Wash Your Hands, and With Soap--I Mean It!

Yesterday, the 15th of October, was Global Handwashing Day. Sorry I'm a day late, but I was busy washing up. Seriously, though, this is a serious issue, as USAID reminds us:

Although many people around the world clean their hands with water, the use of soap is also necessary to more effectively prevent disease.

* Millions of children under the age of 5 years die from diarrheal diseases and pneumonia, the top two killers of young children around the world.
* Handwashing with soap could prevent about 1 out of every 3 episodes of diarrheal illnesses and almost 1 out of 6 episodes of respiratory infections like pneumonia.

Most of the photos and stories are from Africa and South Asia, but this is truly a global issue that each generation needs to learn. In low mortality societies it is easy to forget a key lesson about our low mortality and good health--prevention is always the best medicine. That's why vaccinations are so important, and that is why washing your hands is so important. For years I have sent students off to this website regarding studies of people who wash up (or don't!) at public bathrooms in airports. Kind of creepy and I doubt that things have gotten any better since that study was done. 

Sorting Out Facts From Fiction in the US Immigration "Debate"

This week's Newsweek has a genuinely excellent and detailed analysis of the reality of undocumented immigration in the US. The author, Kurt Eichenwald, went to the key sources such as Doug Massey and Rubén Rumbaut, among others, to get all aspects of the story right.

To understand the current controversy, look back a few decades. Until the mid-1960s, illegal immigration from Mexico was incomprehensible because the United States was legally admitting about 50,000 Mexicans a year as immigrants. From 1942 through 1964, the United States issued short-term visas for temporary laborers from Mexico, primarily for agricultural work. The system functioned well—some Mexicans became legal residents, more became temporary workers, and very little needed to be spent policing the borders since the laborers were happy to head back home when their seasonal jobs were done. 

But civil rights advocates criticized the program as exploitative, and in 1965 Congress terminated the issuance of the short-term visas, which accomplished nothing. “When opportunities for legal entry disappeared after 1965, the massive inflow from Mexico simply re-established itself under undocumented auspices,’’ says Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University. “By 1979, it roughly equaled the volume observed in the late 1950s, only now the overwhelming majority of migrants were ‘illegal.’”

Once immigrants arrive in the U.S. illegally, do they commit crimes? Of course, in any group of millions of people, there will be those who engage in violent felonies, but the numbers here are not statistically significant. Rubén Rumbaut, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, noted in a 2007 report for the Immigration Policy Center (now part of the American Immigration Council) that even though the number of undocumented immigrants doubled from 1994 to the record level of 12 million in 2007, the violent crime rate in America dropped 34 percent, and the property crime rate fell 26 percent. That same report found that Mexican immigrants—including those who entered the U.S. legally and illegally—had an incarceration rate in 2000 of 0.7 percent, one-eighth the rate of native-born Americans of Mexican descent and lower than that of American-born whites and blacks of similar socioeconomic status and education.

Eichenwald discusses the fact that the real crime wave related to immigration is the $6 billion per year human trafficking industry. Those folks have a strong interest in keeping the current system in place, but are probably already figuring out how to charge people to get around any new wall that might be proposed.

This is a lengthy article and I highly recommend it. Not only does it lay out the fallacies of the current policies being promulgated by right-wing politicians, in particular, it also makes a case for seeking a solution--going back to where we were in 1963 and moving forward in a different direction than we did back then.

Lessons From India For How Europe Might Cope With Demographic Diversity

I think it is likely that the average westerner thinks of India as relatively homogeneous--lots of people, to be sure, but largely Hindu with respect to religion, and largely speaking the Hindi language. Europe, on the other hand, is culturally and demographically diverse, with lots of different languages and backgrounds, albeit predominantly Christian with respect to religion. And that diversity of European cultures has shown its head recently, as Europe has tried to cope with the onslaught of refugees, not to mention economic issues like the Greek bailout. But, wait just a minute says Amit Mukherjee, professor of leadership and strategy at IMD in Switzerland,. He is a colleague of my older son, who linked me to Professor Mukherjee's recent op-ed piece about what Europe could learn from India's history of diversity.

Europe's diverse population will impede the creation of a "US of Europe". India, which has comparable diversity, can teach much. But will Europeans be willing to learn from an emerging economy where corruption is rife? They should. Indians have got a lot wrong, but they got this right. 

