A Convergence of Civilizations

I recently read (and very much enjoyed) "A Convergence of Civilizations" by Youssef Courbage and Emmanuel Todd, who are researchers at INED, the French National Institute for Demographic Studies. This book was published originally in French but was translated and published this year in English by Columbia University Press. The book is what I would call an "interpretive essay," in the sense that the authors are attempting to interpret a broad temporal and geographic range of data trying to understand why rates of population growth are so high in some Muslim countries, in particular, although not so high in others. The basic premise is that the supposed schism in the world between Islam and the "West" is not a real phenomenon. Rather, all less developed nations, including those that are predominantly Muslim, are heading toward modernity through lower fertility and the key is the timing of literacy--especially for women, but also for men. It is literacy that matters in the world, not religion. As the authors note in their introduction:

The explanatory variable [for a decline in fertility] that has been most clearly identified by demographers is not the per capita GDP, but the literacy level of women...The elimination of illiteracy, then, points back to a  classic conception of universal history, that of the Enlightenment or the nineteenth century, as Condorcet conceived of it in his "Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind," or Hegel in his "Lectures on the Philosophy of History." It has no doubt gone a little out of fashion, but it remains relevant.

I could not agree more and I encourage you to read the book and see why the Enlightenment and literacy are still key elements in the world and will almost certainly influence the course of events over the next few decades.

Central Americans Account for the Majority of Latinos in Maryland

The Washington Examiner has a story today about the high percentage of Latinos in Maryland that are from Central America, especially El Salvador, despite the fact that the average American probably thinks that anyone speaking Spanish is from Mexico (which the US government now typically defines as being in North America, rather than Central America).

Central Americans now make up the majority of Maryland's Hispanic population -- the fastest-growing population in the state -- a growth primarily led by a large influx of Salvadorans over the last decade, new Census data shows.
In the last decade, the number of Salvadorans statewide more than tripled and their share of Maryland's Hispanic population increased by 11 percentage points, the largest jump of any group.
"It's important to keep in mind that a lot of growth is coming from children, so that has its own set of issues associated with it," said Audrey Singer, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. "[Especially] with certain countries like El Salvador and Guatemala where the economy and political conditions were so harsh that people who would not normally leave did leave."

This general pattern is not really news, of course, if you have read my Population text or the book "Irresistible Forces: Latin American Migration to the United States and Its Effects on the South," written by my son, Greg Weeks, and I. Still, it is interesting to see that the 2010 Census data are corroborating the trends that we have been seeing over time.

Will Robots Replace Human Workers in China?

If you look at the back of your iPhone or iPad you will see that it was "Designed by Apple in California Assembled in China." The Chinese assembly is handled by a Taiwan-based company called Foxconn. According to The Economist, its one million workers may make it China's largest employer. But humans are increasingly expensive, so Foxconn is now looking into replacing some of them with robots.

China’s competitive edge has long been its vast supply of cheap hands. But as the country grows richer, skills shortages are driving wages rapidly up. Foxconn’s decision to alter its mix of capital and labour is thus logical, and mirrors what many smaller firms are already doing.
Rising wages are good for Chinese workers, and for firms that want to sell them things. But they also raise questions. Do they spell an end to the cheap “China price” for manufactured goods? Will multinational firms shift production elsewhere? Or will Chinese firms adapt nimbly to automation and remain fearsome competitors? They might, but Chinese robots may be no cheaper than robots elsewhere.
Finally, will the shift to a more capital-intensive capitalism throw legions of workers onto the streets? The Chinese authorities will be watching nervously.

Where will the next generation of cheap labor come from? India? Africa? These are the two areas that will add the greatest number of people over the next three or four decades, so they are the logical candidates.

"Betting the Planet" revisited

Way back in 1980 Paul Ehrlich, author of the "Population Bomb" and Julian Simon, author of "The Ultimate Resource" (by which he meant people) entered into a bet that some called "Betting the Planet." Ehrlich believed that, as Malthus predicted, population growth would overrun resources, the evidence of which would be a rise in resources prices. Simon disagreed and argued that human ingenuity would solve the world's problems and so prices would not rise because humans would find substitutes for each resource and just move on. This week's Economist picks up the story:

Faced with a challenge from Mr Simon, Mr Ehrlich selected five metals—copper, chromium, nickel, tin and tungsten—whose prices he thought would rise in real terms over the following ten years. Mr Simon bet that prices would fall. It is clear in retrospect that Mr Ehrlich showed bad timing, since the late 1970s saw a cyclical zenith for commodity prices. But Mr Simon also had history on his side: real commodity prices fell steadily throughout the 20th century.

Mr Simon duly won the bet. The economic boom of the 1980s and 1990s also contradicted Mr Ehrlich’s wilder claims—that a billion people would starve to death and that, by 1985, America would be trapped in an “age of scarcity”.
But what if Mr Ehrlich had taken up Mr Simon’s 1990 offer to go “double or quits” for any future date? All five have risen in price since the rematch was proposed. Furthermore, Jeremy Grantham of GMO, a fund-management group, points out that Mr Ehrlich would have won the original bet were it recalculated today (he is still alive; Mr Simon died in 1998). An equally weighted portfolio of the five commodities is now higher in real terms than the average of their prices back in 1980.

The Cornucopians might argue that today’s metals prices are due to the buoyancy of demand in the developing world rather than any cataclysmic shortages in supply. But the Malthusians might retort that man’s famed ingenuity has not stopped prices from rising in real terms over an extended period. Place your bets.

Gentrification and Diversity in American Cities

Gentrification has been underway in richer cities of the world for decades, but the 2010 Census in the US has revealed that it is an important part of increasing the residential diversity of cities. The latest story comes from New York, where the NY Times reports on the transformation of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in NYC's Borough of Brooklyn "that traces its African-American roots to the early 19th century and has been the borough’s black cultural capital for decades."

Overshadowed by Harlem’s racial metamorphosis since 2000, an even more striking evolution has occurred in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Over all, the neighborhood is now barely 60 percent black — down from 75 percent a decade ago. But in the older Bedford section west of Throop Avenue, according to the 2010 census, blacks have recently become a minority of the population for the first time in 50 years.

“Both the fall of the crime rate and the improvement of the subway were conditions that made this neighborhood more attractive to people who might not have considered living there in the past,” said John H. Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

“In the 2010 census, the first thing we noticed was how the concentrations in many traditional black and white areas dropped off across so many blocks,” said Steven Romalewski, director of the mapping service of the Center for Urban Research at CUNY’s Graduate Center, which analyzed the census results block by block.

In Brooklyn, he said, “you can see how the white population, for example, is shifting eastward into traditionally black areas, while blacks are also moving eastward, especially to Flatlands and Canarsie.” Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, who represents the area, said “some African-American homeowners have sold their houses and returned down South with the ability to improve their quality of life from a space standpoint or are moving to other parts of Brooklyn and to the suburbs.” “Others,” he continued, “have remained in Bedford-Stuyvesant, but have rented parts of their home out to newcomers, both black and white, to benefit from the increased market.” (The number of renters since 2000 has increased at a higher rate than the number of owners.)

San Diego's neighborhoods are far less famous to most people, but when the census data were first released, the San Diego Union-Tribune had reported similar trends in areas near downtown.

Defying the countywide 3 percent drop in non-Hispanic whites, neighborhoods ringing downtown San Diego registered a significant influx of whites this past decade as urban living gained popularity and historic neighborhoods underwent revitalization.Various improvements in the downtown core, redevelopment of East Village and construction of Petco Park helped to attract affluent and educated non-Hispanic white newcomers and businesses that cater to them, demographers said.