Demography is Destiny

Putting gendercide on the front page

Michael Cook — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:23:05 GMT

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. Read more...

Female mortality matters

Vincenzina Santoro — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:28:20 GMT

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. Read more...

Positive signs from the UN

Vincenzina Santoro — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:48:14 GMT

As part of the annual meetings of the Commission on Social Development at the United Nations recently, The Republic of Korea sponsored a “side event” entitled: “Low Fertility and Aging Society in East Asia.” The presenters were a research director from the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, the Ambassador of Population issues of the Republic of Korea and a Korean Senior Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu. A few officials from the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs were also present – and we engaged in a wonderful conversation afterwards. Read more...

Vanishing Females in Vietnam

Vincenzina Santoro — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 06:44:03 GMT

Is Vietnam heading down the same rocky road as China by allowing sex-selective abortion? Read more...

China wakes up to consequences of one-child policy

Michael Cook — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:16:05 GMT

The 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. Read more...

Russia’s brief burst of optimism

Michael Cook — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 06:13:10 GMT

With 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. Read more...

Boris Johnson on over-population

Michael Cook — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 06:05:10 GMT

Gee, I missed this one from the hoo-haa surrounding the Copenhagen Summit. Sorry… Read more...

Bangladesh endorses one-child policy

Michael Cook — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:09:10 GMT

Bangladesh is going to introduce a voluntary "one couple, one child" population planning policy by 2015 to curb its growing population. Read more...

John Lennon on the population bomb

Michael Cook — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 06:12:20 GMT

Arguments from authority are very weak indeed, but when the authority is John Lennon, what the heck. Read more...

Will the one-child policy wreck China’s economy?

Michael Cook — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 07:34:00 GMT

China’s rapid economic development and America’s evident vulnerabilty after the Global Financial Crisis could make the Chinese a bit smug. But as leading demographer Nicholas Eberstadt points out in a frightening article in the Far Eastern Economic Review, China faces gigantic economic problems as the legacy of its one-child policy. Read more...

An “odious, zombie-like Malthusian” organisation has a plan to save the world

Michael Cook — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:42:49 GMT

Not even the journalists reporting from the Copenhagen summit on climate change understand all the complex economic and technological strategies for reducing the world's carbon footprint and averting catastrophic global warming -- let alone the rest of us. There's cap and trade, emissions trading schemes, carbon taxes, discount rates and a phonebook of acronyms. But there is one equation which could be a very easy sell to save the world: fewer people = fewer carbon footprints. Read more...

MercatorNet exclusive—poetry by Al Gore

Michael Cook — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:17:35 GMT

Al Gore’s latest book has just hit the bookshops. Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis is a lavishly illustrated handbook for climate-change activism -- with his first public poetry. It's awful. Read more...

Will Ethiopia become a Muslim-majority nation?

Michael Cook — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 01:27:35 GMT

As Army shrinks, South Korea to recruit women soldiers

Michael Cook — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:46:06 GMT

From 2011 South Korea may start recruiting women volunteers for its Army to make up for its growing shortage of young men. Read more...

Japan’s new government seeks to boost birth rate

Michael Cook — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:56:06 GMT

Japan's new government, led by the Democratic Party of Japan, seems to be taking its population problem seriously. The world's number two economy is set to shrink from about 127 million to 95 million by 2050. This means that the number of workers available to support retirees will fall from 3 to 1.5. Because Japanese are notoriously hostile towards increased immigration, the government's options are limited. It is racking its brains for schemes to increase the birth rate. Here are some mentioned in an article by AFP: Read more...

South Korea reluctantly becoming more diverse

Michael Cook — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:31:45 GMT

With the world's second-lowest birth rate and a gender imbalance to boot because of sex-selective abortions, South Korean men are going overseas to find brides. The growing number of mixed marriages is creating worrying social problems for the goverrnment. According to the New York Times, hundreds of thousands of women have migrated in recent years, mostly to marry men in rural areas. Most of them come from China, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. Read more...

How many people have ever lived?

Michael Cook — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:18:35 GMT

How many people have ever lived upon earth? There is an urban legend from the 1970s that 75% of the world’s total population from the Year 0 to now is alive today. This, it turns out, is nonsense. Demographer Carl Haub, of the Population Reference Bureau, demolished this factoid a few years ago. His argument is one of the best-read articles on the PRB site, which republished it recently. Read more...

Africa passes billion mark

Michael Cook — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:25:35 GMT

A few interesting figures from the United Nations Population Fund report stand out. Read more...

No people, no climate change, says UN Population Fund

Michael Cook — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:16:26 GMT

From year to year, population grows at a glacial pace, so it’s tough job to bang the drum about over-population in a glossy annual report year after year. From a public relations point of view, the solution is to pick a trendy angle. The theme of the 2009 State of the World Population Report is women and climate change. Read more...

