tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-199496762012-01-31T07:57:36.443ZAdminnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4951100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-5083263000334783932012-01-18T23:48:00.004Z2012-01-19T00:11:18.374Z

Recently the Oregonian of Portland, OR USA reported that 2011 was a Banner year for Oregon Public Employee Retirement System retirements."Last year was a banner year for the Oregon Public Employee Retirement System in at least one respect: retirements.PERS officials say 8,279 members signed up during 2011 to start receiving benefits. Final numbers could go down a bit as some members opt to

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12392288826388903607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-78811560689594435552011-12-30T05:50:00.003Z2011-12-30T05:54:00.256Z

The population of the Czech Republic is similar to that of most European populations in its broad outlines: long life expectancies, below-replacement fertility rates, more-or-less substantial net immigration, all can be found in the Czech Republic. The most notable distinguishing factor of the Czech Republic's demographics lie in its size, now and in the relatively distant past: the Czech

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-14866551364211426582011-12-20T01:39:00.004Z2011-12-21T05:13:21.437Z

Kim Jong-Il may have died, but North Korea is still damned.Korea--the south, the north, the peninsula in toto--has been the subject of more than a few posts here at Demography Matters. Korea matters.Right now, the North and the South are marked by notable imbalances: the south has urbanized, has completed the demographic transition, is in fact at the level of lowest-low fertility, and has begun

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-76179213321839133272011-12-05T01:58:00.001Z2011-12-05T02:00:53.870Z

My response to World AIDS Day on Friday was a post at my blog reacting to the new book by doctor and Université de Sherbrooke professor Jacques Pepin, The Origins of AIDS. This book is a detailed examination of the origin of AIDS, piecing together the chain of events that allowed HIV to transition from minor zoonotic transfer that killed only a relatively few chimpanzee hunters and their

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-66050384821377847852011-11-05T22:35:00.000Z2011-11-05T22:36:09.334Z

The Migration Policy Institute has released an analysis Immigration Enforcement in the United States recently with some surprising conclusions about the flow of illegal immigrants in both directions across the US-Mexico border. Most notably, the analysis shows that “During the last decade, apprehensions in Southwest sectors peaked in 2000 (1,643,679) and hit their lowest point in 2010 (447,731)

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12392288826388903607noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-37256879209746844592011-10-16T06:51:00.001Z2011-10-16T06:54:09.785Z

The following chart shows the ratio of employed persons to the total population (from the FRB). The ratio spiked up in the 1970′s as women and baby boomers entered the workforce (with a short plunge due to the major recession of the early 1980′s) and stayed high until the economic crash that began in 2008.A person born in 1950 would have been 25 in 1975; entering the workforce as part of the

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12392288826388903607noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-29867152389577966272011-10-04T03:41:00.004Z2011-10-04T04:02:24.110Z

The Greek economy is locked in a catastrophic downwards spiral. The odds of things getting better soon are trivial.Greece is now caught in a Catch-22. The government must slash spending and raise taxes as a condition for getting the bailout cash it needs to pay for government salaries, pensions and operating expenses.But the deeper Greece cuts, the more the economy shrinks and the less revenue it

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-13146532508463675382011-09-17T03:31:00.005Z2011-09-17T04:19:04.698Z

Writer Mark Adomanis has an extended review of Eurabia theorist Mark Steyn's latest book, the subtly-titled America Alone: Get Ready for Armageddon. Adomanis is critical of Steyn's thesis, since despite his undeniable skill as a raconteur with a good grasp for compelling narratives, it's fundamentally confused if not outright self-contradictory. The core of Adomanis' argument deserves to be

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-29843679040378289652011-08-20T03:47:00.006Z2011-09-18T23:38:49.157Z

The concerns I expressed about Canadian immigration patterns and policies risking the reproduction of patterns of socioeconomic inequality linked to immigration status and ethnicity are all the more salient in light of this Statistics Canada report on projected changes in the Canadian labour force.Using a range of projection scenarios, the labour force is projected to grow to between 20.5 million

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-64023154234881981292011-08-17T03:35:00.002Z2011-08-17T04:04:22.626Z

In the right-leaning Canadian daily newspaper the National Post, policy analyst and writer Steve Lafleur recently had an article titled "Only more immigrants can save Canada’s economy" published. How many more immigrants, and why so many more? In his immigration policy remarks on July 19, Minister Jason Kenney acknowledged that Canada would need roughly one million immigrants per year in order

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-53917759755429477452011-08-07T10:27:00.002Z2011-08-07T10:43:10.640Z

I recently came across a site titled Burgh Diaspora authored by Jim Russell, a geographer who focuses on human capital issues particularly related to the city of Pittsburgh, but covers the wider area commonly referred to as the "Midwest" and "the Rust Belt"(referring to abandoned factories). Russell's point of view is unconventional and he challenges the conventional wisdom regarding the relative

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12392288826388903607noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-73073855386532297502011-07-25T03:39:00.008Z2011-07-25T04:00:57.827Z

Demography matters so much that one man, Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik, decided to become a mass murderer on account of what demography supposedly told him.As has been noted worldwide, the tendentious concept of "Eurabia"--a Europe doomed, via Muslim fecundity and the fecklessness or outright self-hatred of its governing elites, to become Muslim--is the single idea most responsible for

