Some demographics-related news links

* I was quite surprised by the news, reported by the BBC among others, that the most recent German census revealed that the country's overall population was overestimated by 1.5 million. The whole set of discrepancies between updated estimates for West and East Germany and the 2011 census is described in detail at the website of the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, here, here, and here. It's noteworthy that the biggest overestimate by far occurred among foreigners, whose numbers were overestimated by 1.1 million.

* News from Europe's periphery is generally dire. The Inter Press Service's Zoltán Dujisin argues that Hungary is starting to experience a brain drain of professionals to western Europe, a consequence of deteriorating economic and political conditions. The Portugal News observes the continuing fall in Portuguese birth rates, noting that poverty--not just a lack of funding for families, but absolute shortages of necessities like money and even food--is preventing any possibility of a quick recovery. Reporting from Skopje, Balkan Insight notes that more than a tenth of the population of Macedonia is recorded to have emigrated between 1998 and 2011, Eurostat additionally noting that this does not capture irregular migration. Also from the Balkans, the BBC has a depressing profile of the employment situation for young people in Greece. Where emigration is not a realistic option, volunteering is often the only possibility for young Greeks to do something in the hope that, one day, they might enjoy a salary.

* At New Eastern Europe, Filip Mazurczak writes about demographic policies in the former Communist world, arguing that the discontinuation of perfectly helpful policies like workplace childcare after the end of Communism may have contributed to the collapse of birth rates. Estonia is singled out as one country that has made noteworthy progress, as is Russia. The Baltic Course takes a look at the balance of migration in Estonia. Emigration and immigration have both surged in recent years, with just under eleven thousand people leaving in 2012 and a bit over four thousand immigrating. Finland and United Kingdom are the major destinations for Estonian emigrants, while Finland and Russia are the major sources of immigrants. Estonia is uniquely favoured among the Baltic States in having a migration partner so close at hand in Finland.

* The Daily Mail notes that rural and even exurban areas of the United States are facing population decline and aging, as dismal economies and shrinking opportunities encourage migration to cities.

* The Economist observes the rapid and thorough demographic transformations of Latin America, with sharply falling fertility rates, radically changed gender roles, and the rise of new family forms including cohabitation. The article's conclusion that Latin America risks wasting its demographic dividend if it doesn't transform its educational and pension systems in time to, respectively, maximize the coming generation's human capital and prepare to finance its retirement.

* Also at the Economist, the Buttonwood blog examines Spanish youth unemployment, placing the relative reluctance of young Spanish workers to migrate to Germany (compared to their Greek, Romanian, and Polish counterparts) to the relatively better conditions they experience and argues that youth unemployment estimates wrongly include students and mothers of young children.

* The South China Morning Post notes that in Hong Kong, the ongoing fall in fertility rates now means that one-child families outnumber their two-child counterparts for the first time in the city-state's history. In adjacent Macau, meanwhile, population growth is dominated by immigration, 60% of immigrants coming from China but a quarter from the Philippines and Vietnam.

* Australia's ABC News argues that Australia's much-hyped baby bonus didn't contribute to the uptick in fertility rates in that country, that the recuperation of postponed fertility is a more likely explanation.

* Finally, on the lighter end, the Czech capital of Prague has assigned subway cars to singles and the Hungarian government is setting up dance parties, all in efforts to boost birth rates. The Atlantic's Jordan Weissman wonders, meanwhile, if spending on pets and pet ownership is growing as people of parent age respond to the growing costs of children by switching to less expensive substitutes.

Three notes on historical patterns of migration from Bulgaria

Edward Hugh's essay earlier this week at A Fistful of Euros, "The Shortage of Bulgarians Inside Bulgaria", got a non-trivial amount of attention, including linkage by Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen. (See also Economonitor which mirrors the post though not the comments, and, of course, here at Demography Matters.) Within the European Union, Bulgaria really does constitute an exceptional case: among the poorest European Union member-states, with one of the lowest fertility rates of any European Union member-state, and with some of the highest rates of emigration, Bulgaria is quite likely because of its rapidly shrinking population to experience the serious economic and other problems other countries are likely to experience in the near future. The country's population has fallen by a sixth from its peak in 1985, in fact.

Bulgaria has lost 582,000 people over the last ten years, a nationwide census has revealed. The EU newcomer, who has now 7,351,633 inhabitants, has lost 1.5 million of its population since 1985, a record in depopulation not just for the EU, but by global standards too.

Bulgaria, which had a population of almost nine million in 1985, now has almost the same number of inhabitants as in 1945 after World war II, the Bulgarian media writes.

