On cat islands and the wider potential of rewilding

I'm still fond of a old post of mine that I had made back in January 2011, "What the cats of Houtong say about the population of Taiwan". That post, drawing on a September 2010 post I made at my blog, examined 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 Houtong, one of several industrial communities in decline since Taiwan's railroads electrified and oil grew as a power source.

Most towns have never recovered, but this tiny community of 200 is fast reinventing itself as a cat lover's paradise.

"It was more fun than I imagined," said 31-year-old administrative assistant Yu Li-hsin, who visited from Taipei. "The cats were clean and totally unafraid of people. I'll definitely return."

On a recent weekday afternoon, dozens of white, black, grey and calico-coloured cats wandered freely amid Houtong's craggy byways, while visitors captured the scene with cellphone cameras and tickled the creatures silly with feather-tipped sticks.

I went on to connect this with a variety of phenomena, including the decline of peripheral communities, the rise of international migration and tourism in Taiwan, even the demographic regime of the cats themselves. I had fun.

Last Saturday, I reported on another cat community, this one an entire island, in Japan. Early in March, The Atlantic featured a Reuters photo essay by Thomas Peter depicting the cats of the Japanese island of Aoshima. As one source describes it, Aoshima--located off of the coast of the major Japanese island of Shikoku--is an island with an aging human population and a rapidly growing cat population. This latter gives it some economic heft that it would otherwise ave lacked.

A remote island in southern Japan is home to 22 people and more than 120 cats.

Aoshima is a dwindling fishing community of elderly people who live mainly off retirement benefits. The cats were originally brought over to the island to deal with mice plaguing fishing boats. But they've since multiplied as there are no natural predators.

Tourists have been flocking to the island off Ehime prefecture on a ferry that runs twice twice a day. Cat lover Makiko Yamasaki, 27, said: "I came here looking to relax. And as for how is it? Well there is a ton of cats here, then there was this sort of cat witch, who came out to feed the cats, which was quite fun. So I'd want to come again."

Many more photos are available at the links, if you are curious.

The specific phenomenon of the "cat island" or "cat village" seems to be relatively common in East Asia. I have also read of the Pacific-coast cat island of Tashirohima received attention after being spared by the 2011 tsunami. What these communities, in Japan and Taiwan and perhaps elsewhere, all seem to share in common is a recent sharp decline in human populations, coupled with a growth of cat populations. It's reasonable to imagine that, in decaying human settlements, cats might do reasonably well, taking shelter in human constructions and feeding off of prey. The extent to which this is sustainable may be another question entirely. The cats of Aoshima, at least, seem to depend on regular feedings. Can they count on these indefinitely into the future, as Aoshima further depopulates? Will cat tourism bring in enough income to keep the whole cycle going? Will it lways do so?

This specific phenomenon fits within a broader context of rewilding, of the return of wild animals and ultimately wilderness to peripheral areas experiencing depopulation. One example of this is the return of wolves to East Germany in the past decades, aided in part by the depopulation of much of rural East Germany. Another example I'm personally familiar with is the gradual return of woodland to Prince Edward Island over the past century, as subsistence agriculture has disappeared and marginal lands fallen out of production.

It is estimated that in the early 1800s, forests would have covered some 95 per cent of this province; the average age of these trees would have been in the hundreds of years.

[. . .]

According to the State of the Island’s Forests report in 2002, only 9,000 hectares of this hardwood dominant shade tolerant forest remains in scattered patches throughout the island. By 1900, the population of PEI had drastically increased to 100,000 and only about 30% of the land was left in forests. During those 100 years, much of the best forested land went under the axe or was burned to make room for agriculture. Many species of mammals were extripated from the island forests, such as bears, fisher, marten, and piliated woodpeckers. Of those remaining forests, many had been disturbed by cuttings, fires, and cattle grazing. Another big problem was the introduction of diseases that has devastated the American Beech and American Elm on PEI as well as other areas.

[. . .]

According to the State of the Forest report in 2002, only 9,000 ha of forested area on PEI is in a late sussessional shade dominant forest state, typical of the Acadian Forest. That accounts for less than 2% of the entire island, that at one time, was entirely covered in trees. Since 1900, there was a gradual increase in forest coverage, mostly due to farm abandonment. Today, approximately 50% of the island’s land mass of 560,000 hectares is forested, but much of it is in poor condition, growing on poor worn-out agricultural fields. Much of the this has grown up into what’s termed old-field white spruce. This is an even aged stand of poor quality trees, growing on poor quality soils.

In the decline of the human population of many regions lies the potential for a managed return of wilderness. The Rewilding Europe website goes into great detail about the potential for rewilding projects around Europe. The Landscape Institute's James Richardson looked at eastern Portugal, suggesting that rural depopulation could be environmentally advantageous. (Perhaps also economically, if eco-tourism becomes popular?)

