Sad Summary of the Syrian Mess

Thanks to Debbie Fugate for linking me to her unit's very nice summary of the year-end review of the situation in Syria, in terms of refugees and internally displaced persons. This of course has spilled over into Iraq with the introduction of ISIS into the mix in the region. The State Department's HIU notes that an estimated 202,000 Syrians have been killed since 2011, and there are now an estimated 12.2 million internally displaced Syrians who need assistance, and 3.8 million refugees in the region needing assistance. This is an almost mind-blowing number of people whose lives have been turned upside down by this conflict.

Since countries in the region are hardest hit by this conflict, it would seem reasonable for them to be the ones doing something about this. Yet, there is evidence that Turkey has been a customer for oil that ISIS has captured and is selling to fuel its expansion. And, as the Economist has noted, Saudi Arabia is not all that different in its view of the world than is ISIS--it just has more oil to sell. 

And, for all the kingdom’s harshness at home and fuelling of extremism abroad, the world’s leaders flocked to Riyadh. Barack Obama cut short a trip to India to pay homage to the new king. 

This is a craven spectacle from democracies that claim to uphold universal human rights. When authoritarians elsewhere point to the Western silence on Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women, and its ruthless suppression of dissent, and cry double standards, they have a point. The West’s relationship with the Al Sauds must change. So must the dynasty itself.

The kinds of boots needed on the ground seem to be boots of protest about the role played by Saudi Arabia and others (including Russia and Iran) in allowing Syria to implode as it has, putting millions of people in harm's way. 

More Children Left Behind

I recently discussed the situation in Armenia, where women are left behind because the men have migrated (especially to Russia) in search of jobs and money to remit. The Migration Policy Institute has just published a report on children being left behind in two other former Soviet republics--Moldova and Ukraine--as their parents also search for work elsewhere (with men going largely to Russia to work in construction alongside the Armenians). The story on Armenia mentioned the toll on wives of having husbands gone, but there was no mention of the children. The MPI story focuses on them.

Left-behind children face numerous adverse effects of parental migration including problems related to school, such as deteriorating academic performance, declining attendance, and a lack of motivation. In Moldova, 22 percent of migrants’ children do not attend school. Health concerns may arise, including drug use and undermined or deteriorating health, as children with migrant parents may not solicit help when needed. Family stability and future development are also at stake. Divorce is common among Moldovan migrants. Children left behind lack job opportunities and may develop psycho-emotional problems often associated with an inferiority complex. This can lead to youth unemployment and juvenile delinquency, with high rates of each in Moldova and Ukraine. Left-behind children are also vulnerable to human trafficking and labor exploitation.

Reading this report led my mind quite naturally back to Central America, where children left behind are exploited and often seek to find their parents by migrating on their own, as my PhD student, Liz Kennedy, has been researching. It also raises interesting questions about citizenship and the vagueness of that concept when family members are in different countries, and receiving economic benefits from more than one place. In essence, migration of people who are married with children (as opposed to the more "traditional" form of single people, usually males, being migrants) undermines some of the common notions of what is a nation-state. To be sure, in the case of former Soviet Republics, the migration of men, in particular, tends to be toward Russia--the former "mother" country, so there may be a certain fuzziness there about who belongs where. Vladimir Putin obviously is of the opinion that the Ukraine is really still a part of Russia, for example.

Vaccinate Your Kids!

"Are vaccinations dangerous? Yes, if you don't get them?" That was the introduction to last night's Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore. He has taken over the spot on the Comedy Channel held by Steven Colbert for many years (with Colbert now set to take over the late show on CBS). Anyway, Wilmore devotes each night to one topic and last night's topic was measles vaccinations, building on the recent outbreak in California emanating from Disneyland. This may be the Comedy Channel, but just as Jon Stewart on the Daily Show has done for years, and Steven Colbert did for years on the Colbert Report, Larry Wilmore keeps it "100%" --which I guess is even better than "keeping it real." One of his guests is even a mother who refused to vaccinate her children. I think she's an idiot, but you can judge for yourself...