The census also found that the Bulgarian population is ageing fast, that the number of young people is declining and that villages are becoming depopulated as big cities grow.

People of more than 65 years of age in 2001 constituted 16.8% of the population, while this year their rate has grown to 18.9%. At the same time, the number of children has declined, which is a clear sign that ever fewer employed people will have to provide for a growing number of elderly people[.]

Bulgaria of some interest to me in that it's a new country, in many respects newer than my Canada. Yes, Bulgarians have lived in Bulgaria for centuries without any experience of historical discontinuity as severe as that experienced by Canada, which has been almost completely repopulated by Old World migrants. Still, the Bulgarian state is a young entity: the Principality of Bulgaria was established by the Great Powers in 1878; Bulgaria was unified with adjacent and autonomous Eastern Rumelia in 1885; Bulgaria declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1908; Bulgaria's current borders were only definitively settled in 1946 as the Cold War began. As much as Bulgaria is a modern European nation-state now, its history--including its migration history--bears the marks of its recent past.

1. Let's start with the migration patterns of Bulgaria's Turks and Muslims.



Taken from here, this chart shows basic census results by ethnicity between 1880 and 1910 in Bulgaria. Noteworthy is the near-doubling of the Bulgarian population over this timeframe while the Turkish population falls by a third. The Turkish population of Bulgaria may have fallen further, in fact: one estimate in the Wikipedia article on Turks in Bulgaria claims that in the Danube Vilayet, which occupied most of northern Bulgaria along with parts of what are now coastal Romania, Christians of all ethnicities formed barely half of a population of almost 2.4 million people. The high proportion of Muslims in mid-19th century Bulgaria makes sense if you think of Bulgaria not as a peripheral European nation, but as a collection of provinces which formed part of the core of the Ottoman Empire, in the hinterland of the capital, even.

Muslims in Bulgaria, like Muslims elsewhere in the independent states emerging from the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, and in the lands conquered by the Russian Empire in the Caucasus, were generally unwelcome presences in these newly Christian lands. As detailed by--for instance--Berna Pekesen in the essay "Expulsion and Emigration of the Muslims from the Balkans", Muslims of all backgrounds--people of indigenous Balkan background like Slavs and Albanians, members of Turkic groups, and peoples of the Caucasus like the Circassians--were subjected to what would be called ethnic cleansing. Millions of muhajir ended up settling in the Turkish core of the Ottoman Empire, starting off that country's modern tradition of immigration. (Various estimates claim that a high proportion of Turks, some up to one-third, are descended from these refugees.) In Bulgaria's case, Pomaks--people of Bulgarian language but Muslim religion--were separated from the Turkish population by various governments, which hoped to assimilate the Pomaks into a Bulgarian ethnic identity.

Bulgaria kept a larger Turkish and Muslim population that many other Balkan countries, but towards the end of the Communist period a variety of violent policies mandating the assimilation of all Muslims, including forced renamings and closing down specifically Muslim facilities, culminating in the May 1989 expulsion of most Bulgarian Turks from their country of birth into adjacent Turkey. The terrible international reaction and the economic consequences of the mass expulsion helped bring down the Communist government and fairly quick restitution made to the Turks (and Pomaks) as part of the democratization process. Today, Turks and Muslims in Bulgaria seem--some concerns aside--to be well-integrated in their homeland as respected players, with their political party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, being a major political player. Even so, perhaps a third of the million people claiming an identity as Bulgarian Turks currently live in Turkey, a country where they have put down roots. The Bulgarian emigrant community in Turkey, in fact, is the largest community of Bulgarian emigrants, the half-million Bulgarians in Turkey outnumbering registered Bulgarian emigrants in the rest of the European Union combined.

2. Bulgaria's borders are not what many had hoped.



Initially in 1878 Bulgaria under Russian sponsorship would have been a large country indeed, including within its borders not only modern Bulgaria but almost all of the historical region of Macedonia. The negative reaction of other powers to such a large Bulgaria, seen as a Russian pawn threatening Constantinople and the Straits, led to the creation of a smaller Bulgaria. Despite fighting numerous wars at great cost with the aim of gaining these territories, Bulgaria never did manage to gain more than a small piece of Macedonia. After multiple ethnic cleansings all around which saw the deportal of most of the region's Muslims to Turkey and the eventual expulsion and forced assimilation of most Slavs in an Aegean Macedonia that received many of the Greeks expelled from Turkey in 1922, and the creation in Tito's Yugoslavia of a Macedonian national identity separate from the Bulgarian, Bulgaria was left with only a portion of eastern Macedonia. As for Bulgarian communities scattered further afield, whether in neighbouring Balkan countries or in old immigrant communities on the northern shore of the Black Sea (Moldova, Ukraine, Russia), they were left out of the Bulgarian national project.

