Category Archives: Population

‘We’re poor people’: Middle East’s migrant workers look for way home amid pandemic

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Gulf states prepare for demographic shift as migrant workforces return home, with prospects bleak for those who stay

During 14 years in Lebanon, Jevie Olido’s four children have grown up without her, her marriage has failed and her parents have grown old. Now, the income that kept her far from her home in the Philippines has also gone, rubbed out by the coronavirus crisis and an economic implosion that has forced thousands of desperate domestic workers like her to look for ways to leave.

In neighbouring Jordan, Samir Ali, an Indian garment worker, is also waiting to be paid, after only receiving his March salary when he and other foreign workers at their factory threatened to strike. The pandemic has crippled production across the country and caused clashes between labourers and employers. Eight of the 40 men had registered to go back to India once their contracts had finished. “We’ve decided this factory is really bad,” he said. “We’re poor people, so we have to find another way.”

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‘It’s national preservation’: Greece offers baby bonus to boost birthrate

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€180m-a-year scheme launched in response to projections of ageing and shrinking population

As the new year dawned, Maria Pardalakis was in the throes of labour. The clock had barely struck midnight when she delivered a healthy boy in a clinic on Crete.

With her son’s birth – the first in Greece this year – Pardalakis and her husband, Christos, became the first people eligible for a €2,000 (£1,700) government baby bonus. “It’s been a new year like no other, the best gift my wife could give me,” Christos enthused. “And, sure, the benefit will help – not just us, a lot of families.”

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Africa poised to lead way in global green revolution, says report

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Continent is set for massive urbanisation but can avoid relying on fossil fuels, says IEA

Africa is poised to lead the world’s cleanest economic revolution by using renewable energy sources to power a massive spread of urbanisation, says an IEA report.

The IEA, or International Energy Agency, predicts that solar energy will play a big role in supporting the continent’s growing population and industrialisation over the next 20 years.

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‘Bulging at the seams’: Auckland, a super city struggling with its own success

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The government dreamed of a metropolis that is a beacon to all but the pace of change has left some behind and others disillusioned

Tāmaki Makaurau, the Māori name for Auckland which can be translated as “the place desired by many”, is living up to its billing. The city’s population has swelled rapidly to 1.7 million and is estimated to be adding 40,000 people a year. By 2048 it could host nearly half of New Zealand’s current population.

In the 1980s only a couple of thousand people lived in the central city. Now some 57,000 people call it home, a figure that was not expected to be reached until 2032.

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Air pollution particles found on foetal side of placentas – study

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Research finds black carbon breathed by mothers can cross into unborn children

Air pollution particles have been found on the foetal side of placentas, indicating that unborn babies are directly exposed to the black carbon produced by motor traffic and fuel burning.

The research is the first study to show the placental barrier can be penetrated by particles breathed in by the mother. It found thousands of the tiny particles per cubic millimetre of tissue in every placenta analysed.

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Viktor Orbán trumpets Hungary’s ‘procreation, not immigration’ policy

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Hungarian PM invokes far-right ‘great replacement’ theory at Budapest demography summit

Procreate or face extinction: that’s the message from central European leaders to their shrinking populations, as across the region rightwing governments implement so-called “family first” policies to incentivise childbearing.

Hungary’s government is holding an international summit on demography in Budapest this week, being attended by several regional leaders and delegations from dozens of countries in an attempt to trumpet their investment in family policies.

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Politician scolds female professor for not having child

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‘Failing to fulfil her duty to the nation’ criticism sparks outrage on social media

A South Korean politician has sparked anger after he criticised the female nominee for head of the country’s fairtrade commission for “failing to fulfil her duty to the nation” by not having children.

Jeong Kab-yoon, a member of the conservative opposition Liberty Korea party, was widely condemned after suggesting to Joh Sung-wook, an economics professor, that she had focused on her career at the expense of the country’s birth rate.

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The west takes its eyes off Africa at its peril | Larry Elliott

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The G7 thought it had solved Africa’s problems, but rising child poverty is a ticking time bomb

Time was when Africa dominated gatherings of the G7. In the period between two summits held in the UK – Birmingham in 1998 and Gleneagles in 2005 – the talk was of little else. There was public activism and it led to political action.

In part, that was because the big developed countries were enjoying a spell of low-inflationary growth and could look beyond their own problems to see a bigger picture. There was the occasional financial panic, but the G7 thought the problems of economic management had largely been solved and all that was needed was a bit of tinkering by technocratic central bankers.

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‘The next era of human progress’: what lies behind the global new cities epidemic?

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The urge to build cities from scratch is not new – but this time they are being conceived by private multinational corporations as gilt-edged tax-exempt gated communities

At 8.30 every morning, an announcement is piped though a speaker in the ceiling of Kim Jong-won’s apartment, barking the daily bulletin in a high-pitched voice. The disembodied broadcaster details new parking measures, issues with the pneumatic waste disposal chute and various building maintenance jobs to be carried out that day.

“There’s no way of turning it off,” sighs Kim’s wife, Jung-sim, as she prepares breakfast. “I hate technology but my husband is an early adopter. He has to have everything first.”

