Friday, January 29, 2010
A few links
Hi, everyone! My apologies for taking this much time off. While I generate some actual content, here's a few links for you to peruse!
The Toronto Star reports that many displaced people from Port-au-Prince have found refuge in Haiti's smaller towns and cities.
At the Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin reproduces economist Paul Romer's argument that Haitians should be helped by letting them immigrate to countries where they will able to prosper, instead of forcing them to stay in their impoverished country while hoping for massive political and economic improvements that may well not come.
Elliott Abrams makes a similar argument in the Washington Post, arguing that a much larger Haitian diaspora would be able to send more remittances back to Haiti, thus helping the Haitian economy.
The Inter Press Service reports that high rates of poverty have made most of Nicaragua's young want to emigrate, joing a diaspora amounting to 13% of Nicaragua's 5.5 million.
Yabiladi.com reports that a tenth of Italy's foreigners are Moroccan.
The New Straits Times's Chi Mei Ling writes about the vast improvements in opportunities that migrants to richer countries could enjoy, and argues that some countries--Malaysia is specifically raised--could do a better job of enabling this improvement.
The New York Times takes a look at the controversial nature of daycare and the all-day school system in Germany, steps towards more equal labour-sharing within the household and greater opportunities for women, part of an effort towards boosting cohort fertility. Interestingly enough, East German women raised with the GDR's tradition of female daycare and high rates of female participation in the labour force are wondering why it took West German women so long.
Radio Australia describes a major problem facing foreign immigrants in Japan when it notes that out of one thousand nursing applicants from Indonesia and the Philippines, "30 were able to qualify for training in Japan, and of those, just five passed the national exam, giving them the right to work as nurses." Mastering the Japanese language, especially all three of its scripts, was a major problem; without the language, they couldn't get in.
In Canada's, the population of the province of Saskatchewan--recently a net exporter of immigrants--has grown as economic opportunities have improved.
The Latin American Herald Tribune notes that Chile's birth rate has fallen by more than half since 1950, from "an average of five children each in 1950 to fewer than two apiece in 2007" to a current TFR of 1.8.
The Inter Press Service's Chen Siwu and Li Yahong describe the provinces of China's "ant tribe," the well-educated young Chinese who have difficulties finding a job.
People in Mali are organizing to help and protect the sizable Malien labour diaspora in Europe, especially in France, lobbying for the regularization of this diaspora's members and helping Maliens deported back to their country.
Taiwan News notes the correspondence between Taiwanese women's low participation in Taiwan's labour force and the island nation's low cohort fertility.
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7 comments:
There are new news from Taiwan: The TFR, 1.05 in 2008 is estimated to be 1.02 in 2009, the lowest national TFR ever recorded. i'll post a link in a few hours, but it would be interesting for demography matters to have a focus on Taiwan. If things do not change, then Taiwan will be the fastest ageing society and the oldest when demography has stabilized.
I wonder if Brazil has a lower or higher TFR than Chile.
Germany saw negative net migration in 2009. It appears to have been somewhere from -20,000 to -70,000.
I think this is largely due to foreigners returning home. Especially retired guest workers are now enjoying their life at the coasts of the mediterranean sea in Italy, Greece or Turkey.
Odd that Taiwan would be lower than mainland China, where there was an official low fertility policy.
It might be worth making an entry about Germany's emigration trends.
Chile, Coasta, Rica, Brazil, and others definitely suggest that much of Latin America is entering subreplacement fertility.
World fertility must be either subreplacement or extremely close. The U.N. data seems to be mainly from 2007.
If India's fertility dropped substantially then the majority of the world's population probably are in subreplacement fertility states even if the figure is measured through relative population weight.
Meant Costa Rica in the above post.
> Radio Australia describes a major problem facing foreign immigrants in Japan when it notes that out of one thousand nursing applicants from Indonesia and the Philippines, "30 were able to qualify for training in Japan, and of those, just five passed the national exam, giving them the right to work as nurses." Mastering the Japanese language, especially all three of its scripts, was a major problem; without the language, they couldn't get in.
So, I take it that it is OK for people to come to work in the USA (or Australia) as nurses not knowing English but instead, say, Russian.
and, from the quoted article
> SEVENTINA: So difficult because there is hiragana, katakana, and kanji - kanji's so very difficult.
The emphasis is on Kanji. The others are not really that difficult.
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