Indian Census Count Totals 1.21 billion

The provisional results of the 2011 Census of India have just been released, and they show that the population has now reached 1.21 billion. BBC News notes that:

More people now live in India than in the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Bangladesh combined.
India launched the 2011 census last year. The exercise costs in the region of 22bn rupees ($490m; £300m). Some 2.7 million officials visited households in about 7,000 towns and 600,000 villages, classifying the population according to gender, religion, education and occupation.

Korean Immigrants Successful in the US

The US Census figures have emphasized the recent growth of the Latino population, while also noting that the Asian population has been increasing almost as quickly, although there are still considerably fewer Asians than Hispanics in the US. BBC News has a story about the rather amazing success of the Korean immigrant population, fueled by classic patterns of chain migration, a strong sense of community, and hard work.

Like other immigrants before them, Koreans supported each other, often pooling money to provide no interest loans to help the newest immigrants start their businesses.

John Kim, of the Korean Produce Association in New York, whose parents immigrated and opened a sweet shop when he was a boy, recounts a common adage describing how important it was for new immigrants to know someone before arriving in a new country.

"As a new immigrant, the saying goes, 'Whoever picks you up form the airport, whatever business they are in is what you will go into'."

Like other immigrants before them, Koreans supported each other, often pooling money to provide no interest loans to help the newest immigrants start their businesses.

John Kim, of the Korean Produce Association in New York, whose parents immigrated and opened a sweet shop when he was a boy, recounts a common adage describing how important it was for new immigrants to know someone before arriving in a new country.

"As a new immigrant, the saying goes, 'Whoever picks you up form the airport, whatever business they are in is what you will go into'."

The BBC story is rich in individual detail, whereas for overall statistics you can go to the Migration Policy Institute's website.

Russian Census Results Confirm Population Decline

Results of the 2010 Census of the Russian Federation have just been released and, according to the report from the New York Times, they confirm that the population of Russia is in decline.

A census carried out in October 2010 showed that the population had fallen to 142.9 million, from 145.2 million in 2002, when the previous census was taken, and from 146.3 million in 2001, according to Russia’s Federal Statistics Service. Russia is expected to lose an estimated one million workers every year until 2017.

Assuming that Russians are generally not happy about this demographic decline, the only "good" news might be that the decline was less than demographers at the UN Population Division had expected. Their projections, completed in 2008, suggested that Russia would be down to 140.4 million by 2010.

Non-Hispanic Whites Are Now a Minority in the New York Area

The recently released results of the US 2010 Census highlighted the growth nationally of the Hispanic and Asian populations.

More than half of the growth in the total U.S. population between 2000 and 2010 was because of the increase in the Hispanic population. Between 2000 and 2010, the Hispanic population grew by 43 percent, rising from 35.3 million in 2000 to 50.5 million in 2010. The rise in the Hispanic population accounted for more than half of the 27.3 million increase in the total U.S. population. By 2010, Hispanics comprised 16 percent of the total U.S. population of 308.7 million.

The non-Hispanic population grew relatively slower over the decade at about 5 percent. Within the non-Hispanic population, the number of people who reported their race as white alone grew even slower (1 percent). While the non-Hispanic white alone population increased numerically from 194.6 million to 196.8 million over the 10-year period, its proportion of the total population declined from 69 percent to 64 percent.

The 23 county area around New York City became the first region outside of the West or South to transition to a situation where non-Hispanic whites have become the minority.

In 2000, the census found that non-Hispanic whites made up 54.3 percent of the area’s population. By 2010, their share had declined to 49.6 percent.

In every county except Manhattan and Brooklyn, the population of non-Hispanic whites decreased.

The black population decreased in every borough except Staten Island and in the counties closest to the city, and increased slightly in the suburbs. The number of Asian residents increased in every county in the metropolitan area, while the Hispanic population rose in every county except Manhattan.

Plato, Missouri is the New Population Center of the US

Now that the Census Bureau has released all of the redistricting data from the 2010 Census, we know that the population center of the country has continued its movement to the west and south, now centered on the tiny town of Plato, Missouri. It has been moving measurably west ever since the second census in 1800 and its shift to west by southwest has been in play since the beginning of the twentieth century. The center has been in Missouri since 1980 and, at its current pace, will probably still be in Missouri after the 2020 census.

Based on current U.S. growth, which is occurring mostly in the South and West, the population center is expected to cross into Arkansas or Oklahoma by the middle of this century.

The last time the U.S. center fell outside the Midwest was 1850, in the eastern territory now known as West Virginia. Its later move to the Midwest bolstered the region as the nation's heartland in the 20th century, central to farming and manufacturing.

