Month: July 2012

BBC: Is Dar es Salaam Africa’s next megacity?

Editors

Dar es Salaam is the largest city in Tanzania with a population estimated in 2009 at 3.2 million. Tanzania’s population of 44 million is forecast by the United Nations (medium variant scenario) to rise to 138 million by 2050. Its fertility ratio is 5.5 children per woman, one of the highest in the world.

JOE BOYLE writes in the BBC NEWS MAGAZINE:

BBC News, Dar es Salaam

Visionaries hope for a modern metropolis modelled on Singapore, but pessimists fear the emergence of another dirt-poor city of slums. Dar es Salaam is one of the world’s fastest growing cities, and it has reached its tipping point.

In the dark basement of the cavernous Kariakoo market, dozens of traders gather at tiny makeshift stalls, arranging fruit and vegetables into neat piles. This part of the market has the least sought-after plots, and all of the stallholders have one thing in common: none of them was born in Dar es Salaam.

Rolens Elias arrived seven years ago from a village near Morogoro, about 150km to the west. He had been a farmer but wanted to try his luck as a trader. He now makes about 3,000 shillings ($2; £1.50) each day selling tomatoes in the farthest corner of the basement.

“It has been hard to set up a life here,” he says. “I came here by myself and had to wait until I had enough money to bring my wife and family. We all live in one room, but it’s a better life than in the village.”

As he arranges his tomatoes, a group of his friends gather around and chip in with their own stories. They are all from Morogoro, and all came to Dar es Salaam in the hope of a better life. They all contrast the rural poverty they were born into with the lure of Dar es Salaam and its big-city opportunities. READ MORE.

AP: Iran Urges Baby Boom

Editors

NASSER KARIMI writes at the ASSOCIATED PRESS:

Iran’s new message to parents: Get busy and have babies.

In a major reversal of once far-reaching family planning policies, authorities are now slashing its birth-control programs in an attempt to avoid an aging demographic similar to many Western countries that are struggling to keep up with state medical and social security costs.

The changes — announced in Iranian media last week — came after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the country’s wide-ranging contraceptive services as “wrong.” The independent Shargh newspaper quoted Mohammad Esmail Motlaq, a Health Ministry official, as saying family planning programs have been cut from the budget for the current Iranian year, which began in March.

It’s still unclear, however, whether the high-level appeals for bigger families will translate into a new population spike. Iran’s economy is stumbling under a combination of international sanctions, inflation and double-digit unemployment. Many young people, particularly in Tehran and other large cities, are postponing marriage or keeping their families small because of the uncertainties. READ MORE.

Irans’ Population Reaches 75 Million

Editors

An article in the TEHRAN TIMES says that Iran’s population has reached 75 million.  Per UN estimates, Iran has one of the lowest fertility ratios in the world, 1.59 children per woman.

Article begins here:

TEHRAN – According to the final results of the 2011 National Population and Housing Census of Iran, the country’s population has reached 75,149,669 people, the director of the Statistical Center of Iran said on Tuesday.

According to the census data, men constitute 50.4 percent of the country’s population, and women account for 49.6 percent, Adel Azar told reporters.

He added that rural population constitutes 28.5 percent of the total population of the country, and urban population accounts for 71.4 percent. READ MORE.

LA Times: Beyond 7 Billion

Editors

KENNETH R. WEISS at THE LOS ANGELES TIMES explores the Population Boom in a five-part series:

After remaining stable for most of human history, the world’s population has exploded over the last two centuries. The boom is not over: The biggest generation in history is just entering its childbearing years. The coming wave will reshape the planet, and the impact will be greatest in the poorest, most unstable countries.

Part 1: The biggest generation

Guardian: $21 Trillion Hoard Hidden From Taxman by Global Elite

Editors

HEATHER STEWART, business editor at THE GUARDIAN writes:

A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network.

James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer.

He shows that at least £13tn – perhaps up to £20tn – has leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. Their wealth is, as Henry puts it, “protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy“.  According to Henry’s research, the top 10 private banks, which include UBS and Credit Suisse in Switzerland, as well as the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, managed more than £4tn in 2010, a sharp rise from £1.5tn  five years earlier. READ MORE.

CFR: China’s Population Policy—An Exchange Between Edwin Winckler and Yanzhong Huang

Editors

FROM THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS:

Dr. Yanzhong Huang is Senior Fellow for Global Health and the newest writer for Asia Unbound. His first post, “Time for China to Abandon Its Population Control Policy,” attracted significant attention, including a thoughtful response from Edwin A. Winckler, a Senior Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University. Here we have posted both Dr. Winckler’s commentary and a new response from Dr. Huang. We hope you enjoy their discussion.

