Bringing the Population-Sustainable Development Debate to a Higher Level

Today is the first day of a PERN (Population-Environment Research Network) cyberseminar on "Bringing the Population-Sustainable Development Debate to a Higher Level.” The cyberseminar will be open through Monday, 14 May, and you can participate by sending an email to: pern-m@ciesin.columbia.edu. If you are reading this after 14 May 2012 you can find the posts to the cyberseminar at the CIESIN website at Columbia University.


PERN is a is a project of The International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP), and the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP) on Global Environmental Change. Bill Butz of IUSSP sent out these background notes to the cyberseminar:

The title of this seminar is meant to suggest that the pathways through which population factors affect development are higher, broader, and more complex than any one dimension.  Population size is one dimension.  So is the rate of population growth or decline.  Likewise, distribution by age and geography.  Alongside are the acquired characteristics of people: their schooling, health, and nutrition.  And their behaviors:  consumption, work, migration, and how they live together in households and networks.  Gender considerations may be important in any of these areas. In general, any of these dimensions may influence people’s ability and willingness to engage in mitigation of environmental challenges, their effectiveness in adapting to such challenges, and their success in developing and adopting new approaches and technologies across the spectrum of daily life.

Which of these dimensions are important in which geographic, environmental, and economic circumstances is a matter for research.  I hope that our discussion this week will bring to the table the research that exists and, equally important, help to prioritize the data and research still required, for policymakers and the interested public around the world to know which policy areas—education, health, family planning, consumption awareness, or others—deserve attention in particular circumstances.

As background information,  two recent international efforts have focused on bringing population considerations into prominence at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development to be held in Rio in June (Rio+20). In one effort, a global forum of experts met under UNFPA sponsorship in late November at IIASA in Austria to bring data and research to bear on these  higher-level population relationships. Under the broader umbrella of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital, their summary document, the Laxenburg Declaration on Population and Sustainable Development, was announced in a 24 February 2012 letter in Science magazine. In the other, The Royal Society's expert international working group, chaired by Nobel Laureate Sir John Sulston FRS, oversaw a study which resulted in a major report, People and the Planet, which was released on 26 April 2012 (http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects/people-planet/2012-04-25-PeoplePlanet.pdf). They conducted a wide-ranging evidence-gathering exercise involving meetings with government, industry, academia, and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations in the UK and overseas, as well as an open public call for evidence. Some of the experts from the IIASA and Royal Society studies will be joining our discussion.

Germany Contemplates a New Family Policy

Women in Germany currently are currently bearing an average of 1.4 children, which is more in line with Germany's eastern and southern European neighborhoods than with its western and northern European neighbors, where fertility is slightly higher, although still below replacement level. A major explanation for low fertility is the difficulty facing women in combining a career and motherhood in a society like Germany where very traditional attitudes persist regarding gender roles. The belief is that women belong at home with the children, and that doesn't square with maintaining a career. Into this situation the German government is thinking about injecting a new family policy, as reported in this week's Economist:

CRITICS call it a “hearth bonus” or “keep-your-kids-out-of-school money”. The government prefers Betreuungsgeld (“child-care benefit”). Few of its ideas are as contentious as a planned €150 ($199) monthly payment to parents who do not put their children into crèches [day care centers].

The issue is whether this really fixes any of Germany's demographic problems:

Germany’s long-term worries include a shrinking and ageing population, immigrants who are not fully integrated into the workforce and women who are both underemployed and underpaid. German women work fewer hours than women in most other OECD countries (see chart). The gap in median pay is the third-widest in the club, after South Korea’s and Japan’s. That is partly because mothers stay at home. In 2008 just 18% of children under the age of three were in formal child care, against an OECD average of 30%.

It appears that the new family policy would not really accomplish the objective of helping to raise the birth rate--if that is the objective. Subsidized day care--essentially the opposite of what this legislation proposes--is much more likely to promote among women a belief that they can work and also have a second child.

Missing Girl Babies in Canada

Asia has become famous for its distorted sex ratio at birth, caused by the desire for boy babies in an era of ultrasound procedures that allow the identification of a fetus's sex in utero. But Canada? This week's Economist reports on a study recently published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal showing that there were fewer girl babies being born in the province of Ontario than you would expect among the 767,000 babies born in the province between 2002 and 2007. Ontario takes in a lot of immigrants, and the key to the puzzle lay in the mother's country of origin.

