Why China and India face a marriage crisis

The Economist

China's Massive Female Abortions Tied to Violent Crime by Unmarried Males

breitbart

By Dr. Susan Berry 

China’s one-child policy, instituted in 1979, has made it the most gender-imbalanced country in the world, with 117.78 boys for every 100 girls. Since the Chinese culture traditionally favors males, massive numbers of female babies have been aborted. 

While the policy is blamed for societal flaws such as a depressed “real exchange rate,” which damages the global economy, and a reduction in the labor force, perhaps the most disturbing outcome of having significantly more boys than girls is an increase in violent crimes.

Writing at the New Republic, Elizabeth Winkler reports that, in 2012, the Chinese government estimated that China had 40 million more males than females, with the difference growing larger each year.

While the country claims a reduction in the gender imbalance is a national priority, largely due to economic reasons, China, and much of the media, gloss over the fact that its one-child policy has been one of the great human rights atrocities in world history. As BBC.com reports, in 2000, for example, 90 percent of aborted babies were reportedly female.

Winkler writes that the resulting “gender imbalance” has likely led to the increase in China’s violent crimes.

In a recent study published in Asian Population Studies, economists Jane Golley and Rod Tyers determined that the higher number of males in China has led to excessive savings since families with boys are competing to match up their sons with girls, who are scarce. However, the investigators also found climbing rates of crime among unmarried males.

Projecting outward to 2030 using a global dynamic model, the researchers find “the proportion of unmatched unskilled Chinese men of reproductive age could be as high as one in four by that time.”

They write:

Policies to rebalance the sex ratio at birth will take decades to reduce the sex ratio at reproductive age and any associated allowance for higher fertility would slow growth in real per capita income. Yet our results suggest that more than offsetting gains could accrue from productivity improvements stemming from reduced crime.

The researchers tap into previous research that has determined that China’s crime rate has indeed doubled over the last two decades.

A March 2010 article in The Economist observes:

China alone stands to have as many unmarried young men—“bare branches,” as they are known—as the entire population of young men in America. In any country rootless young males spell trouble; in Asian societies, where marriage and children are the recognised routes into society, single men are almost like outlaws. Crime rates, bride trafficking, sexual violence, even female suicide rates are all rising and will rise further as the lopsided generations reach their maturity.

Additionally, George J. Gilboy and Eric Heginbotham, writing at Foreign Affairs in October 2010, noted that China’s economy has continued to grow and its per capita income increased as it has repealed taxes and invested in infrastructure and a social safety net; nonetheless, social tensions have grown more pronounced.

The authors write:

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) estimates that incidents of social unrest have risen from about 40,000 in 2001 to “over 90,000” in 2009. CASS also reports that these incidents are becoming larger, more violent, more likely to cross provincial borders, and more diverse in terms of participants and grievances.

A 2008 study in Social Science Research Network links the increase in crime and violent behavior in China to the scarcity of females. The research indicates that crime rates almost doubled in the nation between 1992 and 2004, the same period in which sex ratios (males to females) in the age grouping of 16-25 years, which is characterized by a tendency toward crime, rose dramatically from 1.053 to 1.093.

The study found that "a 0.01 increase in the sex ratio raised the violent and property crime rates by some 5-6%, suggesting that the increasing maleness of the young adult population may account for as much as a third of the overall rise in crime."

As Winkler observes, anthropological studies confirm what instinctively seems true—that in cultures with excessive men, males tend to engage in risky, “wife-seeking” behavior. When the size of the pool of unmarried men is reduced and “normative monogamy” occurs more often, rates for rape, murder, assault, robbery, and fraud are all reduced.

Global ageing: Time to rethink retirement

The Economist

The Disappearance of China's Re-Education Camps | Foreign Affairs

By John Delury

Inmates listen to a speech, Shanxi province, September 1, 2010. (Courtesy Reuters)

Advocates for the rule of law in China won a victory two weeks ago when the most Kafkaesque aspect of the country’s penal system was officially slated for abolition. The system of laodong jiaoyang, or laojiao for short, translates, innocuously enough, to “re-education through labor.” In practice, laojiao is a system of punishment for misfits -- from drug addicts to political critics -- whose rehabilitation is deemed to require years of forced labor without the benefit of a trial or even a chance to hear formal charges. It is a remnant of Maoist Communism that is entirely at odds with the country’s contemporary capitalist sheen.