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-32102759379890170232011-07-14T03:48:00.004Z2011-07-14T04:03:01.637Z

Tonight, I thought I'd limit myself to posting four links dealing with the transformation of the Canadian census from a detailed mandatory form to a shorter optional questionnaire. (I've blogged about the issue here on several occasions, link to these post to be found here.)The Toronto-focused blog Torontoist's Max Hartshorn asked in "Can An Optional Questionnaire Fill the Shoes of the Long-Form

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-56414172480097661212011-07-13T03:48:00.006Z2011-07-13T04:02:56.273Z

A Deutsche Welle English-language article pointed me to an interesting new phenomenon, that of African immigration with Latin America as a final destination--most notably Argentina, but also Brazil. I first heard about the phenomenon back in 2009, but this largely anecdotal phenomenon seems to be getting more attention of late.It's rush hour on Avenida Rivadavia in the buzzing, pulsating quarter

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-87596404513100537252011-07-12T03:21:00.007Z2011-07-12T05:53:41.333Z

David P. Goldman, a writer and economist who first appeared writing for Asia Times under the moniker of "Spengler", has gained a lot of fame on the Internet for his articles, combining as they do hard figures with a pronounced conservatism and interest in pop demographics. Notwithstanding his sketchy past ties with the LaRouche movement, a rather conspiratorial movement claiming to favour a new

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-71593358549133743102011-06-19T01:31:00.002Z2011-06-19T01:38:24.607Z

The US CDC released a statement saying that "The broad-based decline in births and fertility rates from 2007 through 2009 is now well-documented...The provisional count of births in the United States for 2010 (12-month period ending December 2010) was 4,007,000. This count was 3 percent less than the number of births in 2009 (4,131,019) and 7 percent less than the all-time high of 4,316,233

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12392288826388903607noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-30705964177354368522011-06-13T20:58:00.000Z2011-06-13T20:59:32.040Z

Robert Hummer, a demographic researcher at the University of Texas discussed the topic of The Increasing Importance of Education for Longevity in the United States in an interview at the Population Reference Bureau website recently. The following are Professor Hummer’s responses to questions asked which I found thought provoking, with some of my commentary: “The relationship between

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12392288826388903607noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-48100869797050452532011-06-01T22:01:00.002Z2011-06-01T22:11:23.543Z

A local newspaper reports that Census figures show that “36 percent of Yamhill County households include children between the ages of 5 and 17, compared to only 30 percent statewide and 25 percent in Portland”, due to the county’s high Latino population. The report also quotes a researcher at PSU’s Population Research Center to the effect that: “Latino women have a 50 percent higher fertility

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12392288826388903607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-44825378662522632102011-05-31T03:39:00.003Z2011-05-31T03:55:40.933Z

As I blogged earlier this month, the radically changing appeal of different political parties to different ethnolinguistic and territorial communities played a major role in the massive surprises (Conservative majority, New Democratic Party official opposition, devastation of the Liberals and especially the Bloc Québécois) in this month's Canadian election.Éric Grenier of the Canadian political

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-16714965001789979402011-05-28T03:42:00.004Z2011-05-28T03:59:26.121Z

Earlier this month, the Burgh Diaspora reflected on the history of immigration to the United States, the variant forms of immigration sought by different states, the tensions between different American states over differing attitudes towards immigration and immigrants, and made a proposal: why not let subnational entities control their own immigration policies?I think we should embrace the

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-4420397462169357052011-05-26T17:07:00.004Z2011-05-26T19:15:56.661Z

This afternoon--this afternoon in Toronto, at least--I thought I'd share with you five interesting demographics-related blog posts.At Behind the Numbers, Mark Mather reports on the news that men in the United States are catching up to women in terms of life expectancy.Dealing with my earlier post about biased sex ratios in the South Caucasus, fellow Livejournaler demographer has written--

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-73692003757021467842011-05-26T03:43:00.002Z2011-05-26T03:52:20.066Z

I owe thanks to Sublime Oblivion's Anatoly Karlin for linking to Kit Gillet's article in the Guardian, "Vast Mongolian shantytown now home to quarter of country's population". It turns out that over the past two decades, the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator, has grown immensely, developing shantytowns as the traditional nomadic herding lifestyle of the Mongols becomes non-viable and despite the

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-5027180587447729482011-05-22T17:03:00.002Z2011-05-22T17:04:06.320Z

One of the reasons that I have always had a problem with Goldman Sachs' infamous notion of the BRIC economies was not the fact that it excluded other important economies such as e.g Chile or Indonesia, but rather that Brazil, India, Russia and China never belonged in the same group. The reason for this is largely because of demographics. Both Russia and China are consequently set to age

CVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16843402165210120665noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-14807187381080279622011-05-21T03:58:00.003Z2011-05-21T15:00:11.503Z

Earlier this month, my attention was caught by a Behind the Numbers blog post by Carl Haub which described how sex ratios in the countries of the South Caucasus--Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan--were among the most unbalanced in the world.Son preference and sex-selective abortion in China and India have frequently been in the news but who would ever have thought of it in the Caucasus countries?

