Some Demographic Assorted Links

1. The UN has recently released the 2015 Revision of World Population Prospects (via Bernardo Queiroz)
   
   
2. Cutting edge research behind new population projections
   
   
3. Can Demography Affect Inflation and Monetary Policy? (via MR)
   
   
4. Which countries have the most immigrants?
   
   
5. There are now at least two good open access journals in demography/population studies. The well known Demographic Research (twitter) , and the new International Journal of Population Studies (twitter)
   
   
6. The new Institute for Asian Demographic Research, in Shanghai (via Emilio Zagheni)
   
   
7. In celebration to World Population Day (11th of July), Springer and BioMed have made freely available a selection of free articles that investigate the consequences of the ever increasing population on health, migration and the environment. These papers will be freely available until September 10, 2015
   
   
8. Nice piece in the NYT on the The Unrealized Horrors of Population Explosion
   
   
9. A great series of GIFs showing demographic changes in different counties (ht Conrad Hackett)

[image credit: Laird Research]

Age related CO2 Emissions

Zagheni, E. (2011) The Leverage of Demographic Dynamics on Carbon Dioxide Emissions: Does Age Structure Matter? Demography. Volume 48, Issue 1, pp 371-399. (ungated version)

Abstract:

This article provides a methodological contribution to the study of the effect of changes in population age structure on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. First, I propose a generalization of the IPAT equation to a multisector economy with an age-structured population and discuss the insights that can be obtained in the context of stable population theory. Second, I suggest a statistical model of household consumption as a function of household size and age structure to quantitatively evaluate the extent of economies of scale in consumption of energy-intensive goods, and to estimate age-specific profiles of consumption of energy-intensive goods and of CO2 emissions. Third, I offer an illustration of the methodologies using data for the United States. The analysis shows that per-capita CO2 emissions increase with age until the individual is in his or her 60s, and then emissions tend to decrease. Holding everything else constant, the expected change in U.S. population age distribution during the next four decades is likely to have a small, but noticeable, positive impact on CO2 emissions.

Related Links:

• An Estimate of the Age Distributionís Effect on Carbon Dioxide Emissions
• How to cut carbon emissions: don’t be middle-aged
• Hans Rosling explains population growth and climate change
• Food Production, Population Growth, and the Environmet

Assorted Links (overloaded edition)

1. Darkened Shanghai
   
   
2. One of the new big question marks for economic demographers
   
   
3. Latin America has more mobile phones than people, seriously!?
   
   
4. Observations on US Urbanization: 1920-2010
   
   
5. How much do teachers cost? (via Drunkeynesian)
   
   
6. Two Research Fellowship positions in Demography at Oxford
   
   
7. Self-recommending -  Tracking the Wider Impacts of the São Paulo Subway System
   
   
8. Call of dutty, or how far can a coutry go to promote fertility
   
   
9. An excellent advice for young researchers
   
   
10. Compare Global Cities on your iPad
    
    
11. U.S. Life Expectancy Map: The Gender Gap (via @Demografia_CSIC)

Assorted Links

1. The Central Bank of Brazil has come up with a new Real Estate Price Series it was about time  (via Drunkeynesian)
   
   
2. A new paper that has been shaking up Malthus's theory (and an institutionalist reinterpretation of Malthus)
   
   
3. The Journal of Unpublished Results (via Bernardo Furtado)
   
   
4. Attribution of CO2 emissions from Brazilian deforestation to consumers between 1990 and 2010
   
   
5. Pervasive Externalities at the Population, Consumption, and Environment Nexus, a new paper published at Science, by Dasgupta and Ehrlich
   
   
6. An impressive Skyscraper
   
   
7. Agent-based models are getting more interactive (via M Batty)
   
   
8. Urbanization and Climate Change Hazards in Asia via (Sebastien Goulard)
   
   
9. Really impressive TweetMap ALPHA developed by Harvard University's Center for Geographic Analysis (via infosthetics)

Educational Attainment and the Demographic Dividend

The Economist Magazine has published a short piece where they highlight Wolfgang Lutz's arguments on the importance of educational attainment to the potential benefits countries may get from their demographic dividend. 

Related Links:

• The changing demographics of Brazilian workforce [this publication is availabe in Portugue only]
• Education-specific population projections

Chart of the Day

US housing (via The Economist)

Related Links:

1. Is It Better to Buy or Rent? (interactive)
2. UK house prices - as flat as a board
3. Demographic Transition, Economic Crisis and the Housing Deficit in Indonesia
4. The Balance of Affordable Housing in New York City
5. The spatial dynamics of the Hong Kong housing market, 1992–2008
6. A nice debate the merits of homeownership in The Economist
7. The Latin American Cohabitation Boom, 1970–2007

Assorted Links

1. Old People Versus Babies, In One Graph (via Population Econ)
   
   
2. The Environmental Consequences of Urban Growth in Brazil's Amazon
   
   
3. Women, education, and earnings
   
   
4. Understanding the Long-Run Decline in Interstate Migration in the USA, by (via Matthew O'Brien)
   
   
5. How presidential elections are impacted by a 100 million year old coastline (really nice!)
   
   
6. UN Report: Estado de las ciudades de América Latina y el Caribe 2012
   
   
7. Planned Cities Seen From Space (HT Bernardo Furtado)
   
   
8. Identifying Communities in Traffic Flow (by Ed Manley)

Assorted Links

1. Is It Better to Buy or Rent? (via Patrik)
   
   
2. Neil Smith (the father of the Gentrification theory)  has passed away.
   
   
3. New survey paper on what economists know about “brain drain”/“brain gain”). via MR
   
   
4. The New Science of Viral Ads by Thales S. Teixeira (Harvard)
   
   
5. Germans are five times more likely than Americans to travel by mass transport (the paper is here)
   
   
6. Book: The Demography of Health and Healthcare
   
   
7. The demographic transition may be the result of a mismatch between ancient psychology and the modern world (via @blqueiroz)
   