After 1989 and the collapse of Yugoslavia, Bulgarian citizenship laws were slowly transformed so as to give people claiming an identity as ethnic Bulgarians, including those living in countries immediately adjoining Bulgaria as well as those living in the Black Sea diaspora. This was merely the most prominent part of a policy of outreach to these diasporids that includes gifts of school books in Serbia or vice-presidential visits in Ukraine. As noted by Marko Žilović in an essay at the website Citizenship in Southeastern Europe, citizenship in Bulgaria--a country on track to join the European Union, no less--could be a potent economic advantage.

On a usual working day in the village of Ivanovo in Serbia there are three cars with Bulgarian license plates parked in front of the small elementary school. This is not because a delegation from Bulgaria is visiting this village of little more than 1000 inhabitants. Importing used cars licensed in Bulgaria was a well-known scheme to circumvent restrictive Serbian regulations that protect the Zastava company, the only domestic car producer. The scheme worked best if the buyer had a Bulgarian passport. It is thus no coincidence that several cars with Bulgarian license plates found their way into the Ivanovo, for it is one of the few places where fleeing Roman Catholic Slavs from northern Bulgaria settled in the 18^th century. Today, about a fifth of Ivanovo’s population declare themselves ethnic Bulgarians, though probably only a handful of them have obtained Bulgarian passports. However, among the owners of the Bulgarian-licensed cars, and passports, is also a local math teacher who declares himself an ethnic Serb. He tells of having some ethnic Romanians in his family tree a few generations ago, but no Bulgarian connections whatsoever.

By far the biggest number of people claiming Bulgarian ethnic identity to get Bulgarian citizenship are from Macedonia. While Bulgaria recognizes Macedonian independence, it does not recognize the separate existence of a Macedonian nationality, leaving open the possibility for Macedonian Slavs--of which there are 1.2 million in the former Yugoslav republic--to declare themselves Bulgarians. Given Macedonia's likely continued exclusion from the European Union owing to the name dispute with Greece and an emergent history dispute with Bulgaria, claiming a Bulgarian ethnic identity makes sense. Joanne van Selm's June 2007 profile of Macedona notes this.

It goes without saying that this is exceptionally controversial in Macedonia.

The Bulgarian case is fairly represented in Milena Hristova's February 2010 article for the Sofia News Agency, "Bulgarian Passports for Macedonians: Debunking Myths".

Macedonians strive to obtain Bulgarian citizenship for a number of reasons – to migrate to Bulgaria, to travel and work freely across the European Union and also due to the faith in the protection that the Bulgarian state can give them. “I would risk saying that this emotional factor is the most important and most often cited reason,” says Mandzhukova. She vehemently denies that the real motives are more pragmatic. “To say that Macedonians obtain Bulgarian citizenship as a passport to Europe is a stereotype that gives a very distorted reflection of the truth,” she says. According to her the influx of Macedonians to Bulgaria did not increase significantly after the country's accession to the European Union on January 1, 2007. “The first signs f the hype came much earlier when Bulgarian institutions agreed that the document our agency issues is enough to claim Bulgarian origin. This is when the real increase in applications came due to the streamlining of the process.” While in Macedonia many Macedonians try to cover the fact that they have signed such a declaration. “Well, certainly nobody will shout it at the top of his lungs. But first of all if someone considers what the Macedonian authorities think important, he would not sign the declaration in the first place, “ Mandzhukova says.

(A April 2012 essay by the Sofia News Agency argues the Bulgaria gives Bulgarian nationality to many fewer Macedonians than Romania gives Romanian nationality to many fewer Moldovans, and is more moderate.)

The Macedonian International News Agency, meanwhile, doesn't address directly the denial of Macedonian nationhood, instead challenging via articles like "Bulgarian citizen: Should my wife become Macedonian to get Bulgarian Passport?" (published earlier this month) the justice of a citizenship policy that makes it difficult for long-time residents to naturalize.

"Practically none of the Macedonans who have obtained a Bulgarian passport lives in Bulgaria. A large majority of them obtain the passport so they can work in EU countries. My wife on the other hand lives in Bulgaria for 11 years, speaks perfect Bulgarian, pays taxes, however is unable to obtain a citizenship" explains Bulgarian citizen Stefan Rusenov in an interview with Dnevnik.