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-56577233230807735782011-05-19T21:16:00.000Z2011-05-19T21:17:23.715Z

Demographic gender imbalance in favor of males due to prenatal gender selection and misogynism in India and China will probably handicap economic and social progress in these countries relative to the United States. The US will have a long term economic advantage due to its greater utilization of its human capital and the future social disruption likely in countries with large gender

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12392288826388903607noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-34837839415488340212011-05-17T02:52:00.004Z2011-05-17T02:58:21.234Z

Thanks have to go to Edward Hugh, via his Facebook presence, for sharing the news that the Lithuanian population has fallen catastrophically, to a much greater extent than earlier predictions had suggested. I'm honestly quite surprised by the scope of the decline.The Lithuania prime minister bemoaned his shrinking population Monday, as the results of a census revealed it has fallen 10 percent in

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-63484351621050307882011-05-11T21:25:00.000Z2011-05-13T20:40:16.836Z

Carl Haub at the Population Reference Bureau blog has pointed out that in 2009--likely because of the economic calamities of that year--has fallen significantly.The United States, long a target of envy by many European and East Asian industrialized countries for its “high” birth rate, has recently seen its own birth rate decline. The recession has been blamed and would seem to be a no-brainer as

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-22851641773547972452011-05-10T20:10:00.003Z2011-05-10T20:18:12.800Z

I wanted to point our readers to weblog Spike Japan's latest post, a report by the blogger of the visit he paid to Japan's Fukushima Prefecture, a district that not only suffered heavy damage from March's tsunami but is also having to cope with the damage and--perhaps worse--dangerous reputation from the Fukushima nuclear complex's meltdowns.Some lazy hacks have taken to calling everywhere along

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-78095527207021102742011-05-10T05:39:00.005Z2011-05-10T07:38:46.278Z

The United States Census Bureau completed its constitutionally mandated population count last year and has been gradually releasing data and analysis of the results. The most important information, that of state population totals, required to provide the basis for re-apportionment of seats in the US Congress as required by the Constitution was released first.In March of this year the Census

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12392288826388903607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-32767266662366263322011-05-08T03:41:00.002Z2011-05-08T03:44:39.408Z

My previous post here touched upon the remarkable consequences of the Canadian federal election held last Monday. The New Democratic Party made massive breakthroughs, especially in Québec, to become the official opposition, while the separatist Bloc Québécois was devastated (from 47 to 4 seats) and the Liberal Party was more than halved. Maps do a good job of illustrating this transformation.

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-84177102481442774872011-05-05T20:40:00.003Z2011-05-05T20:51:01.670Z

In the aftermath of Monday's federal election in Canada, which not only saw the creation of a Conservative majority in the federal parliament but the emergence of the social-democratic as the Official Opposition (thanks substantially to the near-total collapse of Québec's federal separatist Bloc Québécois party) and the reduction of the Liberal Party to third place, many questions about the

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-70808750425116685662011-04-29T01:14:00.008Z2011-05-05T20:44:39.157Z

Thanks to Facebook's Urmas for letting me know the surprising news that Estonia has become--so far as I know--the first former Soviet republic in Europe (Azerbaijan and the rest of the Caucasus, perhaps, excluded--thanks for the correction, Anatoly) to experience an excess of births over deaths since the fall of the Soviet Union. Yes, there seems to have been some improvement--I posted recently

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-15966075338669944192011-04-28T04:13:00.004Z2011-04-28T04:19:14.152Z

I wanted to share with our readers that friend of the blog Doug Saunders' book Arrival City, a book exploring the roles of cities in global migrations that I blogged about back in September, won Canada's prestigious Donner Prize literary award.Globe and Mail European bureau chief Doug Saunders has won the $35,000 Donner Prize for Arrival City: The Final Migration and Our Next World, which the

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-16249383357460497892011-04-28T03:10:00.003Z2011-04-28T03:48:30.271Z

I'd like to apologize for not posting in a while: offline life intervened. I have accumulated four links that I think might be of interest to you all.Over at Far Outliers, Joel quotes from Ryszard Kapuscinski's 2002 The Shadow of the Sun, describing how Tanzanian Sango-speakers (from central Tanzania) found ethnolinguistic kin in coastal Dar es Salaam.Following a ball of yarn, they will finally

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-30587411419039305062011-04-19T16:27:00.001Z2011-04-19T16:28:43.178Z

Negative population growth in much of the developed world through 2050 means that residential real estate prices will have a long term negative trend. For example, the Population Research Bureau predicts (pdf) that Japan’s population, now around 127 million, will shrink to roughly 95 million by 2050. This is due to the aged population with below replacement fertility. Assuming a

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12392288826388903607noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-53971170912875106772011-04-17T15:06:00.001Z2011-04-17T15:06:26.913Z

In a seminal paper [1] from 1958 Franco Modigliani and Merton H Miller showed why investors should not care about whether firms were financed with debt or equity. This led to the idea of the the debt irrelevance proposition and although the DIP is a theoretical benchmark rather than a real world rule the 1958 paper by Modigliani and Miller remains a

CVhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16843402165210120665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-18022595645841597182011-04-13T03:35:00.005Z2011-04-13T03:54:52.869Z

I've blogged here in the past about censuses, especially when censuses run into problems with accuracy or become politicized. In the western Balkans, censuses are considerably more problematic than in Canada or China, simply because demographics--in particular, ethnic identity--matter so significantly when it comes to power and boundary claims.Croatia, Kosovo and Montenegro have started to count

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-27190363757477049722011-04-12T03:04:00.004Z2011-04-12T03:57:50.168Z

