It’s like this is a deliberate policy to not develop indigenous human resources and to provide well-paid employment for French nationals,” Rallu adds, “so the French colonial governments—and I use that phrase intentionally—are bureaucracies where the metropolitan French labor unions still have power and influence.”
What’s the cost of all this?
Rallu does a quick Gallic shrug. “The real question is, are the territories sustainable economically?”
But it’s an economic question that can only be answered politically.
“It costs each American taxpayer four dollars a year to support their territories, Rallu says but each French citizen pays $26 a year for their Pacific holdings. Is it worth it? I don’t know. Maybe the taxpayers just don’t notice.”
