Do You Know the Way to The Ukraine?

I'm in Tampa for the annual meetings of the Association of American Geographers where I'm presenting a paper on our work in Ghana, and so it was nicely coincidental that my son, Greg Weeks, sent me a link today to an analysis of how imperfect the knowledge is about where Ukraine is. This doesn't affect the country's demographics--they are what they are--but it probably does influence how people respond to events in that country. Here's the link:

Since Russian troops first entered the Crimean peninsula in early March, a series of media polling outlets have asked Americans how they want the U.S. to respond to the ongoing situation. Although two-thirds of Americans have reported following the situation at least “somewhat closely,” most Americans actually know very little about events on the ground — or even where the ground is.

On March 28-31, 2014, we asked a national sample of 2,066 Americans (fielded via Survey Sampling International Inc. (SSI), what action they wanted the U.S. to take in Ukraine, but with a twist: In addition to measuring standard demographic characteristics and general foreign policy attitudes, we also asked our survey respondents to locate Ukraine on a map as part of a larger, ongoing project to study foreign policy knowledge. We wanted to see where Americans think Ukraine is and to learn if this knowledge (or lack thereof) is related to their foreign policy views. We found that only one out of six Americans can find Ukraine on a map, and that this lack of knowledge is related to preferences: The farther their guesses were from Ukraine’s actual location, the more they wanted the U.S. to intervene with military force.

Here's the map:

I am reminded here of a study that I used for many years in my spatial statistics class--do you know the way to San Jose? [sorry, I don't have the reference here on my travel laptop] and the farther away from San Jose students were (even in California!), the less close they were to where San Jose, CA actually is. We need to work on this, folks!

Russian Demographics: Whom to Believe?

I do not profess to have any insider knowledge about Russian demographics. At the same time, I do know where to go if I want that kind of information. So, I was very interested to dig into a debate on Russian demographics to which Duane Miller alerted me. Here's the deal. A few days ago an article appeared in Vanity Fair by Maureen Orth titled "The Numbers Vladimir Putin Doesn't Want You to See." This is a provocative headline and the story is a bit sensational, but the message is basically that Russia's demographics are not good. It has a relatively low life expectancy, especially for men, and a low fertility rate. Her information comes from respectable sources: the World Health Organization, in particular, and interviews with demographers Murray Feshbach and Nicholas Eberstadt, both of whom you'll find cited in my book. And she puts out some numbers that can be fact-checked against the WHO and United Nations Population Division databases:

Despite a recent slight uptick in births versus deaths, life expectancy now stands at 64 for males and 76 for women (137th and 100th in the world, respectively). According to the U.N.’s World Health Organization, the life expectancy for a 15-year-old boy in Haiti is three years higher than for a Russian boy the same age [YES, THAT IS WHAT THE WHO LIFE TABLES SHOW]. A drop in fertility by 50 percent between 1987 and 1999 [YES, THAT'S WHAT THE UN SHOWS] has resulted in a reduced number of women now at childbearing age, which is beginning to affect the country in a major way: Two thirds of all births in Russia take place among women between the ages of 20 and 29, and this population will decline from 13 million currently to 7 or 8 million in the coming years [YES, THIS IS CONSISTENT WITH UN DATA AND PROJECTIONS].

In response to this article was a piece in Forbes by Mark Adomanis titled "4 Things You Should Know About Russian Demography That Vanity Fair Won't Tell You". He says that his specialty is Russian economy and demography and he puts out a number of charts that don't exactly refute the Vanity Fair article, but rather point to a rosier picture. Fertility is increasing, life expectancy is increasing, and the sky is not falling in. These trends are also apparent in the WHO and UN Pop Division data, but my real complaint about the Adomanis article is that he does not cite a single source for his data. Others seemed to have complained about this, and yesterday he issued a revised story in which he draws on data from a Russian source (I clicked on the link, but it was all Greek to me, as they say), so I can't confirm what he is saying, but this is a much more reasoned argument:

I’m not clairvoyant and I won’t pretend to know exactly what Russia’s population will be ten years from now. If forced to guess I would have to say that it will be smaller than it is today. Much of the answer, though, hinges on what happens to the flow of workers out of Central Asia, and migration patterns are notoriously hard to predict. The point I’m making is not that “things in Russia will continue to get better forever” but merely that we need to rely on the most recent and accurate data. And the most recent and accurate data say that the general demographic picture in Russia is continuing to improve.

