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Benjamin McKeown

Japan's Rural Aging Population - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...537375

pop density ageing japan

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 24 Aug 17 - No Cached
  • , young people have been fleeing this rural village, lured by the pull of Japan’s big cities like Tokyo and Osaka
  • Tochikubo’s school now has eight children, and more than half of the town’s 170 people are over the age of 50
  • Japan is slowly becoming something like one big city-state
  • ...40 more annotations...
  • with the majority of the population centered in an urban belt that runs through the cluster of Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya,
  • bullet train.
  • n 1950, 53 percent of Japan’s population lived in urban regions; by 2014, 93 percent did.
  • It is mostly young people who move to the cities
  • Bear attacks near settlements in Japan’s north are increasing as humans stop pruning back trees and maintaining their land. Wild boars have been ravaging farmland across the island of Honshu.
  • predicted that 896 cities, towns, and villages would be extinct by 2040. Dozens of towns will see the number of young people drop significantly, as the share of elderly people grows, he predicted. Overall, Japan’s population is expected to shrink from a peak of 128 million in 2010 to 97 million by 2050.
  • apanese towns are wrestling with dilemmas like how to run their governments with fewer tax dollars, and how to provide services for an increasingly needy population with fewer workers. To make this all the more challenging, governance is strained by the population decline as well: In Yamagata Prefecture, 45 percent of seats in the local assembly race in 2015 were uncontested because of a lack of candidates.
  • Other regions of the world will soon have to face these challenges, too. Just about every developed country is aging and urbanizing, though Japan is doing so the fastest
  • The reasons that Japan’s rural population is shrinking
  • Jobs are increasingly clustered in cities, and the jobs that remain in the countryside require fewer workers than they did half a century ago. “There are very few economic opportunities outside major cities,
  • Japan has few major learning centers located outside major cities, Mock said. That means as young people increasingly pursue college educations, they leave for the cities, and often don’t return.
  • “They graduate high school, they go to university in Tokyo, they start working in Tokyo, and they set up their lives in Tokyo and never come back,
  • Of the 500 or so teenagers who graduate high school in Minamiuonuma every year, only about 100 remain in the city after graduating. Everybody else goes off to college, and only 40 come back after graduating from college on average, the mayor, Shigeo Hayashi, told me.
  • the country’s falling fertility rate. Japan's fertility rate fell by a third between 1972 and 2015;
  • When a population is shrinking and most of that population lives in urban centers, that spells problems for rural areas like Tochikubo and Minamiuonuma, unless there is a lot of immigration.
  • The problem is not necessarily that Japan will run out of money t
  • someone needs to be around to provide these services.
  • Right now, the decline of these places is happening fast, within a generation or two. If it can be a more gradual process, perhaps then basic social services can at least survive for long enough to provide for the remaining residents.
  • One obvious solution to reversing, or at least slowing, rural Japan’s decline would be to open up the country to immigration
  • Just 1.8 percent of the country’s population is foreign-born, compared to 13 percent of the population in the United States.
  • But Japan is a country whose national identity is, in some ways, based upon racial homogeneity. Proposals to significantly increase immigration have gone nowhere, and polls consistently find that two-thirds of Japanese are against large-scale immigration.
  • And it’s unlikely that immigrants, even if they were allowed in, would move to rural areas where there are few jobs even for the people who want to stay.
  • In Minamiuonuma, for instance, city leaders talk about their newly-built global IT park, where start-ups can set up offices for low rent, and a business academy for people interested in creating their own business. They built a brand-new hospital and medical college to attract doctors and nurses, and are in the process of building a series of homes for active retired people in the hope that retirees will want to relocate to the city. Like almost every other shrinking city, Minamiuonuma sends brochures to young people from the region to try to get them to come home. But still, the population continues to shrink
  • Other areas are trying to grow the population they have by increasing the birth rate.
  • Niigata Prefecture, which is expected to be among the regions hardest-hit by population decline.
  • Niigata will lose 40 percent of its women aged 20 to 40 by 2040
  • Declining Birthrate Countermeasures Division
  • Niigata sponsors matchmaking events for its young people, and even invited a matchmaking company to come in and pair rural men with women living in cities like Tokyo. “For our division, one of the most important things is making couples,”
  • The fertility rate of women in Niigata has fallen from nearly four babies per woman in 1950 to 1.43 babies per woman in more recent years.
  • Niigata is focusing on making it easier for women to have babies and still work. The prefecture is giving certifications to companies that have good parental leave policies in the hope that doing so will motivate companies to be more flexible, but it has no real sway over what companies decide
  • reducing interest payments for families who borrow money to pay for their children’s education
  • But the prefecture hasn’t seen a significant uptick in marriages,
  • or in births.
  • When I asked them about supporting births outside of marriage, officials told me such a thing wouldn’t be acceptable in Japan. Even telling couples to get married doesn’t necessarily go over well. “We are the public sector. It’s difficult for us to say, ‘You should marry as soon as possible, you’re mature enough to have babies,’” she said.
  • Yubari, for instance, a town on the northern island of Hokkaido, which lost 90 percent of its population between 1960 and 2014, declared bankruptcy in 2007
  • Since then, it has drastically cut back on services such as public buses and snow removal, merged schools, laid off government employees, and cut funds for public parks. It relocated residents from public housing on the outskirts of town to apartments close to the city center.
  • In some places, adapting has meant that elderly people are working for longer
  • people who might have wanted to retire at 65 are still tilling the fields at 75.
  • “Sixty is the new 40. The question is, will 80 be the new 60?”
  • They’re most concerned about the disappearance of a way of life—that no young people will come to the village and learn how to farm rice without machines or how to weave cloth or make sake. “It’s difficult for us to give knowledge to the younger generation,” F
Benjamin McKeown

