The Population Reference Bureau takes a dim view of large families and favours contraception and so on, but it does produce excellent material about how to interpret demographic information. In this video well-known demographer Carl Haub goes through the assumptions behind population projections. It’s well worth viewing.

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Before I started writing this blog, the topic of demography usually came before my consciousness (through the media, in conversations etc) in the following form:

The world has a problem in that its population is growing too quickly. The world’s resources are inadequate to support this huge population. Unless something is done, there will be a major crisis – there will be food shortages and many people will die of starvation. This could also lead to wars over food resources.

The answer therefore, is to “do something”. What though? Implement a Chinese-style one child policy? Encourage, sterilisation, contraception and abortion? Tax people according to the number of children they have? Encourage euthanasia of the old and sick?

The trouble then becomes what happens if these measures do not work?  What if people are not receptive to… click here to read whole article and make comments

A recent study by market research company, Colmar Brunton, into New Zealand young people in their 20’s indicates that young women are increasingly finding their self esteem and identity outside the traditional family structure of marriage and family, and want to put off having children to continue with their careers.  The young women who completed the survey rated getting a pay rise or a compliment at work as more important than getting married or having children.  

Surprisingly, the findings also seem to show that, while females are focusing on their career, many young men would like to become dads earlier if they could only find a young woman willing to settle down.  For example, when asked to list a number of priorities for the next two to three years women put "being recognised as a leader" or "expertise in… click here to read whole article and make comments

As a follow up to last Friday’s post about Asia’s gender imbalance, it must be said that public and media recognition of this problem is not new. In fact, a decade ago, Time magazine wrote of the effects of “China’s Lifestyle Choice”. The article stated that, as of 2001, “China’s womb police” have “succeeded remarkably well”. 

“Today the average Chinese woman has two children, compared with six 30 years age. ‘For all the bad press, China has achieved the impossible,” says Sven Burmester, the UN Population Fund representative in Beijing. “The country has solved its population problem.’”

However, although China may have solved its “population problem” in 2001, even then other problems associated with its population control policies were apparent.  First, the population will in the future not be able to replace itself:… click here to read whole article and make comments

Remember when the archetypal family was Mum, Dad and 2.4 kids? Apparently in the United Kingdom, far from 2.4 children being the norm, a fertility rate of 1.94 children per woman in 2009 is a “high” fertility rate, at least according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). 

“In 2009 the provisional Total Fertility Rate (TFR) for the UK was 1.94 children per woman. This represents a small decrease in UK fertility compared with 2008, when the TFR reached 1.96 children per woman.”

It also represents a number below the population replacement threshold of 2.1 children per woman.  Despite this, the ONS states in the very next sentence that:

“However fertility remains at a high level”

How on Earth can the authors come to this conclusion? There are… click here to read whole article and make comments

 

Just backing up a post by Marcus Roberts the other day, the Canadian Medical Association Journal has just published an article which claims that it will be decades before the natural sex-ratio is restored in parts of India, China and South Korea because of sex-selective abortion and a tradition of son preference:

In the next 20 years in large parts of China and India, there will be a 10% to 20% excess of young men because of sex selection and this imbalance will have societal repercussions, states an analysis in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. 

A preference for sons in China, India and South Korea combined with easy access to sex-selective abortions has led to a significant imbalance between the number of males and females born in these countries. The sex ratio at birth (SRB) –… click here to read whole article and make comments

 

Here is a brief video with excellent graphics from The Economist about the arrival of the world’s 7 billionth person. I don’t share its rather woolly optimism about the future, but in 2 minutes and 21 seconds you can’t communicate everything.

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Last weekend I saw an interesting headline in the local Saturday paper here in Auckland, The Weekend Herald. It read: “Bachelor Nations Risk Testosterone Overdose”. Looking at the author of the piece, I was even more interested to discover that it was written by one of the historians that I most enjoy reading – Niall Ferguson.  Of course, this may not seem that exciting, but for us long-suffering Herald readers an interesting headline and an interesting contributor in the same piece is like receiving manna from heaven after wandering in the wilderness. And then discovering that that manna is wrapped in bacon.

Needless to say, my hopes were not disappointed. The article was originally published in Newsweek under the title“Men Without Women: The Rise of Asia’s Bachelor Generation”and it draws attention to the startling gender disparity in certain areas… click here to read whole article and make comments

Germany is struggling to solve its population and demographic crisis, reporting that last year births dropped by 30,000 and there was a net loss of 13,000 people through migration.

Increasing parental leave payments and daycare places over the past few years have not worked the required magic, and the country is still staring at the prospect of a population that is both smaller and older over the next few decades. Ageing Germany was the subject of a best-selling book, The Methuselah Conspiracy, already in 2004.

It is common to blame things that militate against mothers holding down paid jobs: things like Germany’s school system -- which sees school classes over and children arriving home at lunchtime every day; lack of daycare, a social prejudice against working mothers, and even an intolerant attitude to children and their noise (something that… click here to read whole article and make comments

The number of countries deemed poor – or in United Nations parlance “developing” – are considered to be 48 by the same UN’s definition and located mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Discussions abound in conference after conference about the ways that the UN ought to stick it to the rich countries by getting them to shell out more and more aid money and “forgive” debts. Castigation abounds for those hapless developed countries comprising the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD that do not fork over 0.7 percent of their annual Gross National Income in foreign aid.  

But which country is not indebted? And which countries are the most indebted? While Greece and Italy have been raked over the coals for having accumulated indebtedness that exceeds their economic output, they are not alone.

A debtors list does exist.… click here to read whole article and make comments