In Bulgaria, you need to be a Macedonian so you can obtain a Bulgarian citizenship or passport overnight.

Macedonians in Bulgaria don't speak Bulgarian, they don't pay taxes here, but when it comes to obtaining our citizenship, they do it in record time, within a year - says Stefan Rusenov whose wife is from the Ukraine and is unable to obtain Bulgarian citizenship for years. According to Bulgarian laws, she would need to give up her Ukrainian passport to become citizen of Bulgaria.

- Instead of receiving a response in a year, we got our response in three years - that my wife can obtain a citizenship in three years, but, the condition was she must give up her Ukrainian citizenship. Then more problems. From the Ukrainian Embassy we were told she must register to fulfill her request of giving up her Ukrainian citizenship (which lasts 8 months), and only after that she can submit her request to give up her Ukrainian passport - explains Rusenov in frustrating fashion.

3. Bulgaria has long been a European periphery.


Taken here, from the online version of the second volume of the Cambridge Economic History of Europe by Broadberry and O'Rourke, this draws upon the historical statistics of Arthur Maddison to come up with a ranking of European countries by economic and human development in the belle époque. Of note is the fact that Bulgaria's relative underdevelopment is a fact of long-standing, one that isn't a relatively recent artifact of Communism as in central Europe. Although income and development gaps have narrowed in the subsequent century, they are still quite large. Attempts at enforcing an agricultural specialization via Comecon's doctrine of an "International Socialist Division of Labour" never were very successful, but neither was (for instance) the attempt to develop a computer industry in the 1980s (that led, mainly, to computer viruses). The catastrophic breakup of the former Yugoslavia further hit Bulgaria. Bulgaria, now in 2013 as in 1913, is one of the poorest countries in Europe.

There is an abundant literature about migration from post-Communist Bulgaria, for instance the Open Society Bulgaria 2005 report "Bulgarian Migration: Incentives and Constellations", a 2013 fact sheet from the same organization "Is There A Threat of Bulgarian Migration to the UK?" (quick answer: no), Fatma Usheva's 2011 thesis "Emigration from Bulgaria: 1989 - Today", or Eugenia Markova's 2010 report for the Hellenic Observatory, "Effects of Migration on Sending Countries: Lessons from Bulgaria". Suffice it to say that after the end of the Soviet Union, Bulgarian migrants went first to adjacent and relatively prosperous Greece, then starting to move in large numbers to Spain in the late 1990s, with Germany recently emerging as a destination of choice. Bulgarian migrants went to places where they could find jobs easily, often in the informal sector, usually in countries that were relatively close to their homeland. Bulgarian foreign minister Nikolay Mladenov was quite right to tell The Telegraph that Bulgarians are not especially likely to move to the United Kingdom in large numbers.

These three patterns of migration, driven by ethnic identity and relative underdevelopment, seem likely to endure. The odds of Bulgaria transforming sufficiently to not be a relatively poor country with low fertility and very high rates of emigration are not, as Edward noted, high at all. Individual Bulgarians have every incentive to continue to leave their country, and with Bulgaria's full integration into the European Union's single market in labour, very few institutional barriers. It's also fair to wonder whether Turkey, just next door with relatively strong economic growth and a recent history of receiving large numbers of Bulgarian migrants, might also emerge as a destination for Bulgarians regardless of whether Turkey joins the European Union or not. Inasmuch as Macedonia, and the adjacent countries with large Bulgarian communities (Serbia, Moldova, Ukraine)

The latest on emigration from Georgia

Back in August 2008, immediately after the South Ossetia War, I wrote at length about Georgia's demographic situation. Briefly put, with a relatively long history of below-replacement fertility, a recent tradition of mass emigration, and continuing political instability and economic underdevelopment, there were good reasons to be concerned for the future of the Georgian labour force.

Things haven't gotten better. A pair of articles by writer Mari Nikuradze, hosted at Democracy and Freedom Watch, reports on to the continuing large scale of emigration from Georgia. First comes the alarmingly-titled article "A quarter of Georgia’s population are missing", which also notes that Georgians continue to have trouble in getting visas to European Union member-states.

23 per cent of Georgia’s population is away from the country, 80 per cent of which are illegal labor migrants and sole bread-winners.

These are some of the findings in a new report made by Liberal Academy Tbilisi, called Visa Facilitation and Readmission: Visa Liberalization Prospects for Georgia.