When the Chinese Communist Party plenum, an annual conclave of top leaders, announced its intention to do away with the system, it was rightly considered a major test of new president Xi Jinping’s determination to reform the country’s political system. But it is far too soon to conclude whether he has passed the test. Xi’s decisions at the recent plenum -- which included creating high-level commissions to coordinate foreign policy, domestic security, and economic reform, strengthening the market and shrinking the state’s role in the economy, and easing the one-child policy -- have mostly served to clarify the battle lines in the Chinese political establishment over issues of reform. In the case of laojiao, those battle lines are especially entrenched, given that they were drawn in the beginnings of China’s Communist era.

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¿Cuánto tiempo dura algo?. De la inecuación de Gott al efecto Lindy

Jose Monzo Marco

El III Reich decía de sí mismo que iba a gobernar Alemania durante 1.000 años... apenas duró 12 años (1933-1945). El partido de la UCD en España decía de sí mismo que iba a gobernar durante 100 años... apenas duró 5 años (1977-1982). Al parecer los humanos somos muy buenos calculando la esperanza de vida de una persona en base a su sexo y edad mediante las tablas actuariales, pero un poco torpes para estimar la duración de otras cosas. ¿O no?.

Inecuación de Gott

Cuando el matemático y astrofísico John Richard Gott se encontraba ante el Muro de Berlín en 1969, intentó estimar la duración probable del Muro basándose en un solo dato, el tiempo transcurrido hasta ese momento, 8 años (1961-1969) y en base al principio atribuido a Copérnico (los humanos no somos observadores privilegiados del universo), re-elaborado posteriormente como “principio de mediocridad” que viene a decir que cualquier cosa seleccionada al azar que observemos en un momento determinado no estará ni al comienzo ni al final de su vida: lo más probable es que esté en algún punto alrededor de la mitad de su vida. Armado con esta presunción y un mínimo aparataje matemático, Gott se atrevió a calcular que con una fiabilidad del 50%, al Muro de Berlín le quedasen (en 1969) menos de 24 años de existencia (exactamente entre 2,67 y 24 años adicionales). Como ustedes saben, el Muro de Berlín fue derribado en 1989, es decir, veinte años después de la profecía matemática de Gott.

No obstante y tras este éxito, su argumento fue tildado de incompleto, así que lo volvió a someter a contraste empírico. En concreto, Gott elaboró una lista de los 44 espectáculos que había en la cartelera de Broadway un día determinado, el 17 de Mayo de 1993, y predijo que los que llevaban más tiempo en representándose serían los que durarían más tiempo en cartel, y viceversa. Su predicción se demostró correcta en un 95% de los casos.

El problema al que se enfrenta este tipo de predicciones, como la propuesta por Richard Gott o como la que veremos después con el llamado efecto Lindy, desafía el sentido común, pues al común de los mortales nos podría parecer insuficiente o temerario que con apenas el conocimiento de una variable (el tiempo transcurrido) y un coeficiente nos atrevamos a realizar la estimación de la duración de casi cualquier cosa. Ni que decir tiene que el problema tiene su enjundia a un nivel fundamental, pues no pasaría de ser un divertimento matemático si no fuera porque, a mi entender, el enfoque abordado por Gott revela algo profundo sobre nuestra manera de comprender la función de probabilidad en la duración de las creaciones humanas para entrar de lleno en el campo de la metamatemática.

Gráficamente el problema de la estimación de casi cualquier cosa se podría representar de este modo:

En donde partiendo de un único dato, el tiempo transcurrido desde el inicio de algo y el tiempo presente podemos estimar el tiempo adicional o restante de ese algo.

Un cálculo ciertamente atrevido.