I do think he hit the nail on the head with the reference to "workers out of Central Asia." In all likelihood, were it not for this immigration from several of its former republics, Russia would be on the verge of depopulation. At the same time, without the remittances from those workers, several of these former republics would be in dire economic circumstances. According to data from the World Bank, remittances from emigrants (probably mostly in Russia) account for 48 percent of the country's GDP. The Kyrgyz Republic and Moldova are also very high on that list. This suggests to me that these workers are unlikely to go home anytime soon. What I do not know, however, is the gender composition of the immigrants. In particular, are there women of child-bearing age who can help make up for the small birth cohorts of Russian women currently moving into the reproductive ages? If you have answers, provide the source, please.

Lebanon Becomes a Suburb of Syria

Foreign Policy magazine greeted us this morning with the terrible news that the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon has now hit the one million mark. This is not a record anyone wanted to achieve.

The number of Syrian refugees registered in Lebanon officially topped 1 million Thursday in what the United Nations called a "devastating milestone." With a population of about 4 million, this constitutes about a quarter of Lebanon's resident population and has made it so that Lebanon now has the highest concentration of refugees per capita in the world. U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said, "The influx of a million refugees would be massive in any country. For Lebanon, a small nation beset by internal difficulties, the impact is staggering."

Reuters notes that:

School-aged refugees eclipse the number of Lebanese children in the country's state schools, the UN says, and 2,500 new refugees are registered every day.

"The extent of the human tragedy is not just the recitation of numbers," UNHCR representative Ninette Kelley told reporters in Tripoli. "Each one of these numbers represents a human life who ... have lost their homes, their family members, their sense of future."

These one million in Lebanon are in addition to the estimated 2.6 million Syrian refugees spread around Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and a few other places. Nor do these numbers take into account the estimated 6.5 million internally displaced persons within Syria. If we start with a population of 22 million people, subtract about 150,000 who have died (although not all of these are Syrian), the 3.6 million refugees account for 16 percent of the population, and the internally displaced account for an additional 30 percent. This means that nearly half of Syria's population has had to move because of the conflict.

Run For Your Life! But Only in Moderation

More than 2,000 years ago Aristotle advised us to be moderate in all things. I happen to think that this is pretty good advice and so I was not too surprised today to learn on CBS News that a new study presented this week at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Washington, D.C. offers up an example: Too little or too much exercise can shorten your life expectancy.

The researchers behind the newest study on the issue say people who get either no exercise or high-mileage runners both tend to have shorter lifespans than moderate runners. But the reasons why remain unclear, they added.

The new study seems to rule out cardiac risk or the use of certain medications as factors. 

"Our study didn't find any differences that could explain these longevity differences," said Dr. Martin Matsumura, co-director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, Pa.

The general advice seems to be that if you don't exercise, then you fall into the "use it or lose it" category, and this can lead to an earlier than expected death. This is consistent with the approach to exercise among seniors being promoted in Spain, where people are encouraged to "use it." At the other extreme, too much exercise puts you into the "wear and tear" category with respect to important parts of your body such as your heart. You are then perhaps artificially aging your body, leading to an earlier than expected death.

Playgrounds for the Elderly: Spain Prepares for an Aging Society

I had to admire the positive tenor of a story on PRI's "The World" today about the emergence of playgrounds for older people in Spain. To be fair, the story focused on Spain but suggested that other European countries were going the same direction. Instead of simply lamenting that the population is aging, the attitude seems to be: Let's prepare for it. One part of this is keeping older people fit both physically and mentally by creating parks that cater to them, instead of just having parks for kids in which you see older people feeding the squirrels while their grandkids play on the swing.

But these days the older folks aren’t just sitting around feeding squirrels.
They’re playing too. And exercising. On hundreds of specially designed outdoor circuits for the elderly.
On one recent morning, in the Spanish coastal town of Vilassar, a kiddy park with its slides and seesaws is empty. But right next to it, 20 retirees shout out during roll call. Then they take up positions by tiny balance beams, elevated walkways, pedals fixed to benches and twisting metal bars.
The day’s workout session begins.

The parks are put together by a Finnish firm, and appear to be very popular.

The point of these outdoor exercise spots isn’t just to give elderly folks something to do. Officials say it makes good fiscal sense as well.
Analysts estimate that 40 to 45 percent of the population in Spain will be retirees by 2050. Spending a few bucks on parks to keep that population alert and healthy, the thinking goes, could save a lot in expensive health care costs.

Now, I admit that the first thing I did when I got out of the car after listening to this was to check the UN Population Division's projections for Spain. Could those numbers be right? Actually, yes. The UN projects that by 2050, 40 percent of Spain's population could be age 60 and older. If people start taking pensions at a younger age, then the percentage could be higher. This, of course, reminds us of another related policy approach--increasing retirement age throughout Europe.