Do the old have a moral obligation to move out of the way to make room for the young? Or is even suggesting this perpetuating dangerous bias against the elderly and vulnerable? These may not be theoretical questions much longer in rapidly aging societies. A case in the point is the traction the provocative statements of Yale economist Yusuke Narita have gotten in Japan, where those 65 and older make up roughly 30% of the population and those 80 and older account for 10% of the population.  www.nytimes.com/2023/02/12/world/asia/japan-elderly-mass-suicide.html

Megacities are generally defined as metropolitan areas of at least 10 million people. There are currently 33-35 megacities, depending on who is counting and who is being counted. This map looks at cities expected to reach megacity status by 2050: bucket.mlcdn.com/a/2764/2764870/images/0d7ca37bc55b1c8101a1a5e77cb243aae75162b2.jpeg

This interactive map from the Census Bureau shows which U.S. states have the largest proportions of senior citizens (the greener the state, the larger the proportion of the population age 65 or older): www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/population-65-and-older-2021.html

Yesterday, the world population hit 8 billion according to United Nations estimates. Globally, the population is expected to climb to about 10.4 billion around the turn of the century and then taper off. But these new 2.4 billion people will not be evenly distributed around the planet. This article highlights where there are expected to be concentrated population booms, where the population is expected to decline, where the population is aging rapidly, and what it all means: www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/world-population-8-billion/

One of my geography classes recently explored family ancestry and the related issues of immigration patterns and language dispersal. This set of maps from The Washington Post illustrates the concentration of Nordic ancestry in the Upper Midwest.   (Map from www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/07/midwest-orchestras-conservatories-airbnb/.)

COVID cut global life expectancy, but the impact even among relatively affluent countries was highly uneven. Researchers studied life expectancy in 29 countries (mostly European plus the U.S. and Chile) between 2019 and 2021.  In one -- Norway -- life expectancy continued to edge upwards, as had been the long-term trend in all of the countries studied, but in each of the 28 other countries, life expectancy fell by months to years. Between 2020 and 2021, most Western European countries stopped or even reversed the decline in life expectancy, but in the U.S., Chile, and Eastern European countries, life expectancy continued to decline through 2020-2021. U.S. life expectancy declined 2.75 years through the study period, second only to Bulgaria, which saw a decline of 3.5 years. (Study summary at www.statista.com/chart/28487/life-expectancy-change-selected-countries/ includes the link to the Nature Human Behavior article.)

Partitioned from the rest of the island when Ireland (the country) was granted independence in 1921, Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, is the historically Protestant-majority northeastern section of Ireland (the island).  However, a recent census shows that Catholics now outnumber Protestants in Northern Ireland for the first time. www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/world/europe/northern-ireland-census-catholics-protestants.html

Western Europe is one of the world's most rapidly aging regions. This geo-graphic looks at the anticipated increase in dementia rates by 2050 in a sampling of Western European countries: cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/28310.jpeg

Hal Brands, professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and former Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Strategic Planning and lead writer for the Commission on the National Defense Strategy for the United States, released an important and somewhat contrarian new book this week arguing that China is likely to try to invade Taiwan within the next five years. Danger Zone lays out the case that far from being a rising power, China is a peaking power due to the convergence of a variety of serious demographic, economic, and geopolitical constraints, a situation that tends to make countries more reckless. "When you think about revisionist powers - so that's just a fancy political science word for countries that want to change the way the world works; they're dissatisfied with the existing order. They tend to become most aggressive, most rash, not when they are very confident about the future, when they think that things will be better a decade from now than they are now, but when they worry that their window to change the system is closing. That, either because their economy has stalled or they're becoming encircled by their enemies, or sometimes both, that they have a closing window of opportunity to achieve their objectives. And when that is the case, they become more prone to use coercion, to use violence, to use force to get what they want while they can still grab it. That's been the case historically in a variety of instances, from ancient times up to the 20th century. And it's the trap that we worry that China may be falling into today. ... [A] lot of the tailwinds that propelled China to where it is today have now become headwinds. Assets have become liabilities, so to speak." The book makes the argument for China's status as a peaking power and details what the U.S. and its allies can do, now, to head off possible Chinese aggression in the Pacific. (Quote from Brands' interview with the "Intelligence Matters" podcast: www.cbsnews.com/news/hal-brands-on-potential-of-future-conflict-with-china-intelligence-matters/.)

