The GeoDemographics of Gerrymandering

Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution lays out the basis for the census in the U.S. The enumeration of the population (all persons counted equally--as modified later by the 14th amendment) is the basis for dividing up states into Congressional Districts from which members of the House of Representatives are elected. Each such district is to have equal numbers of people, with the exception that each state must have at least one Representative in Congress. Since the Constitution says nothing more about how to create these districts than that cannot cross state lines, the district boundaries have been regularly messed with, starting way back in 1812 when Elbridge Gerry, then governor of Massachusetts, approved a salamander-shaped district, and thus was born the term "Gerrymandering."

While race was the big issue for most of U.S. history, over the past decade the Republican party, in particular, has been trying to redraw Congressional District boundaries in ways that are aimed at providing safe seats for Republican members of Congress. Today's CBS Sunday Morning has a nice primer on the whole set of issues.

Federal judges this past week ordered a redrawing of the lines between Congressional Districts in North Carolina, while the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of a similar ruling in Texas. And then there's Pennsylvania -- which features a Congressional map that, some critics say, looks like a cartoon. [see map below]

But -- and this is important -- even if lines were not being drawn to favor Republicans, Democrats would still be at something of a disadvantage, says Stanford political scientist Jonathan Rodden. That's because of where they live.

"Democrats have been clustered in cities in the industrialized states every since the New Deal, ever since FDR," Rodden said. "Cities have become more Democratic, and rural areas more Republican." 

Rodden studies how increasingly Republicans are spread across rural areas and Democrats packed into urban areas. Consider the influence on a state like Missouri: "The Democrats are highly concentrated in St. Louis and Kansas City," Rodden said. "The gubernatorial elections are always very close. It's a place that Democrats can win statewide. But the best they can hope for in an eight-seat Congressional delegation is three seats, and the current outcome is two." 

So, is the issue gerrymandering or geography? "It's geography and gerrymandering," said Rodden. "In order to understand the outcomes we see, we have to understand how those two things interact."

Strictly speaking, of course, it's not just geography--it's GeoDemographics or spatial demography at work in a big and important way.

Africans Find Work--and Abuse--in the Gulf States

No place on earth is growing more quickly in population terms than sub-Saharan Africa. Importantly, the population growth is outpacing economic growth and youth unemployment is high. This is the major reason why Africans risk their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean to get to Europe. It is also why an increasing number are now finding work in the Gulf states. Two stories this week highlight the issues. The first is from OZY:

While continued international pressure on the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar has managed to improve the working conditions of many South Asian and Southeast Asian migrants, recruitment agencies are now moving on to Africa. Detailed labor statistics are hard to come by in the region, but data from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs suggests that there are more than 636,000 Sudanese migrants in the Gulf, as well as up to 300,000 Kenyans. Many of the workers flooding the Persian Gulf States are from Somalia, Ethiopia or Uganda — countries with little capacity to guarantee the fair treatment of their citizens abroad.

Kenya had, in fact, put a lid on migration to the Gulf states back in 2014 in reaction to numerous stories of abuse and exploitation. But, according to a story from the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Kenya is going to reopen those migrant avenues.

Kenya plans to lift a ban on its citizens working in the Gulf - introduced in 2014 because of abuses - with new safeguards, such as requiring recruitment agencies to pay a security bond so they can repatriate any distressed migrants. But experts fear that the new rules will not protect them amid corruption, greed and desperation for a better life. Lured by the promise of well-paid work and a chance to escape joblessness at home, hundreds of thousands of Kenyans are thought to be employed in the Middle East, sending much-needed remittances to their families every year.

Only time will tell if these new policies will limit the abuses. In the meantime, though, there are relatively few options for young people living in these countries with limited economic opportunities. Would global efforts to improve economic development help? Yes, if they are really indigenous efforts, rather than outsiders coming in to exploit the local populations. That is a tricky balance, and report out today from the Migration Policy Institute suggests that using economic development as a way of limiting migration is more complicated than it seems at first blush, and thus may not always have the desired consequences.

A Japanese Town Figures Out How to Raise the Birth Rate

Thanks to Duane Miller for pointing me to a story in the Economist about a small town in Japan that has figured out how to double its birth rate. This didn't require a Sex Tsar like Spain created last year, nor did it involve billboards emphasizing how important it was to Singapore for people to have babies. Rather, it was an old-fashioned formula similar to the one that the French have been using for a long time--subsidize the cost of having children.

