How Bad Was the Housing Bust?

The housing crisis that led to the Great Recession is now memorialized by the results of the 2010 census that were released today, but the spin put on those results is very different depending upon whether you are reading the Census Bureau's report, or reading the headline news. The Census Bureau's headline was: "2010 Census Shows Second Highest Homeownership Rate on Record Despite Largest Decrease since 1940;" whereas the Associated Press headline left out the "good" news and focused only on the bad: "Census: Housing bust worst since Great Depression." The Census Bureau summarized the data as showing that:

[T]he homeownership rate is the second highest on record, behind only 2000, since homeownership data collection began in 1890. However, the rate decreased by 1.1 percentage points to 65.1 percent between 2000 and 2010. The decrease is the largest since the period from 1930 to 1940.

The caveat here, however, is that census provides a portrait of what's happening only every 10 years. In between 2000 and 2010, the homeownership rate is estimated to have hit 70 percent, and the change from that level is what has been so devastating. Still, that was based on unsustainable mortgage lending policies and unsustainable housing prices, and as those aspects of the housing market get back under control, the future may not be totally bleak:

Peter Francese, founder of American Demographics magazine who is now analyst for the MetLife Mature Market Institute, believes Americans aren't completely giving up on homeownership. He noted millions of young adults are delaying home-buying while they temporarily double-up with their parents, representing pent-up demand for houses that will surface once the job market begins to recover.

Will China Feed Itself? Not This Year

Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute has been worrying for a long time about the ability of China to feed itself. A few months ago, I noted that Chinese officials were pushing back on that idea. However, a report surfaced today that, despite a bumper corn crop this year, China will still be importing corn this year.

China is harvesting a record-large corn crop, but it's also likely to be in the market to import 5 million to 10 million metric tons of corn by the end of 2012, according to the U.S. Grains Council.
That projection for the next 15 months compares with USDA's estimate that China will import 2 million metric tons of corn in the current marketing year. USDA estimated China's imports in each of the past two years at 1.3 million metric tons, or more than 51 million bushels.
At the same time, it is clear that China has the potential to increase output by improving the "means of production:"
Don Hutchens, executive director of the Nebraska Corn Board, noted that 60% to 80% of China's corn is harvested by hand.

There is also evidence that production per acre has been stagnant for the past several years, partly because Chinese farmers continue to use older hybrid seeds. Thus, there seems to be the possibility that corn production could increase in China, but so far it is lagging behind demand.

Just Say Yes to Condoms

The New York Times reports the very disturbing finding, just published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, that women in Africa using injectable hormones (Depo-Provera or its generic equivalent) as a contraceptive are nearly twice as likely to become infected with HIV as are women using no method of contraception. This is scary stuff because if women stop using contraceptives out of fear that they will get HIV then they increase their risk of pregnancy, which generates a host of personal and societal consequences.

The findings potentially present an alarming quandary for women in Africa. Hundreds of thousands of them suffer injuries, bleeding, infections and even death in childbirth from unintended pregnancies. Finding affordable and convenient contraceptives is a pressing goal for international health authorities.Injectable hormones are very popular. About 12 million women between the ages of 15 and 49 in sub-Saharan Africa, roughly 6 percent of all women in that age group, use them. In the United States, it is 1.2 million, or 3 percent of women using contraception. While the study involved only African women, scientists said biological effects would probably be the same for all women. But they emphasized that concern was greatest in Africa because the risk of H.I.V. transmission from heterosexual sex was so much higher there than elsewhere.The study, led by researchers at the University of Washington and published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, involved 3,800 couples in Botswana, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. In each couple, either the man or the woman was already infected with H.I.V. Researchers followed most couples for two years, had them report their contraception methods, and tracked whether the uninfected partner contracted H.I.V. from the infected partner, said Dr. Jared Baeten, an author and an epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist.

The research analysis controlled for the use of condoms, which are still not widely accepted in eastern and southern Africa. At the end of the day, a dramatic increase in condom use is probably the only thing that can simultaneously reduce the spread of HIV and lower the birth rate in Sub-Saharan Africa. If only...

The Very Ugly Side of Increased Deportations in the US

The significant increase in border deportations under the Obama administration has had a host of unintended, and generally very ugly, side-effects along the US-Mexico border, as outlined by Damien Cave in a lengthy article in the New York Times.

Migrant shelters along the Mexican border are filled not with newcomers looking for a better life, but with seasoned crossers: older men and women, often deportees, braving ever-greater risks to get back to their families in the United States — the country they consider home.
They present an enormous challenge to American policy makers, because they continue to head north despite obstacles more severe than at any time in recent history. It is not just that the American economy has little to offer; the border itself is far more threatening. On one side, fences have grown and American agents have multiplied; on the other, criminals haunt the journey at every turn.
President Obama has already deported around 1.1 million immigrants — more than any president since Dwight D. Eisenhower — and officials say the numbers will not decline. But at a time when the dynamics of immigration are changing, experts and advocates on all sides are increasingly asking if the approach, which has defined immigration policy since 9/11, still makes sense.
New research from the University of California, San Diego, shows that crime is now the top concern for Mexicans thinking of heading north. As fear keeps many migrants home, many experienced border guides, or coyotes, have given up illegal migration for other jobs.
In Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, one well-known coyote is now selling tires. In Nogales, the largest Mexican city bordering Arizona, power has shifted to tattooed young men with expensive binoculars along the border fence, while here in Agua Prieta — where Mexican officials say traffic is one-thirthieth of what it once was — the only way to get across is to deal with gangs that sometimes push migrants to carry drugs.
It is even worse in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Tex. Just standing at the border fence brings out drug cartel enforcers demanding $300 for the right to pass. Migrants and the organizations that assist them say cartel lieutenants roam the shelters, looking for deportees willing to work as lookouts, earning $400 a week until they have enough to pay for passage north.

To be sure, the number of undocumented immigrants appears to have dropped considerably over the past year or so, but given the harsh economic situation in the US, not to mention harsh laws against the immigrants passed by several states, it is very difficult to know which factors are most important. In the absence of a broader immigration reform, however, these ad hoc measures seem only to be creating a new culture of violence and victimization.

Don't Expect Ice in Your Water

It has been apparent for some time now that one of the casualties of global climate change has been the ice shelf in the Arctic. New research by Canadian geographers has underscored the trend:

Two ice shelves that existed before Canada was settled by Europeans diminished significantly this summer, one nearly disappearing altogether, Canadian scientists say in new research.
The loss is important as a marker of global warming, returning the Canadian Arctic to conditions that date back thousands of years, scientists say. Floating icebergs that have broken free as a result pose a risk to offshore oil facilities and potentially to shipping lanes. The breaking apart of the ice shelves also reduces the environment that supports microbial life and changes the look of Canada's coastline.
Luke Copland is an associate professor in the geography department at the University of Ottawa who co-authored the research. He said the Serson Ice Shelf shrank from 79.15 square miles (205 square kilometers) to two remnant sections three years ago, and was further diminished this past summer.
"Recent (ice shelf) loss has been very rapid, and goes hand-in-hand with the rapid sea ice decline we have seen in this decade and the increasing warmth and extensive melt in the Arctic regions," said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, remarking on the research.
Scambos said the loss of the Arctic shelves is significant because they are old and their rapid loss underscores the severity of the warming trend scientists see now relative to past fluctuations such as the Medieval Warm Period or the warmer times in the pre-Current Era (B.C.).

As the Economist noted last week, the warming of the Arctic region is taking place much more rapidly than scientific models had projected, suggesting that populations downstream, so to speak, are going to have to adjust and adapt at a more rapid pace than previously expected.