Income Unfairness May be as Important as Inequality

There is no question that the level of income and wealth inequality in the world--and in the U.S. more particularly--has skyrocketed over the past few decades (see graph below). Thomas Piketty's book Capital helped to move the conversation along, as I have noted before. Three Yale University psychologists have just put a new spin on the issue in a paper published online at Nature Human Behavior (and from which the graph below is drawn). They argue that it is not really inequality that bothers people. Rather, it is unfairness that is the problem. Inequality is an accepted part of nearly every human society and this is one reason why the utopian idea of true communism (total equality for everyone) has such a poor track record. 

Drawing upon laboratory studies, cross-cultural research, and experiments with babies and young children, we argue that humans naturally favour fair distributions, not equal ones, and that when fairness and equality clash, people prefer fair inequality over unfair equality. Both psychological research and decisions by policymakers would benefit from more clearly distinguishing inequality from unfairness.

Thus, the issue that we face today is that the concentration of income and wealth among a very small number of people is viewed as intrinsically unfair. It is OK for some people to have more than we do, but it is not OK when the gap seems too large and, in essence, has come at our expense.

Female Islamic Clerics in Indonesia Push to End Child Marriage

We usually think of Islam in terms of the Middle East, but in fact the four most populous Muslim nations are in Asia--Indonesia, Pakistan, India (even though Muslims are a minority there), and Bangladesh. Indonesia is the 4th most populous country in the world and its more than 200 million Muslims puts it on the top of that list. So...when we learn that a group of female clerics in that nation has called for end to child marriage, we need to pay attention. 

Female Islamic clerics in Indonesia have issued an unprecedented fatwa against child marriage. The fatwa, which is not legally binding but will be influential, was issued after a three-day congress of female clerics in the country. The clerics urged the government to raise the minimum legal age for women to marry to 18 from the current 16.
Indonesia is a majority Muslim country and has among the highest number of child brides in the world. According to the UN's children office Unicef, one in four women in Indonesia marries before the age of 18.

The existence of female Islamic clerics is itself not widely known, although the BBC reports that:

Female clerics, or "ulema", have existed in Indonesia for hundreds of years, but their role has been played down previously. Nowadays, they help empower their communities and lead educational institutes, organisers say.

The fatwa was driven by the shared knowledge that child marriage is bad for girls--it cuts off their education, often ends in divorce, and can leave the woman and her children in a much worse situation for the rest of their lives than if the marriage had been delayed.

Child marriage is an issue anywhere, not just in Muslim-majority countries. Indeed, I am a co-author on a paper that was highlighted in a poster session at the Population Association of America meetings going on right now in Chicago.

"Distribution of Adolescent Fertility in the Copán Region of Rural Honduras: Results From a Complete Census of 117 Villages", Holly Shakya, Center on Gender Equity and Health, University of California, San Diego; John R. Weeks, San Diego State University; Nicholas Christakis, Yale University

Watch this space for more details on our research findings--an astonishingly high percentage of Central American girls are married before reaching age 18. 

Refugees in Europe Update from HIU at State Department

The United Kingdom may want to separate itself from the rest of Europe, but there are still a lot of people in the world who want to be in Europe--anywhere in Europe rather than where they are right now. The Humanitarian Information Unit at the US State Department is keeping track of these things and they recently posted a two-page infographic with lots of new details. I've copied the first page below but of course you really need to go online and see it yourself to pick up all of the information.

The bottom line is that Europe has been protecting itself especially from Syrian refugees by paying Turkey to keep most of them, and by erecting new border controls--including even fences in some cases--to stem the flow. The migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Libya and Tunisia are mainly from sub-Saharan Africa. That is a flow with a long history, and it continues to be associated with a high death rate among people who pay traffickers for a spot on a boat that may not be seaworthy.

Will Vaccines Mean the Death of Malaria in Africa?

Today is World Malaria Day and that is, of course, nothing to celebrate in the usual sense. However, there was some good news from the World Health Organization. Three African countries--Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi--will participate in a WHO malaria vaccine program, building on slow, but steady progress against this ancient deadly disease:

Nearly half of the world's population is at risk of malaria. In 2015, there were roughly 212 million malaria cases and an estimated 429 000 malaria deaths. Increased prevention and control measures have led to a 29% reduction in malaria mortality rates globally since 2010. Sub-Saharan Africa continues to carry a disproportionately high share of the global malaria burden. In 2015, the region was home to 90% of malaria cases and 92% of malaria deaths.

The new vaccine has been developed for young children, who are at the greatest risk of death:

The injectable vaccine, RTS,S, was developed to protect young children from the most deadly form of malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum. RTS,S will be assessed in the pilot programme as a complementary malaria control tool that could potentially be added to the core package of WHO-recommended measures for malaria prevention.

“The prospect of a malaria vaccine is great news. Information gathered in the pilot will help us make decisions on the wider use of this vaccine”, said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. “Combined with existing malaria interventions, such a vaccine would have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives in Africa,” she added.

Since the discovery in the late 19th century that mosquitos were the vector for the disease, the main course of action has been prevention--try not to get bitten by a mosquito. That will always be a good idea, of course, but if the vaccine works well in these pilot studies, as it has in trials, then we might really move to a time when the disease is gone, and we can trade in World Malaria Day for Hey, Mama, I'm Still Alive Day. 

Where Can You Get Publicly Funded Contraception in the US?

Without "socialized" (i.e., publicly funded) health services in the United States, health levels would be even worse than they are (remember that we pay more person than any other country for health care, but have worse health outcomes than almost every other rich country in the world). One area where this is important is in the provision of contraception to women who need it. The Guttmacher Institute has just put out a new report--with interactive maps--summarizing what's happening.

A total of 6.2 million women received publicly supported contraceptive services from 10,700 clinics in the United States in 2015. Clinics funded by the federal Title X program served 3.8 million of these women. An estimated 2.4 million additional women received Medicaid-funded contraceptive services from private doctors.

Services provided by clinics that received Title X funding helped women avert 822,300 unintended pregnancies in 2015, thus preventing 387,200 unplanned births and 277,800 abortions. Without the services provided by Title X–funded clinics, the U.S. unintended pregnancy rate would have been 31% higher and the rate among teens would have been 44% higher.

Those numbers speak for themselves about the importance of these services.