Armenians are Helping to Keep Russia From Depopulating Too Fast

Thanks to Duane Miller for pointing me to a CNN story on the village of Lichk in Armenia (see map below), which is run mainly by women for most of the year:

In the Armenian village of Lichk, you will find many hard-working women, but you will not find many men. All these women's husbands are thousands of miles away.

Because of the poor economic situation of this village, 90% of its working-age men have left for better-paying construction jobs in Russia.

So for eight or nine months a year, women run the village.

Armenia is a small country (about 3 million people--fewer than live here in San Diego County, California), that lies directly to the east of Turkey but has for centuries retained its Christian heritage despite being conquered and badly abused by the Ottomans and then becoming part of the Soviet Union. Indeed, in the years after WWII Armenian women were having more than three children each and the population of Armenia peaked at about 3.5 million just as the Soviet Union fell apart. Since then, fertility has fallen below replacement level, the population has declined in size, and the struggling economy has encouraged migration to Russia for jobs. Remittances from migrant laborers are an important part of the economy, as they are to many of the former republics of the Soviet Union. In Armenia, remittances from the migrants account for 21% of GDP, according to World Bank Data. This is very high by world standards, but lower than other former Soviet republics such as Kyrgz Republic (32%), Moldova (25%), and Tajikistan (48%). This is a classic win-win (or lose-lose, depending upon your political predilections) in that Armenia could not survive economically without the ability to send laborers to work in Russia, and Russia would be much worse off economically if it could not draw on the populations of its former republics to keep it from depopulating at a fast pace. Keep in mind, as well, that since about 500,000 persons of Armenian origin live in the U.S. (with the largest concentration in Los Angeles), some of those remittances may be from the U.S., not just Russia.

What Happened to America's Middle Class? Global Demographics is the Answer

President Obama's State of the Union Address touched on a topic that has become so intense that even the Republican Party has adopted the mantra that we must address income inequality. Now, to be sure, one part of income inequality (the part generally ignored by Republicans) is that the rich are becoming richer at the expense of the less-rich. But another part (and this is politically more popular) is that the middle class in the U.S. is shrinking. The cover story of this week's Economist relates to this, as does a lengthy story and Upshot blog post in today's NYTimes. The Upshot blog uses U.S. census data from IPUMS at the Minnesota Population Center to show, in particular, that:

Education matters more than it used to. In the 1970s, high school graduates who did not have a four-year college degree were well represented among the middle and upper class. They no longer are, as high-paying, blue-collar jobs have become rarer. College graduates have not suffered as much, though they are also less likely to be high income than they were in 2000.

It is not, however, that education is a more powerful predictor of success than it used to be. Rather, the time when low levels of education could be overcome by well-paying blue-collar jobs is gone. That was transitory. It can't be fixed by somehow reinvigorating trade unions. The jobs are gone. Gone to China and elsewhere where labor is vastly cheaper. After China--whose population has stopped growing--it will be India, where the biggest contribution to the world's total population will be made between now and the middle of this century. The result is, of course, a higher standard of living for the rest of us, because even if wages aren't going up much, the price of goods made overseas is going down. Compare the price of a TV or similar popular appliance now with what that same product was in real terms 15-20 years ago and you will see how much better off the average person is even if income has been flat.

So, what to do? The Economist has the answer: Talent, perseverance, and gumption. Those are the characteristics that move people forward in an open society, such as all western democracies. Not everyone is equally talented but perseverance and gumption go a long way, starting with improving your education and avoiding pregnancies at young ages and when you aren't yet married. On this point, the New York Times has these data from the census analysis:

Married couples with children — who make up a category that is shrinking over all — are diminishing even faster as a share of the middle class. In the late 1960s, about 45 percent of all households included married adults and their offspring. But among middle-class households, more than 60 percent had that traditional family arrangement. 

Today, married couples with children at home make up just a quarter of households. But even as they diminished as a share of the population, these families surged up the economic ladder as more married women went to work in the paid labor force. By 2000, 42 percent earned more than $100,000 in today’s dollars.

In sum, the hollowing out of the middle class started with global demographics, but is exacerbated by domestic demographics. We should be able to deal with the latter more readily than the former.