We arranged to meet with Pedro Prata, the lead advisor of the Western Iberia locality of Rewilding Europe in the Coa valley around 3 hours north of Idanha-a-Nova. Rewilding Europe is an organisation that aims to ‘rewild’ areas of Europe undergoing land abandonment. RE see it as an opportunity for the regeneration of land that has been misused for hundreds if not thousands of years and their ideas support many of our own. The Mediterranean climate and soils are actually ill-suited to the kind of agriculture practiced north of the Pyrenees and Alps.

Pedro showed us around their reserve which they have purchased from local landowners, and through planting native trees, grazing by native breeds of horse and cattle (in association with the Tauros Project), as well as reducing fire, are beginning to establish a regenerating ecosystem in the Coa valley. Although Rewilding Europe is mainly focused on nature conservation, its rewilding projects have important associated effects such as local employment in ecotourism, helping to balance the water table through vegetation as well as having a positive effect on game species such as partridge and rabbits which spill over from the reserve; hunting is a very important activity in Iberia.

We were able to learn many things from the visit including the vulnerability of traditional and sustainable cork-oak forests when too high a percentage of trees are harvested, removing their natural fireproofing. We learned that the area generally receives a good deal of water, but that this water falls seasonally and is often stored centrally and not distributed, or is lost to evaporation or surface run-off before it can be captured by the soil. We learned that despite appearances, the local areas do not provide the amenities such as reliable transport, education, employment and health care that would otherwise keep young people in the area.

A key thing that we have come to appreciate is that there are reasons that people have abandoned the land, and that we should not be trying to address the issue by forcing people, through our strategies, back into agriculture in inherently difficult areas. The abandonment will be used in our respective projects as an opportunity to encourage ecological regeneration, and the boost in productivity and economic activity that this can bring through a reconsideration of the value of nature and through outdoor pursuits.

The project prompts questions about areas of the UK that, were it not for subsidies, would also be undergoing abandonment, such as our sheep-grazed uplands and intensively managed grouse moors. In the UK, the positive effects of rewilding on these bleak areas would be easy to appreciate – native reforestation and the benefits to flood reduction, water quality, carbon storage, biodiversity, diverse and increased economic activity, recreational activity to name but a few.

Can we take, from the growth of the cat island phenomenon and the wider context of rewilding, clues as to how we should react to the future of rural depopulation? I am actually being serious when I say that we can and we should.

"Taiwan's Growing Multiculturalism"

Sinclaire Prowse's article in The Diplomat noting the continuing evolution of Taiwan, via international migration, into a more multicultural society is worth a read. A sample below:

Migration trends over the past two decades have seen an impressive increase in the number of foreign permanent residents in Taiwan from 1,649 in 2005 to 10,811 at the end of 2014 (excluding residents from mainland China). In 2014, for the first time, the number of first and second-generation immigrants living in Taiwan exceeded the population of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples.

Two of the biggest factors leading to the recent increase in immigration to Taiwan include the creation of permanent residence in 1999 and the relaxation of rules applying to the financial, health, and criminal records of immigrants. Some of the largest groups of foreign residents now living in Taiwan include Indonesian, Vietnamese, Japanese, and American-born nationals.

At the end of 2014, important draft amendments to the Nationality Act were announced. Under the proposed reforms, foreigners applying for Republic of China (ROC) citizenship will not have to renounce their original citizenship. These changes would mean that foreigners could be dual-nationals.

This is a very important step in the right direction. But Taiwan faces large challenges as it grows into a more cosmopolitan society.

Taiwan’s past immigration policies have reflected a perception that Taiwan is essentially a mono-cultural society based on a narrow shared ethnicity and culture. Public and political discourse on multiculturalism has solely focused on the indigenous population, Chinese mainlanders, the Hokkien and the Hakka people. Combined with Taiwan’s isolated political situation, this has not aided Taiwan in becoming more open, competitive, and vibrant.

On China becoming a country of immigrants

A South China Morning Post article, Jenni Marsh's "Afro-Chinese marriages boom in Guangzhou: but will it be 'til death do us part'?", published last year caught my attention. This article on the substantial African immigrant community in Guangzhou described how this community, and its descendants, were becoming embedded in the city. Ultimately stemming from the human connections made by China with West African countries during China's Maoist era of internationalism, economic migration has created a large and growing community.

"Chocolate City" OR "Little Africa", as it has been dubbed by the Chinese press, is a district of Guangzhou that is home to between 20,000 and 200,000, mostly male, African migrants (calculations vary wildly due to the itinerant nature of many traders and the thousands who overstay their visas).

