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Spring 2007

What’s Wrong with the ‘Demographic Dividend’ Concept?

DifferenTakes Series
44 ~ Spring 2007
[PDF Version]
By Anne Hendrixson

The September 2006 issue of the International Monetary Fund’s Finance & Development, titled “6.5 Billion and Counting” depicts a bemused cartoon earth, overflowing with people. The earth’s forehead is creased with concern as it strains to support surplus population in its hands, but despite its best efforts, people are slipping through its fingers and falling into space.

Anne Hendrixson is a graduate student in the International Development, Community and Environment Program at Clark University. She is on the advisory board of the Committee on Women, Population and the Environment.

References

  1. For a detailed discussion of overpopulation narratives and the processes that they obscure and emphasize, see Jael Silliman and Ynestra King, eds, Dangerous Intersections (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1999).
  2. See Population and Development Program at Hampshire College, “10 Reasons to Rethink ‘Overpopulation,’” DifferenTakes, No 40, Fall 2006, http://popdev.hampshire.edu/projects/dt/pdfs/DifferenTakes_40.pdf.
  3. David E. Bloom and David Canning, “Boom, Busts, and Echoes,” Finance & Development, Vol. 43, No. 3 (September 2006), http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2006/09/bloom.htm.
  4. David Bloom, David Canning, and Jaypee Sevilla, The Demographic Dividend: A New Perspective on the Economic Consequences of Population Change, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003), xi.
  5. Other demographers describe the demographic dividend as creating two bonuses: one during workers’ prime productive years and the other during workers’ retirement.
  6. RAND, “Banking the ‘Demographic Dividend: How Population Dynamics Can Affect Economic Growth,” Population Matters Policy Brief, 2002, pp.2-3.
  7. See David Bloom, David Canning and Pia N. Malaney, May 1999, “Demographic Change and Economic Growth in Asia,” CID Working Paper No. 15, Harvard University.
  8. Bloom, Canning, and Sevilla, The Demographic Dividend.
  9. The Bellagio meeting was funded by the Rockefeller and Packard Foundations in cooperation with the UNFPA.
  10. The Hewlett Foundation funded David Bloom and colleagues’ The Demographic Dividend, which also received support from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and UNFPA.
  11. Interview with Ann Blanc, September 2006.
  12. UNFPA, The Case for Investing in Young People as part of a National Poverty Reduction Strategy, (UNFPA, 2005), p.26.
  13. Ibid, 28.
  14. See Anne Hendrixson, “The Youth Bulge Concept: Defining the Next Generation of Young Men as a Threat to the Future,” DifferenTakes, No 19, Spring 2002, http://popdev.hampshire.edu/projects/dt/pdfs/DifferenTakes_19.pdf.
  15. Richard P. Cincotta, Robert Engelman, and Daniele Anastasion, The Security Demographic: Population and Civil Conflict After the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Population International, 2003), p. 42.
  16. Interestingly, the “youth bulge” has taken on multiple meanings. While it is most often used to describe the potentially violent population of young men in the global South, it is also employed as a neutral term to refer to size of the youth population. For instance, see Emmanuel Y. Jimenez and Mamta Murthi, “Investing in the Youth Bulge,” Finance and Development Vol. 43, No. 3, September 2006.
  17. Interview with Sonia Correa, September 25, 2006.
  18. According to Correa, a landmark reference is the paper by the demographers José Alberto de Carvalho Carvalho and Laura Rodrigues Wong: “Demographic and Socioeconomic implications of Rapid Fertility decline in Brazil: A window of opportunity” in G. Martine, M. Das Gupta, and L. C. Chen, eds., Reproductive Change in India and Brazil (Oxford University Press, 1998) 208-240. The two authors have recently re-visited the theme in a paper presented at the 2005 IUSSP Conference in Tours, France: “Demographic bonuses and challenges of the age structural transition in Brazil,” which can be assessed at http://www.abep.nepo.unicamp.br/docs/PopPobreza/Wong.pdf.
  19. While merits of the “rights-based” approach are debated within the feminist sexual and reproductive health movement, that is a conversation for another paper.
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Control Freaks:“Homeland Security” and “Interoperability”

DifferenTakes Series
45 ~ Spring 2007
[PDF Version]
By Ben Hayes and Roch Tassé

A primary consequence of government responses to 9/11 has been the development of the homeland security industry. In 2006 the global security market is expected to be worth almost $60 billion. By 2015 it is expected to grow to as much as $170-250 billion, depending of course upon levels of global insecurity. The 2007 US Department of Homeland Security budget alone is over $34 billion, two thirds of which is allocated for border security.

