tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/population-data-32904/articlesPopulation data – The Conversation2024-01-08T13:35:39Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2176612024-01-08T13:35:39Z2024-01-08T13:35:39ZSouth Korea’s gender imbalance is bad news for men − outnumbering women, many face bleak marriage prospects<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563900/original/file-20231206-21-smw7n5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5573%2C3699&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In South Korea, there are nor enough young Korean women for young Korean men to marry.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/airport-business-man-royalty-free-image/166973187?phrase=south+korea+men+together&searchscope=image%2Cfilm&adppopup=true">RUNSTUDIO/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Korea’s bachelor time bomb is about to really go off. Following a historic 30-year-long imbalance in the male-to-female sex ratio at birth, young men far outnumber young women in the country. As a result, some 700,000 to 800,000 “extra” South Korean boys born since the mid-1980s may not be able to find South Korean girls to marry.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=jAfhO2YAAAAJ&hl=en">demographer</a> who over the past four decades has conducted extensive research on East Asian populations, I know that this increased number of South Korean boys will have huge impacts throughout South Korean society. Coincidentally, similar trends are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17450128.2011.630428">playing out in China</a>, Taiwan and India. </p>
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<h2>The reasons</h2>
<p>In most countries, more boys are born than girls – around 105 to 107 boys per 100 girls. That sex ratio at birth (SRB) is a near constant. The gender imbalance is likely an evolutionary adaptation to the biological fact that females live longer than males. At every year of life, men have higher death rates than women. Hence an SRB of between 105 and 107 boys <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/population-and-society/5D47EB8139ED72FD59F7379F7D41B4FB">allows for there to be roughly equal numbers of men and women </a> when the groups reach childbearing ages.</p>
<p>The SRB in the United States in 1950 was 105 and was still 105 in 2021; in fact, it has been stable in the U.S. for as long as SRB data has been gathered. In contrast, in South Korea the SRB was at the normal range from 1950 to around 1980, but increased to 110 in 1985 and to 115 in 1990.</p>
<p>After fluctuating a bit at elevated levels through the 1990s and early 2000s, it returned to the biologically normal range by 2010. In 2022, South Korea’s SRB was 105 – well within the normal level. But by then, the seeds for today’s imbalance of marriage-age South Koreans was set.</p>
<h2>A preference for sons</h2>
<p>There are several reasons why South Korea’s SRB was out of balance for 30 years.</p>
<p>South Korea experienced a rapid fertility decline in a 20- to 30-year period beginning in the 1960s. From six children per woman in 1960, fertility fell to four children in 1972, then to two children in 1984. By 2022, South Korea’s fertility rate had dropped to 0.82 – <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-korea-has-the-lowest-fertility-rate-in-the-world-and-that-doesnt-bode-well-for-its-economy-207107">the lowest fertility rate in the world</a> and far below the rate of 2.1 needed to replace the population.</p>
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<p>Yet, South Korea’s long-held <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2584733">cultural preference for sons</a> did not shift as quickly as childbearing declined. Having at least one son was a strong desire influencing fertility preferences in South Korea, especially up through the early years of the 21st century. </p>
<p>And the declining fertility rate posed a problem. When women have many children, the probability that at least one will be a boy is high. With only two children, the probability that neither will be a son is around 25%, and when women have only one child, it is less than 50%.</p>
<p>In order to ensure that families would continue to have boys, many South Koreans turned to readily available techniques to identify the gender of the fetus, such as screening in the early stages of pregnancy. Abortion, which is legal and socially acceptable in South Korea, was then often used to allow families to select the sex of their child. </p>
<h2>Sex by the numbers</h2>
<p>In South Korea, beginning in around 1980 and lasting up to around 2010 or so, many more extra boys were born than girls. When these extra boys reach adulthood and start looking for South Korean girls to marry, many will be unsuccessful.</p>
<p>The extra boys born in the 1980s and 1990s are now of marriage age, and many will be looking to marry and start a family. Many more will be reaching marriage age in the next two decades.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man kisses pregnant wife's belly." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563902/original/file-20231206-21-k1wz8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563902/original/file-20231206-21-k1wz8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563902/original/file-20231206-21-k1wz8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563902/original/file-20231206-21-k1wz8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563902/original/file-20231206-21-k1wz8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563902/original/file-20231206-21-k1wz8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563902/original/file-20231206-21-k1wz8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A deeply rooted cultural preference for sons was still influential in South Korea up through the early years of this century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/asian-man-kissing-pregnant-wifes-belly-royalty-free-image/174522589?phrase=south+korea+abortion&searchscope=image%2Cfilm&adppopup=true">Greg Samborski via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>I have calculated that owing to the unbalanced SRBs in South Korea between 1980 and 2010, approximately 700,000 to 800,000 extra boys were born.</p>
<p>Already this is having an effect in a society where over the centuries virtually everyone was expected to marry, and where marriage was nearly universal. Recent <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/south-koreans-losing-interest-in-marriage-report-finds-630642">research by Statistics Korea</a> showed that in 2023, over 36% of South Koreans between the ages of 19 and 34 intended to get married; this is a decline from over 56% in 2012.</p>
<h2>Foreign brides and ‘bachelor ghettos’</h2>
<p>The immigration of foreign-born women might help address the imbalance. Research by demographers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X18756640">Guy Abel and Nayoung Heo</a> has shown that financial assistance from the South Korean government is already supporting the immigration to South Korea of Korean women from northeastern China and of foreign women from some less wealthy countries, such as Vietnam, the Philippines and some Eastern European countries. </p>
<p>If the extra bachelors do not marry immigrant brides, they will have no alternative but to develop their own lives and livelihoods. Some might settle in “bachelor ghettos” in Seoul and in South Korea’s other big cities of Busan and Daegu, where commercial sex outlets are more prevalent. Such “ghettos” have already been <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2005/7/20/gender-imbalance-threatens-china">observed in other Asian cities</a> where men outnumber women, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in China.</p>
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<img alt="Bridegroom flashes victory sign." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563903/original/file-20231206-27-z2krp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563903/original/file-20231206-27-z2krp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563903/original/file-20231206-27-z2krp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563903/original/file-20231206-27-z2krp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563903/original/file-20231206-27-z2krp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563903/original/file-20231206-27-z2krp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563903/original/file-20231206-27-z2krp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">While the desire for sons has been relaxed, the social issues, especially regarding the marriage market, remain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/bridegroom-showing-victory-sign-royalty-free-image/903472740?phrase=south+korea+wedding&searchscope=image%2Cfilm&adppopup=true">RUNSTUDIO/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The consequences for South Korean society of the higher than biologically normal SRBs is a problem of the country’s own making. South Korea’s high fertility of the mid-20th century was holding the country back economically. Its program to bring down a fertility rate of nearly six children per woman was hugely successful. But its very success has been problematic. </p>
<p>The speed of South Korea’s fertility transition meant that the evolution to a more modern familial normative structure – that is, with about two children per family and with less preference given to boys – lagged behind. Today, the SRB imbalances appear to be <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38362474">a thing of the past</a>. Women in South Korea have greater access to education and employment, and there is less pressure for men to be sole wage earners. Together with the South Korean government’s efforts to reduce sex selection beginning in the late 1980s, the premium for boys over girls has dropped. </p>
<p>Yet despite the relaxed desire for sons, long-term social issues related to gender imbalance, especially regarding the marriage market, will remain in South Korea for decades to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217661/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dudley L. Poston Jr. does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Following a 30-year boy-to-girl birth rate imbalance, up to 800,000 ‘extra’ men born since the mid-1980s will be unable to find a South Korean woman to marry. That has big demographic consequences.Dudley L. Poston Jr., Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2011472023-04-18T12:43:34Z2023-04-18T12:43:34ZIf 1% of COVID-19 cases result in death, does that mean you have a 1% chance of dying if you catch it? A mathematician explains the difference between a population statistic and your personal risk<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521327/original/file-20230417-22-5x3idt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2078%2C1440&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The risk of dying from COVID-19 varies from person to person.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/covid-19-statistics-graph-royalty-free-image/1347040093">Jasmin Merdan/Moment via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As of April 2023, <a href="https://covid19.who.int/">about 1% of people</a> who contracted COVID-19 ended up dying. Does that mean you have a 1% chance of dying from COVID-19? </p>
<p>That 1% is what epidemiologists call the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/foodnet/reports/data/case-fatality.html">case fatality rate</a>, calculated by dividing the number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths by the number of confirmed cases. The case fatality rate is a <a href="https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Statistic.html">statistic</a>, or something that is calculated from a data set. Specifically, it is a type of statistic called a <a href="https://mathworld.wolfram.com/SampleProportion.html">sample proportion</a>, which measures the proportion of data that satisfies some criteria – in this case, the proportion of COVID-19 cases that ended with death.</p>
<p>The goal of calculating a statistic like case fatality rate is normally to estimate an unknown proportion. In this case, if every person in the world were infected with COVID-19, what proportion would die? However, some people also use this statistic as a guide to estimate personal risk as well.</p>
<p>It is natural to think of such a statistic as a <a href="https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Probability.html">probability</a>. For example, popular statements that you are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2018.1530662">more likely to get struck by lightning</a> than die in a terrorist attack, or <a href="https://www.cleveland19.com/story/38100144/how-likely-are-you-to-die-on-a-plane-these-statistics-may-ease-your-fears/">die driving to work</a> than get killed in a plane crash, are based on statistics. But is it accurate to take these statements literally?</p>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qPNQSR5AWokC&hl=en">mathematician who studies probability theory</a>. During the pandemic, I watched health statistics become a national conversation. The public was inundated with ever-changing data as research unfolded in real time, calling attention to specific risk factors such as preexisting conditions or age. However, using these statistics to accurately determine your own personal risk is <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-impossible-to-determine-your-personal-covid-19-risks-and-frustrating-to-try-but-you-can-still-take-action-182287">nearly impossible</a> since it varies so much from person to person and depends on intricate physical and biological processes. </p>
<h2>The mathematics of probability</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/probability-theory">probability theory</a>, a process is considered random if it has an unpredictable outcome. This unpredictability could simply be due to difficulty in getting the necessary information to accurately predict the outcome. Random processes have observable events that can each be assigned a probability, or the tendency for that process to give that particular result.</p>
<p>A typical example of a random process is flipping a coin. A coin flip has two possible outcomes, each assigned a probability of 50%. Even though most people might think of this process as random, knowing the precise force applied to the coin can allow an observer to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYnJv68T3MM">predict the outcome</a>. But a coin flip is still considered random since measuring this force is not practical in real-life settings. A slight change can result in a different outcome for the coin flip.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AYnJv68T3MM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">You could predict the outcome of a coin toss if you had the right information.</span></figcaption>
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<p>A common way to think about the probability of heads being 50% is that, when a coin is flipped several times, you would expect 50% of those flips to be heads. For a large number of flips, in fact, very close to 50% of the flips will be heads. A mathematical theorem called the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/law-of-large-numbers">law of large numbers</a> guarantees this, stating that running proportion of outcomes will get closer and closer to the actual probability when the process is repeated many times. The more you flip the coin, the running percentage of flips that are heads will get closer and closer to 50%, essentially with certainty. This depends on each repeated coin flip happening in essentially identical conditions, though. </p>
<p>The 1% case fatality rate of COVID-19 can be thought of as the running percentage of COVID-19 cases that have resulted in death. It doesn’t represent the true average probability of death, though, since the virus, and the global population’s immunity and behavior, have changed so much over time. The conditions are not constant. </p>
<p>Only if the virus stopped evolving, everyone’s immunity and risk of death were identical and unchanging over time, and there were always people available to become infected, then, by the law of large numbers, would the case fatality rate get closer to the true average probability of death over time.</p>
<h2>A 1% chance of dying?</h2>
<p>The biological process of a disease leading to death is complex and uncertain. It is unpredictable and <a href="https://theconversation.com/cancer-evolution-is-mathematical-how-random-processes-and-epigenetics-can-explain-why-tumor-cells-shape-shift-metastasize-and-resist-treatments-199398">therefore random</a>. Each person has a real physical risk of dying from COVID-19, though this risk varies over time and place and between individuals. So, at best, 1% could be the average probability of death within the population.</p>
<p>Health risks vary among demographic groups, too. For example, elderly individuals have a much <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/30/what-explains-coronavirus-lethality-for-elderly/">higher risk of death</a> than younger individuals. Tracking COVID-19 infections and how they end for a large number of people that are demographically similar to you would give a better estimate of personal risk. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521375/original/file-20230417-974-45tk2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Pedestrian crosses street in front of cars" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521375/original/file-20230417-974-45tk2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521375/original/file-20230417-974-45tk2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521375/original/file-20230417-974-45tk2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521375/original/file-20230417-974-45tk2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521375/original/file-20230417-974-45tk2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521375/original/file-20230417-974-45tk2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521375/original/file-20230417-974-45tk2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">You have a much smaller chance of dying from a car accident if you aren’t near any roads or cars.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/crossing-in-moab-royalty-free-image/1177654681">georgeclerk/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Case fatality rate is a probability, but only when you look at the specific data set it was directly calculated from. If you were to write the outcome of every COVID-19 case in that data set on a strip of paper and randomly select one from a hat, you have a 1% chance of selecting a case that ended in death. Doing this only for cases from a particular group, such as a group of older adults with a higher risk or young children with a lower risk, would cause the percentage to be higher or lower. This is why 1% may not be a great estimate of personal risk for every person across all demographic groups. </p>
<p>We can apply this logic to car accidents. The chance of getting into a car crash on a 1,000-mile road trip is about <a href="https://www.news9.com/story/5e6fca6cf86011d4820c3f2d/what-are-your-chances-of-getting-into-a-car-accident">1 in 366</a>. But if you are never anywhere near roads or cars, then you would have a 0% chance. This is really a probability only in the sense of drawing names from a hat. It also applies unevenly across the population – say, due to differences in driving behavior and local road conditions.</p>
<p>Although a population statistic is not the same thing as a probability, it might be a good estimate of it. But only if everyone in the population is demographically similar enough so that the statistic doesn’t change much when calculated for different subgroups.</p>
<p>The next time you’re confronted with such a population statistic, recognize what it actually is: It’s just the percent of a particular population that satisfies some criteria. Chances are, you’re not average for that population. Your own personal probability could be higher or lower.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201147/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Stover does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s not entirely accurate to say that you’re more likely to die in a car accident than in a plane crash. Chances are, you’re not the average person.Joseph Stover, Associate Professor of Mathematics, Gonzaga UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1968712023-02-15T13:23:22Z2023-02-15T13:23:22ZHow records of life’s milestones help solve cold cases, pinpoint health risks and allocate public resources<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510099/original/file-20230214-2190-iexpcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2117%2C1412&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Civil registries in the U.S. are spread across different local jurisdictions.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/several-certificate-of-vital-records-for-birth-royalty-free-image/1197564062">eric1513/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After 65 years, Philadelphia police announced in December 2022 that they had identified the remains of <a href="https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/investigators/after-65-years-philadelphia-police-identify-the-boy-in-the-box/3445387/">Joseph Augustus Zarelli</a>, a 4-year-old boy who was murdered in 1957. Because no one had ever come forward to reliably identify Joseph, he became “<a href="https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=194953">America’s Unknown Child</a>,” a moniker that captured the tragic anonymity of his early death.</p>
<p>Recent advances in DNA analysis and forensic genealogy <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/boy-in-box-joseph-zarelli/">provided the needed breakthrough</a> to build a genetic profile that connected the boy to surviving members of his mother’s family. But linking that genetic profile to Joseph’s identity required finding his name, a piece of information stored alongside his mother’s on his nearly <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/joseph-zarelli-boy-in-the-box-dna-genealogy-cold-case-20221216.html">70-year-old birth record</a> in the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s vital records system. </p>
<p>While the revolutionary science of genetic genealogy has received <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/boy-in-the-box-philadelphia-murder-mystery-dna-explainer/">well-earned recognition</a> for its contribution to solving this long-standing mystery, the integral role of the more staid vital records system has mostly gone unnoticed. </p>
<p>Vital records are the stalwart administrative backdrop to life’s milestone events: birth, adoption, marriage, divorce and death. When a child is born in the U.S., the parents and hospital staff complete and sign a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/birth11-03final-acc.pdf">certificate of live birth</a> that includes nearly 60 questions about the parents, the pregnancy and the newborn. A local registrar issues a formal birth certificate upon receiving the record as proof of a live birth.</p>
<p>Other vital events follow a similar process. Collectively, the U.S. vital records system comprises <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK219884/">records of hundreds of millions of events</a> dating back to the beginning of the 20th century.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=J2RmiawAAAAJ">family demographer</a>, I use information from these vital records to understand how childbirth, marriage and divorce are changing in the United States over time. The scope and quality of these records reflect remarkable administrative coordination from the local to the national level, but examples from other countries illustrate how much more the records could yet tell us. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E087KJy5f64?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">While DNA evidence was instrumental to identify “America’s Unknown Child,” vital records also played an important role.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Vital records mark unique events</h2>
<p>Originally, vital records were intended to publicly register events in order to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK219870/">legally recognize</a> the status of the people involved. The two people named on a valid marriage certificate, for example, share the legal protections and obligations of marriage until death or divorce. But over time, vital records have also come to serve as proof of identity. For both purposes, the integrity of the vital records system is critical. </p>
<p>Practically speaking, the system requires a perfect symmetry between people and events. Every recorded event needs to be associated with a unique person or pair of people, in the case of marriage and divorce, and every person or pair needs to be associated with a unique recorded event. Because of this singularity, a <a href="https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/how-apply/citizenship-evidence.html">valid birth certificate</a> is required as proof of an individual’s unique identity to obtain a Social Security card, driver’s license or passport. </p>
<p>The uniqueness of each event also underlies <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/births.htm">how birth, marriage, divorce and death rates are calculated</a>. Double-counted events will artificially inflate these rates, while uncounted events will reduce them. Valid rates are important because governments and businesses rely on accurate measures of population change for <a href="https://ncvhs.hhs.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/NCVHS_Vital_Records_Uses_Costs_Feb_23_2018-1.pdf">planning and investment</a>. </p>
<h2>America’s local approach to vital records</h2>
<p>In the U.S., the vital records system isn’t a single entity. Rather, there is a collection of state and local vital records offices operating independently but in cooperation with the federal government. </p>
<p>Each U.S. state and territory, as well as New York City and Washington, D.C., is its own vital registration jurisdiction, amounting to <a href="https://www.naphsis.org/systems">57 areas in all</a>. And within each jurisdiction, local offices receive and process records and issue certificates. Nationally there are <a href="https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-07-99-00570.pdf">over 6,000 local registrar offices</a> issuing birth certificates in the city or county where a birth occurred. </p>
<p>In nearly all states, marriage licenses and divorce decrees are certified and filed at the courthouse in the county where the event happened. This local registration system explains why Nevada has the highest marriage rate in the nation: of the <a href="https://weddings.vegas/marriage-services/marriage-statistics/">over 77,000 marriage licenses issued</a> in 2021 in Clark County – home to Las Vegas, America’s wedding capital – more than 60,000 couples provided a home mailing address outside of Nevada.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510128/original/file-20230214-18-l8wspj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Marriage license of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, with Elvis' portrait printed in the center" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510128/original/file-20230214-18-l8wspj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510128/original/file-20230214-18-l8wspj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510128/original/file-20230214-18-l8wspj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510128/original/file-20230214-18-l8wspj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510128/original/file-20230214-18-l8wspj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510128/original/file-20230214-18-l8wspj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510128/original/file-20230214-18-l8wspj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Couples who flocked to get married in Las Vegas on 7/7/07 got a copy of Elvis and Priscilla Presley’s marriage license.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/detail-view-of-a-copy-of-elvis-and-priscilla-presleys-las-news-photo/75259026">Ethan Miller/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This highly decentralized approach has at least two significant implications. First, because different agencies are responsible for recording different events, there is no straightforward way to assemble an administrative profile for an individual over a lifetime. This challenge is further complicated when records are stored in different jurisdictions as people move and experience events in different places. Name changes – for example, through marriage – and inconsistencies in spellings, dates or other details also potentially impede record matching.</p>
<p>Second, in the absence of a single national repository for vital records, it takes substantial coordination to produce national statistics about vital events. Currently, U.S. jurisdictions send individual-level birth and death records to the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/index.htm">National Center for Health Statistics</a> annually, and these records provide the basis for national birth and death statistics overall, including demographic characteristics like age, sex, race and ethnicity. This coordination is costly, time-consuming and often delayed. </p>
<p>In part because of the administrative burden, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage-divorce.htm">states stopped sending</a> detailed individual-level marriage and divorce records to the National Center for Health Statistics in 1995, and now provide only annual counts of these events. As a result, the only accessible way to examine national demographic patterns in marriage or divorce is through surveys, which are subject to nonresponse and reporting errors.</p>
<h2>Centralized approaches to vital recordkeeping</h2>
<p>In contrast to America’s decentralized system, <a href="https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/sources/popreg/popregmethods.htm">many countries in Northern Europe</a> have centralized and integrated the collection and maintenance of administrative records related not only to vital events but also to circumstances like change in residence, employment and health care. This approach ensures that residents are <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/Children/BirthRegistration/SwedenPopulationRegistration.pdf">continuously registered</a> to receive mail, vote, pay taxes, enroll in school and receive benefits such as housing subsidies at the correct address. It also means that public agencies have full information about their population to inform planning and budgeting.</p>
<p>A centralized system also facilitates rapid turnaround of population statistics. At peak periods during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, the U.S. <a href="https://covidtracking.com/analysis-updates/how-lagging-death-counts-muddied-our-view-of-the-pandemic">lagged behind many other countries</a> in estimating national death rates as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention awaited reported counts from public health offices in individual states overwhelmed by the pace and volume of deaths. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510118/original/file-20230214-28-1q5c7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Close-up of infant's footprints on birth certificate" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510118/original/file-20230214-28-1q5c7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510118/original/file-20230214-28-1q5c7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510118/original/file-20230214-28-1q5c7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510118/original/file-20230214-28-1q5c7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510118/original/file-20230214-28-1q5c7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510118/original/file-20230214-28-1q5c7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510118/original/file-20230214-28-1q5c7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vital records like birth certificates document your singularity as an individual.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/infants-footprints-on-birth-certificate-royalty-free-image/79250940">Tetra images/Getty Images Plus</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Vital records integrated with population register data also allow