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Global population of eight billion and growing: we can’t go on like this | Robin McKie

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World Population Day will mark a global crisis – one that is best tackled by more access to birth control, particularly in Africa

President Magufuli pulled off an intriguing feat last year when, in a single speech, he managed to affront just about every liberal cause on the planet. The Tanzanian leader told a public rally not to listen to advice from foreigners on contraception because it had “sinister motives”. For good measure, he accused women who use birth control of being “lazy” – it was their duty to have large numbers of children.

By any standards, these were outrageous remarks – and worrying ones, for they indicate there has been a deep and potentially catastrophic failure by the west in promoting a measure on which the future health of our planet depends: limiting numbers of our species. Until this basic task is achieved, virtually every measure we take to tackle global heating will be negated by the energy demands of the extra billions we have added to global populations, say campaigners.

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Has Tokyo reached ‘peak city’?

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You could argue that the world’s biggest city has hit a sweet spot: a flatlining population, pervasive transit and little gentrification. But is ‘peak city’ even possible – and where does Tokyo go from here?

Tokyo is often described as crowded, mushrooming, figuratively bursting at the seams. Except, in many ways, it’s not.

Unlike many megacities, the world’s largest metropolitan area has largely stopped growing, either in land or population. Where Mumbai, Lagos or São Paulo continually sprout new informal neighbourhoods that are constantly outstripping the ability of the city to catch up, Tokyo’s urban planning and services more or less seamlessly encompass the central wards and the neighbouring cities of Kawasaki, Yokohama, Chiba and Saitama that form its unbroken metropolitan area.

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東京の転換点：日本の首都はついに開かれるのか

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日本が移民を受け入れ、その首都がオリンピックの開催準備を進める2019年は、世界最大のメガロポリスが真のグローバル都市になる年かもしれない

暖かい5月の夜、東京・歌舞伎町にある思い出横丁の狭い路地では、背もたれのない椅子に腰かけた旅行者たちが、英語で書かれた焼き鳥のメニューを熱心に眺めている。また、ある者たちは、燃えるようなド派手な「ロボットレストラン」へと押し寄せ、ネオンの光輝く洞窟のようなホールでアニマトロニックなキャラクターたちのダンスを楽しんでいる。そうかと思えば、この街を舞台にしたSF映画に登場したネメシス、「ゴジラ」の前で自撮りにいそしむ人たちもいる。隣町の渋谷の路上では、マリオやルイジといったマリオカートのキャラクターを真似たと思しきコスチュームを着て、ゴーカートの隊列を走らせている。（先週、任天堂は「マリカー」に対する著作権侵害の裁判で二度目の勝訴を得た。）

何十年にもわたり、訪れる者に対して閉鎖的な都市として有名であった日本の首都が、ついに外の世界へと開かれようとしている。昨年、観光客数は記録的な水準にまで増加した。特に中国からの観光客数の伸びが顕著だが、他の欧米諸国からの観光客も同様である。来年の夏には、東京はオリンピックとパラリンピックでその門戸を大きく開放する。日本は、制限的なことで有名であった入国管理法令を緩和したが、この動きは確実に東京の姿を一変させるだろう。東京には、既にコワーキングスペースや本格的なカフェ、海外ブランドのブティックをはじめとして、「グローバル」都市を彩る要素が点在している。

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Europe’s south and east worry more about emigration than immigration – poll

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Exclusive: Survey of 14 countries show some Europeans now favour “emigration controls”

Southern and eastern European countries are more concerned about emigration than immigration, according to a wide-ranging survey of attitudes in 14 EU countries.

In Spain, Italy, Greece, Poland, Hungary and Romania, six countries where population levels are either flatlining or falling sharply, more citizens said emigration was a worry than immigration, according to the poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

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Can China recover from its disastrous one-child policy?

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Families are now being urged to have at least two children, but it may be too late to convince parents to embrace the change

For Xu Meiru, 38, the thought of having a second child is exhausting. Her days typically begin at 5am, don’t end until 11pm, and are filled with shuttling her nine-year-old son to school, helping him with his homework, preparing meals and running an online clothing business.

“It’s hard to find time even to sleep for a few minutes in a chair,” she says, sitting in a McDonald’s while her son plays a game on a phone, the detritus of a Happy Meal in front of him.

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Viktor Orbán: no tax for Hungarian women with four or more children

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Growing families better than letting Muslim immigrants in, says prime minister

Hungary’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has promised that women who have four or more children will never pay income tax again, in a move aimed at boosting the country’s population.

Orbán, who has emerged as Europe’s loudest rightwing, anti-immigration voice in recent years, said getting Hungarian families to have more children was preferable to allowing immigrants from Muslim countries to enter.

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Experts urge Egypt to rethink two-child population strategy

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Medics say limiting families s not the answer for a country where a baby is born every 15 seconds

In the cramped office of New Cairo hospital’s family planning clinic, Safah Hosny sets a box overflowing with contraceptives next to the visitors’ ledger on a small desk.

There are eight condoms for one Egyptian pound, about 4p, or ampoules of injectable birth control, for just under 9p. A contraceptive implant lasting three years costs 22p, while copper IEDs – the most popular form of birth control on offer according to Dr Hosny – cost 17p.

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