Search

Custom Search

Friday, August 07, 2009

International Migration Trends: Facts and Figures

Global estimates

*In 2005, it is estimated there are between 185-192 million1 migrants worldwide.

*In 2000, there were 175 million international migrants worldwide: one out of every 35 person is an international migrant.

*Migrants represent 2.9 per cent of the global population.

*Of these, almost half (48.6%) are women.

* The stock of international migrants rose from 82 million in 1970 to 175 million in 2000.

Global trends

*Migration flows have shifted in recent years with changing poles of attraction for labour migration.

*In some parts of the world, migrant stock has actually decreased.

*Although the number of Asian migrants has increased from 28.1 million in 1970 to 43.8 million in 2000, Asia’s share of global migrant stock decreased from 34.5 per cent to 25 per cent over the same period.

* Africa has also seen a decline in its share of international migrants: from 12 per cent in 1970 to 9 per cent in 2000.

*This is also true for Latin America and the Caribbean (down from 7.1% to 3.4%); Europe (down from 22.9% to 18.7%) and for Oceania (3.7% to 3.3%).

*Only Northern America and the former USSR have seen a sharp increase in their migrant stock between 1970 and 2000 (from 15.9% to 23.3% for Northern America and 3.8% to 16.8% for the Former USSR). In the latter case however, this increase has more to do with the redefinition of borders than with the actual movement of people.

The stock of international migrants remains concentrated in relatively few countries

*75 per cent of all international migrants are in 12 per cent of all countries.2


Migrant population by regions

*56.1 million in Europe (including European part of former USSR), accounting for 7.7 per cent of European population.

*49.9 million in Asia, accounting for 1.4 per cent of Asian population.

*40.8 million in North America, accounting for 12.9 per cent of the North American population.

*16.3 million in Africa, or 2 per cent of African population.

*5.9 million in Latin America, accounting for 1.1 per cent of Latin American population.

*5.8 million in Australia, accounting for 18.7 per cent of Australian population.

International migrants in selected countries

*Top three migrant receiving countries:

*United States with 35 million migrants accounts for 20 per cent of the world’s migrant stock.

*The Russian Federation with 13.3 million migrants accounts for 7.6 per cent of the world’s migrant stock.

*Germany with 7.3 million migrants accounts for 4.2 per cent of the world’s migrant stock.

*Top three migrant sending countries:


*China with a diaspora estimated at 35 million.

*India with a diaspora estimated at some 20 million.

*The Philippines with some 7 million overseas Filipinos.

*Countries or areas where migrants make up more than 60 per cent of the population: Andorra, Macao Special Administrative Region of China, Guam, the Holy See, Monaco, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

International migrants in developed and developing world

*In 2000, 63 per cent of the world’s migrants lived in developed countries and 37 per cent in the developing countries.

Migration is not a one-way street: most countries are both migrant receiving and sending countries3

*In the U.S., for every 4 persons coming in, 1 moved out.

*In Germany and Australia, for every 3 persons coming in, 2 moved out.

*In Japan and Switzerland, for every 3 persons coming in, 1 moved out.

Benefits of migration. One indicator: International Remittances, General Figures

*Total amount of global international remittances in 2003 was US$ 93 billion4 and reached more than US$ 100 billion in 2004. Twice as much money may be sent through informal channels.

*About 20 per cent of annual global international remittances flow into South Asia.

*Top remittances receiving countries in 2002:

1.Mexico received just over US$ 11 billion, or 1.73 per cent of its GDP.
2.India received US$ 8.411 billion, or 1.65 per cent of its GDP.
3.The Philippines5 received US$ 7.363 billion, or 9.45 per cent of its GDP.
4.Egypt received US$ 2.893 billion, or 3.22 per cent of its GDP.
5.Morocco received US$ 2.877 billion, or 8 per cent of its GDP.