Africans began pouring into China after the collapse of the Asian Tigers in 1997 prompted them to abandon outposts in Thailand and Indonesia. By exporting cheap Chinese goods back home, traders made a killing, and word spread fast. Guangzhou became a promised land.

It is easy to believe that every African nation is represented here, with the Nigerian, Malian and Guinean communities the most populous. But Little Africa is a misnomer; in the bustling 7km stretch from Sanyuanli to Baiyun, in northern Guangzhou, myriad ethnicities co-exist.

Uygurs serve freshly baked Xinjiang bread to Angolan women balancing shopping on their heads while Somalis in flowing Muslim robes haggle over mobile phones before exchanging currency with Malians in leather jackets, who buy lunch from Turks sizzling tilapia on street grills, and then order beer from the Korean waitress in the Africa Bar. Tucked away above a shop-lined trading corridor, the bar serves food that reminds Africans of home - egusi soup, jollof rice, fried chicken.

Whereas Chungking Mansions conceals Hong Kong's low-end trading community, in dilapidated Dengfeng village - Little Africa's central thoroughfare - the merchants, supplied by Chinese wholesalers, are highly visible. And it's in this melee of trade where most Afro-Chinese romances blossom.

I would also recommend this Al Jazeera photo essay.

I've blogged here before about immigration into China. In August 2010 I touched upon Russian immigration into China, as people migrated from the Russian Far East to a relatively more prosperous and dynamic Chinese northeast. In a 2011 post on Taiwan, I mentioned in passing the settlement of large numbers of Taiwanese in the Shanghai area. (I recommend one 2009 paper by Yen-Fen Tseng and another by Ping Lin looking at the phenomenon of Taiwanese migration to the Chinese mainland.) In passing while writing on Korea, I've mentioned here and here that many desperate North Korean female refugees have married Chinese farmers. Southeast Asian women seem to be following suit in southwestern China.

China has the potential to become a major destination for immigrants. China has become a global economic power, with interests and relationships worldwide, connections that can be capitalized upon by migrants if there are niches. With a China that is become increasingly rich, especially compared to much of the Third World, with an increasingly low birth rate and a soon-to-shrink working-age population, there are niches. These niches might well attract large numbers of migrants from relatively poorer countries, but they might also attract migrants from relatively richer countries. I mentioned Russia and Taiwan above, while South Koreans are also noteworthy. Looking to the experiences to date from Taiwan and Hong Kong with international migration, I would suggest that Southeast Asia might well become a source of migrants. Will the Philippines become a major source country? What of Thailand and Vietnam? What about an African continent that China is building more ties with? Et cetera.

What will the overall impact be on China's population dynamics? I honestly can't say. With on the order of 1.4 billion people living in China, it would take huge numbers of migrants--tens, if not hundreds of millions, of people--to create change on a large scale. Then again, change on smaller scale, on the level of a province or a metropolis, is also possible. It's arguably already starting to happen. Will this impact the international migration choices of Southeast Asians, if a migrant-accepting China is next door? Is China at all ready for this prospect?

How will the Chinese people and state react to these changes? Any number of outcomes is possible. It will be a privilege to see what will happen in the coming decades.

Reflecting on migration in China through Taiwan and Hong Kong

International migration is increasingly a fact of life in Chinese East Asia. We can see this most clearly by looking at Taiwan and Hong Kong, two polities which not only are--at the very least--autonomous from the government of the People's Republic but which, by virtue of their high levels of economic and human development, representing the end goal that much of urban China seems within reach of attaining.

Ji-Ping Lin's January 2012 overview essay at the Migration Policy Institute noted how Taiwan was increasingly seeing substantial international labour mobility, not only across the Taiwan Straits with China but with Southeast Asia. Increasingly strong Taiwanese ties with Southeast Asian economies, demands for particular kinds of labour, along with the common East Asian theme of Southeast Asian women migrating to richer countries to pursue marriage with locals, have led to the migration of hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asians to Taiwan, particularly of Vietnamese, Filipinos and Indonesians. As the Taiwanese population rapidly ages while access to the Chinese labour market remains problematic given issues of Taiwanese identity, it would not seem like a good idea to bet against the arugment that Taiwan in coming decades will be increasingly multicultural.

The similar sort of thing appears to be happening in Hong Kong. New immigrants to Hong Kong from mainland China are politically quite controversial, not least because of the alleged propensity of many female migrants to move to Hong Kong with the intent of giving birth to children with Hong Kong residency rights. The position of Filipinos and Indonesians, collectively numbering a quarter-million people and working particularly as domestic labourers, is also noteworthy. Hong Kong is more integrated with China than Taiwan because Hong Kong is in fact part of China, but even this autonomous Chinese city sees substantial migration from both Chinese and non-Chinese sources.