Is climate change killing children?

Michael Cook — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:05:13 GMT

What is the biggest killer of children in the developing world? Read more...

Japan slowly cruising into financial shipwreck

Michael Cook — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:29:52 GMT

Is Japan headed for financial meltdown because of decades of below replacement-level birth rates? Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that doom is nigh in a recent column in the London Sunday Telegraph. He quotes a number of economists Read more...

The myth of Nigeria’s over-population

Adebowale Oriku — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:31:14 GMT

I have heard it parroted for as long as I can’t remember that Nigeria’s hyperpopulation is one of the reasons the country is failing. And from the first time I heard this flawed reasoning I have always countered it, even when my views had not even been mellowed with data, statistics and considerable knowledge of political economy. The problem with the notion of high population is not so much that it is erroneous as that it might give Nigeria’s misrulers something to blame for their slimy utter badness Read more...

A breathless moment in the history of reproductive rights

Michael Cook — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:49:14 GMT

The population control lobby is far from dead. There still are highly influential academics who fervently believe that increasing aid for population control (aka reproductive rights, women’s health, safe and legal abortion) is absolutely necessary. Without it, the world will turn into an over-heated, war-torn slum heaped with festering mountains of garbage. This is the message that comes through loud and clear in a special issue of an influential British journal... Read more...

Is youth a danger to democracy?

Michael Cook — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:08:14 GMT

Democracy is a romantic notion; youth are romantic; QED, youth must be democratic. Not so, say some demographers. Richard Cincotta, a consultant in US intelligence and defence, will be explaining his theory about the "youth bulge" in developing countries on PRB Discuss Online tomorrow evening. Could be something to check out. Read more...

Europeans too selfish to have children, says Chief Rabbi

Michael Cook — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:56:19 GMT

It’s not very often that you find an eminent public figure who combines shrewd political observation with philosophical depth. But the other evening Britain’s chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, who entered the House of Lords last week as Lord Sacks of Aldgate, proved that he is such a person. In a speech at Demos, a theological thinktank in London, he examined the deep cultural reasons behind the decline in the British birthrate. The last paragraph is the best. Read more...

The Economist swings ‘round on population

Michael Cook — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:01:19 GMT

The message is finally getting through: the population bomb has fizzled out and fertility is falling everywhere in the world. This is the cheerful message delivered in the October 29 issue of The Economist. If the world’s leading news magazine has finally swung around, the day is not far behind when population controllers will be unemployed. Read more...

Is low fertility bottoming out?

Dermot Grenham — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:33:25 GMT

The received wisdom among demographers and other social sciences is that as countries develop economically and socially their fertility rates decline. However, a recent article in Nature1 has shown that at higher levels of development, as measured by the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI), the fall in fertility goes into reverse. Could this be the answer to the problem of ageing populations? Read more...

Britain unprepared for looming population crisis

William West — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:30:18 GMT

The latest figures on Britain's ageing population confirm that not enough is being done to prepare for the crisis. Read more...

Australia’s population booms

Carolyn Moynihan — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 04:19:47 GMT

Last week, as the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced a 2 per cent leap (439,000 people) in the country’s population in the year to March, a huge dust storm blew in from the arid interior to blanket much of Eastern Australia. Are the two things connected? Read more...

Will demographics lead to a return of traditional values?

Brian Lilley — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 17:27:47 GMT

An interesting book is out by Dr. Brian Lee Crowley, a Canadian economist who sees Canadians returning to traditional values as our population shrinks in coming decades. Titled Fearful Symmetry: The Fall and Rise of Canada's Founding Values, Crowley's book says that with lower birth rates and tougher competition for immigrants, Canadians will eventually return to the founding values of the country, including family and hard work. Read more...

Did Borlaug’s work embarrass population controllers?

William West — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:32:46 GMT

Norman Borlaug should have been an American hero for his work in preventing the population bomb from exploding, but his name is still barely known in the United States. Read more...

Uganda welcomes growing population

William West — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:33:10 GMT

A new report on population in Uganda acknowledges the opportunities of growth. Read more...

Contraception is not the way to fight global warming

William West — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:22:27 GMT

Population researchers have rejected research suggesting population control should be used to fight global warming. Read more...

Britain’s new baby boom

Carolyn Moynihan — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:15:27 GMT

Demographers tend to be control freaks who get nervous if the population rises above or falls below some ideal benchmark -- zero growth, for example. But people tend to procreate -- or not -- with reckless disregard for demography. In Britain the average birth rate fell to 1.63 in 2001, but since then it has leapt to 1.96 (2008) -- nearly back to “replacement” level. Read more...

Dicing with death

Carolyn Moynihan — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 04:48:13 GMT

Germans who have invested in the demise of older Americans are getting angry that the latter are taking too long to die. Statisticians and medical experts are not as good at projecting life expectancy as they might seem to be. Read more...