social scientists, epidemiologists and other researchers to use deidentified linked records to study how <a href="https://ncrr.au.dk/danish-registers">early life conditions shape an individual’s life over time</a>. Using linked records from the Netherlands, for example, researchers have demonstrated that children who were in utero <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09603123.2021.1888894">during the 1944 Dutch famine</a> were more likely to have health problems throughout their lives than those born earlier or later.</p>
<p>The U.S. has made some progress toward developing a more centralized and integrated vital records system. A <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/linked-birth.htm">national file linking births to infant deaths</a> has helped scientists study how risk factors like preterm birth and low birth weight contribute to infant mortality. And public health and medical research studies can obtain cause of death information for participants in the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/ndi/index.htm">National Death Index</a>, a compilation over 100 million death records since 1979. </p>
<p>But further progress is unlikely to happen any time soon. The current system, while cumbersome and incomplete, is well established and reliable. And at a time when the majority of Americans <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/06/06/americans-views-of-government-decades-of-distrust-enduring-support-for-its-role/">lack trust in government</a>, there is little political will or public enthusiasm for a change. </p>
<p>For Joseph Zarelli, the durability of the local vital records system in Philadelphia was enough to answer a question that went unanswered for 65 years: A certificate of live birth registered in 1953 reconnected America’s Unknown Child to his name.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196871/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paula Fomby receives funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. </span></em></p>Vital records document the birth, death, marriage and divorce of every individual. A more centralized system in the US could help public health researchers better study pandemics and disease.Paula Fomby, Professor of Sociology and Research Associate in Population Studies, University of PennsylvaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1920332022-10-06T13:57:45Z2022-10-06T13:57:45ZAusterity led to twice as many excess UK deaths as previously thought – here’s what that means for future cuts<p>Cuts to public services and living standards across Britain from 2010 contributed to 335,000 excess deaths – twice as many as previously thought, according to new research. These austerity measures were introduced by the coalition government elected into office that year, partly in response to the banking crash of 2008.</p>
<p>Previous estimates had suggested that <a href="https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/7/11/e017722">152,000</a> people died prematurely between 2015 and 2019 due to <a href="https://theconversation.com/austerity-was-necessary-in-2010-but-we-dont-need-much-more-37939">austerity</a>. The <a href="https://jech.bmj.com/content/jech/early/2022/09/26/jech-2022-219645.full.pdf">new study</a>, conducted by researchers at the University of Glasgow and the Glasgow Centre for Population Health and published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, suggests this was an underestimate and also suggests that austerity had a growing effect over time. </p>
<p>These findings are troubling for several reasons. They suggest that men were much more affected than <a href="https://www.dannydorling.org/?page_id=3970">we first thought</a>. Furthermore, the UK government now plans to embark on a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/04/liz-truss-kwasi-kwarteng-chancellor-u-turn-tax-cuts-public-services-benefits">new round</a> of very large public spending cuts. Against this backdrop, these new numbers of excess deaths linked to a previous period of stringent public spending cuts <a href="https://conservativehome.com/2022/10/03/our-survey-over-two-in-five-party-members-want-spending-cuts-as-well-as-tax-cuts-not-more-borrowing/">can give us an idea</a> of what might lie ahead this time round too.</p>
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<p>There were actual <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bmb/article/133/1/4/5812717">overall falls</a> in UK life expectancy between 2014 and 2018, with large falls for particular groups such as the poorest tenth of the population, although the health of people living in the best-off areas continued to improve. Previous <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/recent-trends-in-mortality-in-england-review-and-data-packs">suggestions</a> that flu or particularly cold winters might have been key reasons don’t stand up to scrutiny, given that, during this period, there was neither an unusual flu outbreak nor any notably cold winter.</p>
<p>Before this new study, some disputed the idea that austerity could be blamed for the increase in deaths by pointing out that most of those who had died prematurely were old and so had benefited from the <a href="https://www.unbiased.co.uk/life/pensions-retirement/what-is-the-triple-lock-pension-and-how-does-it-affect-me">“triple lock”</a> of the UK state pension. </p>
<p>This safeguarding mechanism was introduced in 2010 to ensure that pensions would rise by the highest of inflation, earnings growth, or 2.5% a year. In theory this meant that pensioners – the over-66s – were sheltered from the effects of austerity. Sadly, that was not true. </p>
<p>Between 2010 and 2020 the average UK pensioner saw their real-terms weekly income (after housing costs) rise by only £12, to £331 a week. That represents a meagre 3.8% rise <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/pensioners-incomes-series-financial-year-2019-to-2020/pensioners-incomes-series-financial-year-2019-to-2020">over the whole decade</a>, which works out to £1.71 extra per day. This in no way compensates for rising fuel and other costs that <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/state-pensioners-set-to-be-left-with-just-11-a-day-from-april-as-energy-bills-soar-12684106">especially hurt</a> poorer pensioners. </p>
<p>The overall rise in weekly income was this small because other state benefits that pensioners received, and relied upon to ensure they could cope, were reduced in real terms. For example the proportion of pensioners receiving disability payments <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/pensioners-incomes-series-financial-year-2019-to-2020/pensioners-incomes-series-financial-year-2019-to-2020#sources-of-pensioner-incomes">fell from 23% to 19%</a> between 2010 and 2020. </p>
<p>Poorer pensioners and those in most need were also most harmed by cuts to state services. They lost their adult social worker and carer visits, local government help, and so much else that existed in 2010 – but was largely gone by 2019.</p>
<p>It is now becoming clear that far more people died prematurely due to the direct and indirect effects of austerity and government policy than we had at first believed to be the case. In international comparisons, only in the UK and US were the cuts as bad and <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k2562">their impacts on health and wellbeing</a> so sustained. </p>
<p>Government policy in the US <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/26/social-security-what-a-new-plan-in-congress-would-mean-for-benefits.html">has changed</a> since the election of Joe Biden and his taking office in January 2021. The UK, by contrast, has moved in the opposite direction. </p>
<p>Data reporter John Burn-Murdoch <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d5f1d564-8c08-4711-b11d-9c6c7759f2b8">recently argued</a> that, in adopting what might well be “the most extreme economic position of any major party in the developed world”, Liz Truss’s Conservative government has “become unmoored from the British people.” </p>
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<p>More people in Britain died due to austerity in the five years before the pandemic, than died from COVID-19 in the first three years of the pandemic. The effects of austerity continued after the pandemic hit, but initially became harder to discern. </p>
<p>However, in August 2022 the Financial Times <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/f36c5daa-9c14-4a92-9136-19b26508b9d2">published</a> estimates suggesting a large proportion of recent non-COVID-related deaths could be ascribed to just one aspect of austerity: waiting over 12 hours to be seen in accident and emergency departments.</p>
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<p>The pandemic has not gone away. Cases are <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19latestinsights/infections">rising again</a>. So too are austerity-related deaths. </p>
<p>Most worrying is the coming winter. The last time the UK suffered a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/14/house-freezing-life-blackouts-1970s-britain">similar energy crisis</a> was during Edward Heath’s term of office (1970-1974). That was also the last time a prime minster in Britain came into office upon winning a general election and left it on losing one. </p>
<p>Today, despite all the deaths from austerity and the pandemic, the UK has a far <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/ageing/bulletins/estimatesoftheveryoldincludingcentenarians/2002to2020">larger elderly and frail population</a> than it did in the early 1970s. That decade was characterised by much greater social solidarity and income and wealth inequalities were at an <a href="https://www.dannydorling.org/books/onepercent/Material_files/Media/Figure0-1/Figure0-1.jpg">all-time low</a>. Life expectancy never fell or even slowed in its rise, <a href="https://themanc.com/news/significant-risk-of-uk-gas-shortages-this-winter-regulator-warns/">despite rising heating costs and power cuts</a>. </p>
<p>The situation we face now is more akin the 1930s. Then, we were <a href="https://www.dannydorling.org/books/newsocialatlasofbritain/">as unequal as today</a>. Mortality rates were very high in poorer areas. Most people were poor. There were few average areas. And the very wealthy were protected by their wealth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192033/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Danny Dorling does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>More people died from the austerity in the five years before the pandemic than have died from COVID since.Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1846252022-08-10T12:18:22Z2022-08-10T12:18:22ZOld age isn’t a modern phenomenon – many people lived long enough to grow old in the olden days, too<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478361/original/file-20220809-16-3s77rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=668%2C129%2C5728%2C2901&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If you made it past early childhood, your chances got better to see your golden years.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/midwife-bathing-newborn-after-birth-in-royalty-free-illustration/1039652044">Grafissimo/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every year I ask the college students in the course I teach about the <a href="https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=tmg">14th-century Black Death</a> to imagine they are farmers or nuns or nobles in the Middle Ages. What would their lives have been like in the face of this terrifying disease that killed millions of people in just a few years?</p>
<p>Setting aside how they envision what it would be like to confront the plague, these undergrads often figure that during the medieval period they would already be considered middle-aged or elderly at the age of 20. Rather than being in the prime of life, they think they’d soon be decrepit and dead.</p>
<p>They’re reflecting a common misperception that long life spans in humans are very recent, and that no one in the past lived much beyond their 30s.</p>
<p>But that’s just not true. <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5mhMQ-8AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I am a bioarchaeologist</a>, which means that I <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23322">study human skeletons excavated from archaeological sites</a> to understand what life was like in the past. I’m especially interested in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23317">demography</a> – mortality (deaths), fertility (births) and migration – and how it was linked with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0705460105">health conditions and diseases</a> such as the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0096513">Black Death</a> hundreds or thousands of years ago. There’s physical evidence that plenty of people in the past lived long lives – just as long as some people do today.</p>
<h2>Bones record the length of a life</h2>
<p>One of the first steps in research about demography in the past is to estimate how old people were when they died. Bioarchaeologists do this using information about how your bones and teeth change as you get older.</p>
<p>For example, I look for changes to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forsciint.2011.11.031">joints in the pelvis</a> that are common at older ages. Observations of these joints in people today whose ages we know allow us to estimate ages for people from archaeological sites with joints that look similar.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478359/original/file-20220809-16-1w3he4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="jawbone with teeth, a tooth, and a microscopy view of layers within a tooth's cementum" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478359/original/file-20220809-16-1w3he4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478359/original/file-20220809-16-1w3he4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478359/original/file-20220809-16-1w3he4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478359/original/file-20220809-16-1w3he4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478359/original/file-20220809-16-1w3he4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478359/original/file-20220809-16-1w3he4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478359/original/file-20220809-16-1w3he4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A researcher can count the layers within a tooth that were added over time to determine how old a person lived to be.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cementochronology.tif">Benoitbertrand1974/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another way to estimate age is to use a microscope to count the yearly additions of a mineralized tissue called cementum on teeth. It’s similar to counting a tree’s rings to see how many years it lived. Using approaches like these, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0096513">many</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpp.2015.05.001">studies</a> have documented the existence of people who lived long lives in the past.</p>
<p>For example, by examining skeletal remains, anthropologist <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/Meggan-Bullock/36970527">Meggan Bullock</a> and colleagues found that in the city of Cholula, Mexico, between 900 and 1531, most people who <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.22329">made it to adulthood lived past the age of 50</a>.</p>
<p>And of course there are many examples from historical records of people who lived very <a href="https://www.medievalists.net/2022/05/most-important-people-middle-ages/">long lives in the past</a>. For example, the sixth-century Roman Emperor Justinian I <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/article/782/justinians-plague-541-542-ce/">reportedly died at the age of 83</a>.</p>
<p>Analysis of the tooth development of an ancient anatomically modern <em>Homo sapiens</em> individual from Morocco suggests that our species has experienced <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0700747104">long life spans for at least the past 160,000 years</a>.</p>
<h2>Clearing up a math misunderstanding</h2>
<p>Given physical and historical evidence that many people did live long lives in the past, why does the misperception that everyone was dead by the age of 30 or 40 persist? It stems from confusion about the difference between individual life spans and life expectancy.</p>
<p><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy-how-is-it-calculated-and-how-should-it-be-interpreted">Life expectancy</a> is the average number of years of life remaining for people of a particular age. For example, <a href="https://jech.bmj.com/content/55/1/38">life expectancy at birth (age 0)</a> is the average length of life for newborns. Life expectancy at age 25 is how much longer people live on average given they’ve survived to age 25.</p>
<p>In medieval England, life expectancy at birth for boys born to families that owned land was a mere <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyi211">31.3 years</a>. However, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08898480902790387">life expectancy at age 25</a> for landowners in medieval England was 25.7. This means that people in that era who celebrated their 25th birthday could expect to live until they were 50.7, on average – 25.7 more years. While 50 might not seem old by today’s standards, remember that this is an average, so many people would have lived much longer, into their 70s, 80s and even older.</p>
<p>Life expectancy is a population-level statistic that reflects the conditions and experiences of a huge variety of people with very different health conditions and behaviors, some who die at very young ages, some who live to be over 100 years old, and lots whose life spans fall somewhere in between. Life expectancy is not a promise (or a threat!) about the life span of any single person.</p>
<p>What some people don’t realize is that low life expectancy at birth for any population usually reflects very high rates of <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/infantmortality.htm">infant mortality</a>. That’s a measure of deaths in the first year of life. Given that life expectancies reflect averages for a population, a high number of deaths at very young ages will skew calculations of life expectancy at birth toward younger ages. But typically, many people in those populations who make it past the vulnerable infant and early childhood years can expect to live relatively long lives.</p>
<p>Advances in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262802">modern sanitation</a> – which reduce the spread of diarrheal diseases that are a major killer of infants – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1413559111">and vaccinations</a> can greatly increase life expectancies.</p>
<p>Consider the effect of infant mortality on overall age patterns in two contemporary populations with dramatically different life expectancies at birth.</p>
<p><iframe id="aP2wK" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/aP2wK/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/afghanistan/">Afghanistan, life expectancy at birth</a> is low, at just over 53 years, and infant mortality is high, at almost 105 deaths for every 1,000 children born.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/singapore/#people-and-society">Singapore, life expectancy at birth</a> is much higher, at over 86 years, and infant mortality is very low – fewer than two infants die for every 1,000 who are born. In both countries, people do survive to very old ages. But in Afghanistan, because so many more people die at very young ages, proportionally fewer people survive to old age. </p>
<h2>Living a long life has long been possible</h2>
<p>It’s incorrect to view long lives as a remarkable and unique characteristic of the “modern” era.</p>
<p>Knowing that people often did have long lives in the past might help you feel more connected with the past. For example, you can imagine multigenerational households and gatherings, with grandparents in Neolithic China or Medieval England bouncing their grandchildren on their knees and telling them stories about their own childhoods decades before. You might have more in common with people who lived long ago than you had realized.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184625/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sharon DeWitte receives funding from the National Science Foundation.</span></em></p>Nasty, brutish – but not necessarily short. Here’s how archaeologists know plenty of people didn’t die young.Sharon DeWitte, Professor of Anthropology, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1777812022-03-08T14:49:18Z2022-03-08T14:49:18ZNigeria’s 2022 census is overdue but preparation is in doubt<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449550/original/file-20220302-15-e96v70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nigeria last conducted a census in 2006.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/year-old-anthony-odili-gives-his-finger-print-after-census-news-photo/57144951?adppopup=true">Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>As Nigeria’s <a href="https://nationalpopulation.gov.ng/">National Population Commission</a> prepares for a national census scheduled <a href="https://www.vanguardngr.com/2022/01/npc-ready-to-conduct-first-digital-population-census-in-nigeria-npc-boss/">for May 2022</a> – the first since 2006 – The Conversation Africa’s Wale Fatade asked demographer and social statistician Akanni Akinyemi what a census entails and how ready the country is for the exercise.</em> </p>
<h2>What is a census and why is it important for a country?</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=2082#:%7E:text=A%20population%20census%20is%20the,delimited%20part%20of%20a%20country.">population census</a> is the process of collecting, compiling, evaluating, analysing, publishing and disseminating demographic characteristics of a country at a specified time.</p>
<p>It is best conducted every 10 years to reflect the population dynamics. It should be able to show changes in fertility, mortality, migration and the labour force. The socioeconomic situation must be captured and it should give the age and sex structure of the population. </p>
<p>Census data should provide reliable information on the population size at national, sub-national and lower administrative levels. </p>
<p>This is critical information for planning social, economic and infrastructural development, budgeting and monitoring government performance. </p>
<p>A major strength of a population census is the ability to provide information at the lower administrative levels. For instance, health indicators are best monitored at these levels. Interventions during outbreaks of disease require reliable estimates of local populations. </p>
<p>Census information is also the bedrock of other surveys. The <a href="https://www.dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR359/FR359.pdf">Demographic and Health Surveys</a>, <a href="http://ghdx.healthdata.org/record/nigeria-performance-monitoring-and-accountability-2020-survey-round-4-2017">Performance Monitoring for Action</a>, <a href="https://www.unicef.org/nigeria/sites/unicef.org.nigeria/files/2018-09/Nigeria-MICS-2016-17.pdf">Multiple Indicator Cluster surveys</a>, <a href="https://dhsprogram.com/methodology/survey/survey-display-576.cfm">Malaria Indicator Surveys</a> and many others derive their sampling from the census. </p>
<h2>How is a census normally conducted?</h2>
<p>There are three parts: pre-census planning, census, and post-enumeration surveys. Before the census, the public is made aware, geographical enumeration areas are demarcated and maps are procured. The logistics of conducting a census in Nigeria are enormous. The census activities can only begin after the presidential assent and a dedicated budget line. The 2022 budget <a href="https://www.dataphyte.com/latest-reports/governance/nigeria-gears-for-2022-population-and-housing-census-approves-n177-billion-budget/">approved</a> N177.33 billion (about US$425 million) for this year’s census. </p>
<p>Ideally, a census questionnaire and method is developed and validated. Census questionnaires do change from time to time. For example, the 2006 census collected information on age, sex, occupation, literacy and employment. It also asked about housing, access to water, electricity and other household amenities. It did not collect information on fertility, mortality, migration and disability. Nothing was asked about religion and ethnicity. </p>
<p>The post-enumeration survey is a critical aspect of quality assurance and control. However, there are other issues around the political and legal framework as provided in the constitution. This is to ensure its acceptability, eventual publication and official gazette. The figures then become official. </p>
<h2>How did Nigeria conduct its past censuses?</h2>
<p>The census has always been <a href="https://theconversation.com/nigerias-census-has-always-been-tricky-why-this-must-change-150391">problematic in Nigeria</a>. The 1962, 1963 and 1973 censuses were <a href="https://nationalpopulation.gov.ng/about-us/history-of-population-censuses-in-nigeria/">bedevilled with controversies</a>. They were mostly about deliberate manipulation of census figures at sub-national levels. The 1973 census <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1974/07/17/archives/nigerian-census-figures-stir-a-dispute-along-ethnic-lines.html">provoked debate</a> along ethnic lines. In 2006, the Lagos State government <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/nigeria-lagos-idUKL0674057420070206">rejected the figures</a> and ran a <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2007/02/population-nigeria-we-want-recount/">parallel</a> census. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.prb.org/resources/objections-surface-over-nigerian-census-results/">2006 census</a> was the last one, so Nigeria is overdue for another. The political interference was enormous and hampered the scientific processes. Important information was not collected on fertility, mortality, migration and disability. </p>
<p>In 2006 there was too much political interest in the composition of the population commission board, with 38 members. These people are not professionals in population or statistics but appointed mostly for political reasons. This put a lot of stress on the census activities. The 2006 census was unable to fulfil one of its critical mandates: providing data below local government levels.</p>
<p>Comparing the 2006 Nigeria census with other African countries like <a href="https://www.iaos-isi.org/images/IAOS2017-19/2016Conference/P1B/Awatif_Musa_paper.pdf">Sudan’s 2008 census</a> shows that political challenges should not be an impediment. The planning, conduct, analysis and quality assurance was adequate.</p>
<h2>Census figures are usually disputed in Nigeria. Why, and what should be done?</h2>
<p>The way resources are shared in Nigeria’s political system puts unnecessary pressure on the census. It encourages competitive manoeuvring and manipulative tendencies at all levels. The 2006 post-enumeration survey was poorly planned and poorly implemented. Census data were not released to researchers for further analysis and scrutiny. This makes it difficult to use the 2006 census as a basis for the 2022 one. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://nationalpopulation.gov.ng/">census coordinating commission</a> is responsible for quality and credibility of the process at all stages. Unfortunately, the composition of the commission’s hierarchy is more about political gains than scientific merit. Ideally, an efficient statistical system should ensure there are other credible sources of data to validate or complement census data. However, there is a lack of commitment to ensuring the quality of other sources of data. </p>
<p>The commission should have a technical working group of experts sourced from professional demographers in academia and industry. </p>
<p>Processing and publishing of census information should adhere strictly to a timeline. The timely release of census data for research and academic purposes should be guaranteed. </p>
<h2>How ready is Nigeria for the census this year?</h2>
<p>The national census is a colossal, expensive and labour-intensive statistical operation that requires extensive planning. The success of a census depends on several factors. These include technical expertise, independence from political interference, excellent geo-referenced maps, huge human and financial resources and good timing. </p>
<p>Although some of the pre-census activities like the enumeration area demarcation have been well implemented, it is unrealistic to assume that everything will be ready. Recruitment and payment of staff were critical issues in the 2006 census. </p>
<p>Year 2023 is an election year with many political activities and this might affect the census slated for 2022. Nigeria’s security challenges and the economy are factors to be considered too. Then there’s the unpredictable dimension of COVID-19. </p>
<p>The level of public and professional awareness of the census is also very low. The Population Commission’s <a href="https://nationalpopulation.gov.ng/">website</a> has no information on milestones and preparedness. Census is a huge scientific responsibility that requires a high level of preparedness, transparency and quality assurance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177781/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Akanni Ibukun Akinyemi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Census is a huge scientific responsibility that requires a high level of preparedness, transparency and quality assurance.Akanni Ibukun Akinyemi, Professor, Obafemi Awolowo UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1753852022-02-25T17:27:04Z2022-02-25T17:27:04ZTo engage LGBTQ+ people in data collection, we need to look at its harmful history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446999/original/file-20220217-23-whsjbt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=100%2C62%2C4951%2C3212&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/paper-doll-people-holding-hands-448484386">STILLFX / Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the 1950s, the UK government formed a committee to investigate fears of a homosexual “problem” in Britain. This was partly sparked by a series of scandals, including the exposure of a Soviet spy ring of homosexual and bisexual men at the heart of major cultural and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35360172">political institutions</a>, and the conviction of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/obituaries/alan-turing-overlooked.html">mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing</a> for gross indecency. </p>
<p>The Wolfenden Committee <a href="https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1386377">published their findings</a> in 1957, recommending the decriminalisation of sex between men aged 21 and over. The committee also made a curious statement about the absence of relevant data:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So far as we have been able to discover, there is no precise information about the number of men in Great Britain who either have a homosexual disposition or engage in homosexual behaviour.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The history of data about LGBTQ+ people is troubled by gaps and absences. The national census, for example, only asked questions about sexual orientation and trans/gender identity <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/18/census-to-ask-about-sexual-orientation-for-the-first-time">for the first time</a> in 2021. Population data from the census is used to inform policies and make decisions about funding for services. Leaving out data about sexual orientation and trans/gender identity means that the specific needs and experiences of LGBTQ+ communities have been overlooked.</p>