'China's Worst Policy Mistake'? by Nicholas D. Kristof | The New York Review of Books - 0 views

www.nybooks.com/...chinas-worst-policy-mistake

population one child policy

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 10 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • n China and abroad, that those adopted babies, mostly girls, were unwanted in a male chauvinist society and abandoned by their parents. Many of those children, some of them now young adults, should know that it’s far more complicated than that. They are the products not of unloving parents, not so much of a misogynist tradition, but of a government policy that sundered families.
  • All fertile married women in their region were obliged to pee into a cup for a pregnancy test every three months; a positive result could lead to a mandatory abortion. Any couple that somehow evaded the controls risked a fine, the demolition of the family home, and forced sterilization.
  • Officials now had their salaries docked if there were babies born without permission in their localities, and the village leader had lost half his salary for that reason.
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  • The local official in charge of family planning promised a $380 reward, presented anonymously, to anyone who informed on an unauthorized baby. Someone reported on Victory,
  • The one-child policy, unlike many Chinese missteps, was not a product of Chairman Mao’s zeal or ideology; in fact, China was extricating itself from Maoism when it adopted the one-child policy.
  • “One child isn’t too few, two are just fine, three are too many.” And within about a decade it managed without coercion to reduce the average number of births per woman from six to three, a remarkable achievement. It’s rarely acknowledged that the biggest drop in Chinese fertility came not from the one-child policy, but earlier during this voluntary birth control campaign.
  • If it had continued, China’s birth rates would have continued to drop, as they have for the rest of the region (Malaysia today averages just under two births per woman; Bangladesh averages 2.2).
  • In retrospect, Western sympathizers were right about the need to curb population growth in China—and blind to the brutality of China’s policy. Partly that’s because China covered up the abuses and pretended that the policy was essentially voluntary, backed by fines but not by force.
  • Internationally, the most visible legacy of the one-child policy is the large number of Chinese-born children who have been adopted in the West
  • because an unauthorized birth would lead her husband to be fired from his job as well as to a large fine and her forced sterilization.
Benjamin McKeown