El enfoque de Richard Gott está basado en la aplicación de la presunción copernicana antes comentada: el momento presente de la vida de ese algo no es excepcional, es decir, no está situado ni al inicio ni al final de la vida de ese algo, un principio que proviene del ámbito de la astronomía, pero que Gott se atrevió a aplicar al ámbito de lo cotidiano. Conociendo por tanto el tiempo transcurrido sólo nos resta aplicar un coeficiente, que en el caso de la inecuación Gott se conoce como factor de fiabilidad, que podríamos entender como probabilidad de la estimación, entendiendo que a menor probabilidad más error aunque menor variabilidad (mayor precisión) y a mayor probabilidad menor error aunque mayor variabilidad (menor precisión), entendiendo por variabilidad la diferencia entre la estimación mínima y la máxima. Nota: 100 - fiabilidad = probabilidad de error.

Otra manera de entenderlo sería que cuanta menos fiabilidad correspondería un rango de solución más estrecho (F < 50%), es decir, más precisión pero más probabilidad de error y cuanta más fiabilidad correspondería un rango de solución más amplio (F > 50%), es decir menos precisión aunque menos probabilidad de error. Una recomendación al operar con la fórmula propuesta por Richard Gott es comenzar usando una probabilidad del 50% que es justo la que solía utilizar su autor.

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Bad News For Baseball: World Series Viewers Are Getting Older And Older

Courtesy of Andrés Pascual

Read on deadspin >>

The Economist: Poverty's new address in America

The Economist

Obama’s demographic edge

Gerber baby: Mary Jane Montoya

By NBC's Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Brooke Browerbama’s demographic

*** Obama's demographic edge: Yes, the auto bailout mattered in Ohio. Sure, Hurricane Sandy helped the president. And, yes, the economy was the No. 1 issue. But make no mistake: What happened last night was a demographic time bomb that had been ticking and that blew up in GOP faces. As the Obama campaign had assumed more than a year ago, the white portion of the electorate dropped to 72%, and the president won just 39% of that vote. But he carried a whopping 93% of black voters (representing 13% of the electorate), 71% of Latinos (representing 10%), and also 73% of Asians (3%). What’s more, despite all the predictions that youth turnout would be down, voters 18-29 made up 19% of last night’s voting population -- up from 18% four years ago -- and President Obama took 60% from that group. The trend also played out in the key battleground states: The president won about 70% of the Latino vote in Colorado and Nevada, and he won 60% of it in Florida (a high number given the state’s large GOP-leaning Cuban-American population). On Monday, we wrote that demography could determine destiny. And that’s exactly what happened. While the campaign’s turnout operation deserves all the credit for getting these voters to the polls, the most significant event of this presidential contest might very well have been the 2010 census.

*** And the GOP’s demographic dilemma: Obama’s demographic edge creates this dilemma for the Republican Party: It can no longer rely on white voters to win national elections anymore, especially in presidential cycles. Indeed, according to the exit poll, 89% of all votes Mitt Romney won last night came from whites (compared with 56% for Obama). So the Republicans are maximizing their share with white voters; they just aren’t getting the rest. And come 2016, the white portion of the electorate will probably drop another couple of points to 70%. Politico’s Martin puts it this way: “Battling a wheezing economy and a deeply motivated opposition, Obama still managed to retain much of his 2008 map because of the GOP’s deficiencies with the voters who are changing the political face of once conservative-leaning Virginia, Florida, Colorado and Nevada. Republicans face a crisis: the country is growing less white and their coalition has become more white in recent years. In 2004, George W. Bush won [about 40 percent] of Hispanics. Four years later, John McCain, the author of an immigration reform bill, took 31 percent of Hispanics. And this year, Romney captured only 27 percent of Hispanics.”

NBC's Chuck Todd discusses how Florida may be used as a model for the rest of the country to show how changes in demographics, particularly an influx of Hispanic voters in key counties, affected the outcome of the election.  

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

*** Hard for the GOP just to turn to the Midwest: Now Republicans might argue, “Look, we can win back the Midwest -- Ohio, Iowa, and Wisconsin.” Yet those account for 34 electoral votes. But the Sun Belt states where Obama campaigned and which have more diverse populations (Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia) have a total of 57 electoral votes. And then there are Arizona, Georgia, and Texas. Do those states come into play in 2016? What about 2020? Come 2016, you could argue that Arizona and Georgia become for Democrats what Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania are for Republicans -- just slightly out of reach.

