This following is taken from a Blog by John R. Weeks. His writing is intended to go along with Population: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues, by John R. Weeks, published by Wadsworth Cengage Learning. The latest edition is the 11th (which came out in December 2010), but this blog is meant to complement any edition of the book by showing the way in which demographic issues are regularly in the news
Debate continues over how best to address these and other problems and over whether rapid population growth is best dealt with by expanding family planning programs or implementing policies that will improve livelihoods and increase the education of girls and young women—or both. Still, many experts remain optimistic that with the right mix of policies, countries can harness the opportunities for economic growth and development offered by a young and educated workforce, congregating in dense, networked urban environments.
To give you a comparison, the peak of the age dividend for China was in the 1990s when the percent 15-29 was 30 percent and the percent 20-44 hit 43. The US did not have quite such a good dividend, but it was pretty good, nonetheless, and the US economy was strong enough to take advantage of it.
We have a different age structure now than in the Reagan years (the percent 15-29 is down to 21 and the percent 20-44 has dropped to 34. At the same time, the baby boomers who were finding jobs back in the Reagan years are now thinking about retiring and that scares lawmakers to death (figuratively, of course, not literally). Different age structures demand different kinds of policies, so the constant reference back to the Reagan years is, unfortunately, badly misplaced
Friday, July 29, 2011
The Way Forward Demographically This week's Science magazine (a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and one of the world's most prestigious magazines/journals) is a special issue (Volume 332, Number 6042, 29 July 2011) devoted to an examination of "the opportunities and challenges created by demographic changes around the world." This issue is done in conjunction with the world's "achievement" this year of having 7 billion of us alive at that same time.
Although you cannot read the articles online without a subscription to the magazine, I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy at your library. The Sciencemag.org website does include a nice seven-minute video providing an overview of the world's population issues, and the introduction to the special issue lays out the problem:
Although you cannot read the articles online without a subscription to the magazine, I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy at your library. The Sciencemag.org website does include a nice seven-minute video providing an overview of the world's population issues, and the introduction to the special issue lays out the problem:
Today these demographic patterns spark concerns, not of a single explosion, but of “cluster bombs” in rapidly growing countries such as Nigeria and Pakistan, which are hobbled by poor governance and limited schooling capacity and already have huge numbers of poorly educated young adults without job prospects.
The [special issue] contains News stories by Science's staff and research assessments by leading experts, enhanced online with videos and dynamic graphics, explores these issues, many of which continue to split demographers.
Monday, August 1, 2011
The Demographics of Job Creation
One of the topics that keeps popping to the surface in the swirl of discussion around the debt ceiling and the deficit is: How do we create more jobs? More specifically, the observation is routinely made that Ronald Reagan was able as President to create jobs and reduce taxes at the same time. This of course ignores the fact that taxes actually rose several times during the Reagan administration before coming down, but setting that aside, Reagan was blessed by an unusually propitious age structure. He was the beneficiary of America's age dividend. The Baby Boomers blossomed during his presidency, providing a cohort of young workers (young = cheaper than older workers in most circumstances) without a large group of older people that the government had to pay for, and without a large group of younger dependents. During his administration from 1981-1989 the percent of the US population aged 15-29 was 27--higher than at any time since the end of WWII and it has not been that high since. The population aged 20-44 was 40 percent during his presidency--higher than at any time since the end of WWII and it has not been that high since.
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