March Archive

Chinese workers getting scarce

Carolyn Moynihan | 30 March 2010

Could China be running out of workers? Changes in the economy and education, combined with a mounting demographic crisis, confront employers and the government with big problems.

Bye-bye Baby Boomers

Vincenzina Santoro | 29 March 2010

Persons born during the 1946-1964 time span became known as the “baby boomers” as postwar family formation returned to normal after the economic depression of the 30s and the belligerencies of the early 40s. This year the first of the baby boomers turn 64 and the last of them turn 46. The demographic consequences of this phenomenon are significant. The older boomers are finishing up their careers, commencing retirement and experiencing the joys of becoming grandparents. The younger boomers are mostly married, at the peak of their careers, spending dearly for their children’s higher education, and the mothers have bid farewell to the possibility of more children.

Sterilisation-for-land deal not catching on in Colombia

Carolyn Moynihan | 26 March 2010

Philanthropy and population control are familiar partners: the Ford Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation… one could go on, but let’s stop at Erwin Goggle’s House and Land Foundation in Colombia.

In the “empowering women” engine room

Vincenzina Santoro | 23 March 2010

Each year the Commission on the Status of Women attracts women (mostly) from all over the globe to the United Nations for a two-week jam session that includes statements made by government officials and cabinet ministers dealing with women’s issues; side events sponsored by governments, UN agencies and the more activist non-governmental organizations accredited to the UN; and long, drawn out deliberations on resolutions presented by delegations. First and foremost is the theme of empowering women.

Putting gendercide on the front page

Michael Cook | 11 March 2010

It has taken 20 years, but gendercide has finally made the front page of The Economist. Back in 1990, Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen wrote an astonishing article in the New York Review of Books claiming that 100 million girls had been aborted because of son-preference. This was happening mostly in China and India, but also in other Asian countries.

Female mortality matters

Vincenzina Santoro | 04 March 2010

New data from the UN tells us that if infants make it beyond the first year of life, their chance of survival to age five becomes even more difficult: the mortality rates for those under five are generally higher - but only in certain countries.