The title of Barry Hatton's Associated Press article "Europeans seek new lives in old colonies" is a bit misleading. The article doesn't deal with "Europeans" generally, but rather is concerned almost entirely with Spain and Portugal, with passing mention of Greece and Ireland.Portuguese are packing their bags for booming Angola and Mozambique in Africa, and for emerging economic powerhouse

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-85679644728119257942011-04-09T03:36:00.005Z2011-04-09T04:04:17.004Z

Vancouver Sun journalist Douglas Todd's blog The Search has an interesting focus on exploring questions of religion and identity in and around and beyond Vancouver and northwestern North America. One of his most recent Vancouver-themed posts highlighted a remarkable fact: descendants of Celtic immigrants, especially Scots, have monopolized the office of mayor.The last three mayors of Vancouver -

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-45610484565091979022011-04-08T03:49:00.005Z2011-04-08T03:58:36.468Z

Over at my blog, I linked to a startling news item pointing to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science paper "Dispersal of Mycobacterium tuberculosis via the Canadian fur trade". The abstract?Patterns of gene flow can have marked effects on the evolution of populations. To better understand the migration dynamics of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, we studied genetic data from European M.

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-76890935794683562682011-04-07T02:49:00.004Z2011-04-07T03:10:15.310Z

The civil war in the West African country of Côte d'Ivoire is entering its final stages (I hope).Forces loyal to Ivory Coast presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara laid siege to incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo's residence on Thursday, after an attempt to pluck him from his bunker met with fierce resistance.Fighting continued in the economic capital Abidjan as Ouattara's forces tried to unseat

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-24515683282086540772011-03-29T03:56:00.004Z2011-03-29T04:03:18.172Z

An article about the recent surge in boat migration from Africa to Italy caught my attention with an interesting comparison.Italy has declared a state of emergency on the southern island of Lampedusa and appealed to the rest of the EU for help following the arrival of up to 5,000 people fleeing the political upheaval in Tunisia.Silvio Berlusconi's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said he had

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-48211989362959813942011-03-26T03:53:00.004Z2011-03-26T04:29:28.814Z

One theme that Burgh Diaspora has been exploring in its study of urban redevelopment is the likelihood that for residents of depressed areas--the blog focuses its attention on American cities, on places like Buffalo or better yet Detroit, where the census resulted revealed that the Motor City's population fell by a quarter over the past decade--emigration makes much more sense than staying. Ryan

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-49915662283941930662011-03-25T04:24:00.002Z2011-03-25T04:32:12.358Z

As an addendum to my previous post, I thought I'd share with our readers an essay from Himal South Asian, the December 2010 essay by Afsan Choudhary "Ripples from Bengal". Drawing from the history of his family, descended from mid-19th century migrants from what's now Bangladesh to what's now West Bengal, Choudary provides a potted history of migration in Bengal--at first within, then from--from

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-19711444206448752922011-03-25T02:16:00.006Z2011-03-27T07:48:34.194Z

The Economist's Asia blog Banyan has a post up exploring the mechanics of Bangladesh's upcoming census. The quality of information available to date, the reader learns, is poor and quite debatable.According to the adjusted 2001 census figures, Bangladesh’s population stood at 129.3m (an initial count put it at 124.4m; an adjustment for the standard rate of undercounting then boosted the figure).

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-66585656340523201792011-03-23T03:57:00.008Z2011-03-23T04:28:25.314Z

I'd like to start by reiterating the point of Edward's post Sunday, about the likelihood of the earthquake triggering systemic changes in Japan. Certainly the recovery process will be long: Bloomberg's Shamin Adam suggests, after the World Bank, that it might take five years for Japan to finish rebuilding.My take? Curiously and quite unexpectedly, I learned that the afflicted region of Tōhoku in

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-14510310176035557692011-03-20T11:12:00.000Z2011-03-20T11:24:48.484Z

As Japanese officials continue to toil away in what we all hope will be a successful bid to avert a worst case scenario nuclear meltdown even while thousands of Japanese still remain missing and unaccounted for, financial market participants across the globe have been struggling with themselves to answer one and the same question: just how serious are the economic consequences of all this

Edward Hughnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-59880283169166921392011-03-19T03:50:00.004Z2011-03-19T04:07:47.615Z

The Copts, Egypt's Christian minority with a population numbering in the millions, has taken on a fair amount of importance in recent years as the largest non-Muslim religious minority in the Middle East, in the Middle Eastern and Arab country with the largest population and the greatest amount of cultural and political heft. This potted history gets the details.The Copts, an indigenous Christian

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-5710464102798715012011-03-12T04:40:00.005Z2011-03-12T05:04:08.332Z

The prominence of migrants in--not from, but in--North Africa brought up by Libya is something that's explored, in three related (and two somewhat surprising) contexts, in Julio Godoy's Inter Press Service article "For Migrants, Crisis Worsens Economic Situation At Home". Godoy began the article by making the point that the flight of millions of labour migrants from Libya to the countries where

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-77491651747475751632011-03-09T04:38:00.004Z2011-03-09T04:53:41.264Z

A tweet from migration researcher Heaven Crawley pointed me to Hein de Haas, a research based at Oxford whose expertise in migration in northern Africa makes him a perfect go-to person for insight on migration as it affects Libya. His blog post "The real refugee crisis: African migrants trapped in Libya ". Libya is a transit country, true, but perhaps most importantly it's a destination country,