<p>In the rare cases where data was collected about individuals who broke gender, sex and sexuality norms, it was often used to “prove” criminality, deviance or difference. For example, records detailing the names of men charged with <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59863140">crimes related to homosexual activity</a> or participants in studies of homosexuality, in which <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1136%2Fbmj.37984.442419.EE">same-sex attraction was understood as a mental illness</a>.</p>
<p>The damaging history of data is often left out of discussions about the importance of LGBTQ participation in major research exercises, such as the census and the UK government’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-lgbt-survey-summary-report">national LGBT survey</a>. </p>
<h2>Careful data collection</h2>
<p>Today’s relationship between data and LGBTQ+ communities is partly the product of a history where data functioned as a tool to stigmatise, pathologise and inflict harm.</p>
<p>Far more data about LGBTQ+ lives exists today than at the time of the Wolfenden Committee. This data can reveal the effects of discrimination on rules that shape everyday life, and expose differences for LGBTQ+ communities in everything from the use of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17450101.2021.1958249">public transport</a>, experiences of <a href="https://www.stonewall.org.uk/lgbt-britain-health">healthcare</a> to <a href="https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/guidance/equality-diversity-and-inclusion/creating-inclusive-environment/lesbian-gay-and-bisexual-people">educational attainment</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A stack of envelopes and brochures with census 2021 branding and the words 'your response is required by law.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446996/original/file-20220217-2552-c58vhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446996/original/file-20220217-2552-c58vhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446996/original/file-20220217-2552-c58vhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446996/original/file-20220217-2552-c58vhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446996/original/file-20220217-2552-c58vhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446996/original/file-20220217-2552-c58vhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446996/original/file-20220217-2552-c58vhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The UK census asked questions about sexual orientation and gender identity for the first time in 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/2021-united-kingdom-census-letters-reference-1931729267">mundissima / Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But there is no easy way out of the damage caused by the harmful history of data collection. LGBTQ+ communities are told, by those in positions of power, that to change the status quo we first need to gather evidence about the nature, size and scale of the problem before work can commence. But, considering data’s dark past, why should we participate?</p>
<p>In projects involving the collection of data about LGBTQ+ communities, I ask myself the following questions before I agree to share my data:</p>
<p><strong>What does the project aim to achieve?</strong> </p>
<p>The collection and analysis of data is not an objective in itself. What problem does the data specifically intend to address? It is also vital to assess whether the project creates more good than harm, and whether the potential benefits outweigh the potential dangers. </p>
<p><strong>Who will make decisions about the data?</strong> </p>
<p>LGBTQ+ people should make decisions about data that disproportionately affects their communities. Where this is not practical, or there is a risk of overburdening a small number of people, decision makers should be familiar with LGBTQ+ issues and people.</p>
<p><strong>Is more data required to solve the problem?</strong> </p>
<p>Do not assume the need for more data –- enough evidence of a problem might already exist to justify the need for action. Similarly, does the data present an authentic account of LGBTQ+ lives? This might be a matter of collection and analysis methods, such as multiple response options and the provision of open-text boxes, to produce a more meaningful reflection of lives and experiences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175385/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Guyan is employed on a project that receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. He sits on the board of the LGBTI charity the Equality Network.</span></em></p>Data collection has been used as a weapon against LGBTQ+ communities.Kevin Guyan, Research fellow, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1611692021-06-21T12:19:40Z2021-06-21T12:19:40ZThe dip in the US birthrate isn’t a crisis, but the fall in immigration may be<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407122/original/file-20210617-13-kyqlc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C14%2C4728%2C3687&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Reports of an American “baby bust” may be premature. But the drop in immigration puts the nation's demographic future at risk.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com">Ariel Skelly/DigitalVision via Getty</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in May 2021 that the nation’s total fertility rate had reached <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr012-508.pdf">1.64 children per woman in 2020</a>, dropping 4% from 2019, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-us-birth-rate-keeps-declining-4-questions-answered-128962">a record low</a> for the nation. </p>
<p>The news led to many <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/05/05/the-coming-covid-19-baby-bust-is-here/">stories</a> about a “<a href="https://time.com/5892749/covid-19-baby-bust">baby bust</a>” <a href="https://theweek.com/articles/982103/doomloop-falling-fertility-rate">harming the country</a>. The fear is that if the trend continues, the nation’s population may age and that will lead to difficulties in funding entitlements like Social Security and Medicaid for seniors in the future. </p>
<p>But as a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=QN9RQAYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">statistician and sociologist</a> who collaborates with <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4196216">the United Nations Population Division</a> to develop new statistical population forecasting methods, I’m not yet calling this a crisis. In fact, America’s 2020 birth rate is in line with trends going back over 40 years. Similar trends have been observed in most of the U.S.’s peer countries.</p>
<p>The other reason this is not a crisis, at least not yet, is that America’s historically high immigration rates have put the country in a demographic sweet spot relative to other developed countries like Germany and Japan.</p>
<p>But that could change. A recent dramatic decline in immigration is now putting the country’s demographic advantage at risk. </p>
<p>Falling immigration may be America’s real demographic crisis, not the dip in birth rates.</p>
<h2>A predictable change</h2>
<p>Most countries have experienced part or all of a fertility transition. </p>
<p>Fertility transitions occur when fertility falls from a high level – typical of agricultural societies – to a low level, more common in industrialized countries. This transition is due to falling mortality, more education for women, the increasing cost of raising children and other reasons. </p>
<p>In 1800, American women on average gave birth to seven children. The fertility rate decreased steadily, falling to just 1.74 children per woman in 1976, marking the end of America’s fertility transition. This is the point after which fertility no longer declined systematically, but instead began to fluctuate.</p>
<p>Birth rates have slightly fluctuated up and down in the 45 years since, rising to 2.11 in 2007. This was unusually high for a country that has made its fertility transition, and put the U.S. birth rate briefly at the top of developed countries. </p>
<p>A decline soon followed. The U.S. birth rate dropped incrementally from 2007 to 2020, at an average rate of about 2% per year. 2020’s decline was in line with this, and indeed was <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN.">slower than some previous declines, such as the ones in 2009 and 2010</a>. It put the U.S. on par with its peer nations, below the U.K. and France, but above Canada and Germany. </p>
<p>Using the methods I’ve helped develop, in 2019 the U.N. forecast <a href="https://population.un.org/wpp">a continuing drop in the global birth rate</a> for the period from 2020 to 2025. This methodology also forecast that the overall world population <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/346/6206/234">will continue to rise over the 21st century</a>. </p>
<p>The ideal situation for a country is steady, manageable population growth, which tends to go in tandem with a dynamic labor market and adequate provision for seniors, through entitlement programs or care by younger family members. In contrast, countries with declining populations face labor shortages and squeezes on provisions for seniors. At the other extreme, countries with very fast population growth can face massive youth unemployment and other problems.</p>
<p>Many countries that are peers with the U.S. now face brutally sharp declines in the number of working-age people for every senior within the next 20 years. For example, by 2040, Germany and Japan will have fewer than two working-age adults for every retired adult. In China, the ratio will go down from 5.4 workers per aged adult now to 1.7 in the next 50 years. </p>
<p>By comparison, the worker-to-senior ratio in the U.S. will also decrease, but more slowly, from 3.5 in 2020 to 2.1 by 2070. By 2055, the U.S. will have more workers per retiree than even Brazil and China. </p>
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<p>Germany, Japan and other nations face population declines, with Japan’s population projected to go down by a massive 40% by the end of the century. In Nigeria, on the other hand, the population is projected to more than triple, to over 700 million, because of the currently high fertility rate and young population. </p>
<p>In contrast, the U.S. population is projected to increase by 31% over the next 50 years, which is both manageable and good for the economy. This is slower than the growth of recent decades, but much better than the declines faced by peer industrialized nations. </p>
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<p>The reason for this is immigration. The U.S. has had the most net immigration in the world for decades, and the projections are based on the assumption that this will continue. </p>
<p>Migrants tend to be young, and to work. They contribute to the economy and <a href="https://www.nap.edu/read/21746/chapter/8#260">bring dynamism</a> to the society, along with supporting existing retirees, reducing the burden on current workers.</p>
<p>However, this source of demographic strength is at risk. Net migration into the U.S. <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/12/net-international-migration-projected-to-fall-lowest-levels-this-decade.html">declined by 40% from 2015 to 2019</a>, likely at least in part because of unwelcoming government policies. </p>
<p>If this is not reversed, the country faces a demographic future more like that of Germany or even Japan, with a rapidly aging population and the economic and social problems that come with it. The <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/can-uncle-sam-boost-american-fertility">jury is out</a> on whether family-friendly social policies will have enough positive impact on fertility to compensate. </p>
<p>If U.S. net migration continues on its historical trend as forecast by the U.N., the U.S. population will continue to increase at a healthy pace for the rest of the century. In contrast, if U.S. net migration continues only at the much lower 2019 rate, population growth will grind almost to a halt by 2050, with about 60 million fewer people by 2100. The fall in migration would also accelerate the aging of the U.S. population, with 7% fewer workers per senior by 2060, leading to possible labor shortages and challenges in funding Social Security and Medicare. </p>
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<p>While the biggest stream of immigrants is from Latin America, that is likely to decrease in the future given the declining fertility rates and aging populations there. In the longer term, more immigrants are likely to come from sub-Saharan Africa, and it will be important for America’s demographic future to attract, welcome and retain them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161169/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrian Raftery receives funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). </span></em></p>Immigration has historically offset America’s low fertility rate, but the recent dramatic drop in immigration threatens that trend.Adrian Raftery, Boeing International Professor of Statistics and Sociology, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1573372021-03-18T14:29:59Z2021-03-18T14:29:59ZCensus 2021 will reveal how a year of lockdowns and furlough has transformed the UK<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390136/original/file-20210317-23-1239by8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=29%2C5%2C3956%2C2982&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 2021 census will help show the changes wrought by a year of COVID-19.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/aerial-view-traditional-housing-estate-england-1044441571">K303/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many people may feel unsure as to whether the English, Welsh and Northern Irish census of 2021 should be going ahead, given that it’s occurring during a pandemic when many aspects of our lives are far from normal. The census has actually <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53444651">been postponed by a year</a> in Scotland due to these concerns. </p>
<p>Census timing has appeared unfortunate before. The 2001 census took place during the peak of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/feb/21/foot-and-mouth-20-years-on-what-an-animal-virus-epidemic-taught-uk-science">foot and mouth disease</a> outbreak, amid concerns that census officials might spread the disease between farms. </p>
<p>Because most people will fill in their 2021 census form <a href="https://census.gov.uk/help/get-an-access-code-or-paper-census">online</a>, disease transmission is less of a concern this year. But there’s another criticism levelled at censuses: that they only ever deliver a snapshot of a population at a specific time, no matter how unusual or temporary the circumstances within a household may be.</p>
<p>There are worries that the 2021 census will capture a particularly distorted snapshot of a country transformed by the pandemic. It’ll capture young adults temporarily ensconced in parents’ homes, thousands of mainland Europeans who had planned to leave but are temporarily trapped in the UK by lockdown rules, and millions of furloughed workers counted as employed despite the real possibility that they’re soon to lose their jobs. </p>
<p>However, there’s a <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/censustransformationprogramme/censusdesign/operationalplanningresponsetothecoronaviruscovid19forcensus2021englandandwales">strong argument</a> in favour of holding the census now – precisely because so much has changed. The 2021 census won’t just capture a unique time in our history; it’s also the best way to show which areas and demographics have been newly disadvantaged by the pandemic, helping direct public funds and services to where they’re needed the most.</p>
<h2>Why hold a census?</h2>
<p>Without the census, held every ten years in the UK, local government would know very little about the composition of the population it currently serves. Officials wouldn’t know which areas were falling behind others, which homes were lying empty, or which families were living in cramped and unsafe conditions.</p>
<p>Census data like these underpin the fair allocation of public finances, revealing the areas and even the postcodes most in need of support. Plus, the census saves the taxpayer money: even the crudest estimate of the value of the census shows that running one every ten years saves <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/2011census/2011censusbenefits/2011censusbenefitsevaluationreport">£500 million annually</a> in administrative costs.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/census-2021-why-its-important-to-take-part-and-what-happens-to-your-information-156684">Census 2021: why it's important to take part and what happens to your information</a>
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<p>Previous censuses have been instrumental in improving lives across the country. As Britain built back from 1950s austerity, an extra <a href="https://data.gov.uk/dataset/396b3c7f-0afd-4a10-b40e-8e4af3a8c616/1966-census-10-census-personal-data-for-england-wales">1966 census</a> was squeezed between those taken in 1961 and 1971 to help guide the urgent investments of the government of the day. </p>
<p>Censuses also expose hidden inequalities. <a href="https://census.ukdataservice.ac.uk/use-data/censuses/forms.aspx">The 2001 census</a> was the last to ask which floor of a block of flats families lived on, revealing that most children living <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/sep/25/communities.politics">above the fifth floor</a> in England weren’t white. That fact meant a great deal more after the 2017 Grenfell tragedy.</p>
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<img alt="A census 2021 form currounded by models of people, houses, and a magnifying glass" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390134/original/file-20210317-17-qspydb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390134/original/file-20210317-17-qspydb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390134/original/file-20210317-17-qspydb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390134/original/file-20210317-17-qspydb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390134/original/file-20210317-17-qspydb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390134/original/file-20210317-17-qspydb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390134/original/file-20210317-17-qspydb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Census 2021 comes at a unique time for the UK – which is what makes it so important.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-february-2021-leaflet-official-1923868256">Ink Drop/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>Census 2021</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/censustransformationprogramme/censusdesign/operationalplanningresponsetothecoronaviruscovid19forcensus2021englandandwales">2021 census</a> is not an ambitious census. The number of rooms (other than bedrooms) in a home is <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8531/">no longer asked</a>, as it has been since 1911 (when questions about being deaf and dumb, blind, a lunatic, or an imbecile were dropped). That means we’ll no longer know how overcrowded the worst-housed tenth of the population of England and Wales are when compared to the best-off tenth – who had <a href="http://www.dannydorling.org/books/peakinequality/figures/figure-372.html">five times as many</a> rooms per person in 2011.</p>
<p>The 2021 census will only ask one new question: whether someone has ever served in the UK armed forces. This could be useful in understanding the links between <a href="https://www.britishlegion.org.uk/docs/default-source/campaigns-policy-and-research/litrev_uk_vets_homelessness.pdf?sfvrsn=110aad9f_2">ex-service people and homelessness</a>. The only other change is that sexual orientation and gender identity have been assigned more categories.</p>
<p>But this census will nonetheless bestow much-needed clarity on a society buffeted by the pandemic. Uncertainty about how many people are <a href="https://ukandeu.ac.uk/labour-force-survey-the-mystery-of-the-shrinking-migrant-workforce/">actually living in the UK right now</a> – let alone where exactly they live – is higher this year than it has been for many decades. It’s thought that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/08/million-people-left-britain-pandemic-exodus-brexit">over a million people</a> left the country in 2020 who would not normally have left, but we don’t know how many really did and if they left for good. This has serious implications for the allocation of funding across regions.</p>
<p>More importantly still, the 2021 census will provide a clearer picture of the inequalities that have come to light since the beginning of the pandemic. The <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cocooning-elderly-suffer-mental-health-decline-in-pandemic-8fhbvckl8">isolation of the elderly</a>, the suffering in <a href="https://www.shu.ac.uk/news/all-articles/latest-news/covid-impact-on-industrial-towns">old industrial wards</a>, and the disproportionate impact of <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/892376/COVID_stakeholder_engagement_synthesis_beyond_the_data.pdf">COVID-19 on BAME communities</a> will all be better illustrated and contextualised by this census. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-is-hitting-bame-communities-hard-on-every-front-136327">Coronavirus is hitting BAME communities hard on every front</a>
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<p>In February 2020, just weeks before the start of the pandemic, the BBC ran a story suggesting that the 2021 census <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51468919">could be the last census</a>. In hindsight, that seems ludicrous: now more than ever, we need the census to tell us even the most basic of facts about our society. Perhaps the pandemic will bring us to our senses when it comes to the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13210080">value of a census</a>. </p>
<p>I’d argue we go even further, adding an extra <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/14/gvfgf">census in 2026</a> which will adequately reflect the damage done by the pandemic, and how equitable the UK’s recovery will look a half-decade hence. The pandemic has forced people online, making a largely online census, held <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/14/danny-dorling-emergency-census-2026-true-state-uk">every five years</a>, far more feasible and less expensive. Perhaps we should even start to ask <a href="http://www.dannydorling.org/wp-content/files/dannydorling_publication_id1651.pdf">household income</a> in our censuses, as they do in the US, to further enrich our data on inequality across the country.</p>
<p>Official statistics like the census are not just for governments but for all of us. Crucially, census data helps us to assess the performance of government. As the UK looks to “<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/build-back-better-our-plan-for-growth">build back better</a>” after the pandemic, we’ll be able to look to the 2021 census to judge whether new policies tackle inequalities in the regions that need the most help.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157337/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Danny Dorling does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Because of the pandemic, we know less about the shape and size of our society than we have for decades.Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1547242021-02-14T18:50:00Z2021-02-14T18:50:00ZHas COVID really caused an exodus from our cities? In fact, moving to the regions is nothing new<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383707/original/file-20210211-17-jczzwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C228%2C4697%2C3147&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/man-unpacking-moving-boxes-removal-truck-451241938">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Internal migration resulted in a net loss of 11,200 people from Australia’s capital cities in the September quarter of 2020, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/regional-internal-migration-estimates-provisional/latest-release">data</a> released this month. At the same time, some regional areas experienced significant <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-04/house-prices-rise-1pc-regional-beats-capital-cities/13029268#:%7E:text=Annual%20data%20by%20real%20estate,research%20director%20Tim%20Lawless%20said.">growth in house prices</a> as <a href="https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/property/2020/12/04/regional-australia-property-boom/">demand for properties</a> increased. So this has raised the questions: are we starting to see an <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-02/abs-data-confirms-city-exodus-during-covid/13112868">exodus from our cities</a>, and is this related to the COVID-19 pandemic? </p>
<p>To work out what is happening there are a few important things to consider. </p>
<h2>In Australia we move a lot</h2>
<p>The first thing to keep in mind is that Australia has one of the <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/2071.0%7E2016%7EMain%20Features%7EPopulation%20Shift:%20Understanding%20Internal%20Migration%20in%20Australia%7E69">most internally mobile populations</a> in the world. About 40% of the population change their addresses at least once within a five-year period. However, the level of internal migration within Australia has <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/2071.0%7E2016%7EMain%20Features%7EPopulation%20Shift:%20Understanding%20Internal%20Migration%20in%20Australia%7E69">fallen since the 1990s</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australians-are-moving-home-less-why-and-does-it-matter-133767">Australians are moving home less. Why? And does it matter?</a>
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<p>The greatest fall has been for long-distance moves between Australia cities and regions, which <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/migration-australia">declined by 25%</a> between 1991 and 2016. Moves between states and territories <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/migration-australia">fell by 16%</a> over this period. An increase or decrease in internal migration from year to year is not unusual. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383668/original/file-20210211-19-dvgm7d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="chart showing net internal migration figures from September quarter 2010 to September quarter 2020" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383668/original/file-20210211-19-dvgm7d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383668/original/file-20210211-19-dvgm7d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383668/original/file-20210211-19-dvgm7d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383668/original/file-20210211-19-dvgm7d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383668/original/file-20210211-19-dvgm7d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383668/original/file-20210211-19-dvgm7d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383668/original/file-20210211-19-dvgm7d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/regional-internal-migration-estimates-provisional/latest-release">Data: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Regional internal migration estimates</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<h2>Putting the numbers into context</h2>
<p>While the recent loss of 11,200 people from Australia’s capital cities is the largest on record, it’s not a significant proportion of the population. Australia’s population has grown and so we expect to see the number of internal migrants to grow too. </p>
<p>The net loss of 11,200 people from capital cities is only 0.06% of the <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/regional-population/2018-19">total population</a> – 17.2 million – living in these cities. This is comparable to recent years. </p>
<p>While net loss – those arriving less those departing – is interesting, it is also important to consider the actual numbers of people who are moving to or leaving capital cities. The growth in the net loss of population from capital cities in the September quarter was not the result of a city exodus. What happened in 2020 was that fewer people moved into capital cities. </p>
<p>Drilling down further behind the headline data, we find Brisbane, Perth and Darwin all had net population gains. Brisbane has gained residents through internal migration in <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/regional-internal-migration-estimates-provisional/sep-2020/3412055005DS0001_202003.xls">each quarter since 2014</a>.</p>
<p>The greatest contributor to the recent net quarterly loss of 11,200 was Sydney, with a net loss of 7,782 people. Melbourne was close behind with a net loss of 7,445. </p>
<p>While this might look alarming at first, Sydney and Melbourne are the largest population centres in Australia. And Sydney has recorded a net loss of population through internal migration <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/regional-internal-migration-estimates-provisional/sep-2020/3412055005DS0001_202003.xls">every quarter for the past two decades</a>. Melbourne recorded net losses until 2012 and then since 2017. </p>
<p>Sydney and Melbourne’s overall population continued to grow over this period due to international migration. Population churn is part of the rhythm of these global cities. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/regional-internal-migration-estimates-provisional/sep-2020/3412055005DS0001_202003.xls">data</a> also reveal that, on average, regional Australia has been gaining population for many years – decades actually. Moving to regional Australia is not new. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-the-new-seachangers-now-its-younger-australians-moving-out-of-the-big-cities-103762">Meet the new seachangers: now it's younger Australians moving out of the big cities</a>
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<p>The past year’s COVID-19 restrictions closed Australia’s borders to the previously <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/migration-australia/latest-release#net-overseas-migration">large numbers of international migrants</a>. Without these international migrants moving to capital cities, the long-term trend of people relocating to urban areas around major cities has become more apparent.</p>
<h2>Have the capital cities lost their appeal?</h2>
<p>Just considering the September 2020 quarter, <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/regional-internal-migration-estimates-provisional/latest-release">nearly 42,000 people</a> moved to capital cities. This is comparable to the March and June quarters of 2020. </p>