Why does this non-Chinese immigration even occur, when there are so many potential migrants from China? Particularly in the case of Taiwan, restrictions on Chinese immigration have much to do with concerns over national identity and the question of how much integration with China is desirable. Even if these restrictions were not in place, I would also suggest that some amount of international migration would be inevitable. Leaving aside issues like China's hukou system which limits migration to urban areas, Taiwan and Hong Kong are highly international polities. They have abundant and deep ties with non-Chinese regions, perhaps most noticeably for migration purposes with Southeast Asian countries, but not only with these. (One childhood acquaintance from Canada, I've recently learned, now works at an animation studio in Taipei.) How would Taiwan and Hong Kong trade with these non-Chinese countries and populations, invest in these territories, even engage in cultural exchanges with these people, without having some of these people have an interest in immigrating to these areas? Already, the proportions are starting to be noticeable.

My final point for the night is this. To what extent must the experiences of Taiwan and Hong Kong, globally renowned and economically successful, must differ from (for instance) Shanghai and the wider Pearl River conurbation? In an era where China again has the largest economy in the world, where many urban areas of China are already receiving very large numbers of migrants domestically, where shortages of labour are foreseeable given demographic change, and where China is building up all manner of ties with the entire planet, is there any reason not to suspect that globalized and successful China will not also become a notable destination for large numbers of immigrants?

What the cats of Houtong say about the population of Taiwan

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 Houtong, one of several industrial communities in decline since Taiwan's railroads electrified and oil grew as a power source.

Most towns have never recovered, but this tiny community of 200 is fast reinventing itself as a cat lover's paradise.

"It was more fun than I imagined," said 31-year-old administrative assistant Yu Li-hsin, who visited from Taipei. "The cats were clean and totally unafraid of people. I'll definitely return."

On a recent weekday afternoon, dozens of white, black, grey and calico-coloured cats wandered freely amid Houtong's craggy byways, while visitors captured the scene with cellphone cameras and tickled the creatures silly with feather-tipped sticks.

I'll happily admit the article caught my attention because it dealt with cats. Since I got my own cat, Shakespeare, a bit more than two years ago, I've paid a lot of attention to the species and the genus.



This isn't just a cat photopost, mind. The ohenomenon of the cats of Houtong actually helps illustrate any number of interesting things about Taiwanese--and world--demographics.

1. Houtong is a community that was a one-industry town, dependent on coal mining. That source of income has disappeared, as cheaper foreign imports and perhaps a move away from coal as an energy source led to the industry's complete disappearance from Taiwan in 2001. Houtong is a community ultimately undermined by globalization. With three-quarters of Taiwan's population fertility rates drop and foreign women immigrate to compensate for a male-biased sex ratio.

Indonesian-born Sumarni, 35, who married a local man six years ago, says she is grateful to the tourists for relieving the town's isolation.

"My three-year-old daughter gets to play with some children of her age when visitors bring their kids here," she said. "There is really not any playmate of her age in the community."

Sumarni has also benefited financially from the tourist influx, piggybacking it to set up a profitable food stall next to her modest home.

One major theme of my Taiwan posts here has been the very low fertility rate, for the main the standard combination of patriarchal cultural norms with the substantial emancipation of women. Another theme has been the sex ratio strongly biased towards men, producing a deficit of marriageable women. Just as in South Korea, this has led to substantial marriage-driven immigration to Taiwan, as Hsieh and Wang describe in their paper, with women from mainland China and Southeast Asia--particularly but certainly not only Vietnamese women--contributing a
notable, if declining number and proportion of newborns.

The number of newborns born to foreign brides in Taiwan plunged to a low of 17,038 in 2009, reaching only 56 percent of a peak of 30,428 recorded in 2003, according to statistics compiled by the Bureau of Health Promotion under the Cabinet-level Department of Health. Foreign brides mainly refer to women from mainland China and Southeast Asian countries who marry Taiwanese men.

The ratio of their babies to the total number of newborns in Taiwan hit a high of 13.51 percent in 2003, meaning that one out of every seven to eight babies were born to such brides.

The ratio fell under the 10 percent mark in 2008 and declined further to only 8.58 percent in 2009, indicating that one out every 11 to 12 babies was born to foreign brides.

The figures have clearly demonstrated that the number of newborns born to foreign brides has been trending downward at a rapid pace.

Observers attributed the decline in the number of babies which foreign brides have given birth to in the past few years mainly to the decrease in the number of foreign brides over the years.

Taiwanese men used to be a priority husband target for women from Southeast Asian countries during the years of Taiwan's economic prosperity. But their willingness to marry Taiwanese men has been undermined by Taiwan's economic shrinkage in recent years.