Actually, that's not quite an accurate statement. If the population had been growing rapidly along the Pacific Coast, but not at all in the midwest, the population center would still have been in the middle of the country. 

But Plato, about 170 miles southwest of St. Louis, doesn't reflect the population changes that have brought it special attention. The town and its surroundings have few blacks and even fewer Hispanics, though there are more minorities in three or four larger cities about 20 to 30 miles away.

Côte d'Ivoire Mess Creating a Million Refugees

Reports out of western Africa suggest that a million people (out of a country population of about 22 million) may have fled Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in anticipation of a full-scale civil war over the issue of presidential succession. Ironically, this election was supposed to have solidified the country, which has been divided since the end of a previous civil war in 2002. Alassne Quattara is generally acknowledged to have won last year's election, but Laurent Gbagbo has refused to step down from the presidency, creating a genuine mess.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Guiglo is in a lawless zone, there is no functioning police, everyone does what they want”

Jacques FranquinUNHCR

"The massive displacement in Abidjan and elsewhere is being fuelled by fears of all-out war," said UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming at the agency's headquarters in Geneva.

She pointed out that the estimate of up to a million displaced was double the figure from just a week ago.

As was true in Libya, refugees seem to be disproportionately workers from other countries, who are trying to get back home and out of harm's way. Libya has oil to attract workers, whereas Côte d'Ivoire is the world's biggest producer of cocoa.

World Tuberculosis Day

March 24th is World Tuberculosis Day--a day to remember how recently in human history the cause of this horrible disease was discovered, and to be reminded of how many people, largely in developing countries, still die from it. 

March 24th commemorates the day in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch astounded the scientific community by announcing that he had discovered the cause of tuberculosis, the TB bacillus. At the time of Koch's announcement in Berlin, TB was raging through Europe and the Americas, causing the death of one out of every seven people. Koch's discovery opened the way towards diagnosing and curing TB.

This week was also World Water Day. In the richer counties, it is easy to take clean, drinkable water for granted. That is, until something like the nuclear emergency in Japan threatens the surrounding water supply. However, a large fraction of the world's population in both urban and rural areas does not have ready access to clean water and this alone is an important contributor to poor health in many, if not, developing nations.

Is Detroit Disappearing?

The census data for the state of Michigan were released yesterday, and the population decline in Detroit was clearly the biggest headline produced by those data. The New York Times noted that:

Detroit’s population had plunged by 25 percent over the last decade. It was dramatic testimony to the crumbling industrial base of the Midwest, black flight to the suburbs and the tenuous future of what was once a thriving metropolis.

It was the largest percentage drop in history for any American city with more than 100,000 residents, apart from the unique situation of New Orleans, where the population dropped by 29 percent after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College.

William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC., but still affiliated with the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, noted that Detroit has probably dropped to 18th on the list of US cities, behind Austin TX and Charlotte NC. 

Nearly a century ago, the expansion of the auto industry fueled a growth spurt that made Detroit the fourth-largest city in the country by 1920, a place it held until 1950, when the population peaked at almost two million. By 2000, Detroit had fallen to 10th place.

Michigan is the only state to have lost population in the decade between 2000 and 2010.

Are Biofuels Good for Africa?

There is a lot of global discussion about trying to make fuel from just about anything except petroleum (and probably also from nuclear sources) and that discussion seems to lead most easily to oil from plants--biofuels. The BBC has a story, though, about the effect of this movement on Kenya, where...

...An Italian company has asked the authorities for permission to lease 50,000 hectares there to grow jatropha, whose seeds are rich in oil that can be turned into bio-diesel.

This plant, originally from South America, has long been grown in Africa as a hedge to keep out animals - goats stay well away as it is poisonous. The area affected is community land which is being held in trust by the local council.

This expansion has been spurred by the European Union, which has set ambitious goals for lowering greenhouse gas emissions and reducing its reliance on imported oil.

Basically, the EU does not want to use any of its own farmland to grow plants that produce biofuels, so European firms are searching for land in developing countries. That doesn't necessarily sit well with the local population.

Some ask: "Why 'feed' a car in Europe when hunger at home is still a reality?"

"Our future is no longer in our hands. We have been told we have to move because they want to plant jatropha here," said 27-year-old Merciline Koi, a mother of two, who added that there had been no offer of compensation for leaving her home in Dakatcha Woodlands.

This story is just unfolding, so we will have to see how it turns out. In the meantime, the BBC notes that there are already many farms in Africa (and India) that are growing jatropha as a source of oil for European customers. The Italian company that wants to set up shop in Kenya "has leased almost a million hectares in Africa; jatropha oil from a plantation in Senegal is being supplied to the Swedish furniture retailer Ikea. Other companies have leased land for the same purpose in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Ghana, as well as in India."