The report also shows that Georgians have the most trouble with getting a visa to Europe, compared to other countries in the same region. The fraction of rejected visa applications was 17.2 and 15.1 per cent in 2009 and 2010, respectively. These numbers are higher than for Armenia with 10.8, Moldova with 6.9, Ukraine 3.4, Azerbaijan 5.0, Belarus 0.6 and Russia 1.2 per cent in 2010.

The presentation referred to, Visa Facilitation and Readmission: Visa Liberalization Prospects for Georgia, is available here. Tamara Pataraia's October 2011 policy brief suggests that Georgia still has a long way to go to demonstrate to the European Union that it would be a worthy partner.

"Nani is one of Georgia’s missing 23 %", meanwhile, takes a look at the life experiences of a single migrant.

Nani (48) left Georgia about 17 years ago to work in Italy and send money to her family. She’s from Samtredia, a small town in Western Georgia. Her husband works at a local theater, earning a small salary. Her daughter goes to school, while her son is getting higher education in Kutaisi, Georgia’s second largest city.

When Nani’s family was on the edge of hunger, she decided to leave. She tells DF Watch that at first she arrived in Italy illegally, because it was too expensive to get there with all necessary documents and procedures. For several years she gathered all necessary documents and saved money, and for now she’s a citizen of Italy.

Nani works as a servant for big Italian family. Her responsibilities are to clean the house, help with the cooking and look after two children. The family is quite rich and pays her a good salary.

“It’s enough for my living here and I’m sending money to my family in Samtredia. I’m also paying for my son’s education. Higher education isn’t free in Georgia, you know.”

She manages to come to Georgia once a year, during holidays.

“I know it’s not enough, but when I remember our being when I was living there I assure myself that it’s better to be here and help my family from here.”

She sends presents for birthday and clothes for her daughter when school starts in autumn.

Nani says she’s not planning to come back yet, as she is sure she won’t be able to find a proper job.

“Until I’m healthy and capable of work and do what I do here, I’ll stay. But then children will grow up, have their jobs and it will be easier to come,” she says, adding that she would like to spend her old age in her hometown with her grandchildren.

[. . .] According to the World Bank, net migration, which is the difference between emigration and immigration in a year, is always negative. In 1992-1996 it was -544 069; in 1997-2001 the numbers were equal to -390.036; in 2002-2006 -309.021 and in 2007-2011 number decreased to -150.000.

According to the International Organization for Migration, the Georgia’s indicator for emigration of is one of the highest in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and in the group of countries, which recently joined EU.

1 058.3 thousand people are in emigration in 2009, according to World Bank data. 644 390 of this number are in Russia, which is on the top of ten countries, where Georgian emigrants go. Then it is followed by Armenia, where there are 75 792 emigrated; Ukraine – 72 410, Greece 41 817 and Israel – 26 032.

Among EU countries, Greece is on the top of the list, followed by Germany, Cyprus, Spain and Latvia.

A brief article from The Messenger Online reports $US 108 million in remittances over the last three months: "The largest amount transferred comes from Russia, at $56 million USD, followed by Greece with $12 million, Italy with $10 million, and the US with $7 million."

Some further notes.

1. The continued large scale of emigration from Georgia has implications for the long-term economic development of the country. If a high proportion of the work force is working outside the country, economic development will be problematic.

2. The presence of large Georgian migrant communities in countries like Ukraine, but also Latvia, which are themselves sources of very large numbers of migrants may indicate both the survival of Soviet-era connections and Georgia's desperate state.

3. The continued concentration of Georgian emigrants in Russia, despite strongly negative Russian-Georgian relations, is outstanding. The number of labour migrants in European Union countries might be understated owing to illegal immigrants entering despite visa restrictions, but the same factors might also be in play in Russia.

4. The location of the largest Georgian migrant community inside the European Union in Greece signals Georgia's vulnerability to the Greek economic crisis.

A note on ethnic conflict and demographics: the Czech Republic

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 Republic is one of the very few countries in the world with a smaller population now than in 1945.

The population of the Czech Republic reached a peak of nearly 11.2 million in 1940 but fell to a mere 8.8 million in 1947, not as a consequence of an especially high wartime death rate but rather primarily because of the expulsion of the roughly three million Sudeten Germans. The population has since grown to 10.5 million, this growth the product first of post-war natural increase then--despite a recent partial recovery in fertility rates--because of substantial net immigration.