There are parallels:
* The EU must unify very diverse peoples. In a few years starting in 1947, India integrated 600 independent and semi-independent kingdoms and the erstwhile British India, and consolidated them into language-based states. There are 29 today.
* Both the EU and India have 24 official languages. Indians who speak these languages live in an area which is three-quarters the size of the EU's. Because half of India can't even recognise the other half's alphabets, educated Indians of different linguistic backgrounds talk to each other in English, an official language.
* India has greater religious diversity than Europe. It has more Christians than all but five EU countries, and more Muslims than all but two countries worldwide.
* Like Europeans, Indians swear by their states' cultures and foods.

Now, you might object to all of this because Europe is not trying to become a unified nation. But is is trying to become a unified something, and learning to live with demographic diversity rather than demonizing it is probably a good place to start. That's the lesson from India.

Angus Deaton's Nobel Prize in Economics Has a Demographic Connection

The Nobel Prize in Economics was today awarded to Angus Deaton, a Professor of Economics at Princeton. Although the thrust of his work has not been specifically in population studies, he has nonetheless been highly influential in research that demographers undertake. If you look at demography journals, or my text, or this blog, you will find constant references to development and well-being--how do we measure these things, so that we can try to improve people's lives? Deaton made key contributions to these analyses, as summarized in today's NYTimes:

“To design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, we must first understand individual consumption choices,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement announcing the prize, the last of this year’s crop of Nobels. “More than anyone else, Angus Deaton has enhanced this understanding.”

Professor Deaton has been at the forefront of a revolution made possible by computers: the use of detailed economic data to produce more accurate conclusions about broad economic trends. He has worked both to improve measurement techniques and to use those tools to pose basic questions about improving human welfare.

Professor Deaton was himself a member of the Population Association of America (PAA) and an indirect measure of Professor Deaton's influence on demography is that one of his former students, Duncan Thomas, is also a prominent demographer who has served on the Board of Directors (including as Vice-President) of the PAA.

“What he’s shown is that you do learn a great deal more by looking at the behavior that underlies the aggregates, “ said Duncan Thomas, an economist at Duke University who also numbers among Professor Deaton’s former students

Professor Thomas said he also admired Professor Deaton’s clarity of thought. “His capacity to present ideas that are incredibly complicated in a way that mere mortals can understand is truly extraordinary,” Professor Thomas said. “He will bring evidence to the table in a way that makes you say, ‘Well of course that has to be right’ and then you hit your head on the table and say ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ ”

That kind of clarity is rare in the world and absolutely is worthy of a major prize. My own mentor, Kingsley Davis, regularly turned the light bulbs on in that way and it is very inspirational.

The Health of the Global Aging Population

The World Health Organization has put out a new report on global aging and health, hoping to generate a strategy for dealing with a growing population of older people everywhere in the world. Keep in mind that this is a good problem to have. More people living to old age and to increasingly older ages is a symptom of how well we've been able to battle death over the years, especially over the past few decades. But the bigger issue is the health of these folks. How will we treat illnesses and deal with frailty and dementia and other problems associated with aging? The WHO has a plan, as outlined by the press:

The WHO is proposing a five-step plan of action, which includes:
1. Committing to healthy aging and "evidence-based policies to strengthen the abilities of older persons."
2. Aligning health systems with the needs of older populations
3. Developing systems for providing long-term care
4. Creating "age-friendly cities and communities"
5. Improving measurement, monitoring and understanding of "aging issues" worldwide.

These are pretty vague goals, but the report does have specific steps that can be taken. One of the important things that has to happen is that we have to focus on behaviors that younger people engage in that create problems for them as they get older. Diet is one thing, of course, and the increased consumption of meat and processed foods among younger people is a recipe for poor health in the older years. Most important, though, is to stop smoking. Today's Guardian summarizes a paper from The Lancet about smoking in China.

“About two-thirds of young Chinese men become cigarette smokers, and most start before they are 20. Unless they stop, about half of them will eventually be killed by their habit,” said the article’s co-author Zhengming Chen from Oxford University. 

China consumes over a third of the world’s cigarettes, and has a sixth of the global smoking death toll.

China is also on the road to having the largest population of older people in the world, so this is going to be a big issue for them. Resources in China are going to have to be diverted from buying precious metals to buying health care for older men with pulmonary disease and heart disease and all of the other problems associated with smoking.