<p>This inflow is noteworthy. At a time when many capital cities had mobility restrictions related to COVID-19 in place, people were still moving to these cities. Australia’s capital cities <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/300000-more-people-living-capital-cities">have not lost their appeal</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383690/original/file-20210211-23-ncinci.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Table showing quarterly internal migration for greater capital cities in September 2019, June 2020 and September 2020" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383690/original/file-20210211-23-ncinci.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383690/original/file-20210211-23-ncinci.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=241&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383690/original/file-20210211-23-ncinci.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=241&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383690/original/file-20210211-23-ncinci.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=241&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383690/original/file-20210211-23-ncinci.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383690/original/file-20210211-23-ncinci.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383690/original/file-20210211-23-ncinci.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Click on table to enlarge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/regional-internal-migration-estimates-provisional/latest-release">Data: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Regional internal migration estimates Feb. 2021</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>There is a risk in interpreting net migration from capital cities as an indicator of decreasing satisfaction with city lifestyles or a growing desire for rural lifestyles. It masks the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BriefingBook43p/regionalpopulation">considerable variability</a> in the types of moves people are making, where they are going and why. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-in-lockdown-but-is-moving-to-the-country-right-for-you-148807">It seemed like a good idea in lockdown, but is moving to the country right for you?</a>
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<p>Outside of capital cities are a whole range of different community types. They range from expansive city areas such as the Gold Coast and Geelong through to tiny agricultural and fishing hamlets. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/regional-population/latest-release">fastest-growing areas outside capital cities</a> are those that offer sophisticated urban settings. They have diverse employment options and high-order social, education and healthcare infrastructure. So when people leave a capital city, more often than not <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/3218.0Feature%20Article12016-17?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3218.0&issue=2016-17&num=&view=">they are moving to a large city</a>. </p>
<h2>Will COVID-19 lead to growth in smaller centres?</h2>
<p>Australia’s overall population growth has <a href="https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/planning-for-australia%27s-future-population.pdf">promoted the growth of capital cities and larger regional cities</a>. Some smaller communities, particularly high-amenity coastal towns, have also experienced periods of sustained population growth.</p>
<p>Distributing this growth further inland to smaller towns and cities is both possible and plausible. </p>
<p>A major barrier to population growth in smaller rural communities is the lack of diverse local employment options. For those who have made the transition to <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-could-spark-a-revolution-in-working-from-home-are-we-ready-133070">working fully or partially online</a> as a result of COVID-19 restrictions, <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-urban-sprawl-while-jobs-cluster-working-from-home-will-reshape-the-nation-144409">moving further from their workplace more permanently</a> – and perhaps to the country – could be on the cards. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-urban-sprawl-while-jobs-cluster-working-from-home-will-reshape-the-nation-144409">More urban sprawl while jobs cluster: working from home will reshape the nation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>So is there a pandemic-related exodus?</h2>
<p>The COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting the way we live our lives but, no, there is not an exodus from Australia’s capital cities. For some, pandemic-related disruptions might have heightened their dissatisfaction with where they live. For others, working from home might have provided them with the opportunity to consider alternative living arrangements. </p>
<p>However, right now, given the data we have, it is unlikely that COVID-19 is driving a shift away from capital cities or city lifestyles.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154724/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Davies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The ‘exodus’ from capital cities amounts to 0.06% of their populations – similar to recent years – and people are still moving to the cities. What’s missing is growth driven by international migrants.Amanda Davies, Professor of Human Geography, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1533942021-02-09T16:22:31Z2021-02-09T16:22:31ZWill the COVID pandemic cause London’s population to decline?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381346/original/file-20210129-19-80nkkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C3483%2C2292&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/aerial-view-river-thames-part-central-574107499">heliray/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The purpose of a city is to allow people to live and work close together, so social distancing has the potential to threaten cities’ very existence. </p>
<p>A recent <a href="https://image.uk.info.pwc.com/lib/fe31117075640475701c74/m/3/ab9cf413-ac81-40eb-a803-84542c05e42c.pdf">report</a> by audit and consultancy firm PwC predicts that the impact of COVID-19 will lead <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jan/07/london-population-decline-first-time-since-1988-report-covid-home-working">London</a> to see its first population decline in decades. Is this set to be a blip, quickly reversed – or a turning point which will mark the start of long-term population decline in the city?</p>
<p>Steady population change is normally easy to forecast by projecting forward existing trends, but identifying turning points is much harder. However, we can gain insight by looking at past turning points in London’s population. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Time series graph showing total population for Greater London, and its sub-divisions into inner and outer London" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380342/original/file-20210124-23-a70ep4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380342/original/file-20210124-23-a70ep4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380342/original/file-20210124-23-a70ep4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380342/original/file-20210124-23-a70ep4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380342/original/file-20210124-23-a70ep4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380342/original/file-20210124-23-a70ep4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380342/original/file-20210124-23-a70ep4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Greater London population 1851-2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">1961-2019: Office of National Statistics mid-year population estimates; 1851-1951: calculations by author from GB Historical GIS</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The graph shows that from 1850 the population of Greater London grew steadily, before declining between 1951 and 1988. This was then followed by new expansion.</p>
<p>By 1900, inner London was almost completely built up, and improved public transport let people live further from work, so expansion moved outward. The population decline in the city after 1950 was the product of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1796533?seq=1">government policy</a>. The <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/green-belt">green belt</a> limited London’s sprawl, and bombed inner city areas were rebuilt at lower densities. Inner city residents moved to new and expanded towns built beyond the green belt.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Table showing percentage change in total population of local government wards in each ten-year period 1951 to 2011" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380341/original/file-20210124-13-1sjwvzo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380341/original/file-20210124-13-1sjwvzo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=235&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380341/original/file-20210124-13-1sjwvzo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=235&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380341/original/file-20210124-13-1sjwvzo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=235&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380341/original/file-20210124-13-1sjwvzo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=295&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380341/original/file-20210124-13-1sjwvzo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=295&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380341/original/file-20210124-13-1sjwvzo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=295&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Inter censal population change 1951-2011, by distance from central London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Calculations by author from 1961 census report and later Census Small Area Statistics.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This table shows the impact of these policies. Together with colleagues, I used detailed statistics from every census between 1951 and 2011 to estimate the populations of each local government ward, as defined in 2011. We then grouped the wards into rings by their distance from the centre of London, and calculated rates of change for each decade. The ring with fastest growth is shown in green, and the most rapid decline (or slowest growth) in blue.</p>
<p>In all decades from 1951 to 1991, the innermost ring, within five miles of Nelson’s Column, shrank fastest. The band between 15 and 20 miles out roughly corresponds to the green belt, and in the 1950s the next ring out, containing the original new towns, grew fastest. After this, the fastest growth took place far outside any definition of Greater London, but was still based on workers commuting into London or otherwise serving London’s economy.</p>
<p>The second turning point is emphatic: from 1991, the innermost ring went directly from decline to being the fastest growing part of the city. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, 1980s dock closures and manufacturing decline freed up large areas for new housing, often apartment complexes clustered around transport links. </p>
<p>Secondly, the deregulation of London’s financial markets in 1986 – known as the “<a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bigbang.asp">Big Bang</a>” – boosted London’s financial services, while pre-internet computer networks allowed London to dominate financial markets globally. This resulted in longer working hours, discouraging long commutes from outside the city. </p>
<p>More broadly, increased <a href="https://www.lse.ac.uk/geography-and-environment/research/lse-london/documents/Reports/2020-LSE-Density-Report-digital.pdf">population density</a> in inner London was a result of the rise of the “<a href="https://www.dezeen.com/2020/11/02/coronavirus-cities-affordable-creatives-richard-florida/">creative city</a>”. Cultural industries are hard to identify in employment statistics, but London is clearly a dominant world city not just in finance but in sectors such as fashion and video production. </p>
<p>These sectors do not need large or specialised factories, but do need easy interaction between many small firms, and a flexible, often freelance workforce – so they gravitated not to science parks but to old workshops in central districts like Soho and Shoreditch.</p>
<h2>The impact of lockdown</h2>
<p>The immediate consequences of the pandemic are clear: after a year confined to their homes, city dwellers are looking for more space. Upmarket estate agent <a href="https://www.knightfrank.co.uk/research/article/2020-12-29-country-house-price-growth-finishes-2020-on-a-high">Knight Frank</a> has described 2020 as “dominated by the escape to the country trend”. A particularly high proportion of London’s workers normally sit at computer screens, allowing for a rapid shift to home working. If any London residents have second homes in the country – something that does not show up in existing census data – they may have been spending more time there. </p>
<p>These trends are real, and maybe permanent. However, the counter-argument is that once social distancing ends, the gravitational pull of the city will reassert itself. Inner London’s post-1990 resurgence was driven by creative sectors that now appear well suited to home working, so we need to understand what more they need from a location than a computer and a network connection. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="View of street and shops" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381350/original/file-20210129-17-bhfbg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381350/original/file-20210129-17-bhfbg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381350/original/file-20210129-17-bhfbg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381350/original/file-20210129-17-bhfbg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381350/original/file-20210129-17-bhfbg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381350/original/file-20210129-17-bhfbg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381350/original/file-20210129-17-bhfbg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Creative industries have flocked to locations like Soho in central London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-may-15-2019-shopping-1525225043">JJFarq/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>London’s gravitational pull is partly lifestyle. A young and educated workforce prefers nightclubs and theatres to large gardens, so long as they are not closed. The ease of international travel from London – before quarantine – is also a draw. But for businesses, too, the higher costs of operating from a city are accompanied by real economic benefits. </p>
<p>Creativity is far harder in isolation: many of us are learning that we can write, compose or even perform from home, but this is not always enjoyable or inspiring. Sustaining creative industries needs cities. In financial services, traders can beat the financial markets only if they know something the other guy does not, so need access to to less formal information circuits – to gossip.</p>
<p>The networks that led to London’s dominance of financial services from the early 1990s promoted a division of labour around the globe, with routine back office work moving from towns like Worthing to locations such as India. However, the dealmakers, and elite workforces in many other globalised sectors, did not disperse – despite inner London’s higher costs.</p>
<p>As long as the pandemic is brought to an end, then, it is unlikely to lead to a turning point in London’s population. While the internet allows for remote working, the past 30 years has shown that the value of working in close proximity with others can outweigh this benefit.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153394/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Humphrey Southall has undertaken projects funded by the Greater London Authority, the European Union Regional Policy Directorate (DG6) and the Centre for Cities to redistrict historical census data so as to construct long-run time series, and this article draws on the results. The original construction of the historical GIS used for redistricting and the computerisatioon of historical census statistics were funded by the Aurelius Trist, the Big Lottery Fund, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Joint Information Systems Committee, the Leverhulme Trust, the Marc Fitch Fund, the Nuffield Foundation, the Population Investigation Committee and the Wellcome Trust. He is a member of the Labour Party. </span></em></p>Once the pandemic is over, London’s gravitational pull is likely to come back into play.Humphrey Southall, Professor of Historical Geography, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1503912020-12-09T13:27:27Z2020-12-09T13:27:27ZNigeria’s census has always been tricky: why this must change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372245/original/file-20201201-12-le5w0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nigeria's last census was conducted in 2006. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/census-counters-stops-by-a-house-21-march-2006-in-asaba-news-photo/57144970?adppopup=true">Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Demographic data are important for national development. <a href="https://www.academia.edu/10885778/Demographic_dynamics_and_development_in_Nigeria_Issues_and_perspectives">They are useful</a> in sectoral planning and should influence the direction of government priorities. </p>
<p>A youthful population like Nigeria requires accurate information on characteristics like the age and sex of the population and how they are distributed spatially. This is the basis of policy and planning for education, employment and health systems. </p>
<p>Demographic data usually come from four main sources: population censuses; specialised surveys (on health topics, for example); registration systems for vital events including births and deaths; and government’s administrative records. Census data provide the bedrock for other sources.</p>
<p>The quality and reliability of a nation’s demographic information is partly a reflection of the quality of the census. </p>
<p>All previous attempts at conducting population and housing censuses in Nigeria have been <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1221472/the-story-of-how-nigerias-census-figures-became-weaponized/">beset with challenges</a>. These have ranged from staffing and logistical shortages to undue political interference and manipulation. Controversies and disputes have followed. </p>
<p>President Muhammadu Buhari has now <a href="https://punchng.com/breaking-buhari-approves-n10bn-for-national-census/">approved N10 billion naira</a> (about $US26m) to prepare for a new census. The funding is for demarcating enumeration areas, with the demarcation scheduled to <a href="https://dailytrust.com/concerns-as-nigeria-sets-for-census-after-14-years">be completed in 2021</a>. It is therefore a good time to reflect on the past challenges in Nigeria so that the country can get it right this time. Population figures are the basis for distributing resources to sub-national governments. A consequence of an inaccurate census is that planning and programmes to use these resources aren’t based on evidence. </p>
<h2>Past censuses were problematic</h2>
<p>Ideally, a census should be done every 10 years, but it is difficult to sustain that in an economy like Nigeria’s. The timing requires political will and proclamation by the president. Constitutionally, it is conducted by the <a href="https://www.nationalpopulation.gov.ng/">National Population Commission</a>. </p>
<p>All previous censuses in Nigeria were conducted in an environment fraught with political interference. This was because there was an incentive to inflate population figures. As people became more aware of the importance of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233498381_Census_in_Nigeria_The_Politics_and_the_Imperative_of_Depoliticization">population size for political representation</a> in a federal system, the census became more problematic. There was also competition within states and among communities to inflate their population so as to get more government resources. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://libsysdigi.library.illinois.edu/ilharvest/Africana/Books2011-05/3064634/3064634_1911_southern_nigeria/3064634_1911_southern_nigeria_opt.pdf">first census was in 1911</a> and covered only a small part of the country. The first nation-wide census was <a href="https://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/divers14-07/23267.pdf">conducted in 1921</a>. It suffered from inadequate staffing and the public boycotted it because they thought it would lead to higher taxes. In Southern Nigeria, the preliminary figures <a href="https://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/divers14-07/23267.pdf">were adjusted upwards</a> before the result of 8.4 million was published. The published figure for Northern Nigeria was 10.4 million. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/africa/article/census-of-nigeria-1931/CF1B7683FC21A088D24C5D2BBC2E6EAD">1931 census</a> was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/159549?seq=1;%20https://libsysdigi.library.illinois.edu/ilharvest/Africana/Books2011-05/3064634/3064634_1931/3064634_1931_opt.pdf">marred</a> by tax riots and a locust invasion. The census of 1941 could not be conducted because of the Second World War. </p>
<p>Eventually, a census took place over 1952 and 1953 and returned a total of 30.4 million. This was taken as the benchmark for political representation in the country’s parliament in preparation for independence in 1960. The population of the Northern Region was 55.4% of the total, that of Eastern Nigeria 23.7% and that of the Western Region, including Lagos and the Mid-West, 20.9%. This gave Northern Nigeria 174 seats, Eastern Nigeria 73 and Western Nigeria (including Lagos and Mid-West) 65 seats in parliament before independence. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-08080-9_5">first post-independence</a> census was conducted in May 1962 by the Federal Census Office in the Ministry of Economic Development. It was better organised but the provisional figure of 45.1 million showed that the southern regions combined had a higher population than Northern Region. This was controversial particularly from political point of view.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://countrystudies.us/nigeria/35.htm#:%7E:text=The%20first%20attempt%2C%20in%20mid,of%20overcounting%20in%20many%20areas.&text=After%20the%20civil%20war%20of,the%20face%20of%20repeated%20controversy.">1962 census was cancelled</a>, and a recount was ordered in 1963. Its management was also removed from the Federal Office of Statistics, marking the beginning of direct political interference in the process. </p>
<p>A special Census Board was set up, census staff numbers increased, and more resources were provided. But at the end of the count, a population figure of <a href="https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/58376/Census-taking_in_Nigeria.pdf?sequence=1">55.7 million</a> was recorded, a difference of nearly 11 million. </p>
<p>This led to a slight redistribution of power in favour of Western Nigeria. Eastern Nigeria and the Mid-West lost five seats in parliament. </p>
<p>This reversal led to <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-08080-9_5">strident criticism</a> of the 1963 results. Politico-linguistic rivalry brewed until it exploded <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/civil-war-in-nigeria">in the civil war of 1967-70</a>, which devastated much of the South East and started military rule in Nigeria.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1974/05/12/archives/-73-census-puts-population-of-nigeria-over-79-million.html">1973 census</a> returned a total population of 79.8 million with the North making up 64.4% which was a subject of controversy. In 1989, the <a href="https://www.nationalpopulation.gov.ng/">National Population Commission</a> was created by military decree to organise the 1991 census in preparation for handover to a civilian regime. The military government announced that the 1991 census figures would not be used for the upcoming elections, thereby reducing the political tension and the usual incentive to inflate population figures. </p>
<p>The board of the commission consisted of seven professionals who did not belong to any political party. Each member was responsible for one census zone which consisted of a mix of states. This reduced the incentive to inflate figures. </p>
<p>For the first time, adequate maps were produced and used for the 250,000 enumeration areas. Instruments and processes were also tested in advance. </p>
<p>The 1991 census published a <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12290239/#:%7E:text=The%20UN%20in%201987%20estimated,should%20have%20exceeded%20120%20million.">total population of 88.5 million</a>, much lower than projections based on the inflated 1963 census. </p>
<p>The most recent census in Nigeria was conducted in 2006 and was plagued by political interference from design through to implementation. The population estimate was <a href="https://www.prb.org/objectionsovernigeriancensus/#:%7E:text=(April%202007)%20Provisional%20results%20of,total%20population%20was%20140%20million.">140 million people</a>. The results were criticised and subject to litigation. </p>
<h2>Next census: new approach</h2>
<p>Planning for the next census must address critical issues. One is the need to strengthen the scientific structure of the National Population Commission. It needs a technical committee of Nigerian experts from universities and research centres at home and in the diaspora. The good news is that enumeration areas and maps are being geo-referenced and digitalised to make them more accurate. </p>
<p>Quality needs to be assured and verified transparently at every stage of the census processes. One option is to stagger the census across geopolitical zones within a specified time frame. Another is to do a sample census. The government must be open to the best option that can give the most accurate information and value for money. The post-enumeration survey must also be well planned. This is the scientific exercise conducted on a sample of census enumeration areas to validate census figures and compute growth rates.</p>
<p>Champions at national and sub-national levels could help check against political and economic manoeuvring of the census. They could include population experts, traditional and religious leaders, and civil society organisations. </p>
<p>Communities must be engaged through entertainment and education. And international and local monitors should be involved at every stage to ensure transparency, accountability and quality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150391/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Akanni Ibukun Akinyemi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Planning for Nigeria’s next census scheduled for 2021 must address critical issues.Akanni Ibukun Akinyemi, Professor, Obafemi Awolowo UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1421372020-09-16T11:23:51Z2020-09-16T11:23:51ZHow a new way of parsing COVID-19 data began to show the breadth of health gaps between Blacks and whites<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357749/original/file-20200912-24-1w933ih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=671%2C0%2C5818%2C4310&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Breaking down COVID-19 data into demographic groups helps scientists learn more about the virus.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/doctor-consoling-sad-senior-male-patient-royalty-free-image/1136848442?adppopup=true">izusek via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Physicians and public health experts know that older adults are more <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/highrisk/65over.htm">susceptible to the flu</a> than those in other age groups. We also know the health of Black Americans is worse than that of almost all other groups for not only flu, but for chronic conditions and cancer. These are two examples of health disparities, or health gaps – when demographic groups show differences in disease severity. </p>
<p>As we analyze the latest data from the COVID-19 pandemic, a more complete picture on infections, hospitalizations and death rates has emerged, along with new conversations <a href="https://www.covid19conversations.org/webinars/equity">about health disparities</a>. The COVID data underscore what social scientists, epidemiologists and other public health researchers have long said: It is not enough to look at a lump sum of data about any health issue, including COVID-19, and think we have the full picture. </p>
<p>By disaggregating the data – that is, breaking the data down into subgroups, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/09/09/black-nursing-homes-coronavirus/">like age and race</a> – we can learn how to make the most of our limited resources. Do that, and we can better strive for a more equitable society and increased entry to a healthy lifestyle for all Americans.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.fsnhp.msstate.edu/associate.php?id=151">practitioner and scholar</a> at Mississippi State University (sometimes we call ourselves <a href="https://jphmpdirect.com/public-health-pracademics/">pracademics</a>), I am driven by compassion and science. Now, with the recent advent of faster and faster access to more and more data, collecting and analyzing disaggregated information – data about gender, ethnicity, disability and neighborhoods, along with age and race – <a href="https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2020/05/health-equity-principles-for-state-and-local-leaders-in-responding-to-reopening-and-recovering-from-covid-19.html">has become one of the biggest components</a> of public health practice. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Mississippi state senator Brice Wiggins studies the state's COVID-19 cases and deaths showing breakdowns by ethnicity and race." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358004/original/file-20200914-14-qaspre.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358004/original/file-20200914-14-qaspre.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358004/original/file-20200914-14-qaspre.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358004/original/file-20200914-14-qaspre.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358004/original/file-20200914-14-qaspre.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358004/original/file-20200914-14-qaspre.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358004/original/file-20200914-14-qaspre.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mississippi state Sen. Brice Wiggins studies a graph showing the state’s COVID-19 cases and deaths by race and ethnicity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/VirusOutbreakMississippi/86bb5a7dd2f64249a6e9bb3a26866855/photo?Query=Mississippi%20COVID-19&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=615&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Musings from Mississippi</h2>
<p>Early in the pandemic, as the virus reached Mississippi, its <a href="https://msdh.ms.gov/msdhsite/_static/14,0,420.html#Mississippi">state Department of Health</a> began reporting numbers each day. To be able to assess case and mortality rates, I linked data with the census reports of Mississippi’s population. </p>
<p>I quickly found this: The percentage of African Americans who got COVID-19 was higher than that for whites; the percentage of African Americans who died from it was also higher than that for whites. But among all people, whites were more likely to die from COVID-19 if they got it. </p>
<p>I was curious the rates would change direction between races. Because I was examining total population data – not data disaggregated by setting – I thought there might be something about a particular setting or subpopulation that was driving that odd finding. Maybe it was a specific part of the state or a certain sector of the workforce? Maybe it had something to do with long-term care facilities? That last question would be an important one. </p>
