The Way Forward Demographically

This week's Science magazine (a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and one of the world's most prestigious magazines/journals) is a special issue (Volume 332, Number 6042, 29 July 2011) devoted to an examination of "the opportunities and challenges created by demographic changes around the world." This issue is done in conjunction with the world's "achievement" this year of having 7 billion of us alive at that same time.

Although you cannot read the articles online without a subscription to the magazine, I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy at your library. The Sciencemag.org website does include a nice seven-minute video providing an overview of the world's population issues, and the introduction to the special issue lays out the problem:

Today these demographic patterns spark concerns, not of a single explosion, but of “cluster bombs” in rapidly growing countries such as Nigeria and Pakistan, which are hobbled by poor governance and limited schooling capacity and already have huge numbers of poorly educated young adults without job prospects.

Debate continues over how best to address these and other problems and over whether rapid population growth is best dealt with by expanding family planning programs or implementing policies that will improve livelihoods and increase the education of girls and young women—or both. Still, many experts remain optimistic that with the right mix of policies, countries can harness the opportunities for economic growth and development offered by a young and educated workforce, congregating in dense, networked urban environments.

The [special issue] contains News stories by Science's staff and research assessments by leading experts, enhanced online with videos and dynamic graphics, explores these issues, many of which continue to split demographers.

Small Town America is Nearly a Thing of the Past

Reporters have continued to mine the recent Population Reference Bureau report summarizing findings from the 2010 Census, and have discovered that rural America is on the verge of disappearing.

The latest 2010 census numbers hint at an emerging America where, by midcentury, city boundaries become indistinct and rural areas grow ever less relevant. Many communities could shrink to virtual ghost towns as they shutter businesses and close down schools, demographers say.
More metro areas are booming into sprawling megalopolises. Barring fresh investment that could bring jobs, however, large swaths of the Great Plains and Appalachia, along with parts of Arkansas, Mississippi and North Texas, could face significant population declines.

A key element in all of this has been the decline of mining and timber industries that created jobs in rural areas in the past but no longer do so. Farming is a now a big business, so there are relatively few farm families any more. Furthermore, almost everyone has access to the same TV and internet as everyone else, so rural areas are not socially isolated in the way that they once were.

"Some of the most isolated rural areas face a major uphill battle, with a broad area of the country emptying out," said Mark Mather, associate vice president of the Population Reference Bureau, a research group in Washington, D.C. "Many rural areas can't attract workers because there aren't any jobs, and businesses won't relocate there because there aren't enough qualified workers. So they are caught in a downward spiral."
Rural towns are scrambling to attract new residents and stave off heavy funding cuts from financially strapped federal and state governments.

Will Latin American immigrants revitalize some of these places? Maybe. We'll see.

Asian Immigrants in Jordan

The discussion over the past few months related to the Middle East has obviously been of the events generally known as the Arab spring, and surrounding that discussion has been the issue of whether or not the violence and conflict have roots in a youth bulge. A report today from the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, DC indirectly suggests that the youth bulge may not have been such a big issue after all. Here's why: An increasing fraction of the labor force in Jordan is composed of Sri Lankans and Filipinos (actually Filipinas--see below), rather than Arabs, who have traditionally made up the immigrant labor force. 

Unskilled and semi-skilled migrant workers from the Arab region have been filling labor shortages in Jordan for decades, shaping its labor market and sustaining its economy. Although Arab nationals still account for a majority of migrant workers in Jordan today, the migration flow to Jordan has changed in recent years with the growing importance of non-Arab migrants from Asia.
Jordan’s census data suggest that the non-Arab Asian population’s share of the total foreign population more than doubled from 7 percent in 1994 to 15 percent in 2004. Among economically active migrants, non-Arab Asians comprised an even larger share, reaching nearly 30 percent by 2004.1A significant proportion of this new migration flow from Asia comes from Sri Lanka and the Philippines, which together account for nearly a third of the total.