Do Frustrated Young People Mean That Revolution is Coming?

The political uprisings in the Middle East have generally been instigated and powered by younger, urban segments of each society. The Iranian revolution of the 1970s was similar in that regard, as are most revolutions. Does that mean that having young, frustrated men in your midst is a dangerous thing? That seems to be the message of an Op-Ed piece in today's New York Times by 24-year-old research assistant Matthew Klein at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

My generation was taught that all we needed to succeed was an education and hard work. Tell that to my friend from high school who studied Chinese and international relations at a top-tier college. He had the misfortune to graduate in the class of 2009, and could find paid work only as a lifeguard and a personal trainer.  Unpaid internships at research institutes led to nothing.  After more than a year he moved back in with his parents.

Millions of college graduates in rich nations could tell similar stories. In Italy, Portugal and Spain, about one-fourth of college graduates under the age of 25 are unemployed. In the United States, the official unemployment rate for this group is 11.2 percent, but for college graduates 25 and over it is only 4.5 percent.

The uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa are a warning for the developed world. Even if an Egyptian-style revolution breaking out in a rich democracy is unthinkable, it is easy to recognize the frustration of a generation that lacks opportunity. Indeed, the “desperate generation” in Portugal got tens of thousands of people to participate in nationwide protests on March 12. How much longer until the rest of the rich world follows their lead?

In virtually every human society it is the younger people--ages 15-24 in particular--where frustrations are apt to build up. If a society has a huge bulge at that age, then this may well be kindling for a fire lit by an event such as the self-immolation of the young man in a Tunisian village. The critical difference, however, between being a young person in a rich democratic country and one in a poor autocratic one is the fact that the former can imagine a future where life will be better--even if one has to wait longer than expected--whereas the latter have no such expectations or even hopes. There are probably not enough resources on the planet for every generation of young people in rich countries to be dramatically better off than their parents, but the average person in the US already has nearly 20 times the annual income of someone in Egypt, so the level of frustration is bound to be different in these two situations.

Blacks are Suburbanizing Throughout the US

One of the clear trends emerging from the 2010 census redistricting data being released state-by-state is that blacks throughout the country were suburbanizing at unexpectedly high rates during the last decade. The Los Angeles Times yesterday reviewed the situation in the southeastern states, where the growth of the Latino population has added a new wrinkle to the region's demographics:

African Americans in the South are shunning city life for the suburbs at the highest levels in decades, rapidly integrating large metropolitan areas that were historically divided between inner-city blacks and suburban whites.

Census figures also show that Latino population growth for the first time outpaced that of blacks and whites in most of the South, adding to the region's racial and ethnic mix.

The share of blacks in large metropolitan areas who opted to live in the suburbs climbed to 58% in the South, compared with 41% for the rest of the U.S., according to census estimates. That's up from 52% in 2000 and represents the highest share of suburban blacks in the South since the Civil Rights Act passed in the 1960s.

The South also had major gains in neighborhood integration between blacks and whites. Thirty-two of the region's 38 largest metro areas made such gains since 2000, according to a commonly used demographic index. The measure, known as the segregation index, tracks the degree to which racial groups are evenly spread among neighborhoods. Topping the list were rapidly diversifying metro areas in central Florida, as well in Georgia, Texas and Tennessee.

Even in San Diego, where the black population represents only about 6 percent of the total, the trend has been toward suburbanization, and indeed leaving for other parts of the United States. I touched on these issues last night on "San Diego Week" on KPBS-TV.

Arizona Seems to be Rethinking Its Immigration Priorities

There was important news out of Arizona yesterday, where the state Senate defeated several bills that were aimed at even further restrictions on undocumented immigrants.

The Senate voted down bills that sought to provoke a reevaluation by the U.S. Supreme Court of birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants, Senate officials said.

Other defeated measures sought to ban undocumented students from studying at state universities, as well as requiring hospitals and schools to check the legal status of patients and students respectively.

The votes came despite the Senate having a majority of Republicans, generally more sympathetic to such measures than Democrats.

"This was a clear statement that Arizona needs to focus on its priorities, not try to solve the immigration problem," Democratic State Senator Steve Gallardo told Reuters.

The story from Reuters also notes, however, that there may still be some backdoor politicking on these issues, so we need to stay tuned:

Despite the state Senate defeat, there is a possibility the laws could be revived during this legislative session in the form of amendments to other bills, or through calls for a revote.

Will Japan's Disaster Open the Country to Immigrants?

