Chilean President Pushes for More Children

President Sebastián Piñera of Chile used the occasion of the Day of the Child in Chile (8 August), to suggest that the country needed to return to the birth rates of the 1990s (when the TFR was about 2.5, compared to today's below-replacement level). He is quoted as saying that "children bring happiness, hope, optimism, and color, which are very necessary in the Chile of today." He chose not to emphasize that a higher birth rate could mean more people to pay the pensions of the aging Chileans. Ironically, he did choose to comment on the fact that one fourth of Chilean children live in conditions of poverty, and that three out of four young people have been victims of violence in their own home. It is difficult to imagine how having more children will fix either of those problems.

Fish for Dinner?

Wild fisheries are rapidly diminishing due to over-fishing in response to the growing population and its demand for fish as a good source of protein. There have been two major responses to this, beyond simple hand-wringing: (1) regulate the amount of fishing allowed in order to conserve the stock of wild fish (which would, of course, drive up the price of fish and make it a luxury good); or (2) raise fish in farms in order to maintain a supply that would otherwise dwindle. The world has chosen the latter course (nearly half of all fish consumed in the world is farm-raised), but that raises a whole set of issues that are discussed by Paul Greenberg in Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food (New York: Penguin Press, 2010). In particular, he notes that some fish are more easily domesticated than others. Salmon predominate because they are among the easier fish to farm, as are tilapia. Other popular fish, such as tuna, are much more difficult to raise in farms. The implication of this is that while we may be able to maintain the amount of fish available per person through aquaculture, the variety of fish available will almost certainly continue to decline.

The Facebook Nation

Facebook has announced that it now has 500 million users. If it were a separate nation it would be the third most populous one. From a demographic perspective, we can think of this nation as being largely comprised of migrants--people migrate in when they become new users, and they can migrate out by shutting down their Facebook page. As is true with migrants, I suspect that the age structure of Facebook is pretty young, bulging in the teens and young adults. Of course, some may may die and leave the nation in that manner, but how would we know unless they are very famous? Indeed, how do we know how many "active citizens" there are in the Facebook nation. I have a Facebook page, because people told me I should, but I rarely visit it. It may be that Facebook follows the 80/20 rule--that 80 percent of the activity is accounted for by 20 percent of its "citizens." That would make it closer to a nation of 100 million, with a bunch of hangers-on.