<p>After breaking down the data across settings, and looking at just the rates for people living in the community versus those living in a long-term care or nursing home facility, it all began to make sense. I found the unusual change in the data’s direction resulted from the long-term care population’s being overwhelmed with cases. In Mississippi, our long-term care residents are more likely to be white. The relationship between race and COVID-19 mortality is different between the community and long-term care facilities. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="In July, House Speaker Philip Gunn of Mississippi revealed he tested positive for COVID-19. At a drive-thru center at the state Capitol in Jackson, a medical team takes information from a person potentially affected." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358006/original/file-20200914-20-fnccu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358006/original/file-20200914-20-fnccu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358006/original/file-20200914-20-fnccu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358006/original/file-20200914-20-fnccu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358006/original/file-20200914-20-fnccu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358006/original/file-20200914-20-fnccu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358006/original/file-20200914-20-fnccu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In July, Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn confirmed he tested positive for COVID-19. At a drive-thru test center on state Capitol grounds in Jackson, a medical team takes information from a person potentially affected.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/VirusOutbreakMississippi/409f947fb1ab4079bc47f0a4c21cb21e/photo?Query=Mississippi%20COVID-19%20drive%20thru%20tests&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=9&currentItemNo=6">AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why this matters</h2>
<p>From a statistical perspective, disaggregation is important. It gives us the backing we need to demonstrate the complexity of the relationship between factors like race and COVID-19 infection and mortality rates.</p>
<p>The case in Mississippi tells us that if we don’t disaggregate the data, we would have an incorrect picture of what’s happening with COVID-19. We would have probably patted ourselves on the back for not having such bad racial disparities after all. But a deeper dive into the data shows that racial disparities persist. And when we look at long-term care facilities, we find problems of a different sort.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>My experience in exploring COVID-19 cases is specific to Mississippi. We need to replicate this nationally, and with other subpopulations, including K-12, college and university settings, residential care facilities and prisons. We must also bring representatives from these populations to the table and engage them in the decision-making process. Furthermore, <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200319.757883/full/?">the data</a> should drive our advocacy for resources at the local, state and federal levels. More than ever before, we must rely on science to guide us in responding to COVID-19 and future public health crises.</p>
<p>As society eventually recuperates from COVID-19, we must not lose sight of the lessons it has taught us. Our data must be granular enough so we can know how each subpopulation is handling not just COVID-19, but chronic disease, cancer, injuries and gun violence. Then, and only then, can we improve our decision-making on health issues and make sure access to public health services and clinical care is available for everyone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142137/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David R. Buys receives funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the United States Department of Agriculture.</span></em></p>Getting the real answers on health gaps requires a deep dive into the demographics.David R. Buys, State Health Specialist and Associate Professor, Mississippi State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1337672020-03-31T00:57:07Z2020-03-31T00:57:07ZAustralians are moving home less. Why? And does it matter?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323104/original/file-20200326-168876-1fdvjip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=159%2C0%2C2436%2C1510&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cute-kelpie-dog-sitting-cardboard-packing-1619474377">K.A.Willis/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australians are <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/2071.0%7E2016%7EMain%20Features%7EPopulation%20Shift:%20Understanding%20Internal%20Migration%20in%20Australia%7E69">among the most mobile populations</a> in the world. More than 40% of us change address every five years, about <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2015.00025.x">twice the global average</a>. Yet the level of internal migration – moving within Australia – has gone down over the past four decades. </p>
<p>The proportion of Australians changing state of residence <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/2071.0%7E2016%7EMain%20Features%7EPopulation%20Shift:%20Understanding%20Internal%20Migration%20in%20Australia%7E69">fell by 20%</a> between 1981 and 2016, particularly after 1991. Their movement between regions within states – between, say, Brisbane and Mackay – <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/2071.0%7E2016%7EMain%20Features%7EPopulation%20Shift:%20Understanding%20Internal%20Migration%20in%20Australia%7E69">dropped by a whopping 25%</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323130/original/file-20200326-168918-jmxrg6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323130/original/file-20200326-168918-jmxrg6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323130/original/file-20200326-168918-jmxrg6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323130/original/file-20200326-168918-jmxrg6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323130/original/file-20200326-168918-jmxrg6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323130/original/file-20200326-168918-jmxrg6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323130/original/file-20200326-168918-jmxrg6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323130/original/file-20200326-168918-jmxrg6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Data: ABS Census of Population and Housing, 1981-2016</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The decline in migration is a feature of a number of <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Internal-Migration-in-the-Developed-World-Are-we-becoming-less-mobile/Champion-Cooke-Shuttleworth/p/book/9781472478061">advanced economies</a>, including the United States. Policymakers have been concerned this trend heralds a less flexible economy where workers do not move to regions with jobs. If that’s the case, it could prolong recessions and reduce growth.</p>
<p>So why are Australians moving less? Several factors might help explain it.</p>
<h2>Australia is getting older</h2>
<p>Population ageing is one of the main explanations because older people move less than young people. It’s enough to account for 20-30% of the decline in internal migration in Australia. </p>
<p>However, the increase in the share of mobile groups – such as renters, tertiary-educated people and recently arrived immigrants – has <a href="https://qcpr.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/qcpr_working-paper_kalemba-et-al-2020.pdf">fully compensated</a> the downward effect of population ageing. This means the net effect on migration levels of changes in the composition of the Australian population is close to null.</p>
<p>So the decline is not the result of overall changes in population composition. It is the result of deeper behavioural changes. People in their 20s, 30s and 40s are simply moving less today than in the past.</p>
<h2>Working arrangements have changed</h2>
<p>Information and communication technology and the changes in working arrangements brought by the internet are often thought to have contributed to lower migration levels. But, the proportion of individuals who telework remains small. <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aude_Bernard/publication/339899498_Decline_in_internal_migration_levels_in_Australia_Compositional_or_behavioural_effect/links/5e6b3077a6fdccf321d93834/Decline-in-internal-migration-levels-in-Australia-Compositional-or-behavioural-effect.pdf">Only 5%</a> of the Australian workforce worked from home at the 2016 census. </p>
<p>Perhaps more significant is the increase in dual-income households. They now account for <a href="https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/3127664/HILDA-Statistical-Report-2019.pdf">two-thirds of couples</a> compared with 56% in 2001. Because these couples find it more challenging to jointly relocate than traditional male-breadwinner families, this shift <a href="https://qcpr.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/qcpr_working-paper_kalemba-et-al-2020.pdf">explains about 10%</a> of the decline in interstate migration in Australia.</p>
<p>Despite these transformations, the mix of reasons for moving hasn’t changed over the past 15 years. Australians still move mainly for family and work reasons.</p>
<p>So, what is going on?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323142/original/file-20200326-168889-xy3fj2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323142/original/file-20200326-168889-xy3fj2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323142/original/file-20200326-168889-xy3fj2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323142/original/file-20200326-168889-xy3fj2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323142/original/file-20200326-168889-xy3fj2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323142/original/file-20200326-168889-xy3fj2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323142/original/file-20200326-168889-xy3fj2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323142/original/file-20200326-168889-xy3fj2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Authors’ calculations using Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey data</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Place attachment plays a part</h2>
<p>In the United States, this downward trend has been linked to “<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/psp.670">rootedness</a>”, the idea that individuals have become more attached their families and communities and are therefore less inclined to relocate. </p>
<p>Such concepts are difficult to measure and quantify. Yet a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/psp.2225">2019 study</a> showed that Australians with strong place attachment and social networks are less likely to migrate, particularly over long distances. But it is not clear how place attachment has changed over time and whether it has contributed to the decline in internal migration.</p>
<h2>Young people are staying put</h2>
<p>We know young people are moving less than they used to. In 2017, <a href="https://theconversation.com/over-50-of-young-australian-adults-still-live-with-their-parents-and-the-numbers-are-climbing-faster-for-women-120587">56% of Australians below the age of 30</a> were still living at home compared with 47% in 2001. Explanations for this trend include increasing housing costs and delayed union formation.</p>
<p>The consequences not only bring down current migration levels but also in the future. This is because <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/psp.2286">migration is self-reinforcing</a>: having moved in the past increases the chances of moving again. So, young adults who are staying put now are less likely to move later because they have not been exposed early in life to the challenges of relocating.</p>
<p>This means the level of migration in Australia is likely to remain low, but this downward trend may level off as we have seen in the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437119316875">United States</a>.</p>
<h2>Is this new low a problem?</h2>
<p>There is no evidence Australians are less willing to relocate for their jobs, so this downward trend should not have major impacts on the economy. </p>
<p>What is more concerning is <a href="https://qcpr.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/qcpr_working-paper_kalemba-et-al-2020.pdf">some groups have been affected</a> more than others, particularly those in part-time work and in low-paid sectors such as retail and trade. These workers are less mobile than in the past and their share in the workforce has increased.</p>
<p>Individuals with limited resources face <a href="https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/38220">greater difficulties</a> in being mobile, particularly when faced with rising housing costs and stagnant wages. We need to ensure Australia does not evolve toward a two-tier migration system, in which some can afford to move and others are “trapped”. This could, in the long term, reinforce socio-economic inequalities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133767/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aude Bernard receives funding from the Australian Research Council </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sunganani V. Kalemba does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Long before coronavirus hit Australia we were moving less between states and regions. Some worry about economic impacts, but a greater concern is inequality if some people find themselves ‘trapped’.Aude Bernard, Lecturer, Queensland Centre for Population Research, The University of QueenslandSunganani V. Kalemba, PhD candidate, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1189882019-08-12T11:11:59Z2019-08-12T11:11:59ZWhy the 2020 census matters for rural Americans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284803/original/file-20190718-116547-1i8bl4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Families in rural areas are harder for the Census Bureau to reach.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/happy-fun-family-nature-concept-united-1417378946?src=nNTHMIMdwL1Oxh7reyTF8w-1-9&studio=1">Rafa artphoto/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As director of the University of Mississippi Center for Population Studies, I regularly talk to people about how they can use data to help their communities thrive.</p>
<p>The decennial census is particularly important – and the next one is less than a year away.</p>
<p>People living in rural and small town America in particular have much at stake in the 2020 census. Unfortunately, census participation tends to be lower in rural areas.</p>
<p>Our research network – including the State Data Center of Mississippi, Mississippi Kids Count Program and the Southern Rural Development Center – has been working to better understand potential barriers to census participation. </p>
<h2>Valuable data</h2>
<p>Legally mandated by the U.S. Constitution, <a href="https://www.census.gov/partners/2020.html">the census</a> is an effort to count all people living on American soil for the primary purpose of apportioning political representation in the federal government. Census data are also used for drawing political boundaries for local, state and federal elections.</p>
<p>Government agencies must use decennial census data, often coupled with data from the <a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs">American Community Survey</a>, to help determine government funding for <a href="https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/program-management/working-papers/Uses-of-Census-Bureau-Data-in-Federal-Funds-Distribution.pdf">rural development, infrastructure and health initiatives</a>. </p>
<p>Census counts are also used to determine <a href="https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/acs/acsgeo-1.pdf">what places are considered rural or urban</a> and where counties fall <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rural-classifications/">along the rural-urban continuum</a>. </p>
<p>Researchers focusing on rural America, <a href="https://socanth.olemiss.edu/john-green/">like myself</a>, are concerned with many issues that census data can help us to understand.</p>
<p>For instance, the rate of population loss in rural America has declined and even slightly reversed in recent years. However, there can be vast differences between regions. As noted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2019/february/rural-population-trends/">John Cromartie and Dennis Vilorio</a>, “People moving to rural areas tend to persistently favor more densely settled rural areas with attractive scenic qualities, or those near large cities. Fewer are moving to sparsely settled, less scenic, and more remote locations, which compounds economic development challenges in those areas.” </p>
<p>2020 census data will help to improve demographers’ calculations of similar statistics to show <a href="https://netmigration.wisc.edu/">rates and patterns of net migration</a>. This information can be used to help leaders better understand and plan for population shifts.</p>
<h2>Low rural turnout</h2>
<p>If many people don’t participate in the census, the data will be far less accurate. And rural people are less likely to take part.</p>
<p>In 2010, an average 73% of households <a href="https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2010/dec/2010-participation-rates.html">returned the mailed version of the form</a>. <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/rural-urban-continuum-codes/documentation/">My analysis of mail response rates by the rural-urban continuum codes</a> showed an average of 68% for non-metropolitan counties, compared with 75% for metropolitan counties. </p>
<p>Analysts have been trying to better understand <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfw040">why some populations are harder to count</a>. There are numerous barriers to participation in decennial censuses. Many people have limited knowledge about the census. Others distrust the government and are concerned about the confidentiality of their information. </p>
<p>Although rural America tends to do better on some indicators used to predict potential census participation, people who live in poverty and are isolated <a href="https://becountedmi2020.com/wp-content/uploads/2020-Census-Faces-Challenges-in-Rural-America.pdf">may be at a particular disadvantage</a>. </p>
<p>In 2020, for the first time, the census will offer an avenue for <a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/2020-census/planning-management/planning-docs/operational-plan.html">online participation</a>, with the hope this will make it easier for people to complete the questionnaire more efficiently. This is promising, but some rural places have <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/12/rural-and-lower-income-counties-lag-nation-internet-subscription.html">limited access to broadband internet service</a>.</p>
<h2>Encouraging participation</h2>
<p>Our research network cross-referenced <a href="https://www.censushardtocountmaps2020.us/">Census Bureau data</a> with data on family and poverty characteristics to identify communities we thought would be likely to have lower participation in 2020. </p>
<p>Identifying two rural places and one urban, we held workshops with local stakeholders, including teachers, nonprofit leaders and clergy. We discussed challenges and opportunities for participating in the 2020 census, messaging that would resonate in their communities, and strategies for further engagement. </p>
<iframe width="100%" height="500" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="" src="https://gis-portal.data.census.gov/arcgis/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=64f6a4d47e864b9699af6ce6338d49bd&extent=-16906650.4472%2C1569692.3102%2C-4852836.8348%2C7880333.3654%2C102100"></iframe>
<figure><figcaption>The Census Bureau assigns each area a ‘low response score,’ a predicted rate of how many people will not respond to the census.</figcaption></figure>
<p>People can promote participation in the 2020 census by discussing it with family members, neighbors, church members and work colleagues. <a href="https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/factsheets/2019/comm/2020-confidentiality-factsheet.pdf">Materials</a> <a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/2020-census/library/fact-sheets.html">available from the U.S. Census Bureau</a> can help. </p>
<p>We also emphasize that people can form or join <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/2020-complete-count-committees.html">Complete Count Committees</a> which promote an accurate count of the population in their communities. For example, participants might coordinate census promotion campaigns within churches, or develop community celebrations that feature the civic duty of census participation.</p>
<p>The 2020 census will be important for all Americans, but for those who live, work and care about rural communities and small towns, it will be critically important. I hope that Americans can work together to make sure that rural areas are accurately counted if they are to get their fair share. </p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118988/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>As Director of the University of Mississippi Center for Population Studies, John Green oversees the State Data Center of Mississippi, a collaborative partnership connecting data users and the U.S. Census Bureau involving projects with government agencies, foundations, and nonprofit organizations concerned with the Decennial Census and other public data. These include the U.S. Census Bureau and organizations with support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and W.K. Kellogg Foundation.</span></em></p>People living in rural and small town America have much at stake in the 2020 census. But census participation tends to be lower in rural areas.John J. Green, Professor of Sociology, University of MississippiLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1212882019-08-07T13:55:05Z2019-08-07T13:55:05ZHow population data can help countries plan and tweak policy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286614/original/file-20190801-169696-2nvbgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Population data can be examined to make important decisions and plans.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Arthimedes/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Statistics South Africa, the country’s statistical service which gathers and analyses a range of data, recently released its <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?page_id=1856&PPN=P0302&SCH=7668">mid-year population estimates</a> for 2019. The data places the country’s <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0302/P03022019.pdf">estimated population at 58,78 million people</a>. But why is it important? The Conversation Africa’s Natasha Joseph asked demographer Nicole de Wet-Billings to explain.</em></p>
<p><strong>Why does population data matter? What is the value of knowing how many people there are in the country and who they are in terms of age and other metrics?</strong></p>
<p>Population data is essential for planning purposes. Any country needs to know the size and composition of its population – around age and sex structure, among other factors. Knowledge about distribution is important, too: where do people live and work? That helps to plan how many schools, clinics, hospitals and jobs a country needs.</p>
<p><strong>How does South Africa’s data collection compare to the rest of the continent? And how is the country doing in terms of managing and sharing this data for analysis and study?</strong></p>
<p>South Africa’s data collection is constantly improving. That’s especially true when it comes to metrics that weren’t collected or were distorted for political purposes during apartheid. Examples include data on race or population group.</p>
<p>Statistics SA also does a good job of making its data available for analysis and research. This is important since researchers, policymakers, planners and even politicians can access the same data and the data can be used to inform policies and programmes.</p>
<p><strong>One of the points the report raised was the increase in South Africa’s aged population – this group now makes up 9% of the population. What are the implications of this?</strong></p>
<p>It means that people are living longer – and this is a good thing. The fact that 9% of the population is older than 65 means that more people are surviving into old age and this speaks to the successes of various health-related initiatives, including <a href="https://africacheck.org/reports/yes-south-africa-has-the-worlds-largest-antiretroviral-therapy-programme/">the success</a> of antiretroviral treatment in the country.</p>
<p>However, it also means that the country will have to reconsider its services for the elderly to include more care for degenerative diseases. And, since the elderly do not work, it’ll be important to think more about their financial needs, too. For example, more people will be accessing pensions and there might be a need to increase pension amounts in the future. </p>
<p>Also since the elderly often live in households where other adults may be unemployed – given the country’s high joblessness rates – the government may also need to think about how those households can be helped when their elderly members stop working.</p>
<p><strong>There is also interesting data about internal migration patterns. What does this tell us, and how does it help with policy and planning?</strong></p>
<p>These show a lot more people moving to Gauteng, Western Cape and the North West provinces, which are all areas of high economic activity. So the flows need to be analysed in relation to employment, education and service delivery as possible reasons for the movement. </p>
<p>In addition, the current condition of services and infrastructure in these three provinces will need to be evaluated to make sure they can meet the needs of these additional people. </p>
<p><strong>Given all the data we have at hand, where is South Africa likely to be population-wise in the next decade? Do any trends stand out to you?</strong></p>
<p>South Africa’s fertility rates have remained consistent for a long period of time so I don’t think we will see any see monumental growth on this front. </p>
<p>But, with the strides being made in antiretroviral rollout and the increased awareness about <a href="https://theconversation.com/weighing-up-the-costs-of-treating-lifestyle-diseases-in-south-africa-110456">non-communicable diseases</a> such as cancers, diabetes and so on, we will see an increase in the proportion of elderly people in the population.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121288/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole De Wet receives funding from the South African National Research Foundation (NRF). </span></em></p>South Africa’s data collection is constantly improving. That’s especially true when it comes to metrics that weren’t collected or were distorted for political purposes during apartheid.Nicole De Wet- Billings, Senior Lecturer, Demography and Population Studies, Schools of Social Sciences and Public Health, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1037622018-10-15T19:02:16Z2018-10-15T19:02:16ZMeet the new seachangers: now it’s younger Australians moving out of the big cities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239705/original/file-20181008-72103-1mk5j0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many younger seachangers are moving to less populated places like Carlton Beach, Tasmania.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author's Photo</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>No longer pegged as one of the retirement villages of Australia, recent demographic data and interest in Tasmania suggest a change in the air. The <a href="https://coastalcouncils.org.au/portfolio/meeting-the-sea-change-challenge-second-report/">seachange phenomenon</a>, once linked to retirees, now involves younger groups, including young families. They are choosing lifestyle advantages associated with regional, coastal locations in a phenomenon that’s not isolated to Tasmania. </p>
<p>Certainly, places such as the Sunbelt Coast around Byron Bay in northern New South Wales have been similar to Tasmania in attracting baby-boomer retirees in search of a seachange. Our research, however, exposes some fundamental changes to this profile. The three largest age groups moving recently to these areas are all under 35. This raises the question: who are the seachangers really?</p>
<p>In addition to the population-related pressures of housing affordability and congestion, Australia is experiencing an ageing population and uneven distributions of people movements around the country. State and federal governments are talking about <a href="http://alantudge.com.au/Media/Speeches/tabid/72/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/994/language/en-US/Speech-THE-CONGESTION-CHALLENGE-MORE-INFRASTRUCTURE-AND-STRONGER-POPULATION-PLANNING-TO-GET-BETTER-CITIES.aspx">policies to redistribute people</a> away from <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3412.0Main%20Features92016-17?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3412.0&issue=2016-17&num=&view=">rapidly growing places</a> like Sydney and Melbourne towards places experiencing decline or stagnation like South Australia and, until recently, Tasmania. Despite recent announcements of a <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/entice-migrants-to-regions-rather-than-major-cities-tudge-says/news-story/21d6f01fb2595ab223dc71f4a72f0e78">redistribution strategy to ease big city congestion</a>, without a comprehensive population policy much of the political rhetoric has remained exactly that. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-doesnt-have-a-population-policy-why-78183">Australia doesn't have a population policy – why?</a>
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<p>Partly there is little understanding, beyond aggregate data, about how people are responding to population changes and deciding to move. What we do know is that people are moving in ways that our current assumptions about internal migration cannot adequately explain. </p>
<h2>Goodbye Sydney, hello Tassie</h2>
<p>In Tasmania, the reversal of interstate migration trends and the fastest population growth in almost a decade for the year to <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3412.0Main%20Features92016-17?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3412.0&issue=2016-17&num=&view=">March 2018</a> are getting <a href="https://www.domain.com.au/news/tassie-is-so-hot-right-now-interstate-migrants-head-to-hobart-as-temperatures-rise-20180925-h15s6u-766573/">media attention</a>. However, from a national perspective, the high level of migration out of Australia’s two biggest cities to coastal, regional locations suggests something else is at play. </p>
<p>Sydney is also receiving considerable <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/may/07/im-not-doing-this-any-more-the-rush-to-escape-sydneys-mad-house-prices">media coverage</a> of an increase in actual and planned migration from the city. Of the five substate regions (known as <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/1270.0.55.001%7EJuly%202016%7EMain%20Features%7EStatistical%20Area%20Level%204%20(SA4)%7E10016">SA4s</a>) in Australia with the highest net internal migration losses, four are in Sydney: the Inner South West, Eastern Suburbs, Paramatta and the Inner West. </p>
<p>Housing affordability, traffic and other forms of congestion that affect lifestyle and amenity are often cited as reasons for leaving. While <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/why-barnaby-joyce-is-just-going-to-get-louder-in-2017-20170127-gu00xz.html">Barnaby Joyce</a> sees migration to places like Tamworth as the solution to crowded cities, it is coastal regions – places like the <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3412.0Main%20Features92016-17?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3412.0&issue=2016-17&num=&view=">Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast and Geelong</a> – that are attracting more Australians than any other area. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/report-recommends-big-ideas-for-regional-australia-beyond-decentralisation-99136">Report recommends big ideas for regional Australia – beyond decentralisation</a>
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<p>Tasmania previously had a reputation for attracting retiring baby boomers with <a href="https://content.firstnational.com.au/blog/relocate-to-tasmania-the-perfect-sea-change">greater housing affordability, lower cost of living and the state’s natural and culinary environment for those seeking an active retirement</a>. Yet a <a href="https://www.fontpr.com.au/brain-drain-battle/">brain drain of youth to the opportunities offered by metropolitan cities</a> had counteracted this trend. The “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-08/mona-effect-ripples-out-to-regional-tasmania/9837626">Mona effect</a>” has changed Tasmania. </p>