Europe needs many more babies to avert a population disaster | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...pe-brink-depopulation-disaster

population migration

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 26 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • “We have provinces in Spain where for every baby born, more than two people die. And the ratio is moving closer to one to three.”
  • Spain has one of the lowest fertility rates in the EU, with an average of 1.27 children born for every woman of childbearing age, compared to the EU average of 1.55.
  • hundreds of thousands of Spaniards and migrants leave in the hope of finding jobs abroad.
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • The result is that, since 2012, Spain’s population has been shrinking.
  • The paradox is that as police and security forces battle to keep them at bay
  • Record numbers of economic migrants and asylum-seekers are seeking to enter the European Union this summer and are risking their lives in the attempt
  • In Portugal, the population has been shrinking since 2010.
  • Portugal’s population could drop from 10.5 million to 6.3 million by 2060.
  • In Italy the retired population is soaring, with the proportion of over-65s set to rise from 2.7% last year to 18.8% in 2050.
  • Germany has the lowest birthrate in the world: 8.2 per 1,000 population between 2008 and 2013,
  • On average, Britain’s population grew at a faster rate over the last decade than it has done over the last 50 years.
  • a direct threat to economic growth as well as pensions, healthcare and social services.
  • the grey vote.
  • “During the same time frame, expenditures on pensions rose by more than 40%. We’re moving closer to being a gerontocratic society – it’s a government of the old.”
  • In 2012, the regional government launched a multi-pronged initiative to address the falling fertility rate, with plans to roll out measures such as home and transport subsidies for families and radio advertisements urging women to have more children.
  • The region of Galicia is one of the few in Spain that has addressed the issue.
  • “these issues will only be solved by a miracle.”
  • ack of financial security that prompts many Italians to live with their parents well into their 30s. The difficulty for mothers to return to the workplace also means women must make considerable sacrifices if they decide to have children.
  • give low-income couples a monthly “baby bonus” of €80
  • The youth jobless rate hit 44.2% in June, while overall it stood at 12.3%.
  • By 2060 the government expects the population to plunge from 81 million to 67 million,
  • In order to offset this shortage, Germany needs to welcome an average of 533,000 immigrants every year, which perhaps gives context to the estimate that 800,000 refugees are due to come to Germany this year.
  • Only Scandinavia appears to be weathering the demographic storm with any success, partly thanks to generous parental leave systems, stable economies, and, in the cases of Sweden and Norway, high net immigration.
  • n Sweden it is possible to combine motherhood with a working life,”
Benjamin McKeown