Beginning with post-war internal migrants from Slovakia (Slovaks and Roma alike) to the labour-hungry Czech lands, immigration into the Czech Republic became more globalized with a later wave of Vietnamese immigrants who made use of Communist Czechoslovakia's recruitment of Vietnamese students and guest workers in the 1970s and 1980s, to the Ukrainians who left their country in the 1990s to earn a living in a neighbouring country with a strong labour market and permeable borders. (As an aside, I wonder if the Ukrainian presence in the Czech Republic is at all linked to historical Czech interactions with the Carpathian Ruthenia that was historically almost an eastern extension of Slovakia, specifically with the Zakarpattia Oblast that was actually part of Czechoslovakia from independence until its 1945 cession to the Soviet Union.) Bulgarians, Chinese, Russians, and Mongolians are some of the newer groups to appear in the Czech Republic. As a high-income European country the Czech Republic would already be an attractive destination, but that the cultural links maintained by the Czechs with other Slavic populations in central and eastern Europe and the Communist-era political and military links established with countries such as Vietnam and Mongolia has advantaged the Czech Republic relative to its neighbours. From what I can tell, this immigration has been substantially less politically problematic than in most other European countries.

None of this couldt have been the case without the catastrophic ethnic violence of the 1940s, the Nazis' colonization and brutalization of the Czechs being followed by the expulsion of nearly the entire ethnic German population from the Czech Republic's territory after the Nazi defeat. Ethnic conflict determined the demographics of the Czech Republic.

Let's start with immigration. Over at my blog I note that Czechoslovakia came apart so quickly and peacefully because Czechs and Slovaks weren't particularly close, for good and for ill; mild resentments and a certain romantic nostalgia characterized, and characterize, relations between the two largest ethnic groups in the former Czechoslovakia. Czechs and Slovaks were separate groups, and each had its own discrete territory unthreatened by the other. The same wasn't true for Czechs and Germans in the modern Czech Republic. I've argued at my blog that the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans was only possible because of long-standing Czech fears that German influence could be the death of their nation, whether metaphorically through assimilation or actually through genocidal colonization. After the Second World War, the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans was probably inevitable. In a counterfactual scenario where the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans wasn't nearly so complete, where the border regions of the Czech Republic were bicultural if not outright German-majority, I can imagine immigration being a contentious issue. In Québec, immigration has been controversial because of concerns about the impact of immigrants on the language balance. Would the post-Communist immigration-driven population growth of the Czech Republic been possible otherwise?

The demographic and economic geography of the Czech Republic would also be radically different. Before 1945, the population density of the Czech lands was relatively uniform, with many of the Czech lands' borders--the same borders home to the Sudeten Germans--being superbly industrialized. The expulsions changed this, depopulating the areas once populated by Germans and then repopulating them only partially with migrants from elsewhere in Czechoslovakia, the expulsions additionally undermining once-strong regional economies. The net result was to make population, making wealth and industry concentrate that much more strongly in the centre of the Czech Republic, in Prague and environs, and in turn creating peripheries. Some people have noted that these peripheries, in turn, suffered disproportionately from overindustrialization and pollution, as the regions' unsentimental new residents saw their new home as a space where industrial modernity could operate untrammelled by tradition, as a site for mass production and mass consumption regardless of the human and environmental cost. According to a recent study (PDF format), the regions which saw the strongest divergence from Czech and European Union averages (as measured by GDP per capita, not by household income) were the border regions that formed the core of the former German zone of settlement. This peripheralization, coupled with the only partial repopulation of the Czech republic's peripheries after 1945, could plausibly encourage the continued concentration of Czechs and their wealth in the geographic centre of their country. Could these border regions of the Czech Republic have evolved very differently if not for the replacement of their populations?

In the past at Demography Matters, we've looked at how changing norms of gender, trivial connections formed by flows of guest workers or tourists, political concerns, the different ways in which people form families, similarities of language and culture between different populations, even geographic adjacency have led to demographic change of one kind or another. One thing that I don't think that we've ever before taken a look at is the role of ethnic conflict, culminating in ethnic cleansing and even genocide, in triggering demographic change. Thinking about this, I find it more than a bit disturbing since more than a few of the populations we've taken a look at--in Germany, Poland, East Africa, the former Yugoslavia, of course the Czech Republic--have been very strongly influenced by the long-term consequences of ethnic conflict. This will change in the new year.

Why are sex ratios at birth so male-biased in the South Caucasus?

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? But it’s there, in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, three former Soviet Republics and the trends have been well analyzed in a recent paper.* The normal global biological sex ratio at birth (SRB) is 105 male births per 100 female. Where son preference is strong and the sex of a fetus is determined, there has been a rise in the abortion of female fetuses in recent years.