According to a new report from the United Nations, global population is projected to hit 8 billion on November 15 of this year, India is expected to surpass China as the world's most populous country in 2023, and more than half of global population growth between now and 2050 will be concentrated in just 8 countries (alphabetically): the DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Tanzania. For all the details, you can download the report here: www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/wpp2022_summary_of_results.pdf

Across the U.S., about half of all adults are currently married, 10-12% are currently divorced, and about one-third have never been married. The "never married" group is growing fastest. This map highlights the states with the largest percentages of adults who have never been married.

One in four American adults is considered "inactive," defined by the Centers for Disease Control as not participating in any physical activity outside of work over the last month. The prevalence of inactivity varies considerably by state and ethnicity, as this series of maps shows: www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/data/inactivity-prevalence-maps/index.html#overall

Not a map but a different visual display of geographic information: this chart from The Economist (UK) shows average life expectancy at birth by country and the gap, in years, between male and female life expectancy. Every country has a longer life expectancy for females than males; those shown in the darkest blue have the largest gap between male and female life expectancy. www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/02/04/why-women-are-less-likely-than-men-to-die-from-covid-19

According to a recent report by the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, an estimated 4.3 million Americans (corresponding to 1.3% of the U.S. population) is Native American. In Bolivia, by contrast, nearly half of the population is indigenous. www.statista.com/chart/19633/countries-by-indigenous-population-in-the-americas

The northeastern Indian state of Assam (shown in red on this map) has been in the news recently. Although Assam is famous for its tea and silk, more recently Assam has been in the news for its efforts to evict Muslim residents whose families arrived from neighboring Bangladesh any time in the last 50 years. High birth rates and land erosion from the Brahmaputra River, which runs east to west the length of Assam, has increased competition for land and given Assam's Hindu-nationalist BJP government a pretext for taking action against Muslim settlers of Bangladeshi descent, most of whom were born in Assam. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/India_Assam_locator_map.svg/1574px-India_Assam_locator_map.svg.png

This geo-graphic looks at who was granted asylum in the U.S. in FY2019, by country of origin, and how that mix has been changing. www.statista.com/chart/25619/asylum-grants-in-the-us-by-nationality

The headline that seemed to emerge from the recent release of the 2020 Census results was that the U.S. was becoming less "white." (What is less frequently mentioned is that at least some of that "decline" was due to a proliferation of other boxes to check.) Census data shows that the Midwest and Rust Belt diversified the fastest from 2010 to 2020. In many cases, the counties that diversified fastest were also those likely to have seen overall population declines between 2010 and 2020. (Map from www.wsj.com/articles/where-is-america-diversifying-the-fastest-small-midwestern-towns-11628860161.)

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control announced that 2020 saw an acceleration in the longtime decline in U.S. birthrates. Total fertility rates in the U.S. now hover around 1.6 children per woman. (A TFR of 2.2 is considered replacement level.) Twenty-five U.S. states had more deaths than births in 2020. This article from Foreign Affairs considers the role demographics plays in geopolitics. www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2019-06-11/great-demographics-comes-great-power

One of the enduring artifacts of the coronavirus pandemic is a decline in birth rates. In the U.S., for example, there were 300,000 "missing" births in 2020.  In China, though, the pandemic hit when the country was already having limited success convincing couples, most of whom grew up as only children themselves, to have more than one child. China "faces a shrinking labor force, a skewed sex ratio and one of the world’s fastest-aging populations. Data released by the Ministry of Public Security in February showed a 15 percent drop in registered new births in 2020. ... Bleak demographic predictions have fanned fears that the country will grow old before it grows rich, as decades of restricting family size compound the effects of urbanization and growing wealth in curbing birthrates. China’s population could begin shrinking as early as 2027, according to an estimate from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and citizens over the age of 65 will account for 20 percent of the population by 2025. ... Urban couples especially, daunted by the cost and pressure of raising a child in China’s hypercompetitive cities, are increasingly forgoing parenthood. ... Others fear that officials will reorient the gigantic family-planning bureaucracy, which enforced restrictions through forced abortions, sterilizations and steep fines, toward pushing women to have children. Recent proposals to inspire more births range from lowering the minimum age for marriage to 18 (from 20 for women and 22 for men) to using education to encourage women between the ages of 21 and 29 to “give birth in a timely manner.”“I am pessimistic that lifting childbirth limits will put women’s status further behind. I feel like scenes from ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ could really happen. I just don’t know when,” [former journalist Chen Hongyu] said."
www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-child-policy-population-growth/2021/03/05/16dd613a-75b8-11eb-9489-8f7dacd51e75_story.html