The Quinoa Quarrel - Food and Environment Reporting Network - 0 views

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quinoa food food security

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 17 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • But at same time, what’s happening to Bolivian potato farmers? They have cheap industrial potatoes dumped into their market, so they can’t compete. They can’t make a living. They have to work in mines or migrate to cities. ”
  • to import useful qualities from the wild varieties, such as heat tolerance and pest resistance.
  • Of course, seeds from Bolivia and other Andean nations would offer a more easily accessible source of genetic diversity—but they’re not available.
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  • Must the whole world “start paying the Iranians a premium for every bushel of wheat,” he asks, “because their Iranian ancestors were the ones that domesticated it?”
  • “If you ask for one crop that can save the world and address climate change, nutrition, all these things—the answer is quinoa. There’s no doubt about it.”
  • “When we’re talking about people who die every day because they don’t have enough to eat, then I think that sharing is a must.”
  • While the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a handful of governments around the world hold small, freely shared collections, most varities of quinoa are off-limits. Who is to blame? It’s not the usual suspect— some multinational corporation with a full portfolio of patents and evil intentions. This time, the germplasm is being withheld by the Andean nations themselves.
  • Jellen pictured quinoa granola bars “in every Walmart in America.” But there was no way to meet this demand as long as the Andean nations refused to facilitate production outside their borders while lacking the infrastructure to supply additional demand themselves.
  • she has finally adapted the plant well enough to be able to provide farmers with seed later this year.
  • “Quinoa has been in a nursery kind of environment,” he explains. “Now it’s about to go out into the urban jungle, so to speak. It’s about to land in Times Square, and it’s going to have to fend for itself.”
  • “To think we can take a couple of Chilean quinoa strains and grow them in Iowa—it just doesn’t work that way,” Jellen tells me. “There’s always a disease right around the corner, and the big game in plant breeding is to be one step ahead of that.”
  • which is why Jellen favors the “free and fair” exchange of germplasm. He will gladly share his genetic material with any interested parties—Americans, Moroccans, Bolivians. “I’d give that seed to Monsanto if they wanted to use it.”
  • For decades, Bolivia did share its quinoa germplasm.
  • To make a hybrid, one plant is used to fertilize another. In the case of corn, which naturally cross-pollinates with its neighbors, this is easy. But where corn is promiscuous, quinoa is practically abstinent, what plant breeders call a “selfer”: the female part of the plant is fertilized almost exclusively by the male part of the same plant. In order for the two plants to be mated, then, the “female” must first be emasculated by the removal of its male reproductive organs. Because quinoa flowers are tiny and numerous, this is extremely difficult work.
  • hybrid quinoa,
  • Farmers in Bolivia were furious. The researchers had found the cytoplasm in plants they were growing in Colorado, but their seed had originated on the Altiplano.
  • “all the countries of the world not to recognize this patent because the male sterile plant, the knowledge and maintenance of its genetic diversity, is the property of the indigenous peoples of the Andes.” Read: quinoa belongs to us.
  • If the cytoplasm identified by Ward and Johnson allowed the efficient creation of hybrids, wouldn’t that serve as an incentive for seed companies to invest in improving quinoa? And wouldn’t the primary beneficiaries of that investment be the quinoa farmers themselves?
  • This thinking reflects the modern mind-set of American plant breeding. Until the 1980s, improving crops was a mostly public endeavor; in the United States, it was underwritten by tax-payers. But as public involvement with agriculture waned and intellectual-property rights began to generate much greater profits for seed companies, plant breeding became largely privatized. Today it is ownership, in the form of patents and licensing agreements, that makes the wheels of progress turn.
  • hey see intellectual-property rights as reasonable arrangements that allow those in the plant-breeding industry to recoup the often enormous sums they invest in research and development.
  • General Mills has declined to support the crop’s development until there’s sufficient supply for a cereal line.
  • Maughan has approached his former employers at Monsanto, making personal appeals for research support, but they are not interested. Even with its star on the rise, quinoa is still too small to be a good investment.
  • For instance, they have identified crucial genes that make possible quinoa’s extraordinary tolerance of salt. If that mechanism could be engineered into corn, it could revolutionize food production around the world. The same goes for quinoa’s ability to withstand drought. These innovations could be invaluable to global food security. They could also be stupendously profitable— and almost certainly patentable.
  • cytoplasm had proved of no commercial value.
  • No one I spoke with in Bolivia denied that poor communities around the world could benefit from quinoa. But once the germplasm is shared, there’s no way to ensure that it won’t be made into something that’s patented.
  • he Bolivians needed to own quinoa so that somebody else couldn’t.
  • Even state ownership, meant to protect a crop like quinoa from corporate predation, tends to work against the larger goal of promoting genetic diversity. Take Bolivia’s genetic-conservation program. In a shift mandated by the 2009 constitution, the government nationalized the quinoa gene bank, which had been overseen by PROINPA for more than ten years. Government supporters argue that a public entity is more likely to be a democratic custodian of those resources than is a private organization—especially one that accepts foreign funding. But researchers in Bolivia and around the world question the government’s ability to safe-guard the seeds.
  • “Quinoa doesn’t belong to the Bolivian government or to corporations,” he told me. “Any food, any seeds, they are very sacred—they are for serving humanity. And if you don’t have their diversity stored in other places, you are in trouble. Be
Benjamin McKeown

China to end one-child policy and allow two - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-asia-34665539

china one child policy

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 02 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • as demographers and sociologists raised concerns about rising social costs and falling worker numbers.
  • "to improve the balanced development of population'' and to deal with an aging population, according to the statement from the Community Party's Central Committee carried by the official Xinhua News Agency (in Chinese) on Thursday.
  • about 30% of China's population is over the age of 50. The total population of the country is around 1.36 billion.
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  • The Communist Party began formally relaxing national rules two years ago, allowing couples in which at least one of the pair is an only child to have a second child.
  • Critics say that even a two-child policy will not boost the birth rate enough, the BBC's John Sudworth reports.
  • that despite the relaxation of the rules, many couples may opt to only have one child, as one-child families have become the social norm.
  • And for those women who want more than two children, nor will it end the state's insistence on the right to control their fertility, he adds.
  • "As long as the quotas and system of surveillance remains, women still do not enjoy reproductive rights,"
Benjamin McKeown