The genuinely horrific combination of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant meltdowns in Japan has shocked and saddened the entire world. A huge rebuilding of places and lives will, however, be the likely long-term aftermath in one of the richest countries in the world--unlike the slow pace with which Haiti has been rebuilding after its massively destructive earthquake a year ago. Quite naturally, speculation has arisen as to the extent to which Japan will need to rely on foreigners to help in that rebuilding process. Jeanne Batalova of the MPI Data Hub project at the Migration Policy Institute has noted that, at present, there are very few foreigners living in the country (of course, these data do not reflect any post-disaster evacuations):

There were slightly less than 2.2 million foreign nationals residing in Japan in 2009, according to Japan's Ministry of Justice. Since 2000, the foreign population grew by nearly half a million, from 1.7 million. Its share of the total Japan's population also increased from 1.3 percent in 2000 to 1.7 percent in 2009. (For comparison, the 38.5 million immigrants accounted for 12.5 percent of the total US population in 2009.) 

The top five countries of origin for foreign nationals were China (31.1 percent or 680,518), North and South Korea (26.5 percent or 578,495), Brazil (12.2 percent or 267,456), the Philippines (9.7 percent or 211,716), and Peru (2.6 percent or 57,464). Together, these countries accounted for 82.1 percent of the 2,186,121 registered foreigners who lived in Japan as of 2009. 

In terms of unauthorized immigrants, the Immigration Bureau estimated that about 91,000 people overstayed their visas, plus another 13,000 to 22,000 estimated to have entered the country without authorization. Together, they represented about 5 percent of the foreign nationals in Japan. (For comparison, the 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants accounted for 28 percent of the total US immigrant population in 2010.) 

Nearly 40 percent of the 2.2 million foreigners resided in the Kanto region (which includes the Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba, Saitama, and Ibaragi prefectures), one of the most heavily affected regions by the March 11 earthquake. 

So, from this perspective it wouldn't take very many additional immigrants (temporary or permanent) to make a huge change in Japanese society. Admittedly, history suggests that this is unlikely to happen, but without such assistance, it may be difficult for Japan to climb out of the hole created by this disaster.

Life Expectancy at All-Time High in the US

The US Centers for Disease Control just released their latest estimates of life expectancy in the US, based on death certificate data for 2009. 

Life expectancy at birth increased to 78.2 years in 2009, up slightly from 78.0 years in 2008. Life expectancy was up two-tenths of a year for males (75.7 years) and up one-tenth of a year for females (80.6 years). Life expectancy for the U.S. white population increased by two-tenths of a year. Life expectancy for black males (70.9 years) and females (77.4 years) was unchanged in 2009. The gap in life expectancy between the white and black populations was 4.3 years in 2009, two-tenths of a year increase from the gap in 2008 of 4.1 years.

So, the good news is that life expectancy is up, but the bad news is that it did not increase for African-Americans, and so the white-black gap in life expectancy increased a bit. It is also useful to keep in mind that life expectancy in the United States is still lower than in all of the western European nations, as well as lower than in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, not to mention Japan, despite the fact that we spend more money per person on health care than any other country in the world.

Among the Reasons Why a Complete Census Count is Important...

In an era when the US Congress is hacking away at budgets, including that of the Census Bureau, it is good to be reminded of the many ways in which the complete count is critical to our understanding of demographic trends. The Pew Research Center today issued a report showing that the intercensal estimates of the Hispanic population tended to be considerably different from the census count in those states, such as in the Southeast, where the Hispanic population is still relatively small, but is rapidly growing. As Jeff Passel and D'Vera Cohn note:

The six traditional Hispanic states for which Hispanic counts from the 2010 Census have been released include Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey and Texas. Each has more than a million Hispanic residents and collectively, 31% of their population is Hispanic. As a group, those states house 30 million Hispanics, according to the 2010 Census, yet their aggregate census count was only 88,000 (or .3%) larger than their aggregate census estimate. 

In the other 27 states, Hispanics make up 7% of the total population. These states as a group house 8.7 million Hispanics, and their combined 2010 Census count was 501,000 people (or 6.1%) higher than their combined census estimate. Among them are Alabama, where the Hispanic census count of 186,000 people was 16% higher than its census estimate, the largest gap among states seen so far.

Perhaps most troubling, however, is that in Arizona the census count was lower than the census estimate for the Hispanic population. 

The gap in Arizona was almost entirely due to a lower-than-expected Census count in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.

It seems likely, of course, that the harsh laws recently passed against undocumented immigrants have had an impact on the overall growth of the Hispanic population.