Urban areas in the U.S. have traditionally been Democratic strongholds. This New York Times analysis of 2020 election data suggests the facts on the ground are more nuanced: immigrant neighborhoods in large cities became more "red" and less "blue" in 2020, not just in easy-to-explain cities like Miami but in a range of cities from Chicago and Philadelphia to NYC and Los Angeles. (Check out the detailed maps in the article itself.) www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/20/us/politics/election-hispanics-asians-voting.html

One of the consequences of the decennial United States population census is a reapportionment of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. This map, from The Wall Street Journal, shows the expected gains and losses of House seats, by state. (from www.wsj.com/articles/lawmakers-prepare-for-battles-over-congressional-redistricting-11609151400)

This interactive series of maps from Pew Research Center looks at the ethno-demographics of the American electorate, by state and over time: www.pewresearch.org/2020/09/23/the-changing-racial-and-ethnic-composition-of-the-u-s-electorate/

Following decades of declining birth rates, Japan's population is shrinking, particularly in rural areas. To stimulate rural tourism, many regions have developed "soft cream" (not unlike soft serve ice cream) that features regional flavors, from lavender and matcha to blue honeysuckle and squid ink: www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-soft-cream-japan

One of the questions continually being batted about at present is, "Has China been fudging its COVID-19 numbers?" This provocative article from Foreign Policy, from well before the pandemic, argues that China fudges *all* of its numbers because China's government -- perhaps all authoritarian governments -- rewards not accuracy but politically desirable numbers.

"We don’t know China. Nor, however, do the Chinese — not even the government. We don’t know China because, in ways that have generally not been acknowledged, virtually every piece of information issued from or about the country is unreliable, partial, or distorted. The sheer scale of the country, mixed with a regime of ever-growing censorship and a pervasive paranoia about sharing information, has crippled our ability to know China. Official data is repeatedly smoothed for both propaganda purposes and individual career ambitions. ... GDP growth has long been one of the main criteria used to judge officials’ careers — as a result, the relevant data is warped at every level, since the folk reporting it are the same ones benefitting from it being high. If you add up the GDP figures issued by the provinces, the sum is 10 percent higher than the figure ultimately issued by the national government, which in itself is tweaked to hit politicized targets. Provincial governments have increasingly admitted to this in recent years, but the fakery has been going on for decades. We don’t know the extent of bad loans, routinely concealed by banks. We don’t know the makeup of most Chinese financial assets. ... But what we don’t know goes far beyond just economics. Look at any sector in China and you’ll find distorted or unreported public information; go to the relevant authorities and they’ll generally admit the most shocking practices in private. ... We don’t know the true size of the Chinese population because of the reluctance to register unapproved second children or for the family planning bureau to report that they’d failed to control births. We don’t know where those people are; rural counties are incentivized to overreport population to receive more benefits from higher levels of government, while city districts report lower figures to hit population control targets. Beijing’s official population is 21.7 million; it may really be as high as 30 or 35 million. Tens — perhaps hundreds — of millions of migrants are officially in the countryside but really in the cities. ... We don’t know how good Chinese schools really are because the much-quoted statistics provided by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) that placed China first in the world were taken from the study of a small group of elite Shanghai schools. As soon as that was expanded merely to Beijing — another metropolis — and two rich provinces, the results dropped sharply. ... We don’t know the extent of the collapse of rural education. We don’t know the real literacy figures, not least because rural and urban literacy is measured by different standards — a common trick for many figures. ...We don’t know the real crime figures, especially in the cities, which may represent as little as 2.5 percent of the actual total. We don’t know the death toll for the ethnic Uighur insurgency in Xinjiang, where local officials, in the words of one government terrorism expert, 'bend figures as much as during the Great Leap Forward,' nor do we know how many people are currently held in 're-education camps.' (Incidentally, we don’t know how many people died in the Great Leap Forward [1958-62], piled up in village ditches or abandoned on empty grasslands: the 16.5 million once given in official tolls or the 45 million estimated by some historians.) And we don’t know what we don’t know." foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/21/nobody-knows-anything-about-china

Across the U.S., at all education levels, white workers on average make more than their black counterparts with similar experience. This map shows the black-white gap in median household (not individual) income by state. In general, the Pacific Northwest shows the smallest gaps with the largest gaps in the Midwest and South. howmuch.net/articles/racial-income-wealth-inequality-us