More Evidence That Contraception is a Good Thing

With reproductive rights generally under assault by the Trump administration, it is helpful that a new study just came out highlighting the importance of having contraception available to young women. This week's Economist reports on a working paper (presumably about to be published) by researchers at Stanford University.

Few tasks in developing countries are as tricky—or as important—as convincing parents to keep their daughters in school longer. One way of doing so is to make contraceptives available, concludes a new working paper by Kimberly Singer Babiarz at Stanford University and four other researchers.

Conducted in Malaysia, the study used a happy coincidence of surveys going back decades and family-planning programmes rolled out in a way that made it possible to measure their effect. Starting in the 1960s, these programmes were introduced in some areas a few years earlier than in others. So researchers could compare what happened to girls in areas where contraceptives became available when they were very young with girls from the same cohorts in areas with no contraceptives.

It turns out that girls in the areas with higher contraceptive availability stayed in school longer, had better jobs when they left school and were more likely to invite their parents rather than the in-laws to live with them. Of course, you could argue that correlation is not necessarily causation, but the impact of family planning programs is something that this group of researchers has been working. Check out the article published last year in Population and Development Review. 

Can We Save the 2020 Census in the U.S.?

Ever since the Republicans took control of both houses of Congress there have been concerns about funding for the 2020 census in this country. A poorly funded census will be a lower quality census which will be troublesome for research of all kinds, including for businesses who rely heavily on that information. Remember, though, that the Constitutional mandate for a census is that those data are the basis for forming Congressional Districts. Thus, the census is inherently political, even as we demographers view it as a key source of data about the country. The Census Bureau has been without a director for several months now, following the resignation of John Thompson. The Director and Deputy Director positions have gone unfilled in the meantime, but there is growing concern that the Trump administration is going to put a possibly biased and almost certainly unqualified person in charge of census operations. 

Today's Washington Post has a detailed story about this:

This week the Population Association of America and the Association of Population Research Centers, whose members include over 3,000 scientists and over 40 federally-funded organizations, sounded an alarm bell about one of their most sacred cows: the United States Census Bureau.

Reports had surfaced saying the White House planned to install as the bureau’s deputy director Thomas Brunell, a political science professor with scant managerial experience who is best known for his testimony as an expert witness on behalf of Republican redistricting plans and a book that argues against competitive electoral districts.

News of the appointment, which sources close to the bureau say is imminent, sparked handwringing among statisticians, former bureau directors, and civil rights leaders.

The appointment would “undermine the credibility” of the traditionally nonpartisan bureau, the president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said in a statement. Brunell “appears to lack the necessary management and statistical agency experience, and may be viewed by many to have a very political perspective,” the president of the American Statistical Association wrote.

In a recent letter to Wilbur Ross, the Secretary of Commerce (which houses the Census Bureau), the Population Association of America urged him "to promptly submit to the United States Senate a qualified nominee to serve as the Director of the U.S. Census Bureau and to reserve the agency’s Deputy Director position for a qualified candidate who can help lead the agency during these critical years leading up to the 2020 Census." We should all be writing a similar letter.

Europe and Africa Struggling With Migrant Issues

I recently blogged about the horrific situation in which African migrants trying to reach Europe wound up in slave markets in Libya. A video of a slave market was shown on CNN and that helped to galvanize the world's attention. In particular it was a top item on the agenda of last week's meeting in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, between the European Union and the African Union. But, as Abu Daoud pointed out to me a couple of days ago, the result was disappointing. CNBCAfrica had a very mundane view of the proceedings:

Most of the discussion at the summit was about migration, with a horrific recent video of a slave auction in Libya at the forefront of delegates’ minds. The summit agreed on the formation of a special task force to protect migrants’ and refugees’ lives, including in Libya.

There was also much talk of how Europe might help African countries to build their economies in such a way that fewer Africans seek to migrate. The speeches on the subject were generic and general, but did show, we think, a widely shared will to do something to address the iniquities and deterioration in living conditions that make people flee their homes.