The effects of subsidies | Global Subsidies Initiative - 0 views

www.iisd.org/...effects-subsidies

subsidies resources

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 01 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • the benefits to society of that money, if it had been spent otherwise, or left in the pockets of taxpayers, might have been even greater.
  • heory shows that these depend on a number of factors, among which are the responsiveness of producers and consumers to changes in prices (what economists call the own-price elasticities of supply and demand), the form of the subsidy, the conditions attached to it, and how the subsidy interacts with other policies.
  • such subsidies tend to divert resources from more productive to less productive uses, thus reducing economic efficiency.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Those who take a more benign view argue that subsidies can serve redistributive goals, or can help to correct market failures. But, as the public-finance economist Ronald Gerritse once warned, subsides defended on such grounds "may have externalities that we did not bargain for." Indeed it is such second-order effects that have come under attack by environmental economists in recent years.
  • any subsidies are defended as benefiting disadvantaged groups, or groups the politicians like to make us believe are disadvantaged.
  • tend to favour larger producing units. Recently, for example, the Environmental Working Group, an American non-profit organization, counted up all the direct payments made by the U.S. Government to farmers between 1994 and 2005 and found that ten percent of subsidy recipients collected 73 percent of all subsidies, amounting to $120.5 billion Analyses of agricultural support programmes in other countries appear to lend credence to the 80:20 rule - the impression that 80% of support goes to 20% of the beneficiaries.
  • environmentally harmful subsidies" they generally mean subsidies that support production, transport or consumption that ends up damaging the environment. The environmental consequences of subsidies to extractive industries are closely linked to the activity being subsidized, like fishing or logging.
  • Subsidies to promote offshore fishing are a commonly cited example of environmentally harmful subsidies, with support that increases fishing capacity (i.e., subsidies toward constructing new boats) linked to the depletion of important fishery stocks. In other industries, subsidies that promote consumption or production have led to higher volumes of waste or emissions. For example, irrigation subsidies often encourage crops that are farmed intensively, which in turn leads to higher levels of fertilizer use than would occur otherwise. Moreover, irrigation subsidies can lead to the under pricing of irrigated water, which in turn fosters the overuse and inefficient use of water. While many subsidies have unintended negative consequences on the environment, well designed subsidies can be beneficial when they work to mitigate an environmental problem. In the context of fisheries, for instance, these would include subsidies to management programs that help ensure that fisheries resources are appropriately managed and that regulations are enforced, or to research and development (R&D) designed to promote less environmentally destructive forms of fish catching and processing.    
Benjamin McKeown

Bold steps: Japan's remedy for a rapidly aging society - The Globe and Mail - 0 views