The World Approaches 7 Billion

I routinely refer to the world's population as being 7 billion, but the UN Population Division estimates that we are still just short of that number, although we will reach it during 2011. In anticipation of this event, the National Geographic has created a series of videos exploring the "face" of seven billion, and reliving some of the important transitions that got us to this point. These resources are available on their website: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/7-billion

Even More Populations at Risk in Japan

As rescue efforts go forward in Japan, it is clear that the number of deaths from the combined earthquake and tsunami will be in the thousands, if not the tens of thousands. The New York Times reports that:

Japanese news media estimates of the death toll from the natural disasters ranged from 1,300 to 1,700, but the total could rise. Many communities were scrambling to find the missing; in the port town of Minamisanriku, nearly 10,000 people were unaccounted for, according to the public broadcaster NHK. Much of the northeast was impassable, and by late Saturday rescuers had not arrived in the worst-hit areas.

The continual swaying and rolling of the ground deepened the disorientation of a nation accustomed to disaster, but which has not experienced anything on this scale for generations.

Residents in the hardest hit northern part of the country are without food and water and, of course, the threat of disease is a serious one, even in a country that has the world's highest life expectancy. On top of that is the fear that at least one, and perhaps two, nuclear plants may experience a meltdown, which will have further horrific consequences.

The developments at two separate nuclear plants prompted the evacuation of more than 200,000 people. Japanese officials said they had also ordered up the largest mobilization of their Self-Defense Forces since World War II to assist in the relief effort.

Keep in mind that at the end of WWII the population of Japan was about 80 million. It is now more than 50 percent higher than that--about 127 million--so no previous earthquake or Tsunami had the opportunity to put so many people at risk as has this set of natural events. Most disturbing about what is happening in Japan is that it is taking place in one of the most advanced civilizations ever in human history, with knowledge of and experience with earthquakes and tsunamis, and yet the number of victims is huge.

Populations at Risk in Japan

The largest earthquake ever to hit Japan (8.9 on the Richter Scale), and one of the largest ever recorded on earth hit today, killing at least 300 people, and sending a Tsunami across the Pacific Ocean. The New York Times notes that the deaths are especially related to the fact that the town nearest to the earthquake (which was itself centered off-shore) is on relatively flat ground.

Japanese police officials said that more than 200 bodies were found in Sendai, a port city in the northeastern part of the country and the closest major city to the epicenter, and the government put the official death toll at more than 300. But with many people still missing there and elsewhere, the death toll is expected to rise.
Vasily Titov, director of the Center for Tsunami Research, said that coastal areas closest to the center of the earthquake probably had about 15 to 30 minutes before the first wave of the tsunami struck. "It’s not very much time. In Japan, the public is among the best educated in the world about earthquakes and tsunamis. But it’s still not enough time.”
Complicating the issue, he added, is that the flat terrain in the area would have made it difficult for people to reach higher, and thus safer, ground. "There are not many places they could go," he said.

Russians Vote With Their Feet

By all accounts, Russians have plenty to protest about, living in a country rife with corruption and few opportunities to get ahead. Of course, there is no youth bulge to push an agenda to the streets, as has happened in several of the now volatile Arab nations. Indeed, Russia has been slowly losing population since the mid-1990s, due to very low fertility, high mortality (life expectancy for males is about the same as in Ghana), and...outmigration. The Washington Post features a story this week about the slow, but steady leaking of people out of Russia.

The departures are not easily documented because they are mostly unrecorded, but they have become the talk of the independent press and professional circles here. Russians blame their malaise on an authoritarian system in which political limits have settled over society as a whole, dead-ending career opportunities.

In the Soviet era, emigration was a daring and irreversible public act that required getting an exit permit, renouncing citizenship and leaving most family and worldly goods behind forever. Today's emigrants often set off temporarily to study or for a contract to work for a year or two elsewhere. They return home frequently to visit and only gradually make themselves emigrants.

Sergei Stepashin, chairman of the government's Audit Chamber, which oversees public spending, estimates that about 1.25 million Russians in this country of 140 million have left in the last few years. Gennady Gudkov, head of the security committee in the lower house of parliament, puts the figure at 96,000 a year. He told a Russian newspaper that small-business people are reportedly leaving in great numbers because working here is too difficult.

It is not clear what could change this situation. The very same reasons that push people out of a country--lack of opportunity--are very unlikely to attract immigrants from other places, and are unlikely to encourage people to start having more children.

Slow Growth Comes to California

The Census 2010 redistricting data for California were released yesterday and, as the NewYork Times notes, the results reveal a substantial slowing of California's population compared to previous decades.

Perhaps the legendary beaches here are losing their pull. California, once the very symbol of sun-drenched American growth, had a population increase of only 10 percent in the last decade, the slowest rise in the state’s history. And for the first time since California was became a state in 1850, it will not gain a Congressional seat.

