Stunning Swing in South Korean Demography

East Asia is one of the most xenophobic regions in the world, routinely and unapologetically keeping foreigners (including those from other East Asian countries) from becoming permanent members of their respective societies. That is why I was truly stunned by the article in today's New York Times suggesting that demographic diversity is starting to find a home in South Korea.

Only a decade ago, school textbooks still urged South Koreans to take pride in being of “one-blood” and “ethnically homogeneous.” Now, the country is facing the prospect of becoming a multiethnic society. While the foreign-born population is still small compared with countries with a tradition of immigration, it’s enough to challenge how South Koreans see themselves.

Among the factors driving this development is the influx of women from Southeast Asia who have come to marry rural South Korean men who have difficulty attracting Korean women willing to embrace country life. The number of marriage migrants grew to 211,000 last year from 127,000 in 2007, most of them women from Vietnam and other poorer Asian countries drawn to a better life in South Korea.

One of every 10 marriages in South Korea now involves a foreign spouse. Although overall numbers of schoolchildren in South Korea have been declining — to 6.7 million this year from 7.7 million in 2007 — as a result of one of the world’s lowest birth rates, the number of multiethnic students has been climbing by 6,000 a year in the same period.

“A multicultural society is not just coming; it’s already here,” Ms. Lee [originally from the Philippines], a member of the governing Saenuri Party, said in an interview at her office in the National Assembly.

The change is driven by the combination of the low birth rate, which has created a demand for labor at the younger ages, and by urbanization, which has attracted young women to cities, where they are not tied to the traditional gender roles typical of rural society. Regardless of the reasons, though, this has to be a good sign for the region.

Yet Another Type of Biofuel

Creating energy from vegetable mass is a great idea, as long as it doesn't wind up competing with the ever-increasing demand for food, as I have mentioned before. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, have just reported on their research (in the journal Algal Research) suggesting that ocean algae can be grown as efficiently as freshwater algae for the purpose of creating biofuels. This means that not only does this source of biofuel no compete with food, but it also does not compete for the use of freshwater, which is an increasingly contested resource. The San Diego Union-Tribune has the story:

The scientists genetically engineered marine algae to make valuable industrial enzymes in addition to oil. This feat had been performed in freshwater algae but not in marine species, said UC San Diego researcher Stephen Mayfield, who led the study.

They experimented on a species of algae named Dunaliella tertiolecta, which has a high oil content. They inserted five genes, allowing production of five kinds of industrial enzymes.

“What we showed is that we could do the genetic engineering that’s going to be required to really get costs down,” Mayfield said.Algal biofuels must compete not only against fossil fuels but against other crops, including corn and nonfood “cellulosic” plant material for ethanol, and the jatropha bush, which produces oily seeds. All of these biofuels face limitations that prevent their large-scale adoption anytime soon.

The latter is key, of course, but it is obvious that the sooner we start planning for the use of these sustainable sources of fuel, the better off we'll be.

Mexico's Demography Will Help Drive its Future

This week's Economist has a special section on Mexico and a big part of the story is about Mexico's demography, including its declining birth rate, and its diminishing wave of immigrants north to the US.

Fewer Mexicans now move to the United States than come back south. America’s fragile economy (with an unemployment rate nearly twice as high as Mexico’s) has dampened arrivals and hastened departures. Meanwhile, the make-up of Mexican migration is changing. North of the border, legal Mexican residents probably now outnumber undocumented ones. The human tide may turn along with the American economy, but the supply of potential border-hoppers has plunged: whereas in the 1960s the average Mexican woman had seven children, she now has two. Within a decade Mexico’s fertility rate will fall below America’s.

Undervaluing trade and overestimating immigration has led to bad policies. Since September 11th 2001, crossing the border has taken hours where it once took minutes, raising costs for Mexican manufacturers (and thus for American consumers). Daytrips have fallen by almost half. More crossing-points and fewer onerous checks would speed things up on the American side; pre-clearance of containers and passengers could be improved if Mexico were less touchy about having American officers on its soil (something which Canada does not mind). After an election in which 70% of Latinos voted for Mr Obama, even America’s “wetback”-bashing Republicans should now see the need for immigration-law reform.

The article also notes that the demographic dividend for Mexico will nonetheless be less dramatic than it has been in Asia for two reasons: (1) the birth rate has not dropped as quickly, so the age structure is not as favorable; and (2) Mexico has not made the same kind of improvements in its educational system as have Asian countries. Nonetheless, it was very encouraging to read that Mexico's Minister of Higher Education is Rodolfo Tuirán, a well known demographer. 

The Economist's urging that America pay closer and more realistic attention to Mexico echoes the comments made on CNN this weekend by Robert Kaplan, author of a new book on "The Revenge of Geography."

Urban Strain Goes With the Forest Rain in the Amazon

As if the Brazilian rain forest wasn't strained enough by farmers deforesting the region, a growing source of environmental stress in the Amazon is rapid urbanization, as reported by Simon Romero for the New York Times. The Amazon is the fastest growing region of Brazil, fueled by migrants and by a higher-than-average birth rate.

Of the 19 Brazilian cities that the latest census indicates have doubled in population over the past decade, 10 are in the Amazon. Altogether, the region’s population climbed 23 percent from 2000 to 2010, while Brazil as a whole grew just 12 percent.

Various factors are fueling this growth, among them larger family sizes and the Amazon’s high levels of poverty in comparison with other regions that draw people to the cities for work. While Brazil’s birthrate has fallen to 1.86 children per woman, one of the lowest in Latin America, the Amazon has Brazil’s highest rate, at 2.42.

Why is this happening? It's the economy, stupid (to borrow from the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton). Besides the processing of the region's burgeoning agricultural sector, there are big energy and industrial projects, including the building of hydroelectric dams and open-pit mining. All of this means jobs, and a way out of poverty for many Brazilians.

The soaring population growth in some cities in the Amazon — called the “world’s last great settlement frontier” by Brian J. Godfrey, a geography professor at Vassar College who is the co-author of “Rainforest Cities” — is intensifying an urbanization that has been advancing for decades. For more than 20 years, a majority of the Brazilian Amazon’s population has lived in urban areas.

So, instead of directly affecting the environment, the growing urban population makes an indirect, but still very large impact on the rain forest environment. Is it good for the people who are employed by all of this development? Almost certainly. Is this sustainable? Almost certainly not.

Web-Based Mapping of American Community Survey Data

If you are like me (and a lot of other people I know) you aren't overly happy with the revamped Factfinder2.census.gov as a source of data from the US Census. Although there is a huge amount of data available to all of us for free, it is not easy to get what you want. That is why the resources of socialexplorer.com can be so useful. As I have referenced before, this is a project created several years ago by Andrew Beveridge at Queens College and the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. He and his group have created sets of maps of the census and survey data, with a nice array of data from the 2005-09 American Community Survey mapped at the block level for the entire country accessible online through the New York Times website. This is tremendously useful and a good advertisement for the more detailed services that Beveridge and his group can provide.