A Convergence of Civilizations

I recently read (and very much enjoyed) "A Convergence of Civilizations" by Youssef Courbage and Emmanuel Todd, who are researchers at INED, the French National Institute for Demographic Studies. This book was published originally in French but was translated and published this year in English by Columbia University Press. The book is what I would call an "interpretive essay," in the sense that the authors are attempting to interpret a broad temporal and geographic range of data trying to understand why rates of population growth are so high in some Muslim countries, in particular, although not so high in others. The basic premise is that the supposed schism in the world between Islam and the "West" is not a real phenomenon. Rather, all less developed nations, including those that are predominantly Muslim, are heading toward modernity through lower fertility and the key is the timing of literacy--especially for women, but also for men. It is literacy that matters in the world, not religion. As the authors note in their introduction:

The explanatory variable [for a decline in fertility] that has been most clearly identified by demographers is not the per capita GDP, but the literacy level of women...The elimination of illiteracy, then, points back to a  classic conception of universal history, that of the Enlightenment or the nineteenth century, as Condorcet conceived of it in his "Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind," or Hegel in his "Lectures on the Philosophy of History." It has no doubt gone a little out of fashion, but it remains relevant.

"Betting the Planet" revisited

Way back in 1980 Paul Ehrlich, author of the "Population Bomb" and Julian Simon, author of "The Ultimate Resource" (by which he meant people) entered into a bet that some called "Betting the Planet." Ehrlich believed that, as Malthus predicted, population growth would overrun resources, the evidence of which would be a rise in resources prices. Simon disagreed and argued that human ingenuity would solve the world's problems and so prices would not rise because humans would find substitutes for each resource and just move on. This week's Economist picks up the story:

Faced with a challenge from Mr Simon, Mr Ehrlich selected five metals—copper, chromium, nickel, tin and tungsten—whose prices he thought would rise in real terms over the following ten years. Mr Simon bet that prices would fall. It is clear in retrospect that Mr Ehrlich showed bad timing, since the late 1970s saw a cyclical zenith for commodity prices. But Mr Simon also had history on his side: real commodity prices fell steadily throughout the 20th century.

Mr Simon duly won the bet. The economic boom of the 1980s and 1990s also contradicted Mr Ehrlich’s wilder claims—that a billion people would starve to death and that, by 1985, America would be trapped in an “age of scarcity”.

State of the Union and Tunisian Demographics

President Obama's State of the Union address this evening was focused almost entirely on US domestic policy, but among the very few references to international events was his comment that the US government supported the recent events in Tunisia. By coincidence, I have to think (since the president's speech was leaked to the press later in the day), Richard Cincotta today posted a lengthy discussion of the demographics of the Tunisian situation. Among the many interesting comments is the following paragraph, which helps you to contextualize what's going on in Tunisia:

To understand how age structure can directly influence a state’s chances of attaining and maintaining liberal democracy requires a discussion of two models of sociopolitical behavior: (1) the Hobbesian bargain and (2) the youth bulge thesis. Assuming, as the English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes did in the middle of the 17th century, that citizens are willing to relinquish political liberties when faced with threats to their security and property (the Hobbesian bargain), it is not surprising that support for authoritarian regimes – especially among commercial and military elites – appears high when societies are very youthful and prone to political violence (the youth bulge thesis). When fertility declines, the population’s bulge of young adults ultimately dissipates over time. With much of society’s political volatility depleted, authoritarian executives tend to lose the support of the commercial elite, who find the regime’s grip on communication and commerce economically stifling and the privileges granted to family members and cronies of the political elite financially debilitating. 

Irresistible Forces: Latin American Migration to the US

This is a shameless self-promotion of a just-released book written by my son, Greg Weeks, and I called "Irresistible Forces: Latin American Migration to the United States and Its Effect on the South," published by the University of New Mexico Press. The book informs the discussion of the migration transition in the Population text and, as you might suspect, the Population text significantly informs our new book. However, the book also updates and advances the concept of political demography--the intersection of demographic change and policy choices that countries make. 

The central argument of this book is that only through an analytic combination of politics and demography can the dynamics of migration (and the reactions to it) be fully grasped.  This political demographic approach will demonstrate that irresistible forces are at work changing the face, quite literally, of the South--changes that are broader than often realized.  People in Latin America are not just moving to the traditional “gateways” in the United States (e.g. California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida); they are also arriving in new areas of the country.  Furthermore, these new migrants are not only from Mexico, but are from all over Latin America. 

The Malthusian Response to Bad Times--Postpone Marriage

The US Census Bureau has just posted the 2009 American Community Survey results to its website, and many journalists have focused directly on measures of employment, income, and poverty. The New York Times, however, picked up on a different thread in the social fabric--the delay in marriage that has accompanied the deep recession.

A long-term decline in marriage accelerated during the severe recession, according to new data from the Census Bureau, with more couples postponing marriage and often choosing to cohabit without tying the knot.

“People are unsure about their job security, and a lot of people lost their jobs,” said Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau, a private research group that analyzed census figures. “Getting married is obviously a big step and if you’re not comfortable about your future, it makes sense that you’d postpone a big decision like this.”

Two factors contribute to the decline in marriage among adults ages 25 to 34, said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University: less marriage and more cohabitation, which has become far more socially acceptable, even with children.

The Language Demographic

The Wall Street Journal carries a story by Dr. Lera Borodistsky, a Professor of Psychology at Stanford, discussing the potential role that language plays in the way we think and perceive the world. This has obvious implications for the connection between culture and demography, and flies in the face of the well-entrenched theories of Noam Chomsky that language is universalistic and is not tied to specific cultures. Professor Borodistsky's view of the world seems to be shared by Indonesians who, according to the New York Times, are very worried about the fate of their language as Indonesian elites focus on teaching their children English from an early age. This is a tricky area in which to work, of course, because we need to always be wary of falling into the trap of thinking that language determines behavior. More likely, it helps to shape behavior in subtle ways.