Demographics, Statistics etc. 01 (Apr 09 - Aug 22)

[winston]

China:-

From Monitor, SCMP

Hidden debts of local government: RMB 4t

Bad debts: RMB 4t

Unfunded Pension Liabilities: RMB 2.5 t

Official Debt to GDP: 18%

If includes hidden debts, bad loans & unfunded pension liabilites, Debt to GDP is 52%

[winston]

OUR VANISHING ULTIMATE RESOURCE - Gary Halbert

Plummeting birthrates threaten prosperity worldwide. Can America buck the trend?

by Steven Malanga

http://www.investorsinsight.com/blogs/f ... erity.aspx

[winston]

Shame of Asia's lost women

Asia is "missing" about 96 million women - the majority in China and India - who died from discriminatory health care and neglect or who were never born at all, the UN estimates.

Female infanticide and sex-selective abortion have caused a severe gender imbalance in Asia, and the problem is worsening despite rapid economic growth in the region, the United Nations Development Programme report said.

"The old mindset with its preference for male children has now combined with modern medical technology" that makes it easier to predict and abort unborn girls, said Anuradha Rajivan, the report's lead author.

"It is not just female infanticide but sex-selective abortion of unborn girls that cause so-called `missing' females," she said, contrasting the issue with recent improvements in female life expectancy and education.

The UNDP report found that East Asia had the world's highest male- female sex ratio at birth, with 119 boys born for every 100 girls.

This far exceeded the global world average of 107 boys for every 100 girls.

"Females cannot take survival for granted," it said.

"Sex-selective abortion, infanticide, and death from health and nutritional neglect in Asia have left 96 million missing women and the numbers seem to be increasing in absolute terms."

The regional figure was skewed by enormous birth gender disparities in China and India, which between them accounted for about 85 million of the report's "missing" figure.

The number was calculated from the actual sex ratio in the population compared to what it would theoretically be, if equal treatment were given to the sexes during pregnancy, birth and afterwards.

The region, and especially south Asia, ranks near the worst in the world - often lower than sub-Saharan Africa - on issues such as protecting women from violence, as well as access to health, education, employment and political participation.

"Today, the Asia-Pacific region is at a crossroads," the report said. "Whether gender equality is pushed aside or pursued with greater energy amid the economic downturn depends on actions taken or not taken now by governments."

The report, launched on International Women's Day, focused on the need to improve women's rights in three key areas: economic power, political participation, and legal protection.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_deta ... 00309&fc=2

[millionairemind]

A nice cover story on GENDERCIDE was done in last week's Economist.

http://www.economist.com/world/internat ... d=15636231

[winston]

"Between 1970 and 1999, 80% of civil conflicts occurred in countries where 60% of the population or more were under the age of thirty...

Today there are sixty-seven counties with youth bulges, of which sixty of them are experiencing social unrest and violence." -

Council on Foreign Relations

Source: Daily Reckoning

[winston]

Long-hated one-child rule may be eased in China

Demographers warn of baby shortage in China, as many Chinese choose to have one child

ALEXA OLESEN
AP News

Apr 25, 2010 00:01 EDT

When asked why she and her husband don't want a second child, Shi Xiaomei smiles at her pudgy nine-year-old son and does a quick tally of the family budget.

Her salary as a cleaning lady and the income from a mahjong parlor in their spare room barely cover their son's school fees and other expenses.

"With just one, we can give him nicer things. But if you tried to split what we have between two or three, they would all end up with nothing," the 34-year-old says at her home in Dafeng, a prosperous but still-rural county 185 miles (300 kilometers) north of Shanghai.

For years, China curbed its once-explosive population growth with a widely hated one-child limit that at its peak led to forced abortions, sterilizations and even infanticide. Now the long-sacrosanct policy may be on its way out, as some demographers warn that China is facing the opposite problem: not enough babies.

A stroll down the dirt path linking Shi's close-knit neighborhood suggests why.

Though a little-known exception allows a second child when both parents are single children themselves, there are few takers.

"Why would we want another one? That's just looking for trouble," said Huang Xiaochen, 28, mother of a one-year-old son.

"Kids are running in and out of here all the time," her husband Zhu Yingzhun said, pointing to his front door which, like many here, is often left open. "He doesn't need a sibling to have someone to play with."

Officially, the government remains committed to the one-child policy. But it also commissioned feasibility studies last year on what would happen if it eliminated the policy or did nothing. An official with the National Population and Family Planning Commission said privately that the agency is looking at ways to refine the limit — though not get rid of it.

A people shortage may seem unlikely in a country of 1.3 billion, the most in the world. The concern, though, is not with the overall number. Rather, as the population shrinks, which is projected to begin in about 15 years, China may find itself with the wrong mix of people: too few young workers to support an aging population.

It's a combination that could slow or, in a worst-case scenario, even reverse China's surging economic growth. The government and families will have to tap savings to care for the elderly, reducing funds for investment and driving up interest rates. At the same time, labor costs will likely rise as the work force shrinks, squeezing out some industries.