*** Last night’s results: The morning after, here are the results (so far) from last night: Obama holds 303 electoral votes and Romney 206. (NBC News has yet to call Florida and its 29 electoral votes, but Obama leads there 50%-49%.) In the popular vote, it’s Obama 50%, Romney 48%. Also, Democrats have held on to their Senate majority and might add to it -- with undecided races in Montana (where Democratic incumbent Jon Tester leads 48%-48% with 77% in) and North Dakota (where Democrat Heidi Heitkamp is ahead by about 3,000 voters with 93% in). But Republicans held on to control of the House, holding 237 seats vs. 197 for the Democrats, plus-minus four seats.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

*** Does status-quo control = status-quo governing? So in the end, we got a status-quo result -- with Obama holding on to the White House, Democrats keeping control of the Senate, and Republicans maintaining their grip on the House. But here’s the question with the “fiscal cliff” negotiations coming up: Will the governing be status quo, too? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell released this statement last night: “To the extent [Obama] wants to move to the political center, which is where the work gets done in a divided government, we’ll be there to meet him half way. That begins by proposing a way for both parties to work together in avoiding the ‘fiscal cliff’ without harming a weak and fragile economy, and when that is behind us work with us to reform the tax code and our broken entitlement system.” And House Speaker John Boehner makes a statement on the “fiscal cliff” negotiations at 3:30 pm ET. But who holds the mandate here? The GOP? Or a president who waged a national campaign on raising taxes for the wealthy, and who won? And here’s another question: Do Boehner and McConnell take advantage of the lame duck to compromise? 

*** Obama’s swing-county swagger: Turning back to last night’s presidential contest, Obama beat Romney in almost all of the swing counties (won by Bush in ’04 but by Obama in ’08). Indeed, Obama won three of four swing counties in Florida (Hillsborough, Pinellas, Osceola), four of six in Ohio (Hamilton, Wood, Ottawa, Sandusky), 11 of 14 in Virginia (including Loudon, Prince William, and Henrico), and all six in Colorado (including Jefferson, Arapahoe, and Larimer). And despite losing North Carolina, Obama may have proved that the state is changing, becoming more “Mid-Atlantic” but not quite all there, as Charlie Cook has said. Obama won nine of 13 swing counties in the Tar Heel State (including the large counties of Wake, Forsyth, Cumberland, and Buncombe).

*** And his tactical dominance: But it was more than winning the swing counties for Obama; it was tactical dominance. Romney made inroads all across the country from previous GOP performance. What happened, however, was that the Obama campaign exploited the census and changed the margins. The best example of this was in Florida.

*** Making history: Finally, it was an historic-making election. With Obama’s re-election, we now have the first time since Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe that Americans have elected three two-term presidents in a row… Tammy Baldwin will become the Senate’s first openly gay member… The Senate will have at least 19 female members -- the most ever -- and there’s a chance that number could increase to 20 if Heitkamp wins… Maryland and Maine became the first states to approve of gay marriage at the ballot box… And initiatives to legalize marijuana passed in Colorado and Washington state.

Census data reveals new family structures in Canada

GlobalToronto

China's demographic problem

By EconomistMagazine

La clase media ya es mayoritaria en Brasil

Juan Arias / El Pais

En el centro del debate político brasileño reina la novedad de la nueva clase media, que ya es mayoritaria en la sociedad y por tanto capaz de decidir unas elecciones. Políticos, sociólogos, periodistas y analistas sociales bucean en esta nueva realidad preguntándose cómo es esta clase media que, de minoritaria hace sólo 10 años, hoy ocupa el centro de la antigua pirámide social. La estructura social brasileña ya no es piramidal, gracias a los 30 millones de pobres que, en los ocho años de la presidencia del exsindicalista y tornero mecánico Lula da Silva, saltaron de la pobreza a la clase media baja.

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Destiny is Demography

Bill Bonner, for The Daily Reckoning

The San Francisco Federal Reserve bank came out with a gloomy forecast last month. Its analysts said that stocks were likely to earn paltry returns over the next 10 years. The reason cited was simple enough; stockholders don’t live forever.