Here in San Diego the demographic pattern very closely resembled the state pattern, as noted in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

In San Diego County, the decline of the white population between 2000 and 2010 eased compared to the previous decade’s. Similarly, the growth of the Hispanic population slowed during that period, said John Weeks, professor of geography and director of the International Population Center at San Diego State University.

Between 1990 and 2000, the non-Hispanic white population declined 5 percent, compared to 3 percent between 2000 and 2010. The rate of growth in the Hispanic population between 1990 and 2000 was 53 percent versus the 32 percent increase in the last decade, Weeks said.

“The trends were not as big as people thought,” he said. “It shows there was less demographic turmoil in the decade. People are not leaving at the same rate they had been previously.”

Although there are pockets of non-Hispanic white gentrification near downtown San Diego, the data show clearly that San Diego County's population is continuing to suburbanize:

This spread reflects a continued trend toward suburbanization, despite efforts to promote smart growth and urban density in the last half of the decade, Weeks said.

“By and large, people tend to prefer the suburbs. It used to be that suburbs were non-Hispanic white, but now everybody lives in the suburbs,” Weeks said. “The suburbs are where San Diego increasingly is.”

Africans Left in the Lurch in Libyan Mess

The civil war in Libya has created a flood of refugees, as I have already noted. However, today's New York Times reports on the genuine tragedy of sub-Saharan Africans who are stuck at the Tripoli airport (not IN the airport, just AT the airport) and seemingly have no way out of the country.

As wealthier nations send boats and planes to rescue their citizens from the violence in Libya, a new refugee crisis is taking shape on the outskirts of Tripoli, where thousands of migrant workers from sub-Saharan Africa have been trapped with scant food and water, no international aid and little hope of escape.

The migrants — many of them illegal immigrants from Ghana and Nigeriawho have long constituted an impoverished underclass in Libya — live amid piles of garbage, sleep in makeshift tents of blankets strung from fences and trees, and breathe fumes from a trench of excrement dividing their camp from the parking lot of Tripoli’s airport.

Sub-Saharan Africans make up a vast majority of the estimated 1.5 million illegal immigrants among Libya’s population of 6.5 million, according to the International Organization for Migration. Many were desperately poor people made even more so by investments of up to $1,000 each to pay smugglers to bring them across Libya’s southern border for a chance at better work in its oil economy.

Unfortunately, the poverty and lack of legal status of many of these people is compounded by racism.

Despite Colonel Qaddafi’s brotherly pan-African rhetoric, racial xenophobia is common here. Many Libyans, ethnically Arab, look down on Chinese, Bangladeshis and darker-skinned Africans, in that order. Many African refugees here and in the camps on the Tunisian border say Libyans often addressed them as “abd,” or slave.

Utah Creates Its Own Guestworker Program

The State of Utah has joined Arizona in passing laws that may well step on federal immigration prerogatives, but in a distinctly different direction. Arizona's laws were basically intended to scare workers away, whereas Utah has decided to move in a more positive direction, as noted in today's New York Times:

Utah’s package includes measures to tighten enforcement against illegal immigrants that echo Arizona’s tough stance — like a requirement that the police check the immigration status of anyone arrested on a felony or a serious misdemeanor charge.

But supporters said the hybrid package offered an alternative to states, including those controlled by Republicans, that are seeking to avoid the costly political polarization and legal challenges that followed Arizona’s law and that also want to recognize the need of some businesses for immigrant labor in spite of high unemployment nationally.

The guest worker bill came after intense lobbying by business and farm groups as well as by some immigrant advocates, and it enjoyed the quiet but all-important endorsement of the Mormon Church. It is likely to raise many of the same constitutional questions as the Arizona law, including whether it intrudes on areas of immigration law reserved exclusively for the federal government. Central provisions of Arizona’s law, known as S. B. 1070, were suspended by federal courts pending a lawsuit by the Obama administration.

But in contrast to Arizona’s approach, Utah lawmakers framed their bill to set up a negotiation, rather than a confrontation, between the governor and the federal authorities. Gov. Gary R. Herbert, a Republican who handily won election in November, is expected to sign the bill.

Under one bill approved on Friday, Utah would issue a two-year work permit to illegal immigrants who could prove that they had been living and working in the state. To qualify, immigrants would have to pass a criminal background check and pay fines of up to $2,500.

The bill gives the governor until 2013 to negotiate with federal immigration authorities for a waiver for the guest worker program. Under federal law, it is a violation for an employer to knowingly hire an illegal immigrant. If no waiver has been obtained by then, the guest worker program would go into effect anyway.

This seems like one of the more useful models for dealing with immigration that has been put on the table, since, as one Utah legislator noted, “we literally do not have the ability to remove those who are here illegally.” 