For first-born children, the sex ratio was normal—105 baby boys to 100 baby girls (since boys are slightly more vulnerable to childhood diseases, this ratio provides for equal numbers at marriageable age). For second children, the ratio was normal for mothers born in Canada. But mothers born in South Korea bore 120 boys for each 100 girls. And for Indian, Filipina and other East Asian mothers, the ratio was 110-111 to 100. The explanation for this pattern in India is that couples welcome a first-born of either sex, but if she is a daughter, then some ensure the second child is a son. That applies even more to third children: in Ontario, mothers born in India gave birth to 1,883 sons and 1,385 daughters, a hugely distorted ratio of 136 to 100.

The only likely explanation is that some mothers from India are using information from ultrasound examinations to abort a female fetus. This sort of blatant and fatal gender bias is now illegal in both China and India, but of course even if it were illegal in Canada it would not likely stop until the parents themselves adapt to western cultural views of gender equality. However, the authors of the study note that despite the overall gender bias among immigrants from south Asia, the distorted sex ratio is much more pronounced among those from India--a secular state--than from Pakistan--an Islamic state where abortion is strictly forbidden by that religion.

What's in a Name--Redux

I have already talked about the the idea that our names provide important and useful demographic clues. Thanks to the AAG Smartbrief, I have been alerted to yet another interesting example. Researchers in China have discovered that analyses of surnames by region provide evidence of migration patterns.

A region with high surname similarity indicates that a stable population has inhabited the area long enough for drift to take place. A region of low surname similarity suggests the migration of different groups of people into the area. 
Although researchers have studied surname structure to deduce the relatedness and movement of populations in a number of other countries, China's family names possess some unique features. The country's recorded history of surnames stretches back 4000 years, and Confucian traditions dictated that surnames were consistently passed through the paternal line without hyphenation or other changes. This stability provides a rare opportunity to study the effects of drift over a long period of time. 

But one of the most interesting things about the Chinese research is the limited number of surnames:

 Furthermore, the total number of family names in China is staggeringly small. The 1.28 billion people included in the new study shared a mere 7327 surnames (compared with nearly 900,000 last names documented in a study of 18 million people in the United States). This name pool is limited partly because Chinese surnames traditionally consist of a single character. Another factor is that about 85% of the population shares the 100 most common surnames and one-fifth of Chinese people have the surnames Wang, Li, or Zhang. 

And what did they find that was relevant to our understanding of migration?

The similarity in surnames between two locations tended to decrease as the distance between the locations increased. This "isolation by distance" is a hallmark of drift happening over a long period of stable habitation. However, the researchers also found evidence of migration's influence. The counties along either side of the lower Yangtze River exhibit very low surname similarity. This diversity is perhaps due to the many large-scale migrations to this region over China's history, the authors say. In addition, the very high surname similarity between the eastern province of Shandong and a cluster of provinces in the northeast of China may reflect the migration of more than 20 million people from Shandong to the northeast in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

In the United States, there is a very high correlation between the percent of people in an area with a Spanish surname and the percent of people in that area who have roots in Latin America. Of course, some people have a Spanish surname and are not from Latin America and vice-verse. Thus, you don't want to use this information to say too much about specific individuals, but the data provide trends at the neighborhood or regional level.

Geography of Health in the US

The American Public Health Association has highlighted an updating of a very neat US health resource available on the internet--rankings of US counties by health and health predictors.

Released in April, the third annual County Health Rankings report ranks the counties within every state, using health outcomes as the primary indicators for assessing a county’s health. To assign ranking, researchers gathered data on premature death, poor physical and mental health days, smoking, physical activity rates, teen birth rates and motor vehicle deaths, among many other factors. The report also takes into account environmental factors, such as poor air quality days and access to healthy foods, and clinical indicators, such as mammography and diabetes screening rates.
“All public health is local,” said APHA member Patrick Remington, MD, MPH, co-director of the County Health Rankings project, which is sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “When you focus your lens at the state level, you’re able to see even more variation…and the resolution of your view depends on what policies you’re considering. Since public health really is administered at the state and local levels, this helps people get a better look.”

This is a classic case of scale issues--relationships are often different at one geographic scale (e.g., counties) than another (e.g., states). The rankings themselves are very interesting and thought-provoking. Why, for example, is my county (San Diego) ranked 18th in the state? Since there are 52 counties in the state, that's not too bad, but the website allows you to make comparisons with other places, so that we could work out the underlying reasons for San Diego County not being closer to the top.