The (US) National Mean Center of Population

Fast post: Each decade the Census Bureau of the US calculates the National Mean Center of Population. This is the animated map displaying the evolution of its position (and here is a different static version of the map). Hat tip to Maptd blog.

Some marriage and divorce statistics

Ok! now back fom the honeymoon to the real world. Something tells me I shouldn't be much enthusiastic about this (I refer to the real world....) So this is just a fast post with some links to marriage and divorce statistics:

1. More or Less (Tim Harford) talks about the decreasing marriage rate in the UK and other wedding-related statistics.
2. An interesting article by Jacob Langenfeld (NewGeography) on divorce and demographics by state in the US.
3. The journal Population, Space and Place has just published this paper: Spatial Variation in Divorce and Separation: Compositional or Contextual Effects? (by Hill Kulu). In fact, I can't recommend the paper. I've been recommended by my wife not to read it.
4. Recent marriage and divorce trends in the US (FlowingData)

"Old concepts for the city's future"

A pretty good video about São Luís* with a transportation proposal for the city (by Diogo Pires Ferreira). The video is based on his MA. Project called "The rescue of old concepts for the city's future".

*a city in the northeast of Brazil

The rescue of old concepts for the city's future from Cidade Ideia on Vimeo.

You can also watch a similar video for Barcelona. I thank Prof. Frederico de Holanda for the tip

Assorted links on Aging and Life Expectancy

• Aging population and Urban decline in Japan (The Economist)
  
  
• What predicts longevity? via Marginal Revolution
  
  
• The Danny Dorling’s Life Expectancy Calculator (via @worldmapper)
  
  
• The U-bend of life - Aging and happiness (The Economist)

Assorted Links - Booming Metropolis

• 12 Megacities That Will Boom In The Next 15 Year (by Business Insider)

#12 Rio de Janeiro

#5 Buenos Aires

#3 Mexico City

#2 São Paulo

#1 London

• The 16 Greatest Cities in Human History by population criteria only (by Business Insider) - via On Street Level

• Urban World: Mapping The Economic Power Of Cities - a not
  not so new
  report from the McKinsey Global Institute explores 600 urban centers over the next 15 years15 years. "[...] the center of gravity of the urban world will move south and, even more decisively, east (thanks Waldery Rodrigues Junior for the tip)

Global cities of the future: An interactive map (by Mckinsey)

• Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox write about The Census’ Fastest-Growing Cities Of The Decade (in the US) via New Geography
  
  
• School Troubles in a Booming Metropolis - It's a good post series connecting demographic, housing and land use contexts of troubled public schools in the City of Vancouver and its suburbs (Parts 1, 2 and 3.....) - via Planning Pool

Out for vacation & Biographical note

Dear readers, I will be out of office for about two weeks (for “honeymoon reasons”). So I scheduled a few posts to run in the meantime.

ps. I definitely do not intend to check my emails.

Why so few? Brazilian emigration

(Read below for further details)

I've read in the last few weeks an interesting tentative debate on "Why do Brazilians emigrate so infrequently?". The question was posed by Tyler Cowen and Leonardo Moansterio, who started this 'conversatition'. Over a hundred comments later, the main hypothesis summarized by Leo are:

• Many poor Brazilians cannot emigrate to developed countries because they are just too far away. Yes, distance and cost still play important roles as limiting factors.
  
  
• The Brazilian middle class usually doesn't speak english or have family/friend network abroad (This would be mainly because Brazil has been a closed economy for a long period of time)
  
  
• The relatively few high-educated Brazilians would have no strong reasons to emigrate permanently since they enjoy pretty good living standards.

Sounds plausible, right? now...., don't these tentative explanations sound familiar? Ravenstein (1885) and Everett S. Lee (1966) would probably say: "yessssss!"

By the way, the image above presents the international migration maps created by James Cheshire using R(!) and this database (I thank Jonathan Crowe for his post).

Assorted Links on Social Networks

• Facebook v. Twitter Demographics
  
  
• (update!) The placebook - worldwide Facebook user distribution mapped (via mpdt)
  
  
• Anatomy of twitter usage in the US
  
  
• Twitter's Most-Influential People: Brazilian Comedian #1
  
  
• Mapping all Tweets for a specific Keyword
  
  
  
  


• Twitter Data - Seeking Spatial Pattern (by Fabian Neuhaus)
  
  
• Tweetography of the cities around the world (by DigitalUrban and Steven Gray
  
  
• Mapping a Day in the Life of Twitter (by Chris McDowal via Floatingsheep)

Mapping a Day in the Life of Twitter from Chris McDowall on Vimeo.

"Brazil's Brain Strain"

this is a self-promotion post Our study on Skilled Labor Shortage in Brazil was reported by Knowledge Wharton this month. The full story here: Brazil's Brain Strain: Will a Skills Shortage Dampen Growth?

Talking about labor shortage, here is an interesting DER SPIEGEL article about skilled labor shortage in Eastern Germany (via Demography Matters).

I would also like to share this: The Chronicle of Higher Education created a very interesting interactive map on the the percentage of adults with college degrees over time in the USA. Check the map here. (Hat tip: Flowing Data)

1970 - % of adults with college degrees over time in the USA

2005-9 - % of adults with college degrees over time in the USA

It's Alive !!!

Talking about the Ghost City of Zhengzhou it seems it's alive! Read about it here. (Thanks to Leonardo Monasterio for the tip)

by the way, check this video: Time-lapse video of a 15-storey prefabricated hotel in Changsha.

ps. too lazy busy to blog these days. Have a nice weekend!