Contrasting Tales of Indian Migrants

Thanks to Nick Parr for pointing to an article in the Economist highlighting the incredible success of migrants from India to the United States:

On the usual measures of success they outstrip all other minorities, including Jewish-Americans. They are educated and rich. In 2012 some 42% held first or higher degrees; average family income was over $100,000, roughly double that of white Americans (see chart). Over two-thirds of them hold high-status jobs. They have done so well that many migrants from Pakistan or Bangladesh like to call themselves Indian, hoping that some of the stardust will rub off on them.

The graph below highlights the overall numbers:

But it turns out that this is not how life turns out for all migrants from India seeking work elsewhere in the world. In today's OZY, Charu Sudan Kasturi has an article about the discrimination faced by Indian and Filipino workers in Singapore and in the Middle East. They are confronted by low wages and poor working conditions, xenophobia from locals, and even potential conflict between immigrant groups.

Indians, the largest immigrant community in these cities and countries, mostly work in the construction industry as laborers, with a minority employed in white-collar jobs. Most Filipinos — the second-largest immigrant group — work as nurses, caregivers and household help. Yet some host nations often end up pitting the two immigrant groups against each other in a contest to prove which is better suited for the land where they work.

Higher wages in places like Singapore and the UAE have long drawn Indian and Filipino workers from their home countries. A nurse, for example, earns about 3,000 rupees ($47) a month in India, or 2,500 dirhams ($680) in Dubai. Strict curbs on freedom of expression and the threat of deportation keep workers there “firmly in line,” says Syed Ali, an associate professor of sociology and anthropology at Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York. If they go on strike, for instance, or even just make demands for better wages and working conditions, “they’ll often get arrested and deported,” Ali says. “Or the companies fire them, so they lose their work permits, their visas get canceled and they have to leave.”

In the UAE, salaries often depend on the worker’s nationality — to compensate foreign workers proportionate to wages they’d earn back in their own countries, Ali says. That’s why Europeans tend to get paid more than a local, who in turn usually earns more than a Filipino. A Filipino would earn marginally more than an Indian. “There are often sentiments expressed about unfair advantage and privilege,” Kathiravelu says.

The point here, of course, is that the country of origin is less important than your choice of a destination and that depends heavily on your education and the range of "salable skills."

The Demographics of One Person One Vote

The US Supreme Court this week agreed to review a case that could help decide what is actually meant by the concept of "one person, one vote." The NYTimes summarizes the issue in this way:

The court’s ruling, expected in 2016, could be immensely consequential. Should the court agree with the two Texas voters who brought the case, its ruling would shift political power from cities to rural areas, a move that would benefit Republicans. 

The court has never resolved whether voting districts should have the same number of people, or the same number of eligible voters. Counting all people amplifies the voting power of places with large numbers of residents who cannot vote legally, including immigrants who are here legally but are not citizens, illegal immigrants, children and prisoners. Those places tend to be urban and to vote Democratic.

A ruling that districts must be based on equal numbers of voters would move political power away from cities, with their many immigrants and children, and toward older and more homogeneous rural areas.

[I should note that I am not certain of the validity of this blanket statement--it may be generally true, but not dramatically so. A lot of undocumented immigrants in states like California, Texas, and Florida are living and working in counties that are predominantly agricultural.]

The case, a challenge to voting districts for the Texas Senate, was brought by two voters, Sue Evenwel and Edward Pfenninger. They are represented by the Project on Fair Representation, the small conservative advocacy group that successfully mounted the earlier challenge to the Voting Rights Act. It is also behind a pending challenge to affirmative action in admissions at the University of Texas at Austin.

It turns out that this is a very complex issue, and one with a long history. Everyone interested in this issue (and that should be every one living in the US), including the attorneys and Supreme Court justices, should read the Population Association of America Presidential Address by Marta Tienda of Princeton University from 2002, which is technically behind a subscription to the journal Demography, but can be found here. As the demographics of the US have changed over the years, the issue has periodically arisen as to which people should be included when we calculate the number of constituents for a given office, which then helps drive the boundaries for that elected office. There are, in short, no easy answers, which is one of the reasons why the current status is somewhat vague. 

In a classical case of "be careful what you wish for," it is interesting that the petitioners in this case are from Texas. Although the case revolves around the Texas Senate, not the federal House of Representatives, Marta Tienda's analysis showed that if you excluded immigrants from apportionment for seats in the House of Representatives, Texas would lose several seats in Congress. Oops!

