America's Youth Reveal the Country's Changing Face

William Frey of the Brookings Institution has just put out a new report, highlighted in today's New York Times, that compares some of the changes in the United States over the last three censuses. The most striking finding is that:

New minorities—Hispanics, Asians, and other groups apart from whites, blacks, and American Indians—account for all of the growth among the nation’s child population.  From 2000 to 2010, the population of white children nationwide declined by 4.3 million, while the population of Hispanic and Asian children grew by 5.5 million.

This trend undoubtedly brings some challenges, particularly as the younger part of the population becomes more racially and ethnically diverse than the older baby boomer- dominated white population. “Racial generation gaps” can emerge as a result of competing interests regarding community resources or views on issues like immigration.

Indeed, it is my view (Frey does not say this) that much of the angst and anger of the Tea Party movement is fueled by these changing demographics, even though people tend not to want to acknowledge that fact. In a very visible way, the country does not look the same as it used to, and this an important part of the challenges alluded to by Frey. At the same time, the fact that we have a larger child population in relation to the total population than do most other rich countries is a situation that we must collectively work with to our best advantage.

Demographic Divide in Arizona

Arizona has become notorious for its anti-immigrant attitude and legislation. However, The Economist notes that there is a real divide in Arizona on this issue and it cuts along geographic, and especially demographic lines. Maricopa County, in the middle of the state and where Phoenix is located, has one set of demographics, and is seen as being very different from Pima County, in the southern part of the state (albeit contiguous to Maricopa County) and where Tucson is located.

Midwestern snowbirds and others who flooded into Arizona mainly settled in Maricopa, making it politically dominant and distinct.

The differences start with the aesthetic. Middle-class houses in Phoenix tend to have lawns, whereas Tucson’s mostly have desert landscaping, with artful cacti and such. Thomas Volgy, a politics professor at the University of Arizona and former mayor of Tucson, says that Maricopans want “to recreate Michigan”, whereas people in Pima accept that they live in a desert and use water responsibly.

Tucson is at heart a college town, the home of the state’s flagship university. To the extent that intellectuals (such as Mr Volgy) moved to Arizona, they favoured Tucson. Pima County also has an old and rooted Hispanic community. By contrast, Maricopa is a largely white society with more recent Mexican immigrants. And whereas Maricopa is inland, Pima is on the border, which has always made its debate about immigration “more nuanced” than Maricopa’s, according to Mr Volgy.

All of this is wrapped up in a movement calling for Pima and perhaps also Santa Cruz Counties in Arizona to secede from Arizona and create a new state called "Baja Arizona."

How Might America's Changing Demographics Affect Politics?

This week's Economist looked at the 2010 Census Redistricting data from the perspective of what this might mean for the political landscape in the US. We won't have detailed age data for the country until May, but the redistricting data do break the population into the two age groups of under 18 (i.e., not of voting age), and 18 and older. The 18 and older non-Hispanic white population in the US grew very slightly between 2000 and 2010, but there were fewer non-Hispanic whites under the age of 18 in 2010 than there had been in 2000. The same was true for blacks, although the loss at the younger ages was not as large in percentage terms as for the whites. At the same time, there were substantial gains in both age groups for Hispanics and Asians.

What all this means for politics is the subject of some dispute. Right-wing analysts herald the ballooning population of the Republican-leaning states in the South and West and the relative stagnation of the Democratic bastions in the Midwest and north-east as proof of the superiority of Republican policies. What is more, they crow, faster growth is bringing more seats in the House of Representatives to Republican states, which could help to cement their current majority. Conservative Texas, for example, is gaining four seats in the reapportionment set in train by last year’s census; liberal New York is losing two.

But Democrats counter that the growth the Republicans are celebrating comes from natural Democratic constituencies. Minorities, they point out, tend to vote Democratic, whereas the dwindling white, rural population is largely Republican. By this logic, Democratic infiltrators are gradually undermining Republicans’ control over their territory from within. Barack Obama, after all, carried previously Republican-leaning western and southern states such as Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina and Virginia on his way to the White House in 2008. If he can maintain his share of the vote among blacks and Latinos, he will be hard to beat in 2012.

Trends in Migration Between Mexico and the US

The Population Association of America met this week in Washington, DC and among the many interesting sessions was one that included both Mexican and American demographers discussing recent trends in migration between the US and Mexico. Data from the 10 percent microsample of the 2010 census of Mexico and the 2005 - 2009 American Community Survey both confirm what we had suspected--that migration out of Mexico dropped dramatically in the face of the Great Recession, whereas there was only a very modest rise in return migration from the US to Mexico. The latter trend was small enough that it did not necessarily constitute a rise in the out-migration rate, and there was speculation at the session that it could have been due especially to the increase in 'interior enforcement' leading to a greater number of deportations.

Midwives Save Lives

Saving children's lives can be a relatively simple thing--if you know what you are doing. The average women in the world doesn't actually know what to do when it comes time to give birth to her baby (and that's not my opinion--that's the scientific evidence). When a trained/experienced person such as a midwife attends the delivery of a baby, the baby's chances of survival (and the mother's too) are greatly increased. Yet, there are still a lot of women in the world who give birth without that kind of assistance. A study by the organization Save the Children, and reported by BBC News, suggests that:

It said if a global shortage of 350,000 midwives were met, more than one million babies a year could be saved.

Some 1,000 women and 2,000 babies died every day from easily preventable birth complications - Afghanistan was the worst place to have a baby, it said.

The report said Afghan women faced a one in 11 risk of dying from complications during pregnancy and childbirth. One in five children dies before the age of five.

Many babies in Afghanistan die because of traditional practices, such as placing them on the floor to ward off evil spirits, which can cause infection, it said.