*Top remittance-sending countries in 2001:

*US: US$ 28 billion
*Saudi Arabia: US$ 15 billion
*Germany, Belgium and Switzerland (US$ 8 billion each)
*France: US$ 3.9 billion
*Luxembourg: US$ 3.1 billion
*Israel: US$ 3 billion
*Italy: US$ 2.6 billion
*Japan: US$ 2.3 billion

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Effect on environment by growing population

No driver of environmental deterioration is more obvious than population growth, and none has been more taboo to talk about – especially in recent decades. Even ecologists have often danced around the topic. Although more than 40 years have passed since we wrote The Population Bomb, the book is still attacked daily on blogs, misquoted and excoriated. On the positive side, however, it has received great honors from the lunatic fringe. It was listed by the Intercollegiate Review as one of the fifty worst books of the 20th century, along with John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. In Human Events’ list of the “Ten Most Harmful Books of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” it came in 11th place ("honorable mention”); even so, it bested Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

Such nonsense over four decades has allowed the role of population growth and related issues (especially patterns of rising consumption) as drivers of some of our most serious problems to be largely ignored. That makes a collapse of civilization now seem ever more likely. Climate disruption alone, tightly tied to overpopulation through such activities as fossil-fuel use and deforestation, could make achieving sustainability impossible.

A possibly even more serious problem is the increasing release of toxic chemicals in support of growing numbers of people, each striving to consume more. The releases are done with essentially no cost-benefit analysis; a potentially dangerous compound that might cure cancer is treated much the same as one that strengthens eyelash glue. While there are nut-case plans for “geoengineering” that might be tried if the climate starts to get away from us, there are no such possibilities if synergisms among toxics begin to kill us or our life-support systems. Especially threatening are endocrine-disrupting contaminants with non-linear dose-response curves – synthetic compounds sometimes more dangerous in tiny rather than large doses.

Then, of course, there’s the decay of the epidemiological environment, intimately tied to the increasing absolute numbers of people and of hungry (and thus immune-compromised) individuals – the latter now at a record more than one billion. More susceptible people pushing into the habitats of animals carrying novel (to us) infectious diseases, larger human populations to maintain those diseases, and ever more rapid transportation systems make nasty pandemics increasingly likely.

The Population Bomb, ironically, was much too optimistic about the future. In 1968, when it was published, carbon dioxide was thought to be the only human-produced greenhouse gas, and some climatologists believed that cooling by other pollutants would overwhelm its effect. As a result, we could only write that exploding human populations were tampering with the energy balance of Earth and that the results globally and locally could be dire. Now we know that increasing flows into the atmosphere of a series of anthropogenic greenhouse gas, a consequence of the near doubling of the human population and the more than tripling of global consumption, have the potential to cause catastrophic climate disruption unless rapidly abated.



In 1968, Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina had not yet discovered the potential of chlorofluorocarbons to destroy the ozone layer and make life on Earth’s surface impossible. Norman Myers was years from calling world attention to the destruction of tropical rainforests; when The Bomb was written, the possibility that those forests might be destroyed was essentially unknown. Also unknown were the threats of endocrine-disrupting contaminants. The Bomb also should have paid attention to the potential for resource wars. The 1967 Israeli-Arab war, partly over water, and the current Iraq and Afghanistan wars over fossil fuels may be precursors of many more resource wars with similarly intimate overpopulation connections.

There were of course also flaws in The Population Bomb’s analysis of known threats. The first lines of the Prologue (p. 11) proved to be among the most troublesome in the book: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines — hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." We are often asked about the famines The Bomb predicted, as if the last four decades were a period of abundant food for all. Although hunger became less newsworthy as humanity did try to ameliorate the worst famines, they nonetheless were essentially continuous in parts of Africa. Perhaps 300 million people overall have died of hunger and hunger-related diseases since 1968. But the famines were smaller than our reading of the agricultural literature at the time had led us to anticipate. That was largely because of the medium-term success of the "green revolution," the export of high-yielding grain technology to poor nations. The analysis of the food situation in The Population Bomb was thus wrong in that it underestimated the impact of the green revolution. At the same time, it did correctly recognize that serious ecological risks would accompany the spread of that revolution.

