Category: Family Planning

Detroit’s aging population on collision course with nursing home shortage

Editors

The population of Detroit fell by 25% in the decade to 2010, an unprecedented development for a large American city which has created new challenges for its remaining residents.  ROCHELLE RILEY writes in the Detroit Free Press:

Marylyn Thurmond had been a registered nurse at Detroit Receiving Hospital for 13 years when she was diagnosed with arthritis. She has had both hips replaced. Six weeks ago, she was diagnosed with lupus. She also suffers from hypertension, diabetes and coronary heart failure.

Marylyn Thurmond is 57 years old.

Novella Walker-Page was a registered nurse at Hutzel Hospital in high-risk labor and delivery for 26 years before becoming a home care nurse and then a contract nurse for the Detroit Public Schools. One day, she fell from the bus that took her around for student care. During that same doctor’s visit, she learned that she had sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease. She also suffers from hypertension, high cholesterol and atopic dermatitis, a skin condition.

Walker-Page, who cares for her 95-year-old mother at her northwest Detroit home, is 60. She doesn’t think she’ll live as long as her mother or her grandmother, who died at 116.

Thurmond and Walker-Page are among a fast-growing part of Detroit’s population — the new elderly, people who are 50-59 years old but more like 60-74 in terms of their health. Neither, for now, wants or needs nursing home care. But as that need is growing among their age group, their chances of finding it are in decline. READ MORE.

China Needs to Ease One-Child Policy, State Researchers Say

Editors

BLOOMBERG NEWS WRITES:

Chinese government researchers called on the nation to ease its one-child policy as soon as possible to cope with an aging population and labor shortage.

One option is allowing all people to have a second child, three researchers including Yu Dong from the State Council’s Development Research Center wrote in an article in yesterday’s China Economic Times, a newspaper affiliated with the center. “The longer time we take to adjust the policy, the more vulnerable we become,” the piece said.

The commentary adds to debate on the policy, adopted in the late 1970s, during the deepest economic slowdown since the global financial crisis and ahead of a once-in-a-decade power handover. Last month, the alleged forced abortion of a seven- month-old fetus sparked a public outcry and resulted in the suspension of three officials in a western city.

“It is suggested that the birth control policy be adjusted as soon as possible” against the backdrop of a vanishing demographic dividend, accelerating aging and a potential future labor shortage that are set to become major challenges, the researchers wrote. The recommendation came in a paragraph within a broader piece about social policies.

Working-age people accounted for 74.4 percent of the population in 2011, down from 74.5 percent in the previous year, the first decline since 2002, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. People age 60 and older were 13.3 percent of the population in 2010, 2.9 percentage points higher than in 2000, according to the latest census results released last year. READ MORE.

Book Review: ‘World Population Policies’ Offers Sweeping Overview of a Complex Field

Editors

ELIZABETH LEAHY MADSEN REVIEWS JOHN MAY’S NEW BOOK ‘WORLD POPULATION POLICIES’ FOR THE WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS:

 With much attention in the international family planning community directed to the impending anniversary of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development and the closing date of the Millennium Development Goals, the fact that 2012 is the 60th anniversary of two other milestones in population programming may have escaped notice. In 1952, the International Planned Parenthood Federation was created, and India became the first country to formulate a national policy to reduce population growth.

These and many other landmarks are highlighted in World Population Policies: Their Origin, Evolution and Impact, a new book by demographer John May that reviews several decades of policies, advocacy, and program interventions addressing the full range of diverse demographic trends seen globally.

May, who spent more than two decades working on population issues at the World Bank and other international institutions before recently assuming a fellowship at the Center for Global Development, is well-positioned to provide such an ambitious overview. Although the breadth of material included in the book means that some topics receive less coverage than a specialist might wish, it serves as a sound introduction to this diverse field, and offers some particularly interesting case studies. READ MORE.

Germany: Number of Births Hits Post-War Low

Editors

A third of all babies born in Germany, still the EU’s most populous member state, came from immigrant families, the analysts said, noting that without them the overall figure would have been much lower.

FROM REUTERS VIA CNBC:

BERLIN (Reuters) – The number of births in Germany fell to a post-war low last year despite government incentives meant to reverse a population decline in the European Union’s biggest economy, and analysts blamed a lack of sufficient child care support.

A third of all babies born in Germany, still the EU’s most populous member state, came from immigrant families, the analysts said, noting that without them the overall figure would have been much lower.

The preliminary data released by Germany’s Federal Statistics Office showed 663,000 children were born in 2011, down from 678,000 in 2010.

“As in every year since 1972, the number of people who died was greater than the number of children born. In 2011 the difference amounted to 190,000 people and in 2010 to 181,000,” the office said in a report. READ MORE.

Korea Herald: Population Will Surpass 50 Million this Saturday

Editors

AN EDITORIAL TODAY IN THE KOREA HERALD SAYS:

Korea’s population including foreign residents is projected to surpass 50 million this Saturday. It is estimated to peak at 52.16 million in 2030 before declining gradually to 49.81 million in 2045, according to a projection by Statistics Korea.

It took about half a century for the country to double its population, which stood around 25 million in the early 1960s.

Korea now accounts for 0.71 percent of the world population, up from 0.61 percent in 1983 when its population topped 40 million.

Coupled with its per capita income above $20,000, the landmark population figure appears to give Koreans some sense of pride about their achievements over the past decades.

Local media has shed light on Korea becoming the seventh country with a population of over 50 million whose per capita income exceeds $20,000. READ MORE.