Ben Hayes is a London-based researcher with Statewatch and joint coordinator of the European Civil Liberties Network. Roch Tassé is coordinator of the Ottawa-based International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group.

References

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From Explosion to Implosion: A Call for Population Skepticism

DifferenTakes Series
~ Spring 2007
[PDF Version]
By Elizabeth L. Krause

Fears of global overpopulation pervade the American psyche. In the past several years, however, an unlikely bedfellow has slipped under the covers of the sleeping giant of overpopulation: The new ally stirs under the namesake of “population implosion.” Loud alarms from Europe reverberate elsewhere in a chorus of too few babies and too many immigrants.

Elizabeth L. Krause is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her ethnographic research examines record-low fertility in terms of the everyday experiences, emotions and memories of mothers, fathers, sweater-makers, former peasants, and counts. The findings expose the cultural politics of class, race, gender, nation and science, and they appear in her book, A Crisis of Births: Population Politics and Family-Making in Italy (Wadsworth, 2005).

References

  1. A. Golini, A. De Simoni, and F. Citoni, F., (eds.), Tre scenari per il possibile sviluppo della popolazione delle regioni italiane al 2044 (Three Scenarios for Possible Population Development for Italy’s Regions), Rome: Consiglio Nationale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Ricerche sulla Popolazione, 1995, p.1.
  2. 2. Itti Drioli, “Le ‘tavole’ del Papa conquiestano il Parlamento,” La Nazione, Quotiadano Nazionale, Prato, 15 November 2002, pp.3-5.
  3. Frank M. Snowden, The Conquest of Malaria: Italy, 1900-1962, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. See also, Victoria de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women, Italy, 1922-1945, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1992; and Elizabeth L. Krause, “Forward vs. Reverse Gear: The Politics of Proliferation and Resistance in the Italian Fascist State,” Journal of Historical Sociology 7 (3), 1994: 261-288.
  4. I explore the experiences of low fertility in my book, A Crisis of Births: Population Politics and Family-Making in Italy (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2005).
  5. “Italia? Vecchia e senza bambini,” La Stampa, 25 July 1997, p.17. “Culle più vuote, l’Italia cresce solo per l’apporto degli immigrati,” La Nazione, June 27, 1997, p.7. Marco Martiniello and Paul Kazim, “Italy: two perspectives.” Race & Class 1991 32 (3): 79-89, p. 88.
  6. Gregg Easterbrook, “Overpopulation Is No Problem — in the Long Run,” New Republic, 11 October 1999, p.22. Stephen Sackur, “Ageing Europe is Unprepared,” BBC News, 2 August 2003, http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk. accessed August 4, 2003.
  7. Michael Balter, “The Baby Deficit,” Science 312: 1894-1897 (30 June 2006).
  8. The postwar era witnessed books warning about the perils of overpopulation. Betsy Hartmann criticizes this literature for giving birth to a misdirected ideology in her Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control, Boston: South End Press, 1995. The demographic situations of ten countries in Europe are presented in Carrie Douglass, ed., Barren States: The Population Implosion in Europe, London: Berg, 2005.
  9. The Population Reference Bureau, 2001 World Population Data Sheet, http://www.prb.org, Accessed June 15, 2002. The 2005 World Population Data Sheet no longer included a category reflecting the government’s view of the total fertility rate. Italy’s TFR by 2005 had risen slightly to 1.3 births. The PRB defines Total Fertility Rate as, “The average number of children a woman would have assuming that current age-specific birth rates remain constant throughout her childbearing years (usually considered to be ages 15 to 49,” (2005: 14). Accessed June 1, 2006. For critical elaborations of the field of demography, see Susan Greenhalgh, “The Social Construction of Population Science: An Intellectual, Institutional, and Political History of Twentieth-Century Demography,” Comparative Study of Society and History, 38(1):26-66, 1996.
  10. Elizabeth L. Krause, “Empty Cradles” and the Quiet Revolution: Demographic Discourse and Cultural Struggles of Gender, Race, and Class in Italy,” Cultural Anthropology 16(4): 576-611, 2001.
  11. Roberto Volpi, Figli d’Italia: Quanti, quali e come alle soglie del Duemila (Children of Italy: How What and Why at the Dawn of the Second Millenneum) La Nuova Italia, Bagno A Ripoli (Firenze): 1986, p.31.
  12. Antonio Golini., ed., Tendenze demografiche e politiche per la popolazione. Terzo rapporto IRP sulla situazione demografica italiana (Demographic Tendencies and Policies for the Population, Third Report on the Italian Demographic Situation), Milano: Il Mulino, 1994. (Emphasis original). Agostino Lori, Antonio Golini, and Bruno Cantalini, eds., Atlante dell’invecchiamento della popolazione (Atlas on Population Aging), Rome: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 1995 pp.1. 98-99.
  13. Antonio Golini, Antonio Mussino, and Mira Savioli, Il malessere demografico in Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000, pp. 99-101.
  14. “Allarme dei demografi: a causa della natalità sotto zero spariranno centinaia di cittadine italiane,” (Demographic Alarms: Due to the Below-Zero Birthrate, Hundreds of Italian Towns to Disappear) L’Unità, (October 29, 1996).
  15. Golini et al., 2000, op cit.
  16. Paul Reitter, “Racism: Coded as Culture?” The Nation, October 28, 2002, available at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20021028/reitter, accessed June 7, 2006. See Les Beck, “The New Technologies of Racism,” in D. Goldberg and J. Solomon, eds., A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 2002, pp.365-378.
  17. In 2003, I visited a powerful exhibition in California. See David R. Roediger, “ ‘I Came for the Art’: Exposing Whiteness and Imagining Nonwhite Spaces” in T. Stallings, ed., Whiteness: A Wayward Construction, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California, and Fellows of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2003, p.53.
  18. Demographic alarmism creates a raucous noise that gives legitimacy to white public space. See Jane H. Hill, “Language, Race, and White Public Space,” American Anthropologist 100(3), 1998, pp. 680-689.
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Old Roots, New Shoots: Eugenics of the Everyday