Mrs Fukuda will receive a “celebratory” gift of ¥300,000 ($3,530) when she gives birth. A subsidised baby-sitting service is available for just ¥1,800 a day, along with subsidised carseats and other baby accessories. When her children reach secondary school, she will receive ¥90,000 a year for each one who attends. In theory, this stipend is to cover the cost of getting children to school, especially for people who live relatively far away. And whereas usually all but the poorest and the old in Japan have to pay 30% of their health-care bills (with the national government picking up the rest), in Nagicho the local government pays the 30% for children.

For many years the French system of similar incentives seemed like a failure because the French birth rate remained right around replacement level at a time that the government was hoping for something higher than that. Now, of course, replacement level fertility looks pretty high in Europe! And, to be sure, it would look great in Japan, if every town were to replicate this model. Note that one resident interviewed for the story did not believe that the incentives were the main reason for the increase in the birth rate. I would argue that a community that thinks like this has a culture that is oriented toward families, rather than just individuals getting ahead--and typically at the expense of women. That is why they put the incentives in place, so the explanation is perhaps more complex than it seems at first glance.

Venezuelans Head to Colombia as the Country Unravels

As the economic situation in Venezuela continues its downward spiral, it seems that President Maduro is mainly concerned about his political opponents, not the economy. In other words, he's more concerned about his own survival than the survival of Venezuelans. Colombia has been bearing much of the brunt of this, as an increasing number of Venezuelans seek to find work or even longer-term residence in that next-door country. A story in VICE News summarizes the situation:

The crisis can be felt across Colombia’s border, where authorities lament the lack of support in dealing with the tide of migrants that has steadily increased to crisis levels over the last year. In the past three months, the pace of migration has dramatically grown, local authorities say.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos called Venezuela his “worst nightmare” during a late-November visit to London. But he’s remained focused primarily on his Nobel Peace Prize-winning efforts to end Colombia’s 50-year civil war, and has largely allowed the crisis on his borders to develop without a clear national response.

Many of the border crossers do so legally, just as many people on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border have passes that allow them to work on the other side of the border. But the situation in Venezuela has the effect of turning many of those people into refugees in Colombia.

The monthly flow of documented migrants — those who get their passports stamped — over this part of the Colombian border more than doubled between June and November, from 47,071 to 95,826, respectively. But those numbers show a small part of the picture. Also in November, more than 200,000 people crossed into Colombia with special border transit ID cards, but never left.

And it is not just people. The smuggling of livestock is also on the rise. While cross-border cattle smuggling apparently has a long history, it has ramped up as the chaos in Venezuela keeps getting worse. Two years ago, I wrote about the situation unfolding in Venezuela and concluded that "[t]he result of population growth in the face of low oil prices in Venezuela will probably be a change of government. It is hard to see how Maduro can hang on." Maduro has been more successful in hanging on than I thought, but Venezuela itself seems to be barely hanging on.

Are U.S. Colleges About to Face a Drop in Prospective Students?

Thanks to my son, Greg Weeks of UNC Charlotte, for pointing me to an article in InsideHigherEd reviewing a new book about the demographics of higher education. 

Optimists and plenty of others in higher education may be concerned by Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press), in which Nathan D. Grawe suggests a bleak outlook for most institutions when it comes to attracting and enrolling students.

 Grawe is a professor of economics at Carleton College--a small liberal arts college in Minnesota. Although he's not a member of the Population Association of America, the book uses demographic data in a seemingly new and innovative way to estimate not just the number of people becoming of the age to go to college, but also the probability that they will apply for college, and the kind of college (e.g., community college, four-year, elite, etc) to which they are likely to apply.

He starts with generally accepted figures that show the (traditional) college-age population dropping in the Northeast and Midwest by about 5 percent by the mid-2020s. But he then tracks birth rates and finds that the economic downturn that started around 2008 led many people to delay starting families. The impact, starting around 2026, could mean a loss of 15 percent of the typical college-going population.

And if that's not enough to scare admissions leaders (and perhaps to give college counselors in high schools more confidence on getting students in), Grawe developed a formula called the Higher Education Demand Index, or HEDI. This applies demographic trends to college-going rates. Rather than assuming the same rates in the future as today, Grawe looks at the rates for different socioeconomic groups. Those groups who will make up a growing share of the population tend to have lower college-going rates, on average, than groups whose share of the population will be shrinking. Based on his index, the outlook should scare most nonelite colleges.

I have not read the book, so I'm not in a position to know if I would agree with his methods and conclusions. What I do know is that here at San Diego State University we just had a record 93,610 applications for admission this coming Fall. Only a few thousand of those will actually wind up being enrolled in the Fall, so presumably the rest will go elsewhere--albeit probably not the Northeast or Midwest.