Statistics compiled by the Ministry of the Interior showed that the number of registered alien brides hit a high of 48,600 in 2003, and then declined steadily to a low of only 18,241 in 2009, accounting for only 38 percent of the 2003 level.

Houtong is a small rural community; given the tendency of immigrant women to marry relatively low-status and economically marginal men in rural areas, it wouldn't be surprising if a disportionate number of wives there, like Sumarni, might be of foreign background. As this Wall Street Journal article on Taiwanese immigrant wives and their children points out, the village with the highest proportion of immigrant-mother children--17.5%--is Shihding, like Houtong a coal-mining village in rural Taipei County.

3. On a related note, the immigrant-wife phenomenon illustrates the diversity of the Taiwanese population. This diversity doesn't include only the Taiwanese aborigines who form 2% of the Taiwanese population, but the mainlander tenth of the Taiwanese population disproportionately concentrated in Taipei, along with the Min Nan/Fujianese-speaking Hoklo who form 70% of the Taiwanese population and the Hakka who form nearly a fifth of the population, alongside non-Chinese immigrants.

4. Incidentally, Houtong has become a tourism destination for tourists across greater China, i.e. China and Hong Kong and Macao as well as Taiwan. This may indicate the growing integration of Taiwan's population into the population of Greater China, as demonstrated not only by the Chinese immigrants to Taiwan but by the growing Taiwanese migrant population in mainland China, for instance the tens of thousands in Shanghai. China's not going to be the only reference point, as the Southeast Asia immigrants indicate, but it'll be quite important, arguably most important.

5. Finally, the demographics of the cat species are the dismal demographics that once afflicted the human species. Cats have a spectacularly high birth rate, bearing multiple litters with multiple kittens for most of their lives; female cats can actually become pregnant too early. Why, then are there not more cats out there? A terribly high death rate: indoor cats live for decades, outdoor cats for years. (Shakespeare's an indoor cat, if you're wondering.)

Thoughts?

Astrology and birth rates in East Asia

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 unchanged) in 2010 was the lowest in its history at 0.91 children per woman. It’s the lowest rate any country has ever reported in history. The announcement itself is a bit of a projection since births have been officially reported only through November 2010. The country’s TFR had declined to 1.1 in 2005 and had remained there through 2009.

The rather spectacular drop in 2010 was due to an additional reason: 2010 is the Year of the Tiger on the Chinese calendar, beginning on February 14. The Tiger year is particularly inauspicious for births since Tigers, while seen as brave, are also seen as headstrong and possibly difficult to work with. It is quite common for employers to consider the zodiac of job applicants and Tigers may be avoided so that parents have some concrete reasons to avoid having a child in Tiger years. While there has been a lot of concern over the demographic situation for some time, Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou has now called for measures to increase the birth rate to be raised to the “national security level.”

Births for the 12-month period ending November 2010 dropped to 169,884 from 191,310 in 2009 but there is some hope for those wishing to raise the birth rate. The Year of the Dragon is a favorable year for births and is two years after the Tiger year in the zodiac cycle. In 1998, the last Year of the Tiger, births dropped to 271,450 from 326,002 the year before. But, in 2000, the following Dragon year, births jumped back up to 305,312. A similar pattern had been seen in previous cycles. Nonetheless, the sharp decline in births, regardless of which year it might be, from the late 1990s to the present is very obvious. Another helpful sign is that the number of marriages increased in 2010 by about 20,000 over 2009, a year known as a “widow’s year.” The effect of astrological concerns, common in many other Asian countries, also extends to the more precise timing of births. For that reason, Taiwan has a rather high proportion of caesarean section births, about 30 percent.

Over at Asia Times, Jens Kastner traces the intimate link between the zodiac and the fertility rate in Taiwan's demographic history. The noteworthy thing, from the demographic perspective, is that birth and fertility rates haven't proven as quick to recover recently than a generation ago, if recover they do at all.

The historic graphs in the Statistical Data Book of Taiwan's Ministry of the Interior speak volumes. Recorded from the 1950s on, birth rates in Taiwan have been clearly influenced by the ancient Chinese zodiac's 12 animal signs. The years in which Taiwanese couples decided to give birth most often came in the Year of the Dragon: 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988 and 2000.

The belief is that children born under the dragon sign are not only honest, sensitive and brave, but will also be free from habits like borrowing money or making flowery speeches. Quite the opposite is believed about the Year of the Tiger. Whoever was born in 1950, 1962, 1974, 1986 or 1998 tends to question authority and is therefore likely to cause trouble for himself, his family or to his employers at some stage of life.