‘Demography is destiny,’ said Auguste Comte. ‘It works the other way around too,’ he might have added. If they thought they were going to live longer, America’s most ubiquitous age cohort — the baby boomers — might continue to buy stocks. Instead, the cold hand of the grave is on their shoulders and on the whole economy. The boomers are retiring at the rate of 10,000 per day over the next 18 years. They will sell stocks to finance their remaining years.

Old people have always been a drag on an economy. Migrating tribes left them behind. Eskimos put them out on the ice. Old people generally bowed to their fate with good grace. In times of famine, for example, they stopped eating so the young might live.

Mortality has doomed the stock market, says the S.F. Fed. P/E ratios will likely be cut in half. Investors are unlikely to see their stocks return to 2010 levels, says the report, until 2027. And this assumes that US companies will continue to grow profits as they did since 1954. Not very likely. Because democracy, energy, and financial quackery are destiny too. Jointly and severally, they are responsible for the biggest financial debacle in history.

Read more: Destiny is Demography http://dailyreckoning.com/destiny-is-demography/#ixzz1Y9kX3uBV

Increase in Population Density Triggered Rapid Growth of Human Brain Over Past 2 Million Years

'Galaxy' Classic)

For the past 2 million years, the size of the human brain has tripled, growing much faster than other mammals. Examining the reasons for human brain expansion, University of Missouri researchers studied three common hypotheses for brain growth: climate change, ecological demands and social competition. The team found that social competition is the major cause of increased cranial capacity.

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En Rusia hay 10 millones más de mujeres que hombres

Al parecer, los rusos tienen más perspectivas a la hora de elegir a su pareja que las rusas. Según resultados preliminares del censo 2010 de Rusia, las mujeres son 9,8 millones más que los hombres.

Europe’s Ticking Demographic Time Bomb

by Soeren Kern

Europe’s population is shrinking and aging so much so fast that a major decline in European living standards is now statistically inevitable within the next 15 years, according to data contained in a publication titled “The EU in the World: A Statistical Portrait.” The 113-page report — published by the European Union’s official statistics agency known as Eurostat — shows that Europeans increasingly are relegating themselves to the global margins, as their relative share of global wealth and trade shrinks. The main culprit is the refusal by Europeans to produce more children.

 

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Europe's Ticking Demographic Time Bomb

The seventh billion economist.com/ Video

Demografia mundial y democracia

Martha Colmenares nos muestra el siguiente video muy oportuno a proposito del speech del Iman Hussein. No tenia los datos estadisticos, pero es evidente, y como en muchisimas cosas solo mire y constate la realidad y asi no tendra que spend time reading news or going to update your knowledge El mundo será dominado por los islámicos. Impresionante video

Aborto: Continua el experimento con los cubanos/ Espinaxiones

No solamente ha sido el experimento de supervivencia restringiendo cada dia mas la alimentacion, la variedad y la cantidad de lo que las familias pueden adquirir, de lo que hay disponible, experimentos que hay llevado a los extremos con los presos politicos que han dejado incluso morir de hambre mientras investigaban los limites de la resistencia humana. Ahora el experimento pretende revertir la tendencia a la disminucion de los partos tratando de aumentar la poblacion que con el desenfreno en la politica abortista y antivida asi como los destierros y encierros en prisiones ha traido como consecuencia que la poblacion cubana haya comenzado a disminuir en los ultimos años.
Las noticias confirmadas por esta publicacion del Organo de Prensa Oficial Fascista Nacen más niños en Cuba en el 2008, es que han restringido en cierta medida la galopante y horrorosa carrera de abortos desde hace algunos meses con lo cual se ha incrementado en cierta proporcion el numero de nacimientos.
En esta granja de animales de laboratorio donde impera el kaxtrizmo todo sucede en ciclos y caprichosamente con desprecio absoluto para los seres humanos con el unico fin del poder absoluto e infinito.

Con posterioridad a la visita de Juan Pablo II a Cuba en 1998, el Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet horrorizado por la extendida practica del aborto como metodo anticonceptivo de estado, publico su estudio sobre el aborto en Cuba Oscar Elías Biscet: El Origen Admirable del Movimiento de Elías ... y Granma y la clase médica cubana ahora lo admiten: el aborto seguro ...