Today I woke up to the news that over the last six years the world has got a bit more Canadian. The latest census figures for that great land have been released by Statistics Canada and they show that since 2006 Canada has grown by 5.9%, or 1.9 million people. This growth rate (the highest for any of the G8 countries) takes Canada’s total population to 33.5 million people. Some of the highlights of the results are:
“[f]or the first time in Canadian history, the proportion of the population living west of Ontario (30.7 per cent) is greater than the number of people living to the east (30.6 per cent)’;
British Colombia’s share of the population has reached a new high of 13.1%;
Ontario’s share of the population has also reached a new high of 38.4%;
New research has been recently published by a group of demographers at the social science research organisation, NORC, at the University of Chicago. From it we get an insight into the danger of making population projections (or even making current population estimations).
Now, this research is very technical, but in essence it “contradicts a long-held belief that the morality rate of Americans flattens out above age 80.” The research, undertaken by a husband and wife team, the Gavrilovs, and published in the current edition of the North American Actuarial Journal, “is based on highly accurate information about the date of birth and the date of death of more than nine million Americans born between 1875 and 1895.” According to the PR Newswire:
A bit of demography news hit the headlines last week close to home. Recently (no one is really sure when) the population of my home city, Auckland, hit 1.5 million people. The NZ Herald ran a front page story on a newborn baby, Emily Van Wonderen, who it picked as the 1.5 millionth Aucklander. (Interestingly enough, the other major New Zealand newspaper website, Stuff.co.nz, picked a different person to be their 1.5 million Aucklander, as did at least one of the TV channels.)
1.5 million strong, Auckland is now far and away New Zealand’s largest city, with one third of the country’s entire population living here. It is also Australasia’s fifth largest city – behind Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. Not only is Auckland growing fast (it hit one million people only 16 years ago) but it is also changing in both…
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A new report was released on Monday by the UN’s high level panel on global sustainability. Unsurprising its conclusion is that the world’s current economic , environmental and demographic trajectory is wildly unsustainable. According to the UN estimates, as reported by Reuters:
“[a]s the world's population looks set to grow to nearly 9 billion by 2040 from 7 billion now, and the number of middle-class consumers increases by 3 billion over the next 20 years, the demand for resources will rise exponentially.
Even by 2030, the world will need at least 50 percent more food, 45 percent more energy and 30 percent more water…at a time when a changing environment is creating new limits to supply.”
After last year’s horrific natural disasters, Japan’s government moved away from continuing the child subsidy programme that was introduced in 2009 to try and encourage the Japanese people to have more babies (we blogged about that here). Now, it is unsurprising that a year later the Earthquake is still having economic repercussions, but its effects are again being linked to the wider demographic problem that is threatening to sink Japan.
“Official data to be released overnight is expected to show the country ran a deficit of about $24bn (£15.4bn) in 2011, and has been running a structural shortfall of $3bn a month since the tsunami shut down most of Japan's nuclear industry.”
In the midst of continuing gloom throughout the Eurozone, there is more bad news from one of the most recent additions to the EU, Bulgaria. According to the Sofia News Agency, the demographic and economic slump that is gripping the country may affect the retirement prospects of many working age Bulgarians. We reported last year on the publication of the most recent Bulgarian census showed that the country’s population had declined by 7% over the past decade. A more detailed breakdown of the demographic figures by the United Nations shows that the average annual rate of population change is -0.6%, that the crude death rate (deaths per 1,000 population) is 15 and is higher than the crude birth rate of 10 per 1,000 population and finally that the total fertility rate is well below replacement level at 1.5…
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Today I’d like to briefly follow up Katie Hinderer’s Tiger Print blog post on yesterday’s march for life in Washington DC. It seems as if the march was another success with hundreds of thousands of marchers marking the 39th anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision. To give you some idea of the size of this event, have a look at this time lapse video from last year's march:
What amazes me is the absolute lack of coverage about this annual event in the media that most people watch. If it wasn't for my practice of visiting blogs, I would have had no idea about this march from either the TV or print media here in New Zealand. It seems…
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Happy Chinese New Year! A couple of days ago millions of people celebrated the start of the spring season and the new year both in Asia and in expat communities throughout the world. The new year is an auspicious one – the Dragon is considered the luckiest sign in the Chinese zodiac and represents wealth and power. According to the AFP:
“The dragon is the most favourable and revered sign in the 12-year Chinese zodiac - a symbol of royalty, fortune and power that is also used in other cultures that see in the Lunar New Year, such as in Vietnam.”
It is no surprise therefore that many couples wish to have their babies born this year so that their children may benefit from some of the Dragon’s lucky properties.
There is further recognition by major media outlets that perhaps global overpopulation is not the only demographic story in town. Reuters has just published an article on how Japan’s demographic winter and economic malaise are linked and how that country’s example may provide a roadmap for the future of other Western economies.
Over the past 20 years, Japan’s economic situation has looked like this:
“An asset price bubble pops, hitting bank balance sheets and tax revenues. As growth weakens and the economy flirts with deflation, the real burden of servicing debt increases.
Companies race to pay off debt, further dragging down growth. Government spending takes up the slack. Monetary policy is akin to pushing on a piece of string, so even zero interest rates have scant impact. Population decline compounds the vicious circle.”
Due to expense, there was controversy in New Zealand mid last year when an Auckland school required the purchase of some sort of digital tablet such as an iPad by every new student. However, India may have developed new technology which overcomes the problem of expense and allows hundreds of millions of Indians in remote rural areas to connect to the internet. It may also soon make Indians the biggest single internet user population in the world.
The new device is similar in function to the Apple iPad – but the major difference is that it can be made and sold for under £35. Professor Prem Kalra, who is a team leader at the Rajasthan Indian Institute of Technology, has commented:
A thought experiment about marriage
24 May 2012
A world in which sexual intimacy could not produce children would never have come up with the idea of marriage.
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