The SRB in those countries began rising in the mid-1990s and, in 2009, stood at 114 in Armenia and 118 in Azerbaijan. Birth reporting in Georgia has been somewhat erratic but the pattern is similar if not quite as skewed upwards. Abortion had long been used as a form of birth control in the Soviet Union and the practice has continued in the Caucasus. A low fertility rate is often thought to create a particularly likely impetus for sex-selective abortion when son preference is strong. In all three countries, the SRB for third births was well above the total SRB. In Armenia, the SRB for third births was about 140 in 2000-2004; in Azerbaijan, it was about 150; and, in Georgia, it was about 145. Of course, third births are much less frequent with low birth rates. In recent years, the SRB does appear to have leveled off, but their SRB’s are now exceeded only by China’s.

Such a ratio can't help things at all. Georgia that--as I noted here in August 2008--has been seeing massive emigration since the end of the Soviet Union, just like Armenia to its south and even Azerbaijan to its east. Georgia and Armenia have cohort fertility rates substantially below replacement levels, while Azerbaijan is getting there. If future cohorts of women come to be so outnumbered by men, the South Caucasus' demographic catastrophes can only worsen. As my co-blogger Scott just mentioned, gender balance can well be a competitive advantage in the economic sense, as human capital is found and used more equitably without misogynistic attitudes. Again, this is profoundly self-destructive.

But why is this going on? The Social Sciences in the Caucasus blog notes that the shift in sex ratios only occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when sex ratios were more normal, while commenters suggested that this shift is to be expected in economically straitened times in societies where abortion is an acceptable method of birth control and male children are valued more than female children. Sabina Kiryashova's IWPR article "Abortion Used for Sex Selection in Azerbaijan" describes this mentality.

Such abortions have become increasingly common in Azerbaijan in recent years, particularly since the use of ultrasound to determine the sex of the baby has became widespread.

Up to four of the eight women who come into gynaecologist Gulustan Aslanova’s clinic each day for abortions do so because they are expecting an unwanted girl.

Research conducted by the Women’s Crisis Centre in a main Baku maternity hospital found that abortions carried out because of the sex of the child are currently third behind those done because of the family’s financial situation and ones for contraceptive purposes.

Azad Isazade, a psychologist at the centre, said that in Azerbaijan, as in many eastern countries, preference has always been given to boys. That is rooted in the pre-Islamic, pagan period when men were needed for farming and newborn girls were buried alive.

That no longer happens, but some families see the lack of a male heir as a tragedy or even a curse.

This is fine, but why in the South Caucasus? In the online essay collection Watering the Neighbour's Garden: The Growing Demographic Female Deficit in Asia, the paper by Meslé et al. "A Sharp Increase in Sex Ratio at Birth in the Caucasus. Why? How?" (73-88) makes the point that the shift is unprecedented, occurring in the absence of any state coercion, without any parallels either elsewhere in the former Soviet Union or elsewshere in the Greater Middle East.

It is true that the countries of the Caucasus are very small compared to some of their neighbours and it is easy to imagine that by decreasing the scale to internal administrative districts the same phenomenon could be observed in some regions of Russia, Iran, and Turkey that are close to the Caucasus, particularly among the Azeri in Iran, in the Caucasian republics of southern Russia, and in the eastern regions of Turkey that border Armenia. It is for this reason that we have attempted to collect data by local districts in the countries of the Caucasus and also in the three closest large countries, as well as in Syria. [. . .]


When this data is assembled on a detailed map of the region, two observations reinforce the contrast suggested by national indicators. On the one hand, within each of the three countries of the Caucasus, high sex ratios at birth are almost systematically observed in all the regions. The only notable exceptions concern two groups of Azeri rayons concentrated in the North on the border with Russia and in the South on the border with Iran. On the other hand, no such ratios are observed in the administrative districts nearest to the countries of the Caucasus, either in Russia, Iran, Turkey, or Syria. In Russia, the federated republics of the northern Caucasus such as Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Ingushetia, and Dagestan are all between 104 and 107. Only North Ossetia is slightly over 108. In Iran all the northern provinces and notably the four sharing a border with Azerbaijan (Gilan, Ardebil, eastern Azerbaijan, western Azerbaijan) are below 107. Finally, in Turkey there is a zone around the Van Lake, which is slightly over 107, but all the provinces along the border with Georgia and Armenia are between 104 and 107.