DifferenTakes Series
47 ~ Spring 2007
[PDF Version]
By Betsy Hartmann

Very few people today in the U.S. would openly identify as eugenicists, yet eugenic assumptions are widespread, interacting with other biological determinisms that influence the fields of science, health, economics, politics and popular culture. Like many other powerful ideas, the power of eugenic ideology lies partly in its capacity to not draw attention to itself, to appear commonplace.

Betsy Hartmann is the director of the Population and Development Program at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. This paper is an abridged version of “Eugenics of the Everyday: Some Preliminary Reflections,” background paper for the consultation on ‘New’ Reproductive and Genetic Technologies and Women’s Lives, SAMA-Resource Group for Women and Health, New Delhi, India, June 16-17, 2006, and a version has also appeared on Znet, September 22, 2006.

References

  1. Personal laws in India are based on religion and this is a deeply problematic and contentious issue.
  2. There are enormous problems with this characterization of the Sangh Parivar as Hindu fundamentalist or Hindu nationalist. In the first place they do not represent Hindus, and indeed seem to be deeply ashamed of Hinduism, wishing to transform it into a more “masculine” religion, like Christianity or Islam. There are of course no fundamentals in Hinduism. Their claim to be nationalistic is equally moot since they played an extremely marginal role, if at all, in India’s freedom struggle. Indeed the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, a good and proper Hindu, was a member of the Sangh Parivar as it then existed. However, this is how they are referred to, in especially the Western literature and media, and following this, in India.
  3. South Asia Citizen’s Web and Sabrang Communication (2002), A Foreign Exchange of Hate, Mumbai. See also “Project Saffron Dollar,” http://www.stopfundinghate.org (SFH), (accessed on November 20, 2006).
  4. He now regularly presents papers on Muslim demographic dangers to India at various fora, not all of them organized by the RSS. It is thus no surprise that police forces in India are known to be deeply communal.
  5. Patricia Jeffery and Roger Jeffery, Confronting Saffron Demography: Religion, Fertility and Women’s Status in India (New Delhi: Three Essays Collective, 2006).
  6. N. Krishnaji and K.S. James, “Religion and Fertility: A Comment,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.XXXX, No.5, 2005.
  7. Datta, Pradip Kumar, Carving Blocs: Communal Ideology in Early Twentieth Century Bengal, O.U.P., Delhi, 1999 pp. 18, 23.
  8. The founder of the RSS, M.S.Golwalkar, was a great admirer of Hitler’s grand experiments with racial purification. Like Hitler, he defines a nation as a nation of blood, of primordial ties embedded in an ancient culture, in a fierce anti-Enlightenment discourse. He argued that only those whose religion emanated in India could be Indian citizens, thus marking Christians, Muslims, Parsees and Jews as “outsiders.” He wrote: “To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races, the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how wellnigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by” (Golwalkar M.S. (1947), We, Or Our Nationhood Redefined, Bharat Publications, Nagpur).
  9. See “VHP Supremo Asks Hindus to give up Family Planning,” http://www.newkerala.com/ (December 30, 2004); “VHP asks Hindus to Abandon Two Child Norm,” The Statesman, February 16, 2005; and Staff Correspondent, “RSS sees ‘demographic war,’” The Hindu, January 24, 2005, p. 5.
  10. Mohan Rao, “Female Foeticide; Where Do We Go?” Issues in Medical Ethics, Vol. IX, No.4, October 2001.
  11. Nussbaum, Martha, The Clash Within: Violence, Hope and India’s Future, Harvard University Press, (forthcoming, 2007).
  12. Sarkar, Tanika, “Semiotics of Muslim Terror: Muslim Children and Women in Hindu Rashtra,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.XXXVII, 2002, No.28, p. 2874.
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India’s Saffron Demography: So Dangerous, Yet So Appealing