Europe’s demographic and cultural time bomb

Carolyn Moynihan — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:45:49 GMT

In Brussels, the top seven boys names recently were Mohamed, Adam,Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza. Mohamed is also the most popularname in Holland’s four biggest cities. Is anyone surprised? Read more...

Is India winning its war against gendercide?

Carolyn Moynihan — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:45:34 GMT

A badly skewed sex ratio in the Indian capital, Delhi, has suddenlycorrected itself, according to official figures. In the period from2005 to 2007, only 871 girls were born in Delhi for every 1000 boys,but last year the ratio had changed to 1004 girls per 1000 boys, theRegistrar Generals records show. Read more...

The “Viagra effect” may lengthen pension payouts in Brazil and threaten the system.

Brian Lilley — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:11:20 GMT

The "Viagra effect" - men marrying much younger women is a challenge for Brazil's pension system. Read more...

40 years later, was “The Population Bomb” a damp squib?

Michael Cook — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 06:28:50 GMT

Forty years after the publication of Paul Ehrlich’s influential book The Population Bomb, a new scholarly, peer-reviewed magazine, the Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development, thinks that it is time to take stock. And in a fascinating series of articles, it contributors demolish Ehrlich’s population pessimism. This is essential reading – and it is freely available. Here are a few highlights. Read more...

Snapshot of a gay future

Michael Cook — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 04:50:42 GMT

Sweden developing nursing home for GLBT community Read more...

India debates methods of population control

Michael Cook — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:22:47 GMT

Bizarre suggestion from health minister Read more...

Ageing Shanghai desperate for more births

Carolyn Moynihan — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 04:46:50 GMT

A birth rate that has crashed to .88 children per woman and a population ageing fast have led officials in the Chinese coastal city of Shanghai to start knocking on doors to get couples to have more children. Read more...

Vietnam burns sex selection books

Michael Cook — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:01:05 GMT

Another distressing consequence of sex-selective abortion: censorship! Read more...

Bulging China eyes empty Russian Far East

Michael Cook — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:31:51 GMT

In English, Siberia is a synonym for frigid desolation. Actually, it’s much the same in Russian as well. And now that Russians are no longer forced to live there, they are emptying the vast spaces of the Russian Far East, which stretches from Lake Baikal to Vladivostok. According to an article by David Blair in the London Telegraph, only 6.7 million people live there – 14% fewer than in the late 1980s. Furthermore, over a third of these live in only nine towns. The countryside is nearly empty. By 2015 there will only be 4.5 million people in the Russian Far East. Read more...

Pope insists on “integral human development”

Michael Cook — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 07:55:04 GMT

Pope Benedict XVI recently released an encyclical, a long letter to the Catholic Church and “all people of good will” about progress and development. Coming as it does in the middle of an economic crisis the media reported it as a critique of the market economy and the benefits of globalisation. Read more...

Demographic storms and retirement dreams

Brian Lilley — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:58:36 GMT

There is a story that has made the rounds a couple of times in papers around Canada, it seems people are not ready for retirement. Headlined, "Demographic storm could crush retirement dream." Read more...

Demolishing population pessimism

Michael Cook — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 08:33:12 GMT

For a hard-hitting attack on the over-population scare, it’s hard to go past Brendan O’Neill’s speech in a London debate with a spokesman for the Optimum Population Trust. O’Neill is the editor of Spiked, a web magazine whose watchword is “humanity is under-rated”. Although Spiked has some positions (notably on abortion) which I don’t share, it has become a vigorous and effective defender of human potential. It’s great to read O’Neill’s demolition of population pessimism: he actually welcomed hundreds of billions of people on our planet. Read more...

Japan’s lead in science threatened by youth dearth

Michael Cook — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:42:56 GMT

Japan's ageing population threatens its scientific and technological pre-eminence, says the leading science journal Nature in a blistering editorial. In May last year, a government white paper warned that increasing international competition, especially from China, and older work force at home, Japan might "be forced out of the ranks of major international players and will risk losing [its] current plentiful and stable lifestyle". The outlook for Japanese science is grim. Read more...

The Buena Vista Social Club experiment

Michael Cook — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:13:36 GMT

The exuberant vitality of the Cuban band Buena Vista Social Club seems to confirm advice from the government newspaper Granma, that ageing is terrific. After all, 26% of Cubans will be 60 or over in 2025, the highest proportion in Latin America:. Read more...

Woody Allen’s classic analysis of over-population

Michael Cook — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:20:19 GMT

According to the Population Media Center, Woody Allen gave this speech to graduates in 1979, which was subsequently republished in the New York Times. I haven't been able to locate the original source. But it provides some helpful guidelines for thinking about population issues: "More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." Read more...