<p>Of course, this is not a unique trend. Researchers internationally have explored the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/psp.501">counter-urbanisation</a> movement for many decades. Elsewhere, as with <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Sea_Change.html?id=oXpDf6TLkDcC">Australia</a>, people have long sought to escape stressful and complicated city lives for simpler ones in rural or coastal places. </p>
<p>Internationally, we have seen a rise in so-called <a href="http://www.uta.fi/yky/lifestylemigration/people.html">lifestyle migration</a> of the middle classes seeking a better way of life. Often they choose non-urban spaces such as <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719082498/">rural France</a> and recently <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich">climate change “boltholes”</a> for the super rich in places like New Zealand.</p>
<h2>Australian seachangers are increasingly young</h2>
<p>So who are the recent seachangers in Australia? Using ABS Census of Population and Housing data for 2016, we developed profiles of those who did not live in Tasmania or in the Sunbelt area one year prior.</p>
<p>The largest age group moving to Tasmania was those aged 25 to 29 years (14.0% of all movers), followed by those aged 20 to 24 (11.8%) and then 30 to 34 (10.3%). </p>
<p>Just like Tasmania, the largest age group moving to the Sunbelt was those aged 25 to 29 (12.9%), followed by those aged 20 to 24 (10.5%) and then 30 to 34 (10.2%). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238236/original/file-20180926-48653-1wzoufn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238236/original/file-20180926-48653-1wzoufn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238236/original/file-20180926-48653-1wzoufn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238236/original/file-20180926-48653-1wzoufn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238236/original/file-20180926-48653-1wzoufn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238236/original/file-20180926-48653-1wzoufn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238236/original/file-20180926-48653-1wzoufn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238236/original/file-20180926-48653-1wzoufn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Seachangers’ age structure for Tasmania and the Sunbelt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author calculation using ABS Census of Population and Housing data</span></span>
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<p>The difference between Tasmania and the Sunbelt is the place of origin of these migrants. Both attract a large proportion from overseas (27.0% and 16.2% respectively). For Tasmania, the next biggest groupings relocate from Greater Melbourne (13.8%) or the rest of Queensland (12.6%). For the Sunbelt, large proportions of recent migrants previously lived in Greater Sydney (23.7%), the rest of New South Wales (22.3%), or the rest of Queensland (12.7%).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238296/original/file-20180927-48662-152elfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238296/original/file-20180927-48662-152elfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238296/original/file-20180927-48662-152elfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238296/original/file-20180927-48662-152elfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238296/original/file-20180927-48662-152elfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238296/original/file-20180927-48662-152elfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238296/original/file-20180927-48662-152elfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238296/original/file-20180927-48662-152elfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Seachangers’ place of origin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author calculations using ABS Census of Population and Housing 2016 data</span></span>
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<h2>What’s attracting the new seachangers?</h2>
<p>The next important question is why are people moving to places that lack resources and employment? In research we have conducted over a decade now, it is clear <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137007612">no one variable dominates</a>. </p>
<p>The most important factors often repeated to us involve both economic and aesthetic concerns. These include obvious issues like housing affordability, debt (via mortgage), stress and overwork. Other important concerns include risk perceptions of living in the city, bringing up children in simpler settings, experiencing increased quality time due to shorter commutes, and the imagined peacefulness of living in less populated and more aesthetically pleasing environments. </p>
<p>As we shift into a climate-changed environment, we could increasingly see <a href="https://www.thefifthestate.com.au/urbanism/climate-change-news/climate-migrants-landing-hobart/100773">movement for climate reasons</a>. We are mindful that coastal development itself is at odds with this, with houses being built in <a href="https://theconversation.com/contested-spaces-conflict-behind-the-sand-dunes-takes-a-new-turn-74239">highly vulnerable areas</a>. </p>
<p>Importantly, with the appointment of a federal <a href="http://minister.infrastructure.gov.au/tudge/">minister for cities, urban infrastructure and population</a> and continued talk about overcrowded cities and how to alleviate this, we might want to examine those who are already making a seachange. Despite a recent <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/report/remarkably-adaptive/">Grattan Institute</a> study finding that the major cities are “coping” and “adapting” and that much of the counter-narratives are overblown, there is too much anecdotal evidence to ignore that, at the very least, <em>coping</em> is not what people aspire to for their living and work environments. Finding a way to include these accounts in the current debate is crucial to our inevitable transformation into a bigger Australia. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-fast-growing-cities-and-their-people-are-proving-to-be-remarkably-adaptable-103992">Our fast-growing cities and their people are proving to be remarkably adaptable</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103762/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Once seen as being driven mainly by retirees, migration out of of our biggest cities to less crowded coastal regions is now being led by younger Australians.Lisa Denny, Research Fellow - Institute for the Study of Social Change, University of TasmaniaFelicity Picken, Lecturer in Social Sciences, Western Sydney UniversityNick Osbaldiston, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, James Cook UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/965232018-07-13T07:03:17Z2018-07-13T07:03:17ZFactCheck: is Australia’s population the ‘highest-growing in the world’?<blockquote>
<p>We’re the highest-growing country in the world, with 1.6% increase, and that’s double than a lot of other countries.</p>
<p><strong>– One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, <a href="https://twitter.com/SkyNewsAust/status/994398072569413633">interview</a> on Sky News Australia, May 9 2018</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has <a href="https://twitter.com/PaulineHansonOz/status/1012137057756430337">proposed</a> a plebiscite be held in tandem with the next federal election to allow voters to have “a say in the level of migration coming into Australia”.</p>
<p>Hanson <a href="https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_5782800010001">has</a> <a href="https://www.2gb.com/let-the-people-have-their-say-senator-pauline-hanson-calls-for-plebiscite-on-immigration/">suggested</a> cutting Australia’s <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/corporate/information/fact-sheets/20planning">Migration Program</a> cap from the current 190,000 people per year to around 75,000-100,000 per year.</p>
<p>On <a href="https://twitter.com/SkyNewsAust/status/994398072569413633">Sky News</a>, Hanson said Australia is “the highest-growing country in the world”.</p>
<p>The senator added that, at 1.6%, Australia’s population growth was “double [that of] a lot of other countries”.</p>
<p>Are those statements correct?</p>
<h2>Checking the source</h2>
<p>In response to The Conversation’s request for sources and comment, a spokesperson for Hanson said the senator “talks about population growth in the context of our high level of immigration because, in recent years, immigration has accounted for around 60% of Australia’s population growth”.</p>
<p>The spokesperson added:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3412.0/">Australian Bureau of Statistics migration data for 2015-16</a> show that Australians born overseas represent 28% of the population, far higher than comparable countries like Canada (22%), UK (13%) or the US (14%).</p>
<p><a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.GROW">World Bank data for 2017</a> show that Australia’s population growth was 1.6%, much higher than comparable countries with immigration programs like Canada (1.2%), the UK (0.6%) and the US (0.7%). </p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<h2>Verdict</h2>
<p>One Nation leader Pauline Hanson was correct to say Australia’s population grew by 1.6% in the year to June 2017. But she was incorrect to say Australia is “the highest-growing country in the world”.</p>
<p>According to the most accurate international data, the country with the fastest-growing population is Oman, on the Arabian Peninsula.</p>
<p>Hanson said Australia’s 1.6% population growth was “double than a lot of other countries”. It is fair to say Australia’s population growth rate is double that of many other countries, including the United States (0.7%) and United Kingdom (0.7%), for example.</p>
<p>Since Hanson’s statement, Australia’s population growth rate for the period ending June 2017 has been revised upwards to 1.7%. But Hanson’s number was correct at the time of her statement, and the revision doesn’t change the outcome of this FactCheck.</p>
<p>In terms of the 35 countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Luxembourg was the fastest-growing country in 2016, with Australia coming in fifth.</p>
<p>Caution must be used when making international population comparisons. It’s important to put the growth rates in the context of the total size, density and demographic makeup of the population, and the economic stage of the country. </p>
<hr>
<h2>How do we calculate population growth?</h2>
<p>A country’s population growth, or decline, is determined by the change in the estimated number of residents. Those changes include the number of births and deaths (known as natural increase), and net overseas migration.</p>
<p>In Australia, both temporary and permanent overseas migrants are included in the calculation of population size.</p>
<p>According to Australian Bureau of Statistics data, Australia’s population <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/3101.0Main%20Features2Jun%202017?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3101.0&issue=Jun%202017&num=&view=">grew by 1.6%</a> in the year to June 2017 – as Hanson said. </p>
<p>Since Hanson’s statement, Australia’s population growth rate for the period ending June 2017 has been <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/3101.0Dec%202017?OpenDocument">revised upwards to 1.7%</a>. But, as said in the verdict, Hanson’s number was correct at the time of her statement, and the revision doesn’t change any of the other outcomes of this FactCheck.</p>
<p>That’s an increase of 407,000 people in a population of 24.6 million.</p>
<p>All states and territories recorded positive population growth in the year to June 2017. Victoria had the fastest growth rate (2.4%) and South Australia recorded the slowest growth rate (0.6%).</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-is-south-australias-youth-population-rising-or-falling-92995">FactCheck: is South Australia's youth population rising or falling?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Is Australia’s population the ‘highest-growing in the world’?</h2>
<p>No, it’s not. </p>
<p>There are <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/a3121120.nsf/home/statistical+language+-+estimate+and+projection">different ways</a> of reporting population data. </p>
<p><em>Population projections</em> are statements about future populations based on certain assumptions regarding the future of births, deaths and migration. </p>
<p><em>Population estimates</em> are statistics based on data from a population for a previous time period. Population estimates provide a more accurate representation of actual dynamics.</p>
<p>World Bank data for 2016 (based on population estimates) provide us with the most accurate international comparison. </p>
<p>According to those data, Australia’s growth rate – 1.5% for 2016 – placed it at 86th in the world. The top 10 countries grew by between 3% and 5%.</p>
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<h2>How does Australia’s growth compare to other OECD countries?</h2>
<p>Comparison of Australia’s average annual population growth with <a href="http://www.oecd.org/about/membersandpartners/#d.en.194378">other OECD countries</a> shows Australia’s rate of population growth is among the highest in the OECD, but not the highest.</p>
<p>This is true whether we look at annual averages for five-year bands between 1990 and 2015, or single-year data.</p>
<p>Looking again at the World Bank data, Australia’s rate of population growth for 2016, at 1.5%, was double that of many other OECD countries, including the United Kingdom (0.7%) and United States (0.7%). </p>
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<h2>Permanent v temporary migration levels</h2>
<p>Hanson has <a href="https://www.onenation.org.au/pauline-proposes-peoples-vote-on-immigration/?utm_source=Mailing+Subscribers&utm_campaign=032db92c43-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_25_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4f8178d36d-032db92c43-117107263&goal=0_4f8178d36d-032db92c43-117107263&mc_cid=032db92c43&mc_eid=56574ed782">proposed a national vote</a> on what she describes as Australia’s “runaway rates of immigration”.</p>
<p>The senator has suggested reducing Australia’s Migration Program cap from the current level of <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/corporate/information/fact-sheets/20planning">190,000 people per year</a> to <a href="https://www.2gb.com/let-the-people-have-their-say-senator-pauline-hanson-calls-for-plebiscite-on-immigration/">75,000-100,000 people per year</a>. The expected intake of <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/corporate/information/fact-sheets/20planning">190,000</a> permanent migrants <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2017/November/Behind_the_Numbers_-_the_2016-17_Migration_Programme">was not met</a> over the last few years. Permanent migration for 2017-18 has dropped to <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/immigration/duttons-vetting-drive-slashes-20000-from-migrant-intake/news-story/a0510c51e8be5411e421f1792c847a41">162,400 people</a>, due to changes in vetting processes. </p>
<p>The greatest contribution to the growth of the Australian population (63%) comes from overseas migration, as Hanson’s office noted in their response to The Conversation.</p>
<p>The origin countries of migrants are <a href="https://cdn.tspace.gov.au/uploads/sites/107/2018/04/Shaping-a-Nation-1.pdf">becoming more diverse</a>, posing socioeconomic benefits and infrastructure challenges for Australia.</p>
<p>Sometimes people confuse <em>net overseas migration</em> (the total of all people moving in and out of Australia in a certain time frame), with <em>permanent</em> migration (the number of people who come to Australia to live). They are <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1617/Quick_Guides/MigrationStatistics">not the same thing</a>.</p>
<p>Net overseas migration includes temporary migration. And net overseas migration is included in population data. This means our population growth reflects our permanent population, plus more.</p>
<p>Temporary migrants are a <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3412.0Main%20Features52015-16?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3412.0&issue=2015-16&num=&view=%20%22%22">major contributor</a> to population growth in Australia – in particular, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-18/australia-hosting-unprecedented-numbers-international-students/9669030">international students</a>.</p>
<p>In the <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3412.0Main%20Features52015-16?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3412.0&issue=2015-16&num=&view=%20%22%22">most recent data</a> (2014-15), net temporary migrants numbered just under 132,000, a figure that included just over 77,000 net temporary students.</p>
<p>The international student market is Australia’s <a href="http://dfat.gov.au/trade/resources/trade-statistics/trade-in-goods-and-services/Pages/australias-trade-in-goods-and-services-2017.aspx">third-largest export</a>.</p>
<h2>Looking back at Australia’s population growth</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-doesnt-have-a-population-policy-why-78183">Population changes</a> track the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/aehr.12068">history</a> of the nation. This includes events like post-war rebuilding – including the baby boom and resettlement of displaced European nationals – to subsequent fluctuations in birth rates and net overseas migration. </p>
<p>We can see these events reflected in the rates of growth from 1945 to the present.</p>
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<p>The rate of population growth in Australia increased markedly in 2007, before peaking at 2.1% in 2009 (after the height of the <a href="https://www.rba.gov.au/education/resources/explainers/the-global-financial-crisis.html">global financial crisis</a>, in which the Australian economy fared better than many others).</p>
<p>Since 2009, annual population growth has bounced around between a low of 1.4% and a high of 1.8%.</p>
<p>The longer-term average for population growth rates since 1947 is 1.6% (the same as it is now).</p>
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<h2>Interpreting population numbers</h2>
<p>It’s worth remembering that a higher annual growth rate coming from a lower population base is usually still lower growth in terms of actual numbers of people, when compared to a lower growth rate on a higher population base.</p>
<p>There can also be significant fluctuations in population growth rates from year to year. So we need to use caution when making assessments based on changes in annual rates.</p>
<p>Economic factors, government policies, and special events are just some of the things that can influence year-on-year population movements.</p>
<p>Other factors we should consider when making international comparisons include the: </p>
<ul>
<li>total size of the population</li>
<li>population density</li>
<li>demographic composition, or age distribution, of the population</li>
<li>economic stage of the country (for example, post-industrialisation or otherwise).</li>
</ul>
<p>Any changes to the <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/ReportsandPublications/Documents/discussion-papers/managing-australias-migrant-intake.pdf">Migration Program</a> should be considered alongside the best available research. <strong>– Liz Allen</strong></p>
<hr>
<h2>Blind review</h2>
<p>The FactCheck is fair and correct.</p>
<p>The statement about Australia’s population growth rate over the year to June 30 2017 is correct. The preliminary growth rate published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics at the time of Hanson’s statement was 1.60%; the rate was subsequently revised to 1.68%. </p>
<p>It is also true that many developed countries have lower population growth rates than Australia, but some have higher rates. According to <a href="http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/">United Nations Population Division</a> estimates, Oman had the fastest-growing population between 2014 and 2015 (the latest data available).</p>
<p>With regard to misinterpretations of net overseas migration, it should also be stated that some people think this refers to the number of people migrating <em>to</em> Australia. It is actually immigration minus emigration – the difference between the number arriving and the number leaving. <strong>– Tom Wilson</strong></p>
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<span class="caption">The Conversation FactCheck is accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network.</span>
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<p><em>The Conversation’s FactCheck unit was the first fact-checking team in Australia and one of the first worldwide to be accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network, an alliance of fact-checkers hosted at the Poynter Institute in the US. <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-conversations-factcheck-granted-accreditation-by-international-fact-checking-network-at-poynter-74363">Read more here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Have you seen a “fact” worth checking? The Conversation’s FactCheck asks academic experts to test claims and see how true they are. We then ask a second academic to review an anonymous copy of the article. You can request a check at <a href="mailto:checkit@theconversation.edu.au">checkit@theconversation.edu.au</a>. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96523/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Allen is a national council member of the Australian Population Association.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Wilson receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>One Nation leader Pauline Hanson said Australia is “the highest-growing country in the world”, with population growth “double than a lot of other countries”. Is that right?Liz Allen, Demographer, ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/930272018-03-29T10:28:07Z2018-03-29T10:28:07ZDemocracy is in danger when the census undercounts vulnerable populations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212523/original/file-20180328-109196-1b244v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">US census advocates held a rally in Charlotte, NC, in 2010.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Jason E. Miczek</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2020 U.S. Census is still two years away, but experts and civil rights groups are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/us/census-citizenship-question.html?action=click&contentCollection=us&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront">already disputing the results</a>.</p>
<p>At issue is whether the census will fulfill <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2017/cb17-tps28.html">the Census Bureau’s mandate</a> to “count everyone once, only once, and in the right place.”</p>
<p>The task is hardly as simple as it seems and has serious political <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/146910/who-counts-rig-census-threatens-american-democracy">consequences</a>. Recent changes to the 2020 census, such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-2020-census-shouldnt-ask-about-your-citizenship-status-91036">asking about citizenship status</a>, will make <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/2010_census/cb12-95.html">populations</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/non-citizens-wont-be-hired-as-census-takers-in-2020-staff-is-told/2018/01/30/b327c8d8-05ee-11e8-94e8-e8b8600ade23_story.html?utm_term=.c07f1852130d">already vulnerable</a> to undercounting
even more <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/the-controversial-question-doj-wants-to-add-to-the-us-census/550088/">likely to be missed</a>. These vulnerable populations include the young, poor, nonwhite, non-English-speaking, foreign-born and transient.</p>
<p>An accurate count is critical to the functioning of the U.S. government. Census data determine how the power and resources of the federal government are distributed across the 50 states. This includes seats in the House, votes in the Electoral College and funds for federal programs. Census data also guide the drawing of congressional and other voting districts and the enforcement of civil and voting rights laws.</p>
<p>Places where large numbers of people go uncounted get <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2290604">less than their fair share</a> of political representation and federal resources. When specific racial and ethnic groups are <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/979727066">undercounted</a>, it is harder to identify and rectify violations of their civil rights. My research on the <a href="http://www.emilyklancher.com/research/index.html">international history of demography</a> demonstrates that the question of how to equitably count the population is not new, nor is it unique to the United States. The experience of the United States and other countries may hold important lessons as the Census Bureau finalizes its plans for the 2020 count. </p>
<p>Let’s take a look at that history.</p>
<h2>Census pioneer and promoter</h2>
<p>In 1790, the United States became <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/931708638">the first country</a> to take a regular census. Following World War II, the U.S. government began to promote <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/255504876">census-taking in other countries</a>. U.S. leaders believed data about the size and location of populations throughout the Western Hemisphere could help the government plan defense. What’s more, U.S. businesses could also use the data to identify potential markets and labor forces in nearby countries.</p>
<p>The U.S. government began investing in a program called the <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2730590">Census of the Americas</a>. Through this program, the State Department provided financial support and the Census Bureau provided technical assistance to Western Hemisphere countries taking censuses in 1950. </p>
<p>United Nations demographers also viewed the Census of the Americas as an opportunity. Data that were <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3348070">standardized across countries</a> could serve as the basis for projections of world population growth and the calculation of social and economic indicators. They also hoped that censuses would provide useful information to newly established governments. The U.N. turned the Census of the Americas into a global affair, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/492878080">recommending that</a> “all Member States planning population censuses about 1950 use comparable schedules so far as possible.” Since 1960, the U.N. has sponsored a World Census Program every 10 years. The <a href="https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic-social/census/">2020 World Census Program</a> will be the seventh round.</p>
<h2>Counting everyone isn’t easy</h2>
<p>Not all countries went along with the program. For example, Lebanon’s Christian rulers feared that a census would show <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00263209108700881">Christians to be a minority</a>, undermining the legitimacy of their government. However, for the <a href="https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic-social/products/dyb/dybsets/1955%20DYB.pdf">65 sovereign countries taking censuses between 1945 and 1954</a>, leaders faced the same question the U.S. faces today: How can we make sure that everyone has an equal chance of being counted?</p>
<p>In 1950, Ecuador’s democratic government saw the census as <a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6443.00060">a means</a> of “conquering the national territory administratively.” The military mapped rural areas that had not previously been drawn so that the census wouldn’t miss people living in remote places. They believed the census would help them establish control in areas that had previously remained out of reach due to decades of political turmoil and economic crisis.</p>
<p>In the process, indigenous communities who feared that the census would be used to further oppress them took up armed resistance. The government promised indigenous leaders that participation would help, not hurt their communities. However, the census <a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6443.00060">did not include any racial or ethnic classification</a>. As a result, the data it produced could not be used to address racial discrimination faced by Ecuador’s indigenous communities. It wasn’t even possible to determine the size of the indigenous population or to judge whether it had been counted completely.</p>
<p>Meanwhile in Nigeria, the government expected that its first post-independence census in 1962 would provide an <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/159549">empirical basis</a> for representation in what was then a new democracy. Officials in Nigeria’s Western Region feared that residents would be unable to participate because the census asked for age, which many people didn’t know, simply because there had never been a reason to know. To facilitate participation, officials instructed local leaders to compile lists of dates of local historical events that people could use to determine when they had been born.</p>
<p>Despite these efforts, Nigeria’s 1962 census was plagued by accusations from officials in the various regions that some areas had been counted more completely than others. The government ultimately repudiated the results and <a href="http://population.gov.ng/about-us/history-of-population-censuses-in-nigeria/">repeated the count in 1963</a>. The failure of this census <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/722894">weakened public faith</a> in the ability of the government to either count or rule such a large and diverse population.</p>
<p>In the U.S., demographers began to recognize during World War II that the census was not counting everyone equally. Research showed that African-Americans were <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2086489">less likely to be counted</a> than were white Americans. As a result, places with large nonwhite populations <a href="http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/rol13&div=7&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals">were underrepresented</a> in the House and Electoral College. While the U.S. census has been able to reduce the overall undercount since then, it still disproportionately misses <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2010-census-missed-15-million-minorities/">African-Americans and other people of color</a> today. </p>
<p>Historical challenges to census-taking show that widespread participation is key to an accurate census count. These events have helped demographers understand that people are more likely to participate when they understand the process; are not worried that their participation <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/us/census-citizenship-status-immigrants.html">will be used against them</a>; and can easily <a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/2020-census/planning-management/final-analysis/2015nct-race-ethnicity-analysis.html">identify themselves</a> in the categories used by the census. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/10/06/naacp-lawsuit-alleges-trump-administration-will-undercount-minorities-in-2020-census/?utm_term=.00f01ca9f435">Adequate funding to follow up</a> with people who don’t respond by mail, internet or telephone is also critical.</p>