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ageing japan population

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 19 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • Ms. Shimamura worked part-time in a hotel for years, and at the age of 65 began working full-time as a janitor – retiring only when she was 85.
  • long-term-care insurance program
  • Here, she has food, shelter, scheduled activities and the attentive care of a Filipino health care worker.
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  • hospital's long-term-care ward
  • Japanese leaders have made radical changes to the way health care is delivered in recent decades, most notably with the introduction of long-term-care insurance in 2000. The system is far from perfect, but Japan has been unafraid to improve the system as they learned its faults, and as an economic boom gave way to zero growth.
  • ut Japan's government, businesses and society are facing these challenges earlier than others, allowing the world to learn and benefit from their stumbles, innovations and experiments.
  • 5 per cent of Japan's population is currently over the age of 65,
  • where the hospital says there are no trainee nurses.
  • this demographic is forecast to make up a full 40 per cent of the country's population by 2060
  • 2010 and 2060, the percentage of Japanese citizens over the age of 75 will more than double from 11 per cent to 27 per cent
  • he absolute number of old people will soon level off in Japan, but the proportion of the population who are young is declining rapidly: The percentage of Japanese younger than 19 years old, who constituted 40 per cent of the population in 1960, will decline to just 13 per cent in 2060.
  • apan's total population peaked in 2010 at around 127 million people and has already begun to decline. In 2014, the country lost a record 268,000 people, as deaths continued to outstrip births.
  • ging society is a reality, as well as a business opportunity.
  • Lawson Inc.,
  • "seniors' salon" with a blood pressure monitor, pamphlets on municipal health care services and nursing homes, and on-staff social workers.
  • he store also has a special section featuring adult diapers, special wipes for bathing the elderly, straw cups, a gargling basin and detergent that is tough on urine and perfect for bed mats and wheelchair coverings. Staff will also deliver heavier items, such as bags of rice or water, to local residents.
  • Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration is concerned about how Japan's aging and shrinking work force will slow down the national economy. One piece of Mr. Abe's so-called Abenomics revival program – which also includes getting more women in the workplace – is an emphasis on new medical technologies, including experimental regenerative medicine and cell therapy. The hope is that with two new acts governing regenerative medicine to help commercialize technologies more quickly, the Japanese government can save money on future health care costs while spurring the creation of a valuable new industry – particularly in bio-medical hubs such as the one in Kobe, which features a gleaming new mini-city of medical buildings, research centres and hospitals on a man-made island near the port city's airport.
  • macro level, Japan's predicament is prosperity, which is always followed by lower fertility rates and higher life expectancy. At 83.4 years, Japan has the longest life expectancy at birth in the world, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Many Japanese people are also fearful of the type of immigration that has sustained slow population growth in the industrialized West.
  • The elderly in Japan, similar to seniors across Asia, are less likely to live with their children
  • women, after decades of opting out of a career after giving birth, are also being encouraged by the government to re-enter the work force, something that may eventually help boost Japan's declining labour numbers, as the government hopes, but also prevents women from acting as caregivers.
  • small baby boom "echo" took place between 1971 and 1974
  • Liberal Democratic Party to expand the country's health care system as Japan aged, but by the 1990s, the enormous price tag raised the spectre of tax hikes.
  • Japan chose to supplement its national pension plan with long-term-care insurance (LTCI), which was implemented in 2000.
  • one of the most generous long-term-care systems in the world in terms of coverage and benefits."
  • People pay into the system starting in their 40s and are eligible to receive benefits starting at 65, or earlier in the case of illness.
  • assigns the person a care level.
  • allowing the patient to choose between competing institutions and service providers offering everything from home visits, bathing and help getting groceries to paying for short stays in hospitals or long-term residence in nursing homes and specialized group homes for dementia patients.
  • The LTCI system covers up to $2,900 a month in services, as opposed to cash payment, and does require "co-payments" from patients. LTCI co-payments are capped or waived for low-income individuals, and the system saves money by providing options other than full-on institutionalization.
  • has demonstrated to other governments around the world that it pays to adjust programs before problems become systemic.
  • The LTCI system was originally designed to alleviate the strain on family caregivers, but that hasn't entirely happened. Research shows that LTCI, in terms of freeing up family carers to work and have more free time for themselves, has only marginally benefited caregivers, and only then from wealthier families.
Benjamin McKeown

Fact Sheet: Attaining the Demographic Dividend - 0 views

www.prb.org/...raphic-dividend-factsheet.aspx

population dividend

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 06 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • The demographic dividend is the accelerated economic growth that may result from a decline in a country's birth and death rates and the subsequent change in the age structure of the population. With fewer births each year, a country's young dependent population declines in relation to the working-age population. With fewer people to support, a country has a window of opportunity for rapid economic growth if the right social and economic policies are developed and investments made.
  • The first step, in fact, is a transition from high birth and death rates to low birth rates and child death rates—a process referred to as the "demographic transition."
  • While child survival has greatly improved in developing countries, birth rates remain high in many of them. To achieve the economic benefits of the demographic dividend, developing countries must substantially lower both birth and child death rates.
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  • One in four women in developing countries wants to avoid becoming pregnant or delay or space their births but is not using a modern family planning method.
  • sub-Saharan Africa, women in the region today have on average 5.1 children
  • Investment in voluntary family planning helped Thailand accelerate economic growth and provides a model for sub-Saharan African countries.
  • his shifted the age structure of Thailand's population, providing a critical first step toward achieving the economic benefits of a demographic dividend.
  • Rwanda is one of several countries in eastern and southern Africa where investments in voluntary family planning and child survival have led to significantly lower fertility.
  • If the impressive progress continues, Rwanda will, by 2030, have achieved the demographic conditions necessary for accelerated economic growth.
  • While family planning is necessary for establishing the conditions for a demographic dividend, investments in child health, education, and gender equality are critical additional steps that contribute to family planning use and economic growth.
Benjamin McKeown