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-67704716023652537642011-03-04T03:26:00.004Z2011-03-04T04:58:59.876Z

I wanted to highlight the latest post at Behind the Numbers "What’s Changed (or Not) for Women Since the First International Women’s Day 100 Years Ago?". The demographics of different communities around the world were very different from the way they were no, not least because of the substantially inferior status of women. How different were they?In 1911, the U.S. population was 92 million, less

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-1980944092878640142011-03-01T03:57:00.004Z2011-03-01T04:41:14.364Z

The large numbers of refugees crossing from Libya into Tunisia or Egypt has been prominently featured in international news media. Over at BAG News photographer Alan Chin has a couple of photoessays from the border-region up (1, 2), the below evocative picture being located at the second post.A very high proportion of these refugees aren't Libyan citizens, but rather, immigrants of greater or

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-11321205207579709072011-02-24T03:34:00.004Z2011-02-24T03:48:06.372Z

The country of Malta has had many representations. Most recently, after its accession to the European Union in 2004 and to the Eurozone in 2008 while it became a major transit point and inadvertant destination for migrants, it has been imagined as a destination for migrants, perhaps peculiarly vulnerable owing to its small size and relatively tenuous economic state and national identity. Malta,

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-87017904856866598802011-02-23T18:54:00.003Z2011-02-24T20:03:18.408Z

A tweet from Torontonian (and Maltese-Canadian) Shawn Micallef pointed me to the news that two Libyan fighter jet pilots defected (with their pilots) Monday, and one Libyan warship following yesterday. This latest episode in ">Libyan-Maltese relations ads a new twist in relations between the two countries, in the 1970s and 1980s ">quite close owing to Maltese left-wing politician Dom Mintoff's

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-82571498512042018502011-02-22T04:35:00.003Z2011-02-22T05:03:02.642Z

It may not be well-known that plans were made, during the brief three decades of Italian rule, to engage in the extensive colonization of Libya, in many respects as thorough and disruptive as French colonization as neighbouring Algeria.Once pacification had been accomplished, fascist Italy endeavored to convert Libya into an Italian province to be referred to popularly as Italy's Fourth Shore. In

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-65590264923606316142011-02-15T04:42:00.004Z2011-02-15T05:03:27.298Z

The metaphorical aftershocks of the Canadian government's decision to forego the mandatory long-form census in favour of a voluntary household survey, triggering the resignation of then-Chief Statistician Munir Sheikh and creating one of the more unusual national political controversies in recent Canadian history, continued today with the interview of Wayne Smith, the new Chief Statistician of

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-29074213720558711452011-02-09T04:41:00.004Z2011-02-09T05:02:42.515Z

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in southern Africa is something this blog has dealt with before, though mainly specifically relating to South Africa. Back in September 2006, Edward Hugh identified South Africa as having a very unusual mortality pattern--elevated mortality in younger cohorts--that wouldn't help its future. Zimbabwe hasn't featured, even though it was once the second industrial economy of

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-80495712843551897292011-02-08T03:57:00.005Z2011-02-08T04:21:29.782Z

My latest post at my other group blog, History and Futility, was entitled "Why Eurabia?" Why, in the face of the abundant evidence that the prospect of a Muslim majority in any European country--indeed, of particularly large Muslim minorities anywhere--do large numbers of people (like Glenn Beck) predict an imminent caliphate in Europe?Eurabia's fundamentally an ideology of revenge ("Ha, ha, you

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-37075174351667286972011-02-03T18:09:00.007Z2011-02-08T02:31:40.241Z

The ongoing revolution in Egypt is a concern to Israel, since regardless of the peace treaty theirs is a "cold peace". War's unlikely, but a regime that expressed popular dislike for Israeli policies and for Jews wouldn't be a very good Israeli partner. The Globe and Mail has pointed out a perhaps-unexpected consequence of a deteriorating Egypt-Israeli relationship: there could be more illegal

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-46126433099462086552011-02-03T03:35:00.000Z2011-02-03T03:36:11.078Z

A post on Egypt's population is coming up, I assure you all. The importance of the subject merits doing it right. For now Suffice it to say that Egypt's key to the future of the regions of Nasser's Three Circles, the Arab world, Africa, and wider Islamic civilization.In the meantime, let's take a look at South Africa, the other middle-income African country of global import. South Africa's

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-22906669371544250542011-02-01T18:04:00.007Z2011-02-01T18:10:51.644Z

Co-blogger Claus Vistesen has, at his blog Alpha Sources, a post up taking a look at migration in post-crash Spain. It's a well-known fact that Spain, a massive net exporter of population in the 20th century, became in the first decade of the 21st century a famously important destination for immigrants. Claus' conclusion? Despite a disastrous economy, Spain needs to keep its immigrant

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-55032909683209969502011-01-27T00:46:00.009Z2011-01-27T03:31:07.530Z

Back in September at my blog, I linked to an interesting news story describing how the Taiwanese village of Houtong, located just outside the capital of Taipei, has managed to find new life after its coal mining economy went under thanks to its large feral cat community.Visitors' raves on local blogs have helped draw cat lovers to fondle, frolic and photograph the 100 or so resident felines in

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-50311989632337286072011-01-27T00:40:00.004Z2011-02-11T05:05:28.501Z