On the other hand, Deutsche Welle reports that while the UNHCR was very enthusiastic about the discussion, the German chapter of Amnesty International was, shall we say, less than enthusiastic:

The plan to evacuate refugees stuck in Libya's camps will not work in practice, says Franziska Vilmar of the German branch of Amnesty International. It has only been designed to help the EU shirk its responsibilities.

An even more dire view of the meeting was reported by the right-leaning gatestoneinstitute, which has a rather dire view of the proceedings:

The African Union-European Union (AU-EU) summit, held in in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, on November 29-30, 2017, has ended in abject failure after the 55 African and 28 European leaders attending the event were unable to agree on even basic measures to prevent potentially tens of millions of African migrants from flooding Europe.
Despite high expectations and grand statements, the only concrete decision to come out of Abidjan was the promise to evacuate 3,800 African migrants stranded in Libya.

The President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, said that Europe is "underestimating" the scale and severity of the migration crisis and that "millions of Africans" will flood the continent in the next few years unless urgent action is taken.

The bottom line here is that population growth in Africa is higher than local economies can absorb, and so people are looking around to see what the other options might be. Given the low birth rate in Europe, it seems as though the European economies beckon. At the moment, however, the European people are doing less beckoning at the same time that they are not willing to invest in African economies (which would indirectly encourage a lower birth rate), and so the problem is compounding. 

U.S. Pulls Out of Global Compact on Migration

Thanks to Rubèn Rumbaut for pointing me to the sad story that the United States has pulled out of the United Nations Global Compact on Migration. This was a non-binding political declaration agreed to a little more than a year ago by all 193 member states of the United Nations. The Telegraph in the U.K. notes that the motivation behind the agreement was that migration (especially forced migration) is a growing global issue and success in dealing with this is probably greater if all nations can help "to to uphold the rights of refugees, help them resettle and ensure they have access to education and
jobs."

The withdrawal by the U.S. comes the day before the start of a UN-sponsored meeting on global migration to be held this week in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Although the Compact on Migration is voluntary, CNN notes that a statement from the U.S. State Department indicates that it "undermines the nation's sovereignty."

"While we will continue to engage on a number of fronts at the United Nations," Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement Sunday, "in this case, we simply cannot in good faith support a process that could undermine the sovereign right of the United States to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders." 

The US supports "international cooperation on migration issues," the statement added, "but it is the primary responsibility of sovereign states to help ensure that migration is safe, orderly, and legal."

Of some interest is a report by Foreign Policy magazine that U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley was opposed to pulling out:

White House chief of staff John Kelly, who previously led the Department of Homeland Security’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions strongly backed a pullout, according to diplomatic sources familiar with the deliberations. The State Department initially opposed the withdrawal, but its policy planning chief, Brian Hook, who represented Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the principals’ meeting, reversed course and recommended ditching the negotiations.

The meeting ended in deadlock, with Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, expressing the lone dissent. Haley had argued that the United States would have a better shot at influencing the outcome of the negotiations if it participated in the process.

She was ultimately overruled by the president, according to diplomatic sources.

It Isn't Easy Being an "Undocumented Immigrant" in Beijing

Yesterday's NYTimes had a lengthy story about neighborhoods of migrant workers in Beijing being destroyed by the government [see the photo below]. You may recall that China has a household registration system that is designed especially to keep rural villagers in their rural villages, rather than respond to the demand for workers in the city. But, of course, people do move to the cities where the jobs are and they become illegal migrants in the process. 

The city government says they are being pushed out for their own safety, after a recent deadly fire in a migrant settlement. But many migrants say the government is using the fire as an excuse to ramp up efforts to drive them out and ease pressures in a city whose population has already soared beyond 20 million people.

Beijing has set a goal of limiting its population to 23 million residents by 2020, while also making room to attract more higher-paid, university-educated professionals. 

Despite such efforts, officials have so far failed to deter migrants from settling in the city, largely because Beijing still relies on them to be its cooks, couriers and cleaners.

This is exactly the situation that the U.S. faces with undocumented immigrants. The economy is very reliant on them, and an increase in deportations would have very negative effects not just on the migrants themselves, but on local communities whose businesses would be suddenly shorn of needed workers. China, like the U.S., has to come to grips with the idea that you can't need undocumented immigrants and want to destroy their lives at the same time.