But aren't these worn-out superstitions that modern Taiwan, a world leader in information technology, no longer heeds? There is strong evidence that the island still does. Last year was again the Year of Tiger, and despite more subsidies, 24,424 fewer babies were born than in 2009. But for 2012, the next Year of the Dragon, it is feared that Taiwan could await the bounce back of the birth rate in vain.

"The effect of the tiger and dragon years on fertility behavior in Taiwan and many other Chinese societies in Southeast Asia is not just media hype but a very important issue," says Yang Wen-shan, professor at the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences at Taipei's Academia Sinica, in an interview with Asia Times Online. "In Taiwanese demographic history, during the tiger years, the fertility rate drops, while in the dragon ones, it rises. The expert on demography nonetheless cautions that the Taiwanese could well be disappointed with the baby yield of the next Year of the Dragon. "In recent years, while fertility dropped as usual during the tiger years, it failed to fully recover in the subsequent Year of the Dragon, unlike in the past.”

The phenomenon of astrological influence on birth rates has been noted before, most famously in 1966, the "Year of the Fire Horse".

In general, Horses are outgoing, people-loving, and successful. However, in the Fire element their freedom-loving traits turn to rebelliousness, hubris, and destruction. While this potential was tolerated in a male child, it was thought to be ominous in a woman. The common belief in most Asian countries was that a Fire Horse woman would devastate her nuclear family, drain them of resources, and bring about the early death of her father. If a husband could be found for a Fire Horse woman, he would be mistreated and meet an early death himself. Several stories have perpetuated this fallacy such as a popular Japanese tale dating as far back as 1682 about a Fire Horse woman who nearly burned down the city of Edo.

This had a very strong effect on fertility in Japan, births fell by a half-million (by 20% or increased number of abortions, while one source claims that Taiwan's birth rate fell by a quarter in the same year. A similar effect may plausibly have been felt in South Korea. The extent of the fall may be overestimated owing to the delayed registration of births towards the end of 1966, but the effect is real.

The consequences of all this? Besides creating significant surges and falls in the size of age cohorts, with implications for everything from education to the labour market, there's some evidence that these astrological perceptions influence life outcomes. In the paper "Does Fortune Favor Dragons?" (PDF format) by Noel D. Johnson and John V.C. Nye, the authors argued that the stereotypes associated to births in different years do lead to different outcomes, simply because parents will treat different children born in different years according to different stereotypes.

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.

On the Philippines, its demographics, and relative demographic weight

I've two news articles concerning the demographics of the Philippines I'd like to share with you.

The first is Maragtas S.V. Amante's ABS-CBN News "Korea – Pinoy mixed marriages and tensions in the multicultural family", which examines the problems facing Filipino women migrating to South Korea to marry local men left without marriage candidates by sex ratios biased strongly agaisnt women. I mentioned in the East Asian context before, most often in relation to South Korea but also in regards to Taiwan. This is the first time I've linked to an article describing the phenomenon from the Filipino side.

Koreans on their own spend an average of 13 million won ($10,600) in costs for interracial marriages according to the Korea Consumer Agency (KCA). There are 1,044 matchmaking companies in Korea. The most popular country as source of “brides” was Vietnam followed by China. It takes an average of 88 days, or about three months, to complete an interracial marriage through agencies ― from the Korean applicant's departure to interview with his or her prospective spouse and their entry to Korea. Global mixed marriages have a gender and social equity dimension: the male is from a rich country, and the female is from a poor country.

[. . .]

Matchmaking agencies contract marriages between Koreans and foreign nationals, including the Philippines. In April 2009, approximately 6,000 Filipinos married to South Koreans reside in the peninsula. Philippine Ambassador to Korea Luis Cruz says however that the Embassy have been regularly warning Filipinos against illegal marriage brokers. A Philippine law, the Anti-Mail-Order Bride Law (RA6955), makes it illegal for a "person, natural or juridical, association, club or any other entity" to "establish or carry on a business which has for its purpose the matching of Filipino women for marriage to foreign nationals either on a mail-order basis or through personal introduction." While international marriage broker agencies are legal in South Korea, they cannot legally operate in the Philippines because it violates RA 6955.

The Philippine Embassy in Korea has received many complaints by Filipina wives of abuses committed by their Korean husbands, both as consequence or cause of abandonment of the home, separation and divorce. These complainants entered into the marriage through the services of illegal marriage brokers operating in the Philippines. Many are quick to accept the whirlwind marriage in order to seek employment abroad and have a better life. However, they receive false information on the partner’s family background and face human rights violations in an unfamiliar home abroad, isolated from the community and society, and no preparation in culture and language.

[. . .]