The sport of Gaelic football, one of the prototypical Gaelic games revived as part of the Irish national awakening of the 19th century, finds itself threatened thanks to the Irish economic collapse. The County Clare branch of the Gaelic Athletic Association--the governing body of the sport--warned that the young men playing the game are leaving the country.Clare senior hurling manager Ger ‘

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-84305473977263591622011-01-26T17:31:00.004Z2011-01-26T17:40:27.681Z

Behind the Numbers pointed to a post by Richard Cincotta taking a look at the Tunisian revolution from a demographic perspective: do the demographics look to be helpful? Short answer: hopefully yes.How long could it take Tunisia to move from Freedom House’s “not free” category (7.0 to 5.5) to “free” (2.5 to 1.0)? South Korea ascended in five years (1983-88). For Indonesia, the same journey took

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-25036174329406551322011-01-14T04:05:00.003Z2011-01-14T21:14:58.042Z

Behind the Numbers, the US Population Reference Bureau's blog, has a post by Carl Haub highlighting the very low fertility rate in Taiwan. Why? It's the Chinese zodiac's Year of the Tiger.Taiwan’s government has just announced that the country’s total fertility rate (or TFR, the average number of children a woman would bear in her lifetime if the birth rate of a particular year were to remain

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-67488077571274887072011-01-12T04:32:00.005Z2011-01-15T04:26:47.388Z

The speed of change in Tunisia has been remarkable. Just to recap:Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled his North African country last night after a month of violent street protests over unemployment and corruption, leaving the government in the hands of his long-serving prime minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi.Ghannouchi, who declared himself acting president late yesterday, will meet with

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-87449744076511026892011-01-07T21:59:00.004Z2011-01-16T04:56:30.133Z

Academic and blogger Laura Agustín's blog The Naked Anthropologist is a blog relating to particular types of migration, particularly but not only those involving sex workers. Some of her more recent posts, for instance, include a mention of people-smuggling shown in a John Le Carré novel, the refusal of Chinese sex workers in Congo to be "rescued" from their jobs, or a link post covering such

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-54977629821917444022011-01-06T23:32:00.004Z2011-01-06T23:48:50.584Z

I'm fond of statistics; I'm equally fond of innovative presentation of statistics. That's why I owe LiveJournal's centralasian thanks for linking to this clip from The Joy of Stats, a recent BBC show hosted by Swedish doctor and statistician Hans Rosling. The clip's title? "200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes."If you want to fast-forward through, the presentation proper starts at 0:31 and a

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-63147382118259029132011-01-06T02:47:00.005Z2011-01-06T03:10:52.858Z

The Global Sociology Blog is located on my blogroll at A Bit More Detail, and a regular read with its sharp and acerbic comments on the world as it relates to the social sciences. Yesterday, the author reacted to Robert Kunzig's National Geographic article "7 Billion" and associated video, by observing that "population does not grow homogeneously but largely in the periphery."As illustration,

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-37172113330962702872011-01-05T03:46:00.005Z2011-01-05T04:06:06.632Z

Back in August, a friend of mine, Andrew Barton wrote about the minor fictional sub-genre of invasion literature, which developed in Britain in the late 19th century in response to fears that the country was vulnerable to any number of military threats (first France, then Germany). It spread around the world, adopted in countries which feared their neighbours, adopted and maintained even to this

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-15833400230148002792011-01-01T00:04:00.003Z2011-01-01T00:24:50.847Z

Yesterday's post dealt with the demographic patterns of the past. What of the future?I'm making these predictions keeping in mind what I noted in November about the huge error bars which can apply to predictions--especially but not only if they're not made conservatively. There are all kinds of feedback loops in different populations, with the selective incorporation and implementation of

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-22744904196013801702010-12-31T03:52:00.008Z2011-01-03T20:14:53.093Z

Vaclav Smil is a writer and researcher who occupies an enviable niche with his studies the interactions between human beings, the societies they create, and the natural environments that they inhabit, aiming to determine things like the factors influencing the sustainability of human civilization. One of his more recent books, this year's Why America Is Not A New Rome, was written with the aim of

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-90346532445566393222010-12-27T19:45:00.004Z2010-12-28T03:01:36.360Z

Spike Japan, maintained by Tokyo blogger Richard Hendy, is one of the more interesting blogs out there, certainly among the more original blogs taking a look at the intersection of demographics with economics. Documenting his travels to areas of Japan outside of metropoli like Tokyo in acute essays and well-chosen photos, places that are slowly (or quickly) falling apart owing to a combination of

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-45032548177936795072010-12-20T23:04:00.004Z2010-12-20T23:40:06.363Z

One of the less cheerful tags ar my personal blog is "three torontos". The tag comes from a phrase in the title of a 2007 report by the University of Toronto's David Hulchanski, who found that Toronto's neighbourhoods could be divided into three categories based on patterns of income growth: neighbourhoods which saw significant income growth over the 1970-2000 period; neighbourhods which

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-25110531496971927892010-11-29T13:48:00.009Z2010-11-30T04:14:38.737Z

One very notable difference between North Korea and South Korea, quite apart from their broadly different demographic profiles, lies in the ethnic and national composition of the populations of the two Koreas. These differences might even explain part of North Korea's hostility towards the South.North Korea's population is exceptionally homogeneous. Although North Korea's ties with Communist