Partly due to the message of The Population Bomb, there has been a highly desirable decline in birthrates in much of the world, but the depressing prospect is that some 2.5 billion people will be added to the population before growth stops and (we hope) a slow decline begins. Those additional people will have a disproportionately negative impact on our life-support systems. Our ancestors naturally farmed the richest soils and used the most accessible resources first. Now significant amounts of those soils have been eroded away or paved over, and farmers are increasingly forced to turn to marginal land to grow food. Instead of extracting rich ores on or near the surface, deeper and much poorer deposits must be mined and refined today, at ever greater environmental cost. Water and petroleum must come from lower quality sources, deeper wells, or the latter often from far beneath the ocean, and must be transported over longer distances. The environmental and resource impacts of future population growth will dwarf those of the past.

In the face of these problems, humanity seems paralyzed on many fronts, but especially in confronting issues of population and consumption. There is a growing movement to initiate a Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior (MAHB) to globally examine and publicly discuss the failures of cultural evolution to direct society towards sustainability. The population bomb is returning to public prominence, but it remains to be seen whether anything effective and humane will be done about it.

Level and trend of fertility and mortality in the world.

The 1960s marked a turning point in the history of world population growth as the annual rate of increase, which reached 2%, ceased its ascent. Fertility rates have declined sufficiently rapidly to produce lessened growth rates when compared to mortality among 3/4 of the world's population. The maximum growth rate of developing countries occurred about 1960-65, with a value of 2.4% produced by birthrates of about 40/1000 and mortality rates of about 16/1000. The growth rate is now under 2.1%, due to declines of birthrates to 32/1000 and mortality rates to 11/1000. The recent demographic development of 40 developing countries with populations of over 10 million in 1982 is examined in greater detail including 13 African countries, 8 Latin American countries, 4 East Asian countries, and 15 South and West Asian countries. In 1975-80, the total fertility rate was under 4.7 children/woman, while in 1950 it exceeded 6. A regional comparison for these years indicates that fertility in Africa has scarcely changed in 25 years, while the lowest rates, under 4 children/woman, were found in 3 Latin American and 4 East Asian countries in 1975-80. Reasons for the fertility decline in different countries have included higher marriage age, increased use of contraception in situations where the effect exceeded that of lessened durations of lactation, smaller ideal family sizes, and general socioeconomic progress. Among all developing countries, life expectancy at birth has increased from 42 to 55 years since 1950, but the differences between countries remain great, with almost all African countries, and most South and West Asian countries having life expectancies under 50. Infant mortality rates declined significantly in most of Latin America, but remain very high in Africa and South Asia. Improvements in mortality apparently do not correlate as well with economic development per se as with improved maternal and infant health care, improved water supply, and improved nutrition. A graphic representation of the declines in fertility and mortality in the 40 countries indicates that they are closely related.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

World’s most endangered animals - Northern Hairy-nosed wombat

Northern Hairy-nosed wombat numbers up 20% in 2 yearsMay 2009. Queensland's critically endangered Northern hairy-nosed wombat, one of the world's most endangered species, has seen its population increase by 20 per cent in two years thanks to some remarkable State Government recovery efforts.

138 wombats alive - Up from 115 in 2 yearsThe wombats are more endangered than the Sumatran tiger and the giant panda, but they had grown from 115 to 138 individuals in two years within their only habitat outside Emerald.

In another new initiative funded by Xstrata, wombats are being trapped and an area in south west Queensland to create a second colony to safeguard and further increase the wombat population.