In a survey of 18,638 women in Dafeng and six other counties in Jiangsu province, 69 percent of those eligible to have a second child said they would stop at one, with economics being the major factor. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences survey did not calculate a margin of error.

"Government control is no longer necessary to maintain low fertility," Zheng Zhenzhen, who headed the study, wrote in the November issue of Asian Population Studies magazine. "A carefully planned relaxation of the birth-control policy in China is unlikely to lead to an unwanted baby boom."

Family size has dropped dramatically since the 1970s, when the average Chinese woman had five to six children. Today, China's fertility rate is 1.5 children per woman. Most families have just one, but exceptions allow multiple children for ethnic minorities and a second one for rural families whose first baby is a girl.

If that fertility rate holds, China's population will peak at 1.4 billion in 2026 and then start shrinking, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By the end of this century, China's population would be cut almost in half to 750 million, according to a model developed by Wang Feng, a demographer at the University of California, Irvine. That would still be two and a half times bigger than the U.S. today.

Wang says the government's focus on slowing population growth has dangerous side effects.

In just 10 years, the age 20-24 population is expected to be half of today's 124 million, a shift that could hurt China's economic competitiveness by driving up wages. Over the same period, the proportion of the population over 60 is expected to climb from 12 percent — or 167 million people — to 17 percent.

"We feel like we're seismologists, you know," said Wang, who has helped lead a data-driven campaign to persuade the government to drop the one-child policy. "This earthquake is happening and most people don't see it. We feel we have the knowledge to detect this and we should tell the public."

Another concern is a surplus of males. Sonograms became more widely available in the 1990s, and some parents who wanted a son aborted their baby if they learned it was a girl.

Though the practice is illegal, statistics make clear that it is widespread. The male-female ratio at birth was 119 males to 100 females in 2009, compared with a global average of 107 to 100.

Experts fear that, in the years to come, the gender imbalance will create a frustrated generation of men unable to find spouses. That in turn could fuel the trafficking of women and girls to be sold as brides.

Still, not all experts agree the one-child rule should be dropped.

Li Xiaoping, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, welcomes the coming population decline, saying it will ease food and water shortages and limit pollution. Writing in the state-run China Daily newspaper, Li said the government should stand firm on the one-child limit while finding ways to boost the earning power of a smaller work force.

A change would mark a turnaround from a 30-year-old policy that dates from an era when the Communist Party controlled every aspect of peoples' lives: where they lived and worked, who and when they married, and how many children they could have.

The government credits the rule with raising millions out of poverty by preventing 400 million additional births. But the gains have come at a cost. Families who violated the one-child rule were fined. Some lost their jobs or homes.

Others underwent forced abortions or sterilizations — the subject of well-known author Mo Yan's latest book, "Frog," the tale of a rural midwife who struggles with an emotional breakdown after a 30-year career performing such brutal procedures.

"Yes, our slowed population growth delivered economic prosperity, but needless to say, we've paid a great price," said Mo, whose book was inspired by his aunt, a country doctor. "No matter how you look at it, it's been a tragedy."

Xie Zhenming, who heads the government-funded, research-oriented China Population Association, expects change within the next five years — but gradually, in steps.

Susan Greenhalgh, an expert on the policy's history, agrees. The anthropology professor at the University of California, Irvine believes the government will avoid dramatic change, out of fear that it could revive bad memories and make people wonder whether such a harsh measure was ever necessary.

"My view is that it will gradually be taken apart, piece by piece, over the next few years," she said, "until we all wake up and discover that, lo and behold, the one-child policy has been dismantled to the point that it's no longer a one-child policy."

Source: AP News

[winston]

Hong Kong

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

-- Hong Kong's population will swell to 8.89 million in 30 years, with the elderly population projected to rise to account for 28 percent of the population by 2039, from 13 percent last year, and the number of men to women also widening, the Censis and Statistics Department's latest projections showed.

[winston]

Asia's baby shortage sets demographic timebomb ticking By Frank Zeller (AFP)

TOKYO — East Asia's booming economies have for years been the envy of the world, but a shortfall in one crucial area -- babies -- threatens to render yesterday's tigers toothless.

Some of the world's lowest birth rates look set to slash labour forces in Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, where fewer workers will support more retirees and their ballooning health care and pension costs.

Shuffling along in the vanguard of ageing Asia is Japan, whose population started slowly shrinking three years ago, and where almost a quarter of people are over 65 while children make up just 13 percent.

On current trends, Japan's population of 127 million will by 2055 shrivel to 90 million, its level when it kicked off its post-war boom in 1955, warns the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

Asian population giant China may still be near its prime, with armies of young rural workers flocking to its factories. But, thanks to the 30-year-old one-child policy, its demographic timebomb is also ticking.

"Over the past 50 years, economic and social modernization in Asia has been accompanied by a remarkable drop in birth rates," the Hawaii-based think-tank the East-West Centre says in a new research paper.