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-29293918180692243452010-11-27T03:53:00.004Z2010-11-27T04:53:06.070Z

The recent shelling of South Korea's Yongpyeong island by North Korean-South has obviously been quite disturbing. It likely won't come to war, notwithstanding being the most substantial confrontation between the Koreas since the armistice. If it did come to war ... Anatoly Karlin's scenario for a second Korean war does have an eventual South Korean-US victory over the North, but one coming at

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-24081308737152974542010-11-25T14:08:00.005Z2010-11-25T14:26:35.207Z

The long-form census so vital for Statistics Canada's production of information--something I blogged about this September--is not coming back. Statistical agencies elsewhere in the world have taken note, like the European Statistcal System in its Governing Advisory Board's annual report.Official statistics have to be professionally independent, strong and of high quality. One indispensable

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-30496483978701061362010-11-24T16:24:00.006Z2010-11-24T16:46:53.825Z

This morning, I thought I'd share five population-related blog posts of interest with you. (It is still morning in Toronto.)At the Economist's Eastern Approaches blog, notice was made of a recent conference on the plight of the Romani of Romania. There's room for hope, but then, it also seems like the Romanian government and many ordinary people would like the Romani to, quietly, take advantage

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-88670765341935163562010-11-20T02:20:00.001Z2010-11-20T03:53:33.993Z

Reading yesterday's Financial Times, I found the insert describing how the Channel Island of Guernsey with its financial sector was coping with the global financial crisis interesting. (It's doing well, apparently.) My curiosity was piqued by a passing mention that Guernsey had an official policy of limiting population. What, I wondered, was up with that?Guernsey is an island with a land area of

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-56934414826636268802010-11-18T20:11:00.003Z2010-11-18T22:29:51.076Z

One theme we at Demography Matters have explored in the past is the substantial new phenomenon of Senegalese migration to Spain. Two news articles on some of the problems the people living in communities dependent on remittances face jumped out at me.The Spiegel International's Dialika Krahe has an article, "The Second Niodior: Spanish Wages Keep African Island Afloat", examining how the island

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-86657834127464834342010-11-18T20:07:00.005Z2010-11-18T22:31:22.917Z

I thought our readers might be interested in the Spiegel International article "Eastern Germany Confronts Skilled Labor Shortage". Finally, the low fertility rates and mass emigration are starting to bite.The eastern states are ahead of the rest of the country in at least one respect: From Rügen in the north to Plauen in the south, the lack of skilled workers that western states will not fully

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-23089635496671578712010-11-15T20:51:00.006Z2010-11-15T21:04:08.111Z

I want to begin this post by stating that this brief piece from the Baltic Course seems excessively compressed to me, and suspect it doesn't do Mezs' arguments about the tenuous nature of Latvia's demographic patterns justice.In a hundred years, the population of Latvia will have dropped to around 10 percent of its current level; if current demographic trends continue, there will be only 300,000

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-49409412816732510872010-11-12T03:33:00.006Z2010-11-12T22:30:14.495Z

The 11th of November is Remembrance Day in Canada and other Commonwealth countries, known as Veterans Day in the United States or as Armistice Day in France and elsewhere. As a commemoration of the first industrialized mass war of the 20th century and prototype for the broader second, it's a unifying symbol.War impacts demographics. Obviously. My co-blogger The Oberamtmann at History and Futility

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-17081417723025646532010-11-08T06:23:00.000Z2010-11-08T06:24:59.980Z

Bloomberg has released an excellent report India’s Diabetes Epidemic Strikes Millions Who Escape Poverty which describes a new health problem for that country, which appears to be due to previously unknown factors. The scale of the problem today is described: The International Diabetes Federation in October 2009 ranked India as the country with the most diabetics worldwide. The umbrella

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12392288826388903607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-18352592308054851672010-11-06T03:08:00.005Z2010-11-06T03:46:23.717Z

I'm a big fan of Canadian journalist Dan Gardner's new book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway. Concerned with examining why so many confident people make so many predictions which tend to almost always be wrong, Gardner examines the many fields in which predictions are made. Demographics feature prominently."To look into the future is not always an idle

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-46208015738340500042010-11-02T03:47:00.003Z2010-11-02T03:57:55.786Z

Writing for the Globe and Mail, Mark Mackinnon has been writing a series of articles about the problems that the Chinese government is facing in this year's census. The government is trying hard, but the serious consequences that may face people who aren't doing what they should--living in places where they lack the registration, but especially having too many children--will limit the census'

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-29655005713860251922010-10-30T03:50:00.006Z2010-10-30T04:00:27.374Z

The New York Times's Opinionator featured an article, John Allen Paulos' "Stories vs. Statistics", that caught my attention. I'll quote at length, if you'll forgive me for that.[T]he notions of probability and statistics are not alien to storytelling. From the earliest of recorded histories there were glimmerings of these concepts, which were reflected in everyday words and stories. Consider the

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-89285336511456314682010-10-27T02:40:00.004Z2010-10-27T03:53:09.081Z

I've recently written about how the gutting of Statistics Canada's long-form census is an act of little value. Just recently, I came across an argument that made something of a case that it was a very good thing Iraq's unable to undertake a census at all. Reuters described the situation this January.The long-delayed count, which may shut down the country for two days in October, is also expected