<p>A census that counts everyone <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/70763943">is probably impossible</a>. But if the census is to guide the equitable distribution of political power and federal resources, it must also strive to count people as equitably as possible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93027/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Klancher Merchant has received funding from the National Science Foundation. She is a member of the Population Association of America.</span></em></p>Recent changes to the 2020 census are worrying experts who say they may lead to an undercount. It’s an issue other democracies have also grappled with throughout history.Emily Klancher Merchant, Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Studies, University of California, DavisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/929952018-03-17T03:48:45Z2018-03-17T03:48:45ZFactCheck: is South Australia’s youth population rising or falling?<blockquote>
<p><strong>Nick Xenophon:</strong> The key issue here – and what I find most galling and emblematic of what is wrong – is we now have fewer young people in South Australia than we did 36 years ago, when our population was 400,000 fewer.</p>
<p><strong>Jay Weatherill:</strong> And Nick – you’ve done it before. You’ve said that there are fewer young people here than there were in 1982. You know what you need to do to actually reach that conclusion? </p>
<p>You take the high point in 1981 – it falls all the way to 2002. Since 2002 to now, it’s grown by 36,000.</p>
<p>Sure, it’s less than 1981-82 now, but you have to ignore the fact that, under the entire life of this government, it has actually grown, the number of young people has grown.</p>
<p><strong>– SA Best leader Nick Xenophon and Premier Jay Weatherill, speaking at the <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/programs/sa-votes-leaders-debate/NS1806S001S00">SA Votes: Leaders’ Debate</a>, Adelaide, March 5, 2018</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a leaders’ debate ahead of the South Australian election, Premier Jay Weatherill and SA Best leader Nick Xenophon disagreed over the extent to which young people were leaving the state in search of better opportunities. </p>
<p>Xenophon claimed that “we now have fewer young people in South Australia than we did 36 years ago, when our population was 400,000 fewer”. </p>
<p>Weatherill agreed that there are fewer young people in South Australia now than there were in 1981-82, but said that in quoting that figure, Xenophon had ignored “the fact that, under the entire life of this [Labor] government … the number of young people has grown”.</p>
<p>Were the leaders right? And what’s behind these trends?</p>
<h2>Checking the sources</h2>
<p>In response to a request for sources and comment, a spokesperson for Xenophon pointed The Conversation to the 2017 Deloitte report <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/au/Documents/future-of-cities/deloitte-future-of-cities-make-it-adelaide-280717.pdf">Shaping Future Cities: Make it big Adelaide</a>, which states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Fewer people aged between 15 and 34 live in South Australia today than in the mid-1980s, despite the fact that the population has increased by around 340,000 people in that time.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The claim Xenophon made during the debate echoed a quote from an <a href="https://sabest.org.au/state-policies/growing-sa/">SA Best policy document</a>, which states that there are “fewer young people – 18-to-34 year olds – living in South Australia today than 35 years ago”, and that this is “emblematic of the state’s decline”. So we’ll take 18-34 as Xenophon’s reference point. </p>
<p>A spokesperson for Jay Weatherill referred The Conversation to a <a href="https://www.adelaide.edu.au/saces/docs/issues-papers/saces-economic-issues-49.pdf">2018 report</a> from the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies, and pointed to Australian Bureau of Statistics data showing that in the 0-24 age group, there was a decrease of 53,395 people between 1982 and 2002, followed by an <em>increase</em> of 36,742 people between 2002 (when Labor was returned to office under) and June 2017.</p>
<p>You can read the full response from Weatherill’s spokesperson <a href="https://theconversation.com/full-response-from-a-spokesperson-for-jay-weatherill-for-a-factcheck-on-young-people-in-south-australia-93431">here</a>. </p>
<hr>
<h2>Verdict</h2>
<p>During a South Australian leaders’ debate, SA Best leader Nick Xenophon and Premier Jay Weatherill provided different narratives about youth population trends. </p>
<p>Xenophon said “we now have fewer young people in South Australia than we did 36 years ago, when our population was 400,000 fewer” – a statistic he said was “emblematic” of employment issues in the state.</p>
<p>Both leaders used different definitions of “young people”.</p>
<p>Using SA Best’s own definition, Xenophon was incorrect. There were more people aged 18 to 34 in South Australia in 1982 than today. However, based on Weatherill’s definition (people 0 to 24 years), and another relevant definition (people 15 to 24 years), Xenophon’s statement is correct.</p>
<p>Weatherill was correct to say that since 2002, “under the entire life of this [Labor] government … the <em>number</em> of young people has grown”. </p>
<p>The <em>proportion</em> of young people in South Australia’s total population (across all three definitions) has declined since the early 1980s, but the decline has slowed since 2002.</p>
<p>However, none of the numbers are a simple reflection of the failure or success of government policies. There are also a number of longer term economic and social trends at play.</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<h2>How do we define ‘young people’?</h2>
<p>There’s no single definition of “young people” – and as you would expect, different definitions provide different outcomes.</p>
<p>During the campaign, the relevant policy document from Xenophon’s SA Best party <a href="https://sabest.org.au/state-policies/growing-sa/">described</a> “young people” as being between the ages of <a href="https://sabest.org.au/state-policies/growing-sa/">18 and 34</a>.</p>
<p>Weatherill used a definition of young people as those aged between 0 and 24. (Keeping in mind that young people aged 0-17 are unlikely to leave the state of their own accord).</p>
<p>Each leader chose to highlight the numbers that best supported their own narrative.</p>
<p>Another way of examining this issue is to look at young people aged 15-24.</p>
<p>This is an age when many young people become independent, and may move away from South Australia to finish their education or find employment. </p>
<p>So here are the age ranges we’ll be looking at:</p>
<ul>
<li>0-24 year olds (Weatherill’s definition)</li>
<li>15-24 year olds (highly mobile demographic), and </li>
<li>18-34 year olds (Xenophon’s definition).</li>
</ul>
<h2>Did the leaders quote their numbers correctly?</h2>
<p>Xenophon said “we now have fewer young people in South Australia than we did 36 years ago, when our population was 400,000 fewer”.</p>
<p>According to Census data, South Australia’s population in 1981 was 1,285,042. In 2016, the Census recorded 1,676,653 people – a difference of 391,611. </p>
<p>Given that Xenophon was speaking in a live debate, rounding this number up to 400,000 is understandable. </p>
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<p>In 1982, there were around 378,000 people aged 18-34 in South Australia, compared to just over 390,000 in 2017. In terms of <em>raw numbers</em>, that’s an increase of around 12,000 people. So on those calculations (using his own definition), Xenophon was incorrect.</p>
<p>However, based on the numbers for 0 to 24 year olds (Weatherill’s definition), and 15 to 24 year olds, Xenophon’s statement is correct.</p>
<p>The <em>proportion</em> of 18-34 year olds also fell from around 28% of the total population in 1982, to around about 23% in 2017.</p>
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<h2>Do Weatherill’s numbers stack up?</h2>
<p>Weatherill pointed to 1981 as being a “high point” in youth population in South Australia. </p>
<p>It’s true that in the early 1980s, youth population numbers and youth as a proportion of the total population were higher.</p>
<p>It’s also true that the <em>raw numbers</em> of young people in South Australia then declined until the early 2000s. As the first chart in this FactCheck shows, after 2002 there was growth in the numbers of young people across all three definitions.</p>
<p>(Labor was returned to office in 2002, led by Mike Rann. Weatherill became premier in 2011.)</p>
<p>So, in terms of raw population numbers, Weatherill was correct to say that “under the entire life of this government … the number of young people has grown”.</p>
<p>Using Weatherill’s own definition (0-24 year olds), there was an increase of 36,742 people (in line with his original quote of 36,000). </p>
<p>The <em>proportion</em> of young people across all three definitions has declined since the early 1980s (though that decline has slowed since 2002).</p>
<p>Interestingly, as the chart shows, the decline in the proportion of 0-24 year olds has been greater than the proportions of the 15-24 and 18-34 cohorts, which have stayed relatively static under the four terms of the Labor government.</p>
<p>This is where the numbers tell us a new story – the biggest decline has been in the proportion of younger children. This suggests that <em>falling fertility rates</em> may have been a driver. </p>
<p>As you can see from the chart below, total fertility rates in South Australia did fall between 2008 and 2016.</p>
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<h2>What’s driving these trends?</h2>
<p>The leaders were discussing these numbers in the context of the viability of South Australia as a place where young people can find work and affordable housing, and preventing the so-called “brain drain” that occurs when young people leave the state in search of opportunities elsewhere. </p>
<p>During the debate, Xenophon (and SA Liberal leader Steven Marshall) painted a picture of increasing numbers of young people leaving South Australia, while Weatherill told the story of youth population growth “under the entire life of this [Labor] government”. </p>
<p>None of the numbers are a simple reflection of the failure or success of government policies that may help to retain youth populations. There are larger historical trends at play.</p>
<h2>Understanding the ‘Baby Boomer’ effect</h2>
<p>We cannot fully understand why South Australia had more young people in the 1980s and 1990s than it does today without looking back to the postwar period of 1946 to 1964 – the years when the “Baby Boomer” generation was born. </p>
<p>The baby boom was particularly pronounced in South Australia, and <a href="https://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/128776/sub034-labour-mobility-attachment.pdf">coincided with</a> a strong manufacturing sector that attracted young people from other states, and migrants during a period of high immigration rates (migrants also tend to be young).</p>
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<p>This convergence meant that the early 1980s was a unique time in South Australian population trends.</p>
<p>The first wave of the Baby Boomers (born in the late 1940s and early 1950s) were having children, and those children would have been counted in the 1981 Census. <em>At the same time</em>, the <em>late</em> cohort of Baby Boomers (those born in the late 1950s and 1960s) would still have been included in the 20-24 year old Census cohort. </p>
<p>This was followed by a “baby bust”, or falling fertility rate. From a peak in the early 1960s, <a href="https://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/128776/sub034-labour-mobility-attachment.pdf">family sizes declined</a>, reflecting national trends. </p>
<h2>Economic factors are also at play</h2>
<p>A number of economic events that took place in the early 1990s also had an impact on South Australia’s population profile. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.adelaide.edu.au/saces/docs/issues-papers/saces-economic-issues-49.pdf">2018 report</a> published by the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies (SACES) noted that, in addition to the national recession, South Australia was affected by:</p>
<ul>
<li>the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Bank_of_South_Australia">collapse of State Bank</a> in 1991 </li>
<li>the loss of headquartered companies around the same time, and</li>
<li>the loss of “mass manufacturing” employment, which began in the 1980s and accelerated in the early 1990s.</li>
</ul>
<p>The SACES report found that between 1993-94 and 2001-02, South Australia’s population growth was affected by “sharply reduced overseas immigration and increased outward migration to interstate”. The authors added that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The dominant cohorts of those who left South Australia were young people and young families. </p>
<p>They did not return and they married and/or had children adding to other states’ younger aged profile while depleting our own.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It would be interesting to see how the numbers of international students in South Australia affect the composition of youth populations. People on student visas who are residents of South Australia are captured in Census data, but the data we need to properly analyse this factor are not readily available. <strong>– Helen Barrie</strong></p>
<h2>Blind review</h2>
<p>The author offers a sound consideration of the available evidence.</p>
<p>The proportion of young people in South Australia has declined <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/3101.0Jun%202017?OpenDocument">since the early 1980s</a> – whether defined as those aged 0-24, 15-24, or 18-34 years.</p>
<p>Despite the decline in the proportion of young people, <a href="https://theconversation.com/bloom-and-boom-how-babies-and-migrants-have-contributed-to-australias-population-growth-78097">population momentum</a> means that the South Australian population is still growing, albeit not as strongly as the Australian population overall. <strong>– Liz Allen</strong></p>
<p><em>The Conversation thanks Liz Allen for providing the data used to create the charts in this FactCheck.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>The Conversation thanks <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-conversation-is-fact-checking-the-south-australian-election-and-we-want-to-hear-from-you-92809">The University of South Australia</a> for supporting our FactCheck team during the South Australian election.</strong></p>
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<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162128/original/image-20170323-13486-72k52f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162128/original/image-20170323-13486-72k52f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162128/original/image-20170323-13486-72k52f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162128/original/image-20170323-13486-72k52f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162128/original/image-20170323-13486-72k52f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162128/original/image-20170323-13486-72k52f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162128/original/image-20170323-13486-72k52f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162128/original/image-20170323-13486-72k52f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Conversation FactCheck is accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>The Conversation’s FactCheck unit was the first fact-checking team in Australia and one of the first worldwide to be accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network, an alliance of fact-checkers hosted at the Poynter Institute in the US. <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-conversations-factcheck-granted-accreditation-by-international-fact-checking-network-at-poynter-74363">Read more here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Have you seen a “fact” worth checking? The Conversation’s FactCheck asks academic experts to test claims and see how true they are. We then ask a second academic to review an anonymous copy of the article. You can request a check at <a href="mailto:checkit@theconversation.edu.au">checkit@theconversation.edu.au</a>. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92995/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Barrie receives funding from Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council, Department of Health (Federal) and Office for the Ageing (SA). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Allen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In a South Australian leaders’ debate, Jay Weatherill and Nick Xenophon disagreed over the extent to which young people are leaving the state in search of better opportunities. We asked the experts.Helen Barrie, Deputy Director of the Australian Migration and Population Research Centre, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/867332018-02-13T17:21:11Z2018-02-13T17:21:11ZMonitoring populations helps to put the right health services in place<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199247/original/file-20171214-27583-i52vca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/Isabel Sommerfeld</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fourteen years ago South African researchers <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673608613999">first picked up</a> rising rates of high blood pressure in the population that led to people dying earlier than expected. </p>
<p>But it wasn’t in the bustling urban metropolis of Johannesburg in South Africa’s economic hub where this cardio-metabolic disease epidemic was first found. The trends – that people were increasingly dying from stroke – were picked up in one of the country’s most rural sub-districts.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673608613999">findings</a> contributed to South Africa’s National Department of Health drawing up a policy to introduce “integrated” primary health care. And through this policy, chronic conditions such as high blood pressure can be tested and treated at the clinics set up primarily to provide antiretrovirals to HIV positive people.</p>
<p>The discovery was not coincidental. It emanated from work done in a health and demographic surveillance system <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673608613999">set up in 1992</a> in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga. The site is run jointly by the South African Medical Research Council and Wits University’s Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit.</p>
<p>The project collects population and health and socio-economic data on communities in an impoverished and developmentally constrained part of the country over a long period of time.</p>
<p>Health and demographic surveillance systems like these help researchers understand how factors around health, social and economic wellbeing affect people and the societies that they live in.</p>
<p>These systems are an important part of advanced population registration systems. And nations with complete systems are the world’s most developed. A key reason for this is that they can determine if services are meeting the needs of the population. </p>
<p>The site in Bushbuckridge is one of three surveillance systems running in South Africa. The other two sites are in rural Limpopo: <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/44/5/1565/2594575">Dikgale</a> at the University of Limpopo, and the <a href="https://www.ahri.org/research/">Africa Health Research Institute</a> in rural KwaZulu-Natal. These sites collectively follow a population of about 300 000 people.</p>
<p>The data being collected is expected to provide <a href="https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-12-741">deep evidence-based insights</a> into major health and socio-economic challenges facing the country which in turn will enable the government to design and evaluate targeted, evidence-informed policy solutions.</p>
<h2>Giving government a heads-up</h2>
<p>When surveillance systems work well, the information that is collected forms part of the national statistics platform of the country. It helps researchers understand detail and dynamics that they are unable to derive from a census. </p>
<p>This is because censuses are only able to see people at one point in time. Surveillance systems can provide detail on changing patterns and the processes affecting these changes. Together, the surveillance system data and census data give policymakers a sound basis to evaluate policies that are not working.</p>
<p>Surveillance system data provides deep and <a href="https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-12-741">granular insights</a> into the health and wellbeing of a community. They help governments understand the changing dynamics of a particular population. This, in turn, helps them understand what sort of interventions are needed. Here are some examples:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Data will give a better idea of how and why people move between rural and urban areas and insights into what health and socio-economic services they are getting or being excluded from.</p></li>
<li><p>Tracking the number of pregnancies can provide valuable information about whether or not there are adequate maternal health and family planning services in place.</p></li>
<li><p>Looking at why people are dying is important to understanding if health services need to be adapted or preventative services strengthened.</p></li>
<li><p>Understanding how people’s levels of education and socio-economic status affect their wellbeing.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Falling through the cracks</h2>
<p>Surveillance systems do have challenges. One is that the data come from specific geographic locations. Researchers can’t easily tell what happens beyond these boundaries.</p>
<p>This is why it’s important to have surveillance systems in both rural and urban settings so that researchers can understand livelihoods and monitor bi-directional, migration flows linking poor, rural communities with urban centres.</p>
<p>With investment from the Department of Science and Technology, data and data systems from the current three centres are being harmonised, and <a href="http://saprin.mrc.ac.za/">four more surveillance systems</a> are being set up. Three will be in urban settings in Gauteng, eThekwini and the Western Cape and one in a rural setting in the Eastern Cape. This harmonised network is called the South African Population Research Infrastructure Network (SAPRIN), which is hosted by <a href="http://saprin.mrc.ac.za/">The Medical Research Council</a></p>
<p>The full SAPRIN platform will include 550,000 people –- around 1% of South Africa’s census population. The platform will form <a href="http://saprin.mrc.ac.za/SAPRINfactSHEET.pdf">a network</a> that will be able to generate high-quality evidence to respond to some of South Africa’s biggest issues, which include poverty, inequality, unemployment, education and poor access to effective health care.</p>
<p>It will do this by linking to the public sector’s health system records as well as public school attendance registers and have access to the statistics around social grants. This will help researchers understand how people are using the services that the government has made available.</p>
<h2>The bigger picture</h2>
<p>Inadequate or even misleading evidence for planning is a complex problem in all countries, but especially low and middle-income countries. It arises due to limitations in infrastructure, especially in poorer parts of the country, and the costs involved for people registering key events in their lives. </p>
<p>South Africa is not the only country in the developing world to have surveillance systems like this. The three surveillance sites in South Africa are part of a <a href="http://www.indepth-network.org/">network of 37 health and demographic surveillance system sites</a> in sub-Saharan Africa, comprising the <a href="http://www.indepth-network.org/">INDEPTH Network</a></p>
<p>A combination of national census, vital registration and localised health and demographic surveillance data can be expected to fill the evidence gap in developing countries. </p>
<p>This will enable planners to have immediate and longer-run feedback on the impact of policies and programmes designed to improve health care and socio-economic status. </p>
<p>For this reason, we can expect to see more investment in surveillance over time and a bigger push to combine datasets to understand what is going on and what is needed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86733/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark A. Collinson receives funding from the South African Department of Science and Technology and the National Institute of Health in the US. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kobus Herbst receives funding from the South African Department of Science and Technology and the Wellcome Trust.</span></em></p>Health and demographic surveillance systems are important to understand people and the societies that they live in.Mark A. Collinson, Reader in Population and Public Health, MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit, School of Public Health, University of the WitwatersrandKobus Herbst, Chief Information Officer at the Africa Health Research Institute, University of KwaZulu-NatalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/774032017-07-14T03:16:15Z2017-07-14T03:16:15ZBlaming migrants won’t solve Western Sydney’s growing pains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169296/original/file-20170515-7011-86autq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many people in culturally diverse populations in Western Sydney have lived in Australia for many years, if not several generations.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Population growth has profound impacts on Australian life, and sorting myths from facts can be difficult. This article is part of our series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-australia-full-39068">Is Australia Full?</a>, which aims to help inform a wide-ranging and often emotive debate.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Western Sydney is one of the fastest-growing regions in Australia. It’s also one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse, as a key arrival point for refugees and new migrants when they first settle in Australia.</p>
<p>Various <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/liberal-candidate-links-asylum-seekers-to-traffic-jams-and-hospital-queues-20130902-2t1kw.html">public</a> <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/mark-latham-immigration-is-destroying-housing-affordability-we-need-an-australiafirst-migration-program/news-story/f5597b09f8e449aa5e32985ac93cb700">figures</a> and <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4182366/Iraq-Syria-refugees-warned-no-Australia.html">media</a> outlets have connected asylum-seeker intake and immigration to traffic congestion and queues at hospitals in Western Sydney. </p>
<p>However, this kind of reaction can pin the blame for infrastructure and affordability problems on culturally diverse populations who may have already lived in Australia for many years, if not several generations.</p>
<h2>Growth from international and domestic migration</h2>
<p>Greater Western Sydney includes Blacktown, the Blue Mountains, Camden,
Campbelltown, Canterbury-Bankstown, Cumberland, Fairfield
Hawkesbury, Liverpool, Parramatta, Penrith, the Hills Shire and Wollondilly.</p>
<p>We examined census data <a href="http://www.westir.org.au/new/index.php/census-2016">compiled by WESTIR Ltd</a>, a non-profit research organisation based in Western Sydney, partly funded by the NSW Department of Family and Community Services. These data <a href="http://www.westir.org.au/new/index.php/census-2016">show</a> that Greater Western Sydney’s population increased by 9.8% between 2011 and 2016. Over the decade from 2006 to 2016, it grew by 16%. </p>
<p>About <a href="http://www.westir.org.au/new/index.php/census-2016">55%</a> of those living there were born in Australia, and about 39% where born elsewhere (the remainder did not state their place of birth). Most put English or Australian as their first response when asked about their ancestry.</p>
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<p>New births are slightly down in the region, meaning growth is coming from other sources. This includes new international migration arrivals, but also incoming residents from other parts of New South Wales and interstate.</p>
<p>Greater Western Sydney has long-established cultural and linguistic diversity. The percentage of residents born overseas has increased from 34.1% in 2006 to 38.7% in 2016. Overall, the west accounts for 50.2% of the overseas-born population for the whole of metropolitan Sydney.</p>
<p>Reasoned debates on sustainable migration intake levels are a crucial part of discussions of urban and regional growth. There are valid criticisms of “Big Australia” policies, based on resource and environmental sustainability. </p>
<p>But while the number of new arrivals settling in Western Sydney has increased steadily since the second world war, with a significant jump over the last decade reflecting accelerated skilled migration policies to fill labour shortages, the majority of overseas-born living in the region are long-term settlers who have been in Australia for ten years or more. </p>
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<h2>Increasing diversity does not always mean more new migrant settlers</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.westir.org.au/new/index.php/census-2016">data</a> show that 64% of Western Sydney residents have at least one parent born overseas. This is greater than the number of those born overseas. This correlates with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/27/australia-reaches-tipping-point-with-quarter-of-population-born-overseas">national</a> data indicating that Australian-born second-generation migrant residents outnumber those born outside of Australia. </p>
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<p>So while critics may look at non-white Western Sydney residents and assume they are recent migrants, what they’re often really seeing is multiple generations of multiculturalism. Most of these people are long-term local residents, not necessarily a sudden influx of new arrivals.</p>
<p>In addition, not all overseas-born residents are permanent settlers. Australia takes far larger numbers of temporary entrants than it has in the past. Most of these temporary visa holders, such as international students and temporary skilled workers, live in major metropolitan areas and their surrounds, like Western Sydney.</p>
<p>While some portion of these populations do stay on longer-term, they are not all permanent settlers who will add to long-term population growth. <a href="http://insidestory.org.au/how-many-migrants-come-to-australia-each-year">Net migration figures</a>, which take into account people who depart Australia every year as well as arrive, and exclude short-term visitors, have generally been decreasing over the past six years. </p>
<h2>Who do we define as ‘migrants’?</h2>
<p>New Zealand citizens moving under Trans-Tasman agreements and migrants from the United Kingdom are still among the largest migrant groups in Greater Western Sydney. </p>
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<p>In many local government areas in Western Sydney – such as Wollondilly, the Hills Shire, Penrith, Hawkesbury and Campbelltown – England and/or New Zealand feature in the top five countries of birth of overseas-born residents. </p>
<p>If anxieties about migration and population in Western Sydney are based on genuine sustainability concerns and not xenophobia, why target mostly refugees and non-white migrants? Why focus only on areas with large non-white and non-English-speaking background populations?</p>
<h2>Migrants do use infrastructure, but also drive economic and jobs growth</h2>
<p>It’s never as simple as one new arrival “using up” an allocation of limited resources, whether jobs, housing, or seats on trains. In fact, new arrivals fill the gaps of an ageing workforce, and current migration policies are targeted to favour younger migrants and specific skills shortages.</p>