Waning Fertility Rates Defuse Population Bomb

Editors

BILL KING WRITES AT CHRON.COM, THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE:

When I was a sophomore in college, my sociology professor had our class read Thomas Malthus‘ “An Essay on the Principle of Population.” Malthus argued that human population increases geometrically while food production only increases arithmetically. Therefore, he concluded that the human race was destined to eternal misery as its population would always be bumping up against its ability to produce sustenance.

Malthus wrote his essay around the turn of the 19th century. His belief that the human race was careening headlong into a population-induced apocalypse was redefined in modern terms by Paul Ehrlich‘s best-selling book, “The Population Bomb,” published in 1968, in which he predicted worldwide famine in the 1970s and 1980s. READ MORE.

India: Let’s Get Men Involved

Editors

LALITA PANICKER MAKES A CASE IN THE HINDUSTAN TIMES that India must involve more men in family planning in order to further curb the growth of the country’s population:

The next time you hear a knock on your door, it may turn out to be your friendly local health worker with a choice of contraceptives for you. And who will you have to thank for that? None else than health and family welfare minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, whose innovations in the field of population are matchless. Well, don’t hold your breath just yet, this is one scheme that Azad has mooted though it would be a safe bet that not too many health workers will be turning up at people’s doorsteps just yet.

Some years ago, population was a subject quite close to the hearts of the political class, though not always in a positive sense. There were two points of view, both not very well nuanced. One was that our population would bring us demographic dividends owing to the large youth component. The other was that the numbers were a drag and that people must be stopped from breeding like rabbits. The Planning Commission has a wonderful roadmap for population in the Eleventh Plan (2007-2012) which lays down in great detail all the problems and solutions. It makes for riveting reading and it would be clear except to the most cloth-eared that if implemented we would be home free.

But as always, the proof the policy is in the implementation. Azad a career politician is not really interested in the nuts and bolts of population, except to say that the total fertility rate (TFR), that is live births per woman fell by 19% in the last decade. Nothing to cheer about Azad, the TFR has only fallen from 3.2 in 2000 to 2.5 in 2010. But the health minister says that he will achieve population stabilisation through people’s cooperation and not through legislation. Not so fast, please. READ MORE.

Pakistan Opinion: Our Population Time Bomb

Editors

ZUBEIDA MUSTAFA WRITES IN THE NEWSPAPER DAWN ON PAKISTAN’S HIGH FERTILITY RATE. Pakistan’s population is now almost 180 million. According to a UN report published in 2010, the country’s total fertility rate (TFR) is the second highest (after Afghanistan) in central Asia at 3.2 children per woman, compared to a replacement rate of 2.1 and a world average of 2.4. On the UN’s medium variant estimate which assumes a decline in the TFR to 1.84 by 2050, the Pakistani population will reach 275 million by 2050. With the constant-fertility variant (no decline in the TFR), the population would grow to nearly 380 million by 2050.

Mustafa’s article in Dawn starts here:

PAKISTAN’S Population Census Organisation’s website has a population clock on the home page which gave the country’s population as 179,850,379 on Tuesday — an average increase of 9,700 every day.

According to the National Institute of Population Studies (NIPS), Islamabad, the country’s population was 133.3 million in 1998 when the last census was held. This comes to a whopping increase of 34.8 per cent in 13 years (2.6 per cent per annum) which surprisingly has gone unnoticed. In effect we have slipped down from the two per cent (NIPS) or 1.8 per cent (World Bank) figure we were given as the growth rate for 2010.

We have regressed to the 1980s and this has phenomenal significance for the country’s economy, politics, quality of human life, law and order, in fact for its very survival.

If proof were needed of the apathy that marks people’s attitudes towards their own wellbeing, this is it. Not that everyone is uniformly indifferent. After all the marriage age of girls has gone up somewhat, female enrolment in school has increased and there is a remarkable growth in female awareness about the importance of small families and contraceptives. But the family size has not decreased and contraceptive prevalence remains dismally low.

We know little about the dynamics of family planning. It is assumed that women are irrational about motherhood. Hence new terms are coined to appeal to them to be sensible. What was simply family planning is now the Healthy Timing and Spacing of Pregnancies programme to persuade them to have a gap of three years between their children to ensure healthy babies. That has hardly helped. What women want are the services. They are not empowered enough to get them on their own.

Take the case of Yasmin who is 29 years old and lives under the poverty line as defined by development economists. She was married at 21 (her eldest sister was married at 12). She has attended school and is quite fluent in reading and writing. Yasmin is expecting her fifth baby. She has experimented with various contraceptives and seems to be quite ill-informed about them all. READ MORE.

 

Guardian: Global Summit to Reverse Years of Family Planning Neglect

Editors

EWEN MACASKILL WRITES IN THE GUARDIAN that a summit is to be held in London on July 11, aimed at providing access to family planning to 120 million women in developing countries at an estimated cost of $4bn. The summit is organized by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the British government’s department for international development (DFID). Between 20 and 25 countries are scheduled to attend, including the US, India, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Tanzania.

Article starts here:

World leaders to meet in London in July to pour cash into family planning in the developing world

A major summit is being planned for July that aims to pour money into family planning in the developing world after almost two decades of neglect, particularly during the Bush years.

Parallel to this, millions of dollars are being spent by the Gates Foundation on developing more efficient forms of contraception, particularly injections that might only be required once every six months or annually.

The executive director of the UN Population Fund, Babatunde Osotimehin, in an interview with the Guardian, described proposals at the summit to turn family planning into a global movement as “transformational”.

Family planning can be political minefield, a taboo subject that attracts opposition from an array of opponents including American social conservatives and the Catholic church. There is widespread resistance, too, within many Muslim countries.

Family planning has also been tainted by its association with ‘population control’ – the discredited attempts by various countries to reduce their populations through coercion. READ MORE.