The Philippine Embassy in Korea has received many complaints by Filipina wives of abuses committed by their Korean husbands, both as consequence or cause of abandonment of the home, separation and divorce. These complainants entered into the marriage through the services of illegal marriage brokers operating in the Philippines. Many are quick to accept the whirlwind marriage in order to seek employment abroad and have a better life. However, they receive false information on the partner’s family background and face human rights violations in an unfamiliar home abroad, isolated from the community and society, and no preparation in culture and language.

This movement to newly high-income South Korea and Taiwan is one of the more prominent recent expansions of the Filipino diaspora. There are something on the order of ten Overseas Filipinos out of a national population of some 92 million, including both members of relatively temporary labour diasporas and permanently-settled communities, plays a critical role in their home country's political economy. Wikipedia's population estimates seem broadly accurate, suggesting that there are under three million in the United States that once colonized the archipelago, perhaps two million in the Persian Gulf states with a particular emphasis on Saudi Arabia, a half-million Filipino Canadians and between two hundred thousand and a quarter-million Filipinos in Australia, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and Japan. The Philippines' historic links with Spain have faded, replaced by the consequences of the long American involvement in the Philippines and the use of English, with Overseas Filipinos being concentrated firstly in Anglophone countries, secondly in Persian Gulf states with close ties to first the United Kingdom and then the United States, and finally in the Philippines' Southeast and East Asian neighbours. The Filipino Canadian community is widely dispersed throughout Canada, with large numbers dispersed throughout non-first tier cities like the Manitoba capital of Winnipeg.

The second is a straight-forward demographic projection from the Manila Bulletin, "184 million Pinoys by 2040".

At the current growth rate, the Philippines’ population may reach 184.4 million by 2040 to place it on 10th place as the most populated country, the Population Commission (PopCom) said Saturday.

[. . .]

Currently, the Philippines has a population of 92.2 million and the said figures will eventually double in 31 years to place the country in 10th spot.

The PopCom official revealed that the country’s population growth rate is 2.04 percent annually but the same could increase further if the government could not implement appropriate measures to significantly reduce the rather high growth rate.

Even if the country’s growth rate is on a downward trend because of the massive information and education campaign on artificial and natural birth control methods, population experts cited the same would not mean a decrease in the country’s population since the country has a very high incremental rate and lots of children.

Furthermore, it was discovered that Filipino women have a high fertility rate as a woman gives birth to an average of three children during their fertile years.

It was also noted that 24 percent of the country’s population falls on the adolescent category and almost 50 percent represent individuals aged 15 years and over, which is an indication of expected high fertility of the women who are expected to give birth to more children in the next several years.

While the direction and volume of the Filipino diaspora has been conditioned by language and history, it's currently driven by economic factors. Once one of the most developed economies in East Asia after only Japan, thanks to heavy investment in infrastructure and education, the Filipino economy has been marked by relative decline, its substantial economic potential wasted by years of bad policies, not least by Ferdinand Marcos' kleptocracy in the 1970s and 1980s. A consultation of the Penn World Tables reveals that the Philippines has not only been left far behind of South Korea and Taiwan in terms of GDP per capita, but Thailand's GDP per capita has risen from a position below the Philippines to twice the Filipino figure, and Indonesia and even Vietnam have mostly or entirely caught up Possessing substantial amounts of cultural and economic capital, and with strong incentives to leave the country in search for a better life and funds to support families, Filipinos accordingly left in huge numbers. The remittances sent back by this diaspora play a major role in the country: one of the largest remittance-receiving countries in the world, the remittances subsidize living standards. Even as the Philippines moves towards a more stable high-growth path akin to that of many of its Southeast Asian neighbours, the tradition of migration has been established.

What will happen to the Philippines in the future? I've a few predictions.

The relative economic deprivation faced by Filipinos in their homeland and the tradition of migration will continue, notwithstanding any economic growth in the future. Absolute wealth hasn't discouraged emigration, rather relative wealth does, and even if the Philippines catches up to its Southeast Asian neighbours there will still be yawning gaps between the Philippines and high-income countries.

High-income East Asia is going to become the next major receiving area for Filipino migrants, after the Anglophone world and the Middle East. The pathways established by Filipino migrants to South Korea and Taiwan can be reasonably expected to grow independently of sex ratio bias, in the context of population aging and workforce shrinkage. Similarly, the numbers of the Filipino community in Japan may be expected to grow if Japan opens its doors to some immigration.

The Philippines will enjoy very favourable demographics. With a young and well-educated population located in the middle of a prosperous region with close ties to any number of high-income countries, the Philippines has the potential to catch up economically to its neighbours and maybe even surpass them: the projected rapid aging of Thailand's population won't contribute positively to that country's economic future.