<p>Western Sydney, like many regions in Australia, has an ageing population. Residents aged 65-74 years increased from 6.2% in 2011 to 7.2% in 2016. </p>
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<p>Large-scale infrastructure – whether the slated new airport or the Westmead hospital – requires young and often skilled workers.</p>
<p>Nationally, recently arrived overseas-born residents have a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/27/australia-reaches-tipping-point-with-quarter-of-population-born-overseas">lower median age</a> and a <a href="http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/migrant-intake/report/migrant-intake-report.pdf">higher level of education</a> than Australian-born residents.</p>
<p>Infrastructure problems are also problems of policy, planning and funding, rather than just population numbers. Problems in transport and health infrastructure in Western Sydney cannot be easily solved by reactive anti-immigration attitudes or policies. </p>
<p>Cuts to programs like the humanitarian program or skilled temporary work visas, where the intake numbers remain relatively small as a proportion of the overall population, will not solve those infrastructure problems.</p>
<p>Western Sydney is growing, and with growth comes growing pains. But equating the region’s rich cultural diversity with a population crisis is the wrong message to send.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the Is Australia Full? series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-australia-full-39068">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77403/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shanthi Robertson receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristine Aquino has undertaken research with WESTIR Ltd. in the past. </span></em></p>Reasoned debates on sustainable migration intake levels are important. But transport and health infrastructure shortfalls in Western Sydney won’t be solved by reactive anti-immigration attitudes.Shanthi Robertson, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney UniversityKristine Aquino, Lecturer in Global Studies, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/783912017-07-10T20:09:43Z2017-07-10T20:09:43ZWhy a population of, say, 15 million makes sense for Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175791/original/file-20170627-6086-5kjhd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Our national wellbeing probably peaked with Australia's population at roughly 15 million in the 1970s, when this photo was taken in Hunters Hill, Sydney.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/25653307@N03/6279325699/in/photolist-ayTbLc-9jVykb-b8CBWr-9jUPPA-eYAXYz-9jPaec-bQGxtv-dFLngH-4A8shV-6tRuSc-pqsoFs-9HbTLb-caNvvy-dB7uNS-kh7sYz-8ejwNo-dB228t-ShpFfm-JwJ4te-bwTdNK-9YY4jb-9jRwaH-aziKk4-dFRF6y-7fHKqf-dFL9mH-qBeMkD-dFRkao-nXbNcT-9kRFC4-gApBdF-nQXTLE-bJFwaB-dFRKsf-nZuAo9-dFL3dX-4yYeym-8SU8SP-9wZYRg-nF1CK8-T7b1ei-5xP4Fs-RvBbmQ-8qLds4-4Bvr7C-fAqfWM-pYCnGr-aeFoQd-abiVVs-7K7F36">John Ward/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Population growth has profound impacts on Australian life, and sorting myths from facts can be difficult. This article is part of our series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-australia-full-39068">Is Australia Full?</a>, which aims to help inform a wide-ranging and often emotive debate.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Neither of Australia’s two main political parties believes population is an issue worth discussion, and neither currently has a policy about it. The Greens <a href="http://greens.org.au/policies/population">think population is an issue</a>, but can’t come at actually suggesting a target. </p>
<p>Even those who acknowledge that numbers are relevant are often quick to say that it’s our consumption patterns, and not our population size, that really matter when we talk about environmental impact. But common sense, not to mention the laws of physics, says that size and scale matter, especially on a finite planet.</p>
<p>In the meantime the nation has a bipartisan default population policy, which is one of <a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/factbook-2015-1-en/evopop_g1.html?contentType=%2fns%2fStatisticalPublication%2c%2fns%2fChapter&itemId=%2fcontent%2fchapter%2ffactbook-2015-1-en&mimeType=text%2fhtml&containerItemId=%2fcontent%2fserial%2f18147364&accessItemIds=&option6=imprint&value6=http%3a%2f%2foecd.metastore.ingenta.com%2fcontent%2fimprint%2foecd&_csp_=4c076bdd9393ccf0422808ed2ced01cf">rapid growth</a>. This is in response to the demands of what is effectively a coalition of major corporate players and lobby groups. </p>
<p>Solid neoliberals all, they see all growth as good, especially for their bottom line. They include the banks and financial sector, real estate developers, the housing industry, major retailers, the media and other major players for whom an endless increase in customers is possible and profitable.</p>
<p>However, Australians stubbornly <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/3301.0Main%20Features42014?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3301.0&issue=2014&num=&view=">continue to have small families</a>. The endless growth coalition responds by demanding the government import hundreds of thousands of new consumers annually, otherwise known as the <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/hindi/en/article/2017/05/10/2017-2018-skilled-migration-intake-announced">migration intake</a>. </p>
<p>The growth coalition has no real interest in the cumulative social or environmental downside effects of this growth, nor the actual welfare of the immigrants. They fully expect to capture the profit of this growth program, while the disadvantages, such as <a href="https://bitre.gov.au/publications/2012/files/report_127.pdf">traffic congestion</a>, <a href="https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2015/sep/pdf/bu-0915-3.pdf">rising house prices</a> and government <a href="http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/135517/subdr156-infrastructure.pdf">revenue diverted for infrastructure catch-up</a>, are all socialised – that is, the taxpayer pays. </p>
<p>The leaders of this well-heeled group are well insulated personally from the downsides of growth that the rest of us deal with daily.</p>
<h2>A better measure of wellbeing than GDP</h2>
<p>The idea that population growth is essential to boost GDP, and that this is good for everyone, is ubiquitous and goes largely unchallenged. For example, according to Treasury’s <a href="http://archive.treasury.gov.au/igr/igr2010/">2010 Intergenerational Report</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Economic growth will be supported by sound policies that support productivity, participation and population — the ‘3Ps’.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If one defines “economic growth” in the first place by saying that’s what happens when you have more and more people consuming, then obviously more and more people produce growth. </p>
<p>The fact that GDP, our main measure of growth, might be an utterly <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/beyond-gdp-13319">inadequate and inappropriate yardstick</a> for our times remains a kooky idea to most economists, both in business and government.</p>
<h2>Genuine progress peaked 40 years ago</h2>
<p>One of the oldest and best-researched alternative measures is the <a href="http://www.tai.org.au/sites/defualt/files/DP14_8.pdf">Genuine Progress Indicator</a> (GPI). Based on the work of the American economist Herman Daly in the 1970s and ’80s, GPI takes into account different measures of human wellbeing, grouped into economic, environmental and social categories. </p>
<p>Examples on the negative side of the ledger include income inequality, CO<sub>2</sub> emissions, water pollution, loss of biodiversity and the misery of car accidents. </p>
<p>On the positive side, and also left out of GDP, are the value of household work, parenting, unpaid child and aged care, volunteer work, the quality of education, the value of consumer goods lasting longer, and so on. The overall GPI measure, expressed in dollars, takes 26 such factors into account.</p>
<p>Since it is grounded in the real world and our real experience, GPI is a better indicator than GDP of how satisfactory we find our daily lives, of our level of contentment, and of our general level of wellbeing.</p>
<p>As it happens, there is quite good data on GPI going back decades for some countries. While global GDP (and GDP per capita) continued to grow strongly after the second world war, and continues today, global GPI basically stalled in 1970 and has <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800913001584">barely improved since</a>.</p>
<p>In Australia the stall point <a href="http://www.e-elgar.com/shop/sustainable-welfare-in-the-asia-pacific?___website=uk_warehouse">appears to be about 1974</a>. GPI is now lower than for any period since the early 1960s. That is, our wellbeing, if we accept that GPI is a fair measure of the things that make life most worthwhile, has been going backwards for decades.</p>
<h2>What has all the growth been for?</h2>
<p>It is reasonable to ask, therefore, what exactly has been the point of the huge growth in GDP and population in Australia since that time if our level of wellbeing has declined. </p>
<p>What is an economy for, if not to improve our wellbeing? Why exactly have we done so much damage to our water resources, soil, the liveability of our cities and to the other species with which we share this continent if we haven’t really improved our lives by doing it?</p>
<p>As alluded to earlier, the answer lies to a large extent in the disastrous neoliberal experiment foisted upon us. Yet many Australians understand that it is entirely valid to measure the success of our society by the wellbeing of its citizens and its careful husbandry of natural capital.</p>
<p>At the peak of GPI in Australia in the mid-1970s our population was <a href="http://www.populstat.info/Oceania/australc.htm">under 15 million</a>. Here then, perhaps, is a sensible, optimal population size for Australia operating under the current economic system, since any larger number simply fails to deliver a net benefit to most citizens. </p>
<p>It suggests that we have just had 40 years of unnecessary, ideologically-driven growth at an immense and unjustifiable cost to our natural and social capital. In addition, all indications are that this path is unsustainable.</p>
<p>With Australian female fertility sitting well below replacement level, we can achieve a slow and natural return to a lower population of our choice without any drastic or coercive policies. This can be done simply by winding back the large and expensive program of importing consumers to generate GDP growth – currently <a href="https://www.border.gov.au/ReportsandPublications/Documents/statistics/nom-september-2016.pdf">around 200,000 people per year</a> and forecast to increase to almost 250,000 by 2020. </p>
<p>Despite endless political and media obfuscation, this is an entirely different issue from assisting refugees, with whom we can afford to be much more generous.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the Is Australia Full? series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-australia-full-39068">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78391/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Martin is affiliated with the Wakefield Futures Group, a new non-profit and currently penniless national group of senior and/or retired academics (mostly) focused on the components of sustainability and what might be involved in society achieving a sustainable, desirable future. The group is currently assisting the South Australian Government to examine the potential of the General Progress Indicator as a measure of human wellbeing in that jurisdiction. He is president of the SA branch of Sustainable Population Australia.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Ward receives funding from various sources including local and state government, although he has received no funding for his work on population. He is National President of Sustainable Population Australia.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Sutton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australia’s GPI, a broad measure of national wellbeing, has stalled since 1974. So what has been the point of huge population and GDP growth since then if we and our environment are no better off?Peter Graham Martin, Lecturer, School of Natural & Built Environments, University of South AustraliaJames Ward, Lecturer in Water & Environmental Engineering, University of South AustraliaPaul Sutton, Professor, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of DenverLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/780972017-07-03T20:09:50Z2017-07-03T20:09:50ZBloom and boom: how babies and migrants have contributed to Australia’s population growth<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175788/original/file-20170627-29088-qdwoq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Even without immigration, new data reveals Australia's population would continue to grow. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/anonymous-crowd-people-walking-on-busy-160438778?src=GEDWwODwvjREwVHQZhqhNg-1-1">blvdone/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Population growth has profound impacts on Australian life, and sorting myths from facts can be difficult. This is the second article in our series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-australia-full-39068">Is Australia Full?</a>, which aims to help inform a wide-ranging and often emotive debate.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Population change has long been a topic of public debate in Australia, periodically escalating into controversy. </p>
<p>It is inextricably linked to debates about immigration levels, labour force needs, capital city congestion and housing costs, refugee intakes, economic growth in country areas and northern Australia, the “big versus smaller” Australia debate, and environmental pressures.</p>
<p>Views about the rate of population growth in Australia are numerous and mixed. At one end of the spectrum are those <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2011/10/26/five-reasons-australia-should-stay-small">who are vehemently opposed</a> to further population increases; at the other end <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2011/10/26/five-reasons-australia-should-be-big">are supporters</a> of substantially higher population growth and a “very big” Australia. </p>
<p>Logically, population debates usually quote Australia’s demographic statistics. But there is value in comparing our population growth in the international context. </p>
<h2>Average growth rates compared globally</h2>
<p>Although growth rates have fluctuated considerably from year to year, <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3101.0?OpenDocument">statistics</a> just released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show that Australia’s population grew by 3.75 million between 2006 and 2016. This indicates an average annual growth rate of 1.7%. </p>
<p>As the chart below shows, this was quite high compared to other countries and global regions. Over the decade, other English-speaking countries such as New Zealand, Canada and the US all experienced growth rates lower than Australia’s. The world’s more developed countries in aggregate grew by an annual average of 0.3%. </p>
<p>The world’s population as a whole increased by an average of <a href="https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/">1.2% per year</a>.</p>
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<hr>
<p>According to the UN Population Division, Australia <a href="https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Download/Standard/Population/">ranked</a> 90th out of 233 countries in terms of population growth rate over the decade. The countries or territories with higher growth rates were mostly less developed countries, particularly in Africa, and the oil-rich Gulf states. The only developed countries with faster rates of growth were Singapore, Luxembourg and Israel.</p>
<h2>Why Australia’s population growth rate is higher</h2>
<p>There are two main reasons for Australia’s high growth. </p>
<p>Net overseas migration (immigration minus emigration) is one major factor. It has been generating a little over half (<a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3101.0?OpenDocument">56%</a>) of population growth in recent years. </p>
<p>Demand for immigration – to settle permanently, work in Australia, or study here for a few years – is high, and there are many opportunities for people to move to Australia. In the <a href="http://www.border.gov.au/about/reports-publications/research-statistics/statistics/year-at-a-glance/2015-16">2015-16 financial year</a> about 190,000 visas were granted to migrants and 19,000 for humanitarian and refugee entry. Temporary migrants included 311,000 student visas, 215,000 working holidaymaker visas and 86,000 temporary work (skilled) 457 visas. </p>
<p>Over the last five years, <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3101.0?OpenDocument">ABS figures show</a> that immigration has averaged about 480,000 per year and emigration about 280,000. This puts annual net overseas migration at around 200,000. </p>
<p>This is high in international terms. UN Population Division <a href="https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Download/Standard/Migration/">data for the 2010-15 period</a> reveals Australia had the 17th-highest rate of net overseas migration of any country.</p>
<p>But it is not just overseas migration driving Australia’s population growth. High natural increase (the number of births minus the number of deaths) also makes a substantial contribution. Natural increase has been responsible for a little under half (44%) of population growth in recent years (about 157,000 per year). </p>
<p>Australia has a relatively healthy fertility rate, which lately has averaged almost <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3101.0?OpenDocument">1.9 babies per woman</a>. We also enjoy one of the <a href="https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Download/Standard/Mortality/">highest life expectancies</a> in the world. </p>
<p>This combination of an extended history of net overseas migration gains, a long baby boom and a healthy fertility rate has resulted in Australia being less advanced in the population ageing transition than many other developed countries. </p>
<p>In particular, relatively large numbers of people are in the peak childbearing ages. This means that even if migration fell immediately to zero the population would still increase. Demographers call this age structure effect “population momentum”.</p>
<h2>Whether Australia’s population is growing too fast</h2>
<p>While Australia’s population growth rate is high in a global context, this does not necessarily mean its population is growing too fast. It all depends on your point of view. </p>
<p>It is important to stress that the overall population growth rate is just one aspect of Australia’s demography. A more comprehensive debate about the nation’s demographic trajectory should consider a broad range of issues, such as:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>population age structure (the numbers of people in different age groups);</p></li>
<li><p>the health and wellbeing of a rapidly growing population at the highest ages;</p></li>
<li><p>population distribution across the country;</p></li>
<li><p>economic growth and development;</p></li>
<li><p>the contributions of temporary workers and overseas students;</p></li>
<li><p>appropriate infrastructure for the needs of the population; and</p></li>
<li><p>environmental management and per-capita carbon emissions.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Progress on issues such as healthy ageing, economic development,and environmental management depend on appropriate strategies to deal with these challenges. Total population numbers will often be relevant to the discussion, but they are only part of the equation.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the Is Australia Full? series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-australia-full-39068">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78097/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Wilson receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>The latest statistics show Australia’s population growth in the last decade has been significantly higher than in other developed countries.Tom Wilson, Principal Research Fellow, Charles Darwin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/781832017-07-02T20:12:15Z2017-07-02T20:12:15ZAustralia doesn’t have a population policy – why?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175120/original/file-20170622-3024-1c30sbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Despite expert recommendations to adopt a population policy, Australian governments continue to resist. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/scott-s_photos/12712204375/">Scott Cresswell/flickr </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Population growth has profound impacts on Australian life, and sorting myths from facts can be difficult. This is the first article in our series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-australia-full-39068">Is Australia Full?</a>, which aims to help inform a wide-ranging and often emotive debate.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>Australia lacks an overarching population policy or strategy. Over the years, <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/RP9697/97rp17">multiple inquiries have recommended</a> such a policy. Population policies the world over typically focus on births and migration.</p>
<p>As part of post-war reconstruction, Australia adopted a 2% population growth target. Mass immigration was a defining feature, and couples were <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/immigrationnation/resources/article/176/populate-or-perish">called on to populate</a> or perish. Immigration was successful, but women were big losers in <a href="http://journal.mhj.net.au/index.php/mhj/article/view/530">the push for births</a>. </p>
<p>The 1975 <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/7437812?selectedversion=NBD1639533">National Population Inquiry</a> proved a significant moment in Australian demography. The inquiry found that Australia should not seek to influence population, but should anticipate and respond. </p>
<p>Population policy was revisited in the 1990s with the National Population Council. Its 1994 <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/people/583233?c=people">report</a> found no optimal population size for Australia, but again called for a responsive population policy of preparedness. </p>
<p>Interest in <a href="http://www.assa.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/AP22011.pdf">sustainable population policy</a> was renewed in 2010 following Kevin Rudd’s infamous <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-10-23/rudd-welcomes-big-australia/1113752">endorsement of a “big Australia”</a>. We even had a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-04-03/tony-burke-made-first-population-minister/390256">minister for population</a>, Tony Burke, for about six months until the portfolio was expanded. Population was subsequently dropped from any ministerial title. </p>
<p>After an <a href="http://webarchive.nla.gov.au/gov/20130904062013/http://www.environment.gov.au/sustainability/population/index.html">exhaustive inquiry</a>, <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/6944262c-e3de-4b70-9e09-e3e75668ce63/files/population-strategy.pdf">A Sustainable Population Strategy for Australia</a> was released in 2011. This stopped short of recommending a population policy but removed any option of population limits. Change felt possible in shifting the narrative to a proactive endeavour concerning population matters, particularly evident in the <a href="https://infrastructure.gov.au/infrastructure/pab/files/Our_Cities_National_Urban_Policy_Paper_2011.pdf">National Urban Policy</a>.</p>
<p>Despite such inquiries and recommendations to adopt a population policy, governments have so far resisted. Unsuccessful attempts at population policy can be understood in terms of difficulties in gaining political support and concerns about coercion. </p>
<p>But national population policy need not be coercive – unlike, for example, in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/13/india-population-growth-policy-problems-sterilisation-incentives-coercion">India</a> or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/06/chinas-barbaric-one-child-policy">China</a>. Instead, it can be a series of targets and connected policy domains with oversight.</p>
<p>Presently, the policy landscape is disjointed. Parenting leave, family and childcare payments, and immigration are each somewhat responsive to population changes, but not prepared. Family payments have been shown <a href="https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol25/6/25-6.pdf">not to increase birth rates</a>.</p>
<h2>Births, deaths, migration – and taxes</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.treasury.gov.au/%7E/media/Treasury/Publications%20and%20Media/Publications/2015/2015%20Intergenerational%20Report/Downloads/PDF/2015_IGR.ashx">intergenerational reports</a> have been our only glimpse of responsiveness and preparedness. But these have increasingly been <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-15/dr-karl-backs-away-from-political-intergenerational-report/6393152">criticised for their political tone</a>. Who could forget the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV85VSuQMSI">Challenge of Change</a> campaign?</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Dr Karl Kruszelnicki fronted the Challenge of Change campaign.</span></figcaption>
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<p>What we know is that <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/2024.0">Australia’s population continues to age</a>, so among the nation’s pressing issues is fewer taxpayers. The total age-related dependency ratio, of people aged over and under working age relative to the working-aged population, was 52 per 100 people in 2016. </p>
<p>While the child-dependency rate (0-14 year olds) is higher than the aged-dependency rate (people 65 and over), the rate of people aged less than 15 has steadily declined as the population aged 65 and over has driven increases in the so-called <a href="http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/natlinfo/indicators/methodology_sheets/demographics/dependency_ratio.pdf">dependency burden</a>. </p>
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<p>The relative increase in people older than working age is increasing pressure on the economy and government budgets. While government spending on young people is substantial, the highest per person spending is among people aged 65 and over. </p>
<p>A robust workforce contributing income tax and services is essential to ensure current lifestyles are afforded to the young while also sustaining the <a href="http://www.treasury.gov.au/%7E/media/Treasury/Publications%20and%20Media/Publications/2015/2015%20Intergenerational%20Report/Downloads/PDF/2015_IGR.ashx">public spending</a> necessary for people over 65 years who have over their lives contributed to the nation. </p>
<p>With <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3301.0">birth rates low</a> and <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3302.0Main%20Features12015?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3302.0&issue=2015&num=&view=">deaths increasing</a>, natural increase is no longer driving Australia’s population. <a href="http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n2121/html/ch04.xhtml">Immigration</a> is increasingly relied on to offset the ageing of the workforce. Over half (54%) of Australia’s population growth is from <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats%5Cabs@.nsf/mediareleasesbyCatalogue/CA1999BAEAA1A86ACA25765100098A47?Opendocument">net overseas migration</a>. </p>
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<h2>Preparing for an older population</h2>
<p>In a 2013 United Nations <a href="http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/policy/WPP2013/wpp2013.pdf#zoom=100">survey</a>, the Australian government reported concerns about population ageing, a desire to increase the “too low” birth rate, but satisfaction with the level of net overseas migration. Interestingly, a preference for migration away from cities was also cited. </p>
<p>From current policy and discourse, you would not know these views were held. Most Australians also report a preference for the level of immigration to remain the <a href="http://politicsir.cass.anu.edu.au/sites/politicsir.anu.edu.au/files/ANUpoll-national-identity-042015.pdf">same or be increased</a>, contrary to sentiments we often hear. </p>
<p>Australia has time to prepare for, and make opportunities of, the challenges of an ageing population. Some countries are facing tough decisions now and it is interesting to watch the politics play out. What <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/26/its-official-japans-population-is-drastically-shrinking/?utm_term=.265fef81a0c8">Japan</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-scrapping-the-one-child-policy-will-do-little-to-change-chinas-population-49982">China</a> and <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/germany-is-not-shrinking/a-37415327">Germany</a> show is that we need to take action now. </p>
<p>Insightful guides are in place already. <a href="http://saplan.org.au/media/BAhbBlsHOgZmSSIhMjAxMS8xMS8wNC8wMV8wMl8xNF8yMjNfZmlsZQY6BkVU/01_02_14_223_file">South Australia</a> has had a population strategy since 2004. <a href="http://www.stategrowth.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/124304/Population_Growth_Strategy_Growing_Tas_Population_for_web.pdf">Tasmania</a> recently adopted one.</p>
<p>These state strategies focus on growth to curb economic downturn. What is important in these two cases is that both emphasise policy portfolio linkages, as well as evidence and reporting against targets without coercive measures.</p>
<h2>What is a sensible approach to population policy?</h2>
<p>A renewed, earnest and transparent population conversation is needed. With ever more reliance on immigration, we must go beyond the unhelpful pro-immigration versus pro-nationalism debate to consider our population prospects. </p>
<p>The key question is: how can Australia make opportunities of its demographic challenges? </p>
<p>Australia has the potential to be a global leader in innovative markets and research and development. An ageing population provides an interesting market opening; we just need to be smart about it. Without careful consideration, Australia will be merely a bystander in the increasingly competitive global market. </p>
<p>Policy connectedness should exist between portfolios. These include: health; housing; education, skills and training; employment; infrastructure; regional development; water and energy; environment; and migrant settlement. </p>
<p>We can invest more effectively in young people – our future workforce and economic lifeblood – if we consider a life-course approach to population dynamics. Family friendly, gender-equal workplaces will go a long way to ease the pressures of having children. Integral to this is affordable and accessible child care.</p>
<p>And establishing a ministerial portfolio overseeing population strategy would be a good start.</p>
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<p><em>You can read other articles in the Is Australia Full? series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-australia-full-39068">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78183/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Allen is a member of the national council of the Australian Population Association. </span></em></p>Considering all the aspects of life in Australia that are affected by population, it’s remarkable that the nation doesn’t have a national policy on it.Liz Allen, Demographer, ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.