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-41340331141305840872010-10-23T03:45:00.004Z2010-10-23T03:54:31.947Z

Anti-immigrant sentiments aside in immigrant-receiving countries at all levels of economic development, the necessary existence of 3D jobs--alternatively Dirty, Dangerous and Demeaning, Dirty, Dangerous and Demanding or Dirty, Dangerous and Difficult) and the reluctance of natives to take these jobs ensures that immigration will continue at some level. Gregory Viscusi's Bloomberg BusinessWeek

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-3455749945422078532010-10-22T03:40:00.004Z2010-10-22T03:52:12.328Z

An article recently popped up, Yabiladi.com's "Expulsion de centaines de Subsahariens vers la frontière algérienne" ("Expulsion of hundreds of sub-Saharan Africans towards the Algerian border"), commenting on a recent e3xpulsion of illegal migrants from Morocco.In a statement, [Médicins Sans Frontières] said that between 600 and 700 people were arrested during police operations in several cities

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-28467730849145071382010-10-21T03:30:00.003Z2010-10-21T03:40:18.586Z

Some time ago, Tunisia's GlobalNet had an article examining the latest trends in the Tunisian population, in the article "Démographie, la Tunisie face à un 'trop-plein' de femmes" ("Demography, Tunisia faces a surplus of women").The National Statistics Institute (INS) has released its 2009 survey on population and housing conducted on a sample of 162,500 families spread over 6500 districts in all

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-70685910718579716232010-10-20T03:38:00.003Z2010-10-20T04:00:05.622Z

Over at Foreign Policy, demographer Philip Longman presents a basic overview for that magazine's readers about aging: its scope, its presence in the Third World, its heavy impact in Asia, and so on. Readers of this blog might be interested in his summary. Me, I was interested in his essay's conclusion.The connection between a society's wealth and its demographics is cyclical. At first, with

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-36425408478600955032010-10-05T03:40:00.003Z2010-10-05T03:59:10.314Z

This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Robert G. Edwards, the British scientist who developed the technology of in-vitro fertilizationToday nearly four million people have been born thanks to in vitro fertilization, which occurs when sperm is injected into an egg cell outside the body and the resulting embryo is implanted back into the womb. (Watch a video of how in vitro

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-68463240173874351712010-09-28T03:35:00.004Z2010-09-28T03:58:49.680Z

Tonight, I was lucky enough to see Canadian journalist Doug Saunders present his new book Arrival City here in Toronto. This book, examining the global phenomenon of rural-to-urban migration--in low-, middle-, and high-income countries, within countries and between countries--makes the case, as summarized by Mark Kingwell in his recent review, that rural-to-urban migration is a very good thing

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-2018345065736245082010-09-24T03:23:00.006Z2010-09-24T03:50:46.062Z

The American law blog The Volokh Conspiracy is an unusual place to find guest blogs about migration driven by environmental change, but Matthew Kahn, author of the book Climatopolis does have a guest post there. He argues--as he does here, for instance--that migrations triggered by climate change need not be catastrophic, and in fact can be quite manageable or even net economic pluses. A central

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-34637818419192620082010-09-21T03:49:00.006Z2010-09-21T09:41:42.216Z

Co-blogger Scott Peterson recently linked to a study suggesting that in the United States--and by implication, other high-income countries and/or countries with high rates of obesity--the expected sustained increase in life expectancy might not happen, indeed, might be reversed.“Over the next few decades, life expectancy for the average American could decline by as much as 5 years unless

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-51635494362656276932010-09-16T03:50:00.005Z2010-09-16T03:58:41.477Z

The old age dependency ratio--the proportion of people over 65 to people of working age (15 to 64 years of age) is the standard metric for measuring a population's aging, and by extension, the degree to which an aging country's economy will have to somehow cope with the rapid growth of pension expenditures, the contraction of the workforce, et cetera. Now, a new study out of Vienna's IIASA makes

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-40361044642228044222010-09-10T03:47:00.003Z2010-09-10T03:58:42.754Z

Continuing from yesterday's post examining Morocco as a source of migrants for Europe, recently on my own blog, A Bit More Detail, riffed from Geocurrents' posts on the contested enclaves on the Strait of Gibraltar, examining the positions of British Gibraltar on the Spanish shore and Spanish Ceuta and Melilla on the Moroccan. Now, at Morocco's Yabiladi, Ibrahim Kone's article "Demographics to

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-66338749907544331092010-09-09T03:47:00.005Z2010-09-09T03:57:00.684Z

Some time ago I came across an interesting article at Morocco Board, Hein de Haas and Simona Vezzoli's "Migration & Development Experiences of Morocco and Mexico". Their thesis is simple.Over the second half of the 20th century, Mexico and Morocco have evolved into main sources of predominantly low-skilled migrant labor in the United States and the European Union, respectively. Despite large

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19949676.post-5278027133377011802010-08-24T03:52:00.002Z2010-08-24T03:56:49.255Z

Unsurprisingly, Rwandan presidential incumbent Paul Kagame has won another term in office with 93% of the vote. Notwithstanding serious concerns about the fairness of the vote--some political opponents jailed, others exiled, others mysteriously killed--no one seems particularly eager to condemn the elections because of the moral credibility that Kagame earned by his military defeat of Rwanda's

Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04707497864911987241noreply@blogger.com0