The fact that Jordan needs immigrant labor suggests that there is not a bulge of youth in that country who are otherwise unemployed. The fact that other Arab countries cannot fill the jobs suggests that they, in turn, do not have an excess of young people to send off to a neighboring country. The only caveat is that a large fraction of these Asian immigrants are women engaged in domestic labor. "Filipinos and Sri Lankans who received work permits in 2009 were mostly female." It is likely that cultural prohibitions within the Arab world prevent Arab women from taking jobs such as these, and so women from other societies are recruited instead. Another possibility, of course, is that governments and recruiters recognize that it is easier to exploit and send home people from more distant places than it is to do with your neighbors.

A Small Crack in the Chinese One-Child Wall?

This week's Economist reports that the director of Population and Family Planning in China's Guangdong Province has applied to the central government for a "relaxation" of the one-child policy as applied to his province. The proposal is to allow a couple to have a second child if only one of them is a singleton, compared to the current policy which allows a second child only if both potential parents are singletons.

Zheng Zizhen, a demographer at the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences (GASS), says even a modest change would help. “Every couple, in Guangdong and all over China, should be able to have two children. But before we take a second step or a third step in that direction, we need to at least take a first step like this one.”
Most demographers think the one-child policy has imposed huge costs on the country. The 2010 census showed that population growth was even slower than expected, rising just 0.57% a year over the past decade. The policy has caused conflicts with ordinary people and been a target of intense foreign criticism, worries Peng Peng of GASS (who nevertheless worries about relaxing it too fast). The costs were highlighted recently by revelations of a long-running scandal in Hunan province, where officials are accused of brutalising parents who violate the policy by confiscating “illegal” babies and putting them up for sale in the adoption market.

In its leader to the issue, the Economist opines that this may indicate some softening of attitudes about the one-child policy, especially taking into consideration the enormous age structure and gender imbalance implications that are now in place. In the end, however, there seems to be little chance of change in the near-term:

Few expect significant reforms soon. The family-planning bureaucracy is a vast and entrenched interest group defending the status quo at all levels of government. Senior officials fear that any change would unleash a population boom, despite predictions to the contrary by most experts. With only a year to go until China’s first leadership change in a decade, no high-level figure in the central government is likely to back significant changes now. “If the government has political reasons for not being able to change the policy, then there is nothing I can do,” says Zheng Zizhen. “I can only say that from a scientific point of view, it is clear the policy needs to change.” Guangdong thinks so, too.

Note, by the way, that the article has a good map showing the different provincial levels of strictness with respect to the one-child policy.

North Koreans Are Having Trouble Feeding Themselves

North Korea makes the news largely for its nuclear program and human rights abuses, but it now appears to be facing a serious food shortage, as well. This is almost certainly not as bad as that in Somalia, but it still seems to be bad.

North Korea's food shortage has reached a crisis point this year, aid workers say, largely because of shocks to the agricultural sector, including torrential rains and the coldest winter in 60 years. Six million North Koreans are living "on a knife edge" and will go hungry without immediate food aid, the World Food Program said, calling in April for $224 million in emergency aid.

The country has not had the resources to invest heavily in agriculture, so the ability to grow food is limited.

North Korea, population 24 million with an annual per capita income of $1,800, has the manpower but lacks the economic and natural resources to succeed at farming, said Kim Young-hoon from the Korea Rural Economic Institute in Seoul, South Korea. He said the North Koreans continue to pursue new ways to stimulate the agricultural sector but cannot fund their ambitious projects.

The demographic effect of this can be seen in the vital statistics. According to the UN Population Division the average North Korean woman is bearing only 2 children each, although this is more than the 1.4 children on average being born to women in South Korea. However, life expectancy at birth for females in North Korea is 12 years lower than in South Korea (72 compared to 84). As a reminder, life expectancy in Somalia for females is only 53 years.