Michael Cook
India’s appalling sex ratio worsensMichael Cook | 2 Apr 2011The latest figures show that India’s child sex ratio is getting even worse. The normal ratio for children between 0 and 6 is about 950 girls to 1000 boys. However, early returns for the 2011 census show that the number of girls to 1,000 boys has shrunk to 914 girls to every 1000 boys, down from 927 in 2001.China considers scrapping 1-child policyMichael Cook | 30 Mar 2011The Chinese government may consider lifting restrictions on its notorious one-child policy. Wang Yuqing, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, told the government newspaper People’s Daily that he would like to see a gradual opening of the one-child policy which has been in force since 1979.The science of population projectionsMichael Cook | 29 Mar 2011The 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.A bleak future for boys in China, India and South KoreaMichael Cook | 18 Mar 2011Just 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 son preference.7 billion people and what lies aheadMichael Cook | 18 Mar 2011Here 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.Putting gendercide on the front pageMichael Cook | 11 Mar 2010It 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.China wakes up to consequences of one-child policyMichael Cook | 14 Jan 2010The penny has finally dropped for the Chinese government. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has admitted that gender imbalance because of its draconian one-child policy is a serious problem. In a report in the Chinese newspaper Global Times, demographers Wang Guangzhou and Wang Yuesheng sketched some of China’s intractable problems.Russia’s brief burst of optimismMichael Cook | 13 Jan 2010With a population of 141.9 million, Russia is registering a growth for the first time since 1995, says Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. For the past five years the number of Russian deaths had declined, while births had risen. Life-expectancy is about to reach the age of 69.Boris Johnson on over-populationMichael Cook | 13 Jan 2010Gee, I missed this one from the hoo-haa surrounding the Copenhagen Summit. Sorry… subscribe donate
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