In Peru's Deserts, Melting Glaciers Are a Godsend (Until They're Gone) - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...peru-climate-change.html

climate change consequences peru

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 27 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • has shrunk by 40 percent since 1970 and
  • . It is currently receding by about 30 feet a year, scientists say.
  • The retreat of the icecap has exposed tracts of heavy metals, like lead and cadmium, that were locked under the glaciers for thousands of years, scientists say. They are now leaking into the ground water supply, turning entire streams red, killing livestock and crops, and making the water undrinkable.
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  • pests that now thrive in the warmer air.
  • worm that became the scourge for him and neighboring farmers. It suddenly started devouring their crops in the early 2000s.
  • last year, came the rats.
  • the breaking point for his cotton crops came when red ants ate away the buds.
  • he has decided to plant sugar cane instead and move some of his production to higher altitudes where it is colder.
  • The idea’s supporters promised profits through exports to markets in North America, Asia and Europe, where the fruit seasons were reversed.
  • hey are shipped to China, where they are prized. Credit Tomas Munita for The New York Times
  • All told, more than 100,000 acres of desert were brought into cultivation.
  • With enough water and fertilizer, asparagus could be grown directly in the sand — and at yields per acre far higher than in the United States because Peru has no cold season and more days of sun.
  • A reservoir was created out of a dune. More than 8,000 tons of produce grows here every year.
  • The temperature at the site of the glaciers rose 0.5 to 0.8 degrees Celsius from the 1970s to the early 2000s, causing the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca to double the pace of their retreat in that period
  • It was the start of a wave of migration from the mountainside to the coast set off by the arrival of the water.
  • 14,000 feet above sea level.
  • “In years to come, we will be fighting over water,” said Mr. Gómez.
  • Meanwhile, planners here continue to push for more irrigation.
  • “Because of this water, our children have been able to go to university,” he said. “But if there is no water from the Santa River, that all changes.”
Benjamin McKeown

Japan's population problem | The Japan Times - 1 views

www.japantimes.co.jp/...japans-population-problem

population ageing japan

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 19 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has urged business firms to employ more women and promote them to more senior positions, but he has had only limited success so far. The basic problem lies in the traditional attitudes of a male-dominated society that developed in a land where fighting was venerated and regarded as heroic. Confucian ethics emphasized the dominance of the male. That the mythological founder of Japan, Amaterasu, was a goddess was conveniently overlooked.
  • “Womenomics,” as the policy of employing more women has come to be called, requires the provision of more day care centers, but the provision of facilities will not solve the problem posed by the adherence of mothers-in-law in Japan to the concept that looking after one’s own children is the sine qua non of motherhood.
  • decline in Japanese fertility
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  • disapproval of children born to unmarried mothers
  • the decline in the number of young Japanese people has implications for high schools and universities as well as for industry and commerce. It also means that it will become more and more difficult to fund pensions for old people and to find carers for them.
  • One way of coping with the declining number of young workers is to increase imports of finished goods from countries where wages are relatively low. Japan’s balance of payments is likely to allow this for some time to come.Another way to deal with the likely shortage of labor is by increased use of robots. This is already happening and will certainly lead to a phasing out of certain white- and blue-collar jobs although the prognostications of SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son on this score seem overblown.
  • Ultimately, Japan will only survive and prosper if it alters its deep-seated prejudice against immigration
  • he Korean and Chinese minorities have been painted over, as have regional cultures such as those of the Ryukyu Islands and Hokkaido. It also ignores the existence of the Japanese diaspora in North and South America.
  • Does any Japanese leader have the courage to start arguing publicly and loudly for a relaxation of Japan’s at best illiberal immigration policies that are damaging to the nation’s economic and ultimately national interests? Some nurses have been admitted from the Philippines, but the stringent language tests have been a deterrent and Japan’s welcome mat for such necessary workers is restricted.
  • Japan has shamefully taken very few refugees despite the huge numbers living on a pittance in refugee camps throughout the world.
  • For Japan the immediate requirement is to confront vigorously Japanese male and ethnic chauvinism and traditional prejudices.
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