Europe Gets Even Less Immigrant Friendly

A report out today from the Associated Press details the various ways in which European nations have been making life ever harder for immigrants (in this case, legal ones) to get a job. The lead is about Italy, which now requires that workers demonstrate a knowledge of the Italian language before they can be issued a work permit.

Some immigrant advocates worry that as harsh economic times make it harder for natives to keep jobs, such measures will become more a vehicle for intolerance than integration. Others say it's only natural that newcomers learn the language of their host nation, seeing it as a condition to ensure they can contribute to society.

So far, Italy is only giving a gentle turn to the screw. Cojochru and other test-takers described the exam as easy. No oral skills were tested.

But the story from Italy is just the tip of the iceberg.

In Austria, terms are tougher. There, where native speakers have been sometimes known to scold immigrant parents for not speaking proper German to their children, foreigners from outside the European Union need to prove they speak basic German within five years of receiving their first residency permit. Failure to do so can bring fines and jeopardize their right to stay.

Since 2005, would-be citizens and permanent residency holders have been asked to prove their command of "Britishness" by answering multiple choice questions, in English, on British history, culture and law, from explaining the meaning behind the fireworks-filled Guy Fawkes Night, to knowing which British courts use a jury system.

Britain's government has pledged to dramatically cut immigration, and the language requirement is effectively a tool to put a cap on the number of newcomers, said Sarah Mulley, an immigration expert at the Institute of Public Policy Research, a London think tank.

Home Secretary Theresa May, who aims to cut immigration to below 100,000 by 2015, said language tests will help weed out those who don't plan to contribute to British life. She has singled out spouses seeking marriage visas to join English-speaking partners as a particular concern.

A major concern in Europe mirrors some of the discussion heard in the United States--a sense among the older native-born population that the culture is slipping away because there are too many foreigners.

In 1990, immigrants numbered some 1.14 million out of Italy's then 56.7 million people, or about 2 percent, according to the state statistics bureau, ISTAT. At the start of this year, foreigners living in Italy amounted to 4.56 million of a total population of 60.6 million, or 7.5 percent, with immigrants' offspring accounting for an ever larger percentage of births in Italy.

Canadian 2011 Census Will Be Short-Form Only

Preparations are well underway for the 2011 Census of Canada, which will be conducted in May. Following the lead of the United States, the long form has been abolished and only a small set of data will be obtained from each household. The questionnaires will be mailed out, but they can also be completed online. Statistics Canada has a pretty simple description of the process:

The questionnaire asks basic questions such as age, sex, marital status, relationship to others in the household and mother tongue. The paper questionnaire has enough space for answers from six people. If more than six people live in a household, call the Census Help Line for another questionnaire. It is important to count everyone.

Unfortunately, the decision last year to get rid of the long form was not a statistical or procedural one, but seems largely to have been driven by politics. The Conservative government appeared to feel that questions asked on the long form represented an invasion of privacy. 

Statistics Canada will, however, collect additional data:

The information previously collected by the long-form census questionnaire will be collected as part of the new voluntary National Household Survey (NHS). This questionnaire will cover most of the same topics as the 2006 Census.
The National Household Survey will be conducted within four weeks of the May 2011 Census and will include approximately 4.5 million households.

Census data are used everywhere for a wide range of government planning and business purposes that promote the welfare of society, so this is not a direction that anyone using census data wants to see us go.

More Demographic Fallout From the Libyan Revolt

Amid the violence in Libya, guest workers from African and Asian nations are leaving in droves--or at least they are trying to leave. The New York Times reports that 180,000 people are piled up at the Libyan borders with Tunisia to the northwest and Egypt to the east. 

Appealing for international help on Wednesday, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said: “We need concrete action on the ground to provide humanitarian and medical assistance. Time is of the essence. Thousands of lives are at risk.”

Several aid groups were operating on the Tunisian and Egyptian borders, handing out food and supplies to the refugees and assessing the situation for providing more help.

But it was the Tunisian border that worried aid groups the most.

“There is an absolutely mammoth task that is absolutely imperative” to ease pressure on the border area, Sybella Wilkes, a spokeswoman for the United Nations refugee agency in Geneva, said Wednesday. “The capacity of the border area is bursting.”

At the same time, the disruption of the oil supply from Libya has caused a sharp increase in gas prices, as anyone who drives already knows, and this is cascading into higher food prices because so many of the inputs to agriculture depend upon petroleum.

The Food Price Index, which monitors average monthly price changes for a variety of key staples, rose to 236 points in February from 231 points in January, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said.

It was the highest level since FAO began monitoring prices in 1990.