Gates Foundation's Focus on Family Planning

I have been periodically critical of the Gates Foundation for its emphasis on saving children's lives without necessarily balancing that with preventing unwanted pregnancies. I appreciate, then, that the folks at Population Matters pointed to a recent interview with Melinda Gates, in which she reaffirms her commitment to providing women in developing countries, especially in Africa, with methods of birth control. She notes, for example, that methods like Depo-Provera are not as readily available as they used to be, whereas  condoms tend to be ubiquitous, due in particular to the US government's PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief) program. The problem with condoms in places like Africa is that if a woman asks her husband to use one he may interpret that to mean that she suspects him of extra-marital affairs. In other words, the condom is associated with sexually transmitted disease more than being thought of as method of birth control. Besides, any method that depends on male cooperation has a markedly lower chance of success.

I appreciate the fact that Melinda Gates is once again speaking out about this issue, as she did quite forcefully three years ago. But, of course, it shouldn't be up to a single philanthropic organization to be leading this charge. The UNFPA, whose mission involves helping women have the number of children they want, needs more resources from the rich countries in order to move forward on this front. The issues surrounding population growth are not over, by any stretch of the imagination.

Political Demography and Religion--Burmese Style

Over the past few weeks we have heard the horrific stories of refugees from Myanmar (Burma) and Bangladesh trying to fleeing their country of origin by boat, only to be left drifting at sea because no one wants to take them in. The worst situation is with respect to the refugees from Burma, as noted in an editorial in today's Los Angeles Times:

While Bangladeshis are fleeing poverty, the refugees from Myanmar are Rohingya Muslims trying to escape their country's shameful, long-standing persecution. A minority in a Buddhist-majority country, they have been subject to sectarian violence and denied rightful citizenship for decades. Most of the 1 million Rohingya live in Myanmar's western Rakhine state, and as many as 140,000 currently are in squalid displaced persons camps. The government, wrongfully, considers them illegal immigrants and won't even call them Rohingya, referring to them as Bengalis.

In a not-at-all subtle fashion, the government of Myanmar is trying to get rid of its Muslim population. It started on a new strategy this week by passing a new population control bill:

Myanmar's president has signed off on a law that says couples must space their children 36 months apart. This is the first of four "race and religious protection" laws proposed by Buddhist nationalists.

Buddhist fundamentalists have repeatedly voiced their belief that Muslims, with their high birthrates, could take over the country of 50 million inhabitants - even though they make up only 10 percent of the population.

This is a case of true demographic hysteria. The recently released report by Pew Research on its population projections by religion suggest that, in fact, only 4% of Burma's 54 million people are currently Muslim, and they project that to increase to only 5% by 2050. Now, to be sure, the overall Burmese population has experienced a truly dramatic drop in fertility over the past few decades. In the 1970s women were still having nearly 6 children each, but that has now dropped to below replacement level. Still, it would take many generations for the Muslim population to take over the country, and it is almost certainly the case that their fertility would also drop if they were allowed to become full-fledged members of Burmese society. 

Clean Water and Sanitation Are Still Priorities

It is very easy for those of us in the rich countries to take our infrastructure for granted. Among many other things, we have clean water and flushing toilets connected to sewers. Those two public health attributes are important to survival because they slow down the spread of disease and help to keep us healthy. Untreated water and poor sanitation are commonplace in much, if not most, of the rural parts of the world, but if rural population density is low, that may not matter too much. The problems emerge especially when people are crammed into cities without proper access to water and sanitation, including lack of public toilets. Indeed, I mentioned a few days ago that the CEO of the Gates Foundation recently posted her annual report and in there she tells the story of an early inspiration for the work in which the foundation has been involved:

One of my favorite stories from the early days of the foundation occurred when Bill and Melinda read Nick Kristof’s article about the staggering number of kids dying of diarrhea around the world. Their first reaction was to send a note to Bill Sr. saying, “Dad, maybe we can do something about this.”

That was back in 1997 and a lot of progress has been made, but in those 18 years we have added another 1.3 billion people to the urban population of the world. I thought of these things today as I was reading an Op-Ed in the NYTimes by Tahmima Anam discussing the lack of public toilets in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh:

If I could, I would write a book called “Where to Pee in Bangladesh.” It would be a useful but very short book. It would tell you, for instance, that in our capital city, there are 67 public toilets for over 15 million residents. And of those 67, many have no running water or electricity. According to a 2011 study, only five are fully functional.

Now, as you think about this issue, remember that Dhaka is so crowded because we have exported death control technology to the world, allowing children to survive in historic numbers. That's a good thing, of course, but there are too many of them to be absorbed by the rural economy, so they go to the city to find work, and there they have their own children. We want them to survive and to be healthy, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it also allows people to be economically more productive. At the same time, however, we need to keep pushing for the widespread availability of contraceptives in order to keep population size manageable, which means being able to afford seemingly simple things like toilets and clean water.