Queensland's Climate Change and Sustainability Minister, Kate Jones, said "This is a dramatic turnaround for an extremely vulnerable species in Queensland. It's the largest population increase in more than 25 years of studying and helping the northern hairy-nosed wombat."
Ms Jones said the Department of Environment and Resource Management had used proven threatened species management techniques to help wombat numbers rise, including
Building a 20 kilometre predator-proof fence;Providing food and water in times of drought;Conducting controlled burns to prevent wildfire and improve food quality;Removing noxious weeds and pests; andSlashing areas of land to stimulate new grass growth.
Entire population found in 1 small areaMs Jones added "We've created an environment where the wombat has thrived which is a major milestone in our efforts to save this species from extinction. The Department has the skills, and now thanks to a $3 million partnership with mining company Xstrata, a second population should be up and running in a couple of months. Currently, the world's entire population of northern hairy-nosed wombats are only found in one small area at Epping Forest National Park in central Queensland.

New site chosen for second population"
A second colony would halve the risk of one extreme event like disease, fire or flood, wiping out the entire species."
The 130-hectare site near St George was carefully chosen after a two-year search by DERM staff to find a location with suitable soils and food, within the original geographic range of the species.

Work is well under way to create a suitable environment for the new colony which includes building a predator-proof fence with help from Conservation Volunteers Australia.
Predator proof fenceThe four-and-a-half kilometre boundary fence features a unique ‘floppy top' that restricts predators from climbing over, and a wire mesh skirt on both the inside and outside of the fence to stop predators and wombats digging under the fence.

Ms Jones said to record the population at Epping Forest National Park, DERM rangers obtained hair samples of the colony from sticky tape in wombat burrows.

"Monash University analysed these samples using DNA fingerprinting to arrive at the increased population figures of northern hairy-nosed wombats," she said. "Their analysis of the hair samples also indicated that the sex ratio of the population is about even - a sign of a healthy, growing colony.

Discovered in 1937Regarded as an endangered species since they were first discovered at Epping Forest station in 1937, the northern hairy-nosed wombat is currently listed as Critically Endangered under the World Conservation Union's Redlist of Threatened Species.

Population bomb

If you’re old enough to remember Woodstock, you’ll probably remember The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 best-seller that predicted global catastrophe unless urgent and drastic measures were taken to halt population growth. He likened population growth to a cancer that must be cut out at any cost, and advocated rigorous population control through incentives, penalties and compulsion. He condoned “apparently brutal and heartless decisions” and “intense pain” because the “crisis” justified it. Of course Ehrlich wasn’t the first author to draw attention to a potential population crisis. The English clergyman and economist Thomas Malthus popularized the subject in the 18th century. The post-Second World War revival of the view that population growth is a threat to living standards originated with a group that included William Vogt, a now largely forgotten American writer and advocate of social engineering whose 1948 book, Road to Survival, was the biggest environmental best-seller of all time until eclipsed in 1962 by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Vogt claimed a choice had to be made between more people, less nature and less people or more nature.Vogt and his contemporaries were naturalists who advocated measures to tilt the balance between man and nature in nature’s favour. They opposed widespread use of drugs and pesticides that reduce the effectiveness of natural “overpopulation” controls and argued for enlightened government intervention to discourage increased food production via chemical fertilizers. The population-control movement clicked with the pessimistic spirit of the times despite critiques showing that “overpopulation” was an invented crisis, that there is no direct relationship between population and poverty and that people’s well-being depends instead upon the economic decisions they make and the policies constraining those decisions. World Population Day should serve as a reminder that a little information in the hands of those who think they know best and are able to influence policies imposed on others is a dangerous thing. The impact that the population-control frenzy has had on international aid policy provides a good illustration.The Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to the inventor of DDT in the same year Vogt’s book was published. Vogt disapproved of DDT and swamp drainage because they reduced the effectiveness of malaria as a natural control for human populations. But DDT was banned because Rachel Carson linked it to the collapse of bird populations after the U.S. government encouraged its widespread misuse. Malaria control remains a prominent international aid mandate because more costly and less effective controls such as bed nets are now required to stem an upsurge in child mortality. And this upsurge is occurring because the cheaper, more effective solution was banned by those who felt they had the right to take a fundamental economic decision away from parents. The man vs. nature choice which preoccupied Vogt remains evident in campaigns such as the Millennium Development Goals with its emphasis on poverty reduction. Not that there’s anything wrong with poverty reduction. The question is: How? Most top-down efforts at poverty alleviation are still based on the belief that there is an inverse relationship between the quality and quantity of human life, and that sharing existing wealth among a smaller number of people is the way to go because it limits environmental impacts. Constraints imposed on foreign governments and their people in exchange for aid are similar to those imposed on taxpayers when they are coerced by domestic policy decisions made “in their best interest” by others. Advocates of poverty-reduction initiatives in developing countries cannot look to the success of comparable campaigns in the First World for inspiration: Poverty levels in the United States in 1996 were higher than in 1965 when president Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty was launched, despite the $5.4-trillion spent in the process. International “development assistance” policies are but one example of the false premise underlying all public policy: that decisions taken by elite groups result in better outcomes than those made by people deciding for themselves. The rapid development of today’s rich countries occurred without aid when markets worked with minimal distortion and individuals were given freedom to make their own economic decisions. This was the reason so little attention was paid to population growth in the century following the death of Malthus. Invented crises justifying massive public-sector spending are deceptions which disadvantage ordinary people everywhere. All countries should be developing countries, and public-sector planning of any sort frustrates development by distorting the information on which economic decisions are based.