The number of abortions a woman has rises if the first children born are female, but still. Why in the South Caucasus?

On illegal immigration in Israel

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 immigrants.

Israel is by far the most affluent nation to share a land border wi Africa and is a magnet for refugees – more than a thousand refugees make it across the Israeli-Egyptian border every month. In the past, Egypt’s army has attempted to stop them, but a hostile regime in Cairo, or an ineffective one, could turn this steady trickle into a flood that inundates Israel’s welfare systems.

As one would expect given the importance of displacement and migration in the history of Israel and the diasporas of Jews and Palestinians, immigration is a sensitive topic, illegal immigration more so. Notwithstanding the close links between Palestinians within and without Israel and geography, after the flight of Jews from the Middle East the region is of little, and decreasing, importance. When the post-Gulf War peace process began, Palestinians played a major role in the Israeli economy, provided unskilled labour at significant benefit to the Israeli economy and to Palestinian living standards. Ironically, when the peace process began, even before the post-2000 wave of suicide bombings Palestinians were displaced by less expensive foreign guest workers.

There were three hundred thousand foreigh workers in 2003, of fairly homogeneous background, half from Asia (China, Thailand, Philippines) and 45% from eastern Europe (mainly Romania and Moldova). The largest share work in construction, domestic service, and agriculture, but they can be found throughout the Israeli economy. (This collection of articles) goes into greater detail.) Many overstayed visas, and this, along with the standard concerns of immigrants debasing the national character and harming the economy, etc., has caused a recent crackdown on foreign guest workers.

A new Interior Ministry regulation would bar certain foreign nationals, who had illegally lived in Israel and then left of their own volition, from entering Israel again. This severely tightens immigration policy in Israel, as it bars the entry of foreign nationals from 60 countries exempt from visa requirements, including Russia, Romania, Colombia and the Philippines, for at least a year and up to a lifetime. It will affect tens of thousands of people, including the families of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and of former foreign workers, who were granted Israeli citizenship according to an arrangement for foreign workers' children.

According to the regulation, foreign workers from visa-exempt countries who remained in the country illegally for more than 30 days and then left on their own volition would be subject to a two-year "cooling-off" period. The price to be paid by foreigners who arrived as tourists but remained in the country illegally for a period of up to 30 days is slightly lower - a no-entry period of just one year. However, a foreign worker who is caught and deported from Israel will be barred from entering the country for a period of 10 years. A tourist or foreign worker residing in the country for over a year without a permit will be barred from returning for the rest of his or her lifetime, unless he or she receives a special permit from the immigration authorities in advance. According to the regulation, foreign workers who remained in Israel legally and departed as required will not be allowed to return for a year following their departure.

The notable thing about the illegal migration noted in the Globe and Maoil is that it actually does come from Israel's region. African refugees have a growing presence.

Most Africans [. . .] climb in through the window of the long, sprawling and largely open border with Egypt and then knock on the door for asylum. About 15,000 African hopefuls have entered the country this year, roughly double the amount of last year.

The government is determined to stop the influx. For starters, it is fencing off its 150-mile border with Egypt. Work began last month.

The border fence will cost about $370 million, but government indecision on immigration matters is costing dearly. Fear of the impact on politics, religion, demography, diplomacy and the economy has paralyzed decision-makers, negating a cohesive immigration policy. Years of Band-Aid solutions have produced a situation that is rapidly approaching a crisis.

All non-Jewish foreigners challenge Israel's aspirations for a Jewish majority and character while treating others fairly. But the African issue offers a test of humanitarianism and international law -- and social tolerance too.

Largely lumped together as "infiltrators," many of the Africans come from war-torn regions. Most come from Eritrea; Sudan is a close second, with a number from Ivory Coast and other countries. All asylum seekers undergo a process of "refugee status determination, " or RSD, except for Sudanese and Eritreans, who enjoy a temporary sweeping protection.

The Eritreans are predominantly men of military age, fleeing their country's military draft, while the Sudanese tend to be refugees from Darfur and southern Sudan. Both these populations certainly have any number of incentives to flee their homelands and to try to find new lives in Israel, while the older migration route to Libya is now profoundly unsafe. The size of future influxes of Sudanese and Eritreans into Israel--and, perhaps, of other migrants from the Middle East--depends on the enforcement of border controls by Israel and its neighbours.

Will Israel's neighbours keep illegal migrants out from Israel? Who knows. Leaving their general dislike for Israel aside, they do have incentives not to have large refugee populations accumulate in their own countries. Blind eyes are quite imaginable.