   
8. Call for Abstracts: 9th International Space Syntax Symposium
   
   
9. Car use is peaking in the rich world

[image credit: The Economist]

Window of Opportunity: demographic changes and socioeconomic consequences in Brazil

Window of Opportunity: demographic changes and socioeconomic consequences in Brazil  (I have copied this post from Ricardo Ojima)

View more PowerPoint from UNDP Policy Centre

China's Demographic Future (Part 2)

[Image credit: Chinese American Aging Issues]

And here is an excellent paper to understand China's demographic future: "The Future of a Demographic Overachiever: Long-Term Implications of the Demographic Transition in China" published at PDR by Wang Feng. The paper also dicusses the role of the Chinese State in demographic transition. Prof Feng has also presented the paper at Stanford (the audio is available). If you are having difficulties access the paper, try this link.

I have selected a few sentences:

Mortality

• "In the two decades after 1950, the crude death rate of the Chinese population was reduced by nearly 60 percent, from 18 per thousand in 1950 to 7.6 in 1970."

Life Expectancy 

• [in 50 years/ 1950-2000] China accomplished what it took these other countries [more developed european countries and US] a century to achieve, an increase in life expectancy from the 40s to over 70 years.

Fertility

• "In contrast to western european countries, where it took 75 years or longer to complete a fertility transitionfrom a TFR of around 5 to the replacement level, in China a similar decline took only about two decades."

Demographic Transition

• "In roughly half a century, China completed its transition from a low rate of natural increase due to high mortality and high fertility to a low rate of natural increase as a result of low mortality and low fertility."

Family

• "Moreover, the large number of families with only one child, often against the will of the parents, presents serious economic and social risks for Chinese families and for society as a whole."

Labor Force and Aging

• "China’s economic boom has relied on another crucial factor, namely a young and productive labor force. This large labor force, a non-repeatable historical product of the rapid demographic transition, was present fortuitously as the Chinese economy was about to take off."

• "China’s rapidly shrinking young labor force, a result of very low fertility for nearly two decades, will soon end the era of abundant supply of inexpensive labor that enabled China to become the world’s largest manufacturing center in the last two decades."

My take: China is perhaps one of the few countries that have completed its fertility transition without completing its urban transition. It means that China still has large amount of rural-urban migration potential, which could keep an abundant supply of inexpensive labor for many decades. Perhaps this potential is being underestimated. 

Related posts:

• Demographic factors of China's economic growth
• Overestimated China
• Labor Force and Economic Growth
• Huge Chinese internal migration

China's Demographic Future (Part 1)

An excellent article by The Economist on China’s Achilles heel. Here is Sarah Harper (Oxford) discussing this issue.

Assorted links

1. What's the connection between a metro’s size and its success in pro sports?
   
   
2. The new issue of the Journal of Transport and Land Use (JLUT) is out!
   
   
3. Bucerius Ph.D. scholarship program in migration studies "Settling Into Motion" offers up to eight scholarships for Ph.D. theses addressing migration in changing societies (thank Joice Vieira for the tip)
   
   
4. Is America Facing a Housing Shortage?
   
   
5. Jacobs’ lasting “Top 10″ observations
   
   
6. Want a Job? Go to College, and Don’t Major in Architecture
   
   
7. 5th stage of the Demographic Transition (?)

(image credit)

Soundtrack: Jazzual Suspects

Demographic Dependency Ratio

New Geography have just published a piece by Emma Chen and Wendell Cox on the challenges posed by aging and declining fertility. Worth 5 minutes of your time.

UNDP global old age and child dependency ratios

[image credit: New Geography]

Assorted Links

• Call for Papers - 2012 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (PAA) - Deadline for submissions: 23 September 2011. (thanks Joice Vieira for the tip)

• Urban Analysis Using Mobile-Device Data (via Michael Batty)

• The new issue of the Journal of Transport and Land Use (JLUT) focuses focuses on coevolution: how transport drives changes in land use, and vice versa. Here!
  

• A special edition from Scientific American discussing "Better smarter cities" (via Manu Fernandez)

Demographics under the spotlight

• Demographic changes in Brazil by National Geographic (via Leo Monasterio)
  
  
• Financial Times Special Report on the new demographic challenges around the world (via 'my wife' - thanks my dear for the link) - I confess I still have to take a closer look at this.

And a beautiful video composed completely of photographs of Paris (by Luke Shepard via Daniel Lippman)

Le Flâneur (music by The XX) from Luke Shepard on Vimeo.

The rise and fall of Urban Sociology (?)

Google has scanned 15 million books originally published from 1800 on. And they have also developed the Google Books Ngram Viewer. It's a tool that charts the usage of any word over time in literature and other books (Google books database). One could irresponsibly use it as a proxy for the popularity of words in literature. And I did!

This chart above shows how often "Urban Sociology" has appeared in the literature (Google database - english literature only) since 1800. It looks to me that the Chicago School have had played an important role in the rising 'popularity' of Urban Sociology*. And it looks that Urban Sociology is not as 'popular' as it used to be....

*obviously, it would be necessary to scrutinize other keywords to conclude this (such as the major researchers in the first Chicago School)

And here are some queries of other keywords of interest:

• Aging Population; Demographic Transition; Demography related words; urban mobility, housing bubble, 'Great Cities' as urban hierarchy (?), Space Syntax, GIS, urban, regional and environmental studies, urban and rural, etc.

And my favorites:

Traffic Jam:

Urban sprawl, compact city, smart city, smart growth, compact growth, New Urbanism.

Thanks Vinicius Netto for the tip!