The prison population bomb

Prisons are often referred to as "the big house," but "full house" may be a better term. In 1994, 1 million people lived m America's federal and state prisons. Another 3.7 million were on probation or parole, and half a million were confined to locally run jails. The grand total: more than 5.1 million adults were under some form of correctional supervision two years ago. That is more than the population of Wisconsin.
The number of state and federal prisoners has more than tripled since 1980, due in large part to a national wave of tough anti-drug laws. While those laws removed thousands of drug dealers from America's streets, they also created a huge and rapidly growing industry funded by American taxpayers. The private sector is heavily involved in prison management, and prison privatization is one of the country's hottest industries. Some companies manage entire prisons, while others specialize in particular operations such as health or food services. And manufacturers prosper when they provide the many additional necessary items, from uniforms and bedding to surveillance and monitoring equipment.
If current trends continue, the prison population will increase rapidly in the next decade. Even without growth, the current prison population would still be much more expensive to maintain in the future.
Offenders who are in prison for drug-related crimes are more likely to have serious health problems. The prison population is also aging These trends will increase prisons' health-care costs, but they are dwarfed by the continuing consequences of tough sentencing laws. Until drug abuse stops or drug laws change, the prison population bomb will keep ticking away.

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Demography

The word Demography is derived from greek words 'Demos' and 'Graphy' in which 'Demos' means people and 'Graphy' means to describe, to write, to draw, to study. By analysing the words the study of the people is said to be demography.

The study of population size, structure and distribution and factors for change in population is called demography. Achille Guilard was the first person to use word demography in 1855. Yet in 1662 John Grant had already analysed the varibles of mortality and had studied about the human population. Therefore John Grant is known as the father of population study.

Demographic Transition

Demographic transition is a description of the observed long-term trends in fertility and mortality and a model, which attempts to explain them. Demenmy (1972) has summarized it very succinctly "In traditional societies both the fertility and mortality are high and in modern society both the fertility and mortality are high and in modern society both the fertility and mortality is low. In between, there is a demographic transition".
First propnents of demographic theory were Thompson(1929), Davis(1945) and Notestein(1945). Three basic elements of the transiction can be obtained from their writings;

a) It describes the changes that have taken place in fertility and mortality over time.
b) It attempts to construct theoretical causal models to explain the changes that have taken palace
c) Prediction for the changes, that might occur especially in the developing countries in the light of the experience of the developed countries.

Implicit in the classical demographic transition theory is the concept of modernization and development, which brings about changes in mortality and fertilit. Initially declinein mortality takes place and fertility decline is the response to this decline in mortality. Timing of fertility response depends on the levels of development and modernization in the countries concerned.