Finally, as the second article suggests, the rapid growth of the Philippines' population--called frightening by some, a potential economic opportunity by others--will sharply increase its weight in Southeast Asia and the world. Looking at the medium variant scenarios in the UN's World Population Prospects database, in the 1950-2040 period, Indonesia's population quadrupled (from 77 million) while the Philippines' grew by a factor of seven (from 20 million). Thailand, a nation that also was home to 20 million people in 1950, is going to see its population peak at 73 million in 2040 before slowly shrinking barring unexpected surprises. Even Vietnam, a country home to 27 million in 1950, has just seen its total population figures surpassed by the Philippines. This growth will be even greater relative to high-income East Asia: whereas the number of Filipinos was one-fifth the combined populations of Japan and South Korea, by 2040 the Philippines is expected to arrive on par. More, if Taiwan's population peaks in the area of 20 million, the Philippines' population will come not far short of all of high-income East Asia. (All these are projections, of course, but usefully indicative nonetheless.)

Between the previously-mentioned growth of Indonesia as a migrant-sending country and the Philippines, I speak only half in jest when I suggest that the 21st century since the waves of Austronesian-speaking migrants which led to the colonization of points as dispersed as Madagascar and Easter Island.

On aging and education

Agence France-Presse recently published an article examining one of the less-examined consequences of Taiwan's very low birth rate.

More than one in three Taiwanese colleges are likely to be forced to close by 2021 due to a shortage of students as the island's birth rates continue to fall, local media said Tuesday.

Currently, around 300,000 school leavers are eligible to apply for college each year but the number is expected to drop to 195,000 in 2021, the Liberty Times said, citing the education ministry.

In 12 years, more than one-third of the island's 164 colleges are expected to have closed because they can not enroll enough students, forcing about 1,000 professors to lose their jobs, the report said.

Educational officials are not immediately available to confirm the report.

Taiwan's birth rates have been on a steady decline in recent years, and last year there were less than nine newborn babies for every 1,000 women of reproductive age, according to the interior ministry.

Education minister Wu Ching-ji was quoted by the paper as saying the ministry was considering measures for colleges to merge or become private for-profit learning institutes.

The Taipei Times goes into more detail.

Colleges and universities in Taiwan will see their lowest enrollment and highest vacancies when the new school semester begins next month, the latest enrollment statistics released by the Joint Board of the College Recruitment Commission showed.

A total of 76,434 students enrolled in Taiwanese universities, resulting in a record high of 6,802 vacancies on campuses and a ­record-high college admission rate of 97.14 percent, commission statistics showed. That was up from 4,788 vacancies and a college admission rate of 97.1 percent for last school year, it said.

Both admission rates and vacancies at higher learning institutions have been steadily rising in recent years.

Taiwan’s falling birth rate and the rapid increase in the number of colleges and universities that have opened in Taiwan in the past 15 years are the main reasons behind this trend.

In 1986, there were 28 four-year colleges and universities across Taiwan, but the number rose to 147 last year — the result of a government policy to make it easier for high school students to get into university.

[. . .]

Ho Cho-fei (何卓飛), director of the ministry’s Department of Higher Education, asked low-enrollment colleges and universities to remain committed to giving their students sufficient training, no matter how small their student population is.

To cope with this problem, Ho said the ministry would work out a mechanism to require schools with low enrollment to transform or withdraw from the market.

Eighteen college and university departments in Taiwan failed to recruit any students for the coming semester, commission figures showed.

All this is unsurprising, since it's well known that fertility rates, period and cohort, among the Taiwanese population rank among the lowest in the world. Numerous primary and secondary schools have also been forced to close down for want of young students. Taiwan's situation is admittedly extreme, but as the proportions of the young decrease as the proportions of the old increases, educational systems in any aging country are going to have to change. What can be done?

One approach would be for schools to try to recruit students from outside of their catchment area. Barring large-scale immigration to a region, it might be easy fo an educational institution--likely one at the university level--to recruit students internationally. Taiwan is reportedly trying to recruit mainland Chinese students, and Vietnam and the Philippines might also provide potential students through the marriage migration connecting these countries with Taiwan. This is hardly limited to Taiwan, but is worldwide. Certainly in the Canadian universities I've attended international students are quite numerous.

Another approach might be for these educational systems to retool themselves to deal with an older workforce. Greenspan in 2003 observed that aging populations had to increase their productivity to continue economic growth, yet relatively older populations often had relatively low education levels. Creating systems that would allow relatively older people to enter the education system in order to upgrade and renew their skills. Rihpahl and Trübswetter suggest in their discussion paper that this sort of phenomenon has already been going on in Germany.

Both of these approaches will likely be taken, along with others I've not mentioned here. Education systems are going change vastly, that's for certain, but what's not for certain is the possibility for these to adapt more-or-less successfully.