"Gains in education, employment and living standards, combined with dramatic breakthroughs in health and family-planning technology, have led to lower fertility in every country of the region."

Falling fertility rates are a common trend for societies as they grow richer, and many European nations are also below the level needed to keep a population stable -- about 2.1 children per woman over her lifetime.

While in traditional rural societies children tend to take over the farm and care for their elderly parents, in modern, urban societies, many couples, with better access to birth control, see offspring as an unaffordable luxury.

China now has 1.6 births per woman, Singapore has 1.2 and South Korea has slightly fewer than 1.1. Taiwan has just 1.03 births per woman.

One way to counter declining populations is to allow more immigration -- but governments from Singapore to Tokyo have been reluctant to do so.

At the same time Singaporeans, who have turned their city-state into an Asian hub of commerce and service industries, have long been famously disinclined to procreate.

The government has for years put on match-making events for university graduates on the assumption that Singapore's best and brightest could be coaxed into producing a generation of brainy offspring.

While that model in social engineering has failed to bring a baby boom, bureaucrats across the region have sought to tweak policies and tax codes to get more couples in the mood, but seldom with great success.

At the core of the problem, say analysts, have been gender attitudes steeped in Confucian traditions -- with men still expecting their wives to handle the childcare and household chores that may not top a modern woman's wishlist.

Kim Hye-Young, researcher at the Korea Women's Development Institute, said: "The big problem is that South Korean women, compared to men, have too much to lose when getting married in this system.

"This reality makes marriage, let alone having a child, look like a very unattractive option in South Korea, perhaps far more so than in other countries," she said.

In Japan, where women remain woefully under-represented in corporate boardrooms, falling pregnant still all too often spells career death.

"Women are voting with their wombs, refraining from having children because the opportunity costs are so high and rigid employment policies make many of them choose between raising a family or pursuing a career," writes Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Temple University in Tokyo.

Other factors also play a role, he writes in a new book on contemporary Japan: many young people -- unlike their jobs-for-life fathers -- now skip between temporary jobs and lack the financial security to start a family.

Compounding the geriatric trend in Japan are long life expectancies -- a world-record 86.44 years for women and 79.59 years for men.

This means the social welfare burden is growing for a government that already has a debt-to-GDP ration nearing 200 percent, the rich world's highest.

The centre-left government in power since last year has introduced family friendly policies, from child payments to free school tuition, to ease the burden on parents struggling to raise kids in their cramped apartments.

High-tech Japan has also built robots to help with elderly care, while electronics giants have tapped a huge market for elderly-friendly gadgets, such as mobile phones with extra-large displays and buttons.

In the long run, Japan needs to take fundamental steps to deal with the growing strain of a greying society, warns ratings agency Standard and Poor's.

"Barring structural changes in old-age related government spending, a rapidly greying society will lift expenditures," it warns. "This, in turn, threatens to weaken the sovereign ratings on Japan in the long term."

Polls in Asia indicate that most people are aware of the threat that silent playgrounds and empty classrooms spell for their greying societies, but remain unlikely to rush to their bedrooms to help avert societal doom.

In Taiwan, a survey of childless workers last month found that 87 percent thought the declining birth rate was a serious problem, and two thirds worried the result would be a society unable to look after its elderly.

Still, few said they would start making babies to save their island, according to the survey by human resources service 104 Job Bank. Almost two thirds said they did not intend to have any children in future.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... 002dd1.181

[winston]

Japan population shrinks by record in 2010

Japan's government says the population fell by a record amount last year, as the number of deaths climbed to an all-time high in the quickly aging country.

Japan logged 1.19 million deaths in 2010 — the biggest number since 1947 when the health ministry's annual records began. The number of births was nearly flat.

As a result, Japan contracted by 123,000 people, which was the most ever and represents the fourth consecutive year of population decline. The top causes of death were cancer, heart disease and stroke, the ministry said.

Japan faces a looming demographic squeeze. Baby boomers are moving toward retirement, with fewer workers and taxpayers to replace them. The Japanese boast among the highest life expectencies in the world but have extremely low birth rates.

Source: AP News

[winston]

Eight rising demographic waves:

1. The world's population is growing faster than ever - in numerical, if not percentage, terms - and it's getting older.

2. The geopolitical leadership of the world is shifting.

3. The "middle class" is emerging in the developing nations, driving an unprecedented shift of wealth from the West to the East.

4. The population growth and burgeoning middle class is creating a steady rise in demand for energy and consumer products, which will keep prices moving higher.

5. Population growth is steadily magnifying the need for more food and water, which is already generating critical shortages of both in some parts of the world.

6. Human beings continue to be messy creatures, with an ever-increasing need for sanitation and waste-disposal services.

7. Despite major peace initiatives, conflict among the human race continues to persist.

8. And a mushrooming global debt burden stands as a threat to both the world's currencies and its established trade systems.

http://moneymorning.com/2011/03/29/long ... ic-trends/