"Unexpected oil price spikes could further exacerbate an already precarious situation in food markets," David Hallam, director of the Rome-based FAO's trade and market division, was quoted as saying in a statement.

"This adds even more uncertainty concerning the price outlook just as plantings for crops in some of the major growing regions are about to start."

FAO economists warned that food prices were likely to remain high until the outlook for this year's harvests is known by around April.

Since high food prices have been one of the elements behind popular unrest in developing nations, this situation is naturally causing a lot of global jitters.

The Food Balancing Act

Philosophers through the ages, including Aristotle, Confucius, and Buddha, have extolled the virtue of the golden man, of balance, of the middle way. When it comes to world food security issues, we seem to have lost that way. There are literally billions of people in the world who have too little to eat, while another billion or two have dramatically more than they need to eat. The danger of eating too much, especially when it is not very nutritious, is illustrated by the global trend in obesity. Obesity is closely related to type 2 diabetes, which has been implicated in a shortening of life expectancy in Europe and North America, and almost certainly elsewhere.

The analysis used pooled medical information for 820,900 people from nearly 100 studies done mostly in Europe and North America. The results are published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

A 50-year-old with diabetes dies six years sooner than someone without the disease, and not just from a heart attack or a stroke, new research suggests.

The large international effort to measure diabetes' toll found the disease also raises the risk of dying prematurely from a host of other ailments, even breast cancer and pneumonia.

 "It's quite a wide sweep of conditions," said Dr. John Danesh of Cambridge University in Britain, who led the team of researchers. While most people think of heart problems, diabetes surprisingly "appears to be associated with a much broader range of health implications than previously suspected."Putting the six years lost in context, he said, long-term smoking shortens life by 10 years.

An important aspect of over-eating is related to meat consumption. Animals are relatively poor converters of calories and it takes a lot of food to grow an animal before it is killed to be eaten by humans. Eating less meat would almost certainly improve our health while at the same time freeing up massive amounts of acreage for growing grain for human consumption. The Economist discussed this issue in its recent report on global food security, as it proposed that, if the world is going to continue to consume meat at an ever higher rate, free range will have to give way to penned animals:

This will not happen everywhere. Europeans and—to some extent—Americans are increasingly influenced by welfare concerns. They jib at confining animals. The European Union has banned certain kinds of cages, and California is following suit. But, so far, people in emerging markets, where demand for meat and animal products is growing fast, are less concerned about such things, so the next stage of the livestock revolution will mainly be concentrated there.

This is not something that we should just glibly watch happen. We, and the animals, will all be better off with a new food balancing act.

Smoking Still a Health Risk in the United States

Americans are smoking a lot less than they used to, and that's a good thing. But heavy smoking in the past is still killing people at the older ages in the US and that is an important reason why life expectancy lags behind other rich nations. This is one of the conclusions of a new report from the National Research Council titled “Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries, edited by Eileen M. Crimmins, Samuel H. Preston, and Barney Cohen. Professor Preston, from the University of Pennsylvania, and literally the world's foremost authority on this topic, was interviewed by The Nation's Health, a publication of the American Public Health Association, which summarized the findings:

Over the past 25 years, life expectancy at age 50 in the United States has been increasing, but at a much slower rate than in some other high-income countries. Researchers attribute the slower rate of increase — for women in the United States the increase was about 40 percent smaller than in other countries — to widespread smoking 30 to 50 years ago.

Over the period 1950 to 2003, the gain in life expectancy at age 50 was 2.1 years lower among U.S. women, compared with the average of nine other high-income countries, the report said. Women in the United States, on average, will live 5.7 years longer now than they would have in 1950. In the other nine countries, women are living an average of 7.8 years longer than in 1950.

“What’s clear is that smoking histories matter, and smoking histories can’t be instantaneously reversed when you stop smoking,” Preston said.

Is our lack of universal health care a cause of the problem? Preston thinks this is not a big issue, since most people now die at the older ages, and we do, in fact, have universal health care (Medicare) for the population aged 65 and older. What is more problematic is that the private health care system that exists for everyone younger than 65 is a fee-for-service system that creates profits when people are sick, rather than providing strong incentives for preventive care.

“For main causes of death at older ages — cancer and cardiovascular disease — available indicators do not suggest that the U.S. health care system is failing to prevent deaths that would elsewhere be averted,” the report said.

In fact, Preston said the United States has better cancer detection and survival rates than most other high-income countries. Survival rates following a heart attack are also favorable in the United States, he said.

“Where something has gone awry is in prevention of diseases,” he said. “The (United States) has a very high incidence of chronic disease, though we seem to treat them very well once they occur. We’re not preventing some diseases as effectively as many of our peers.”