Elizabeth Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies

Time for China to ADJUST Its Reproductive Policies By Edwin A. Winckler

As someone who in the early 2000s actively researched PRC birth planning, I found the recent post by the fine scholar Professor Yanzhong Huang a little disappointing. Relative to my experience and research, his main points are basically correct, but imprecise in some details, in ways that obscure important potential lessons, not only about PRC population policy in particular but also about PRC governance in general. Probably in many cases Professor Huang knows better and would be more precise in a longer presentation. However, as presented, his post misses an opportunity to correct what I consider misunderstandings of current PRC birth policy that repeatedly arise in media reporting and American discussion. Moreover, he flatly asserts interpretations that deserve further research as questions, not apparently settled conclusions. This post raises some of those questions. (I personally am no longer actively researching PRC birth policy, but I did discuss some of these issues with various kinds of PRC scholars during a June 2012 visit to Beijing .) READ MORE.

China: Structural Imbalances in Population

Editors

MU GUANGZONG, a professor of demography at Peking University, writes in the China Daily that a decline in the country’s birth rate “may lead to a structural collapse of the population” and that “taking care of the elderly has become an unbearable pressure for some young adults.”

Guangzong’s article begins here:

The nation’s low birthrate is an increasingly severe problem that will accelerate the aging of the population, increase the pension shortfall, and aggravate the gender imbalance.

According to statistics from the Sixth National Census released in April 2011, the country’s birthrate in the past decade has become one of the lowest in the world.

In 1979, youngsters under the age of 14 accounted for one-third of the total population, but by 2010, they accounted for less than 16.6 percent. The family planning authorities are worried about a baby boom if they relax the family planning policy. However, a no-birth culture has become popular among young people of marriageable age who were born in the 1980s and 1990s.

According to a survey conducted by the Beijing municipal institute of population research in 2006, 64.1 percent of the 248 young couples surveyed who would have been allowed a second child, as both the husband and the wife were an only child, expressed unwillingness to do so. One reason for young couples not wanting a second child or wanting to be DINKs – double income, no kids – is the skyrocketing cost of raising children. In addition, the intensified competition in China’s job market has already forced many young couples to put their careers first and postpone their plans to have their first child, let alone having a second one.

Worryingly, if this trend continues it may lead to a structural collapse of the population. According to the human resources white paper issued by the government in 2010, by 2035 China will face the situation where two taxpayers will be supporting one pensioner, while the number of taxpayers will be shrinking. Meanwhile, the decreasing supply of qualified labor will put a drag on the pace of economic development.

Since 2003, a growing labor shortage has spread from the southeast coastal areas across the country, suggesting the transfer of the rural labor force has passed the Lewis Turning Point and China has already lost its demographic dividend. The recent census indicates that the working-age population will begin to decrease between 2013 and 2015, and in the next 10 years the population aged between 20 and 40 may decrease by as much as 100 million. The slowing down of population growth and even a decrease in the population will cause domestic demand to atrophy and economic development will lose an important driving force. Even an immediate loosening of the family planning policy may not be that helpful in the short run, given the time it takes a new-born child to reach working age. READ MORE.

Rwanda: Time Is Now to Control Our Population Growth Rate

Editors

FROM ALLAFRICA.COM:

EDITORIAL

With each Rwandan woman producing an average of 4.6 children during her lifespan, our national fertility rates remain one of the highest in the world. At the same time, our population is growing at the rate of 2.8% every year with the use of any forms of birth control measure (contraceptive) at about 45%.

Even though the use of contraceptives has significantly increased from a mere 4% in 2005 to the current estimates of 45%, more than half of our women (55%) are not using modern birth control facilities. As a result, the country continues to experience rapid population growth that is putting enormous strain on the economy.

To be honest, Rwanda’s population growth is increasingly becoming unsustainable and the faster new rollback measures are put in place, the better for the country’s growth prospects.

First of all, the country is just emerging from the ruins of the past with hardly any resources to write home about. Secondly, Rwanda is a very small country with extremely limited land to sustain the rapid population growth in rural areas. Already with a population of 11 million, Rwanda stands out as one of the most densely populated countries in world when one considers the total land area of the country.

While some African leaders think that a big population means big markets for local goods and services, there are several dangers associated with unsustainable population growth. READ MORE.

Bangladesh Population Stands at 152.5 Million

Editors

FROM BDNEWS24.COM:

Dhaka, Jul 16 (bdnews24.com) – Bangladesh’s population stands at 152.5 million now, reveals the final results of the 5th Population and Housing Census 2011 released at Bangabhaban on Monday, a year after the preliminary counts.

The latest report shows 1,015 people live in one square kilometre in Bangladesh and to be precise the population of the country is 152,518,015.

President Mohammad Zillur Rahman released the census report prepared by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics that showed the population grew by 1.37 percent annually in the last decade, 0.21 percentage point less from the 2001’s 1.58 percent.

The results were released simultaneously from all district headquarters.

The President said the information found in the census would be ‘very useful’ in ensuing balance distribution of national resources, demarcation of electoral constituencies, and fixing quotas for jobs and others services. READ MORE.