DifferenTakes Series
48 ~ Spring 2007
[PDF Version]
By Mohan Rao

In the early 1990s, the slogan Hum Do, Hamare Do; Woh Paanch Unke Pachees, meaning “We are two and have two; they are five and have twenty-five,” became particularly strident in India. It played on the Government of India’s slogan calling for a small family, “We are two and we have two.” But it added something noxious to it: it implied that we, Hindus, are two and have two children, while they, Muslims, are five and have twenty-five children.

Mohan Rao is Professor at the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is the author of From Population Control to Reproductive Health: Malthusian Arithmetic (Sage, 2004), and has edited Disinvesting in Health: The World Bank’s Health Prescription (Sage, 1999) and The Unheard Scream: Reproductive Health and Women’s Lives in India.

References

  1. Personal laws in India are based on religion and this is a deeply problematic and contentious issue.
  2. There are enormous problems with this characterization of the Sangh Parivar as Hindu fundamentalist or Hindu nationalist. In the first place they do not represent Hindus, and indeed seem to be deeply ashamed of Hinduism, wishing to transform it into a more “masculine” religion, like Christianity or Islam. There are of course no fundamentals in Hinduism. Their claim to be nationalistic is equally moot since they played an extremely marginal role, if at all, in India’s freedom struggle. Indeed the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, a good and proper Hindu, was a member of the Sangh Parivar as it then existed. However, this is how they are referred to, in especially the Western literature and media, and following this, in India.
  3. South Asia Citizen’s Web and Sabrang Communication (2002), A Foreign Exchange of Hate, Mumbai. See also “Project Saffron Dollar,” http://www.stopfundinghate.org (SFH), (accessed on November 20, 2006).
  4. He now regularly presents papers on Muslim demographic dangers to India at various fora, not all of them organized by the RSS. It is thus no surprise that police forces in India are known to be deeply communal.
  5. Patricia Jeffery and Roger Jeffery, Confronting Saffron Demography: Religion, Fertility and Women’s Status in India (New Delhi: Three Essays Collective, 2006).
  6. N. Krishnaji and K.S. James, “Religion and Fertility: A Comment,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.XXXX, No.5, 2005.
  7. Datta, Pradip Kumar, Carving Blocs: Communal Ideology in Early Twentieth Century Bengal, O.U.P., Delhi, 1999 pp. 18, 23.
  8. The founder of the RSS, M.S.Golwalkar, was a great admirer of Hitler’s grand experiments with racial purification. Like Hitler, he defines a nation as a nation of blood, of primordial ties embedded in an ancient culture, in a fierce anti-Enlightenment discourse. He argued that only those whose religion emanated in India could be Indian citizens, thus marking Christians, Muslims, Parsees and Jews as “outsiders.” He wrote: “To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races, the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how wellnigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by” (Golwalkar M.S. (1947), We, Or Our Nationhood Redefined, Bharat Publications, Nagpur).
  9. See “VHP Supremo Asks Hindus to give up Family Planning,” http://www.newkerala.com/ (December 30, 2004); “VHP asks Hindus to Abandon Two Child Norm,” The Statesman, February 16, 2005; and Staff Correspondent, “RSS sees ‘demographic war,’” The Hindu, January 24, 2005, p. 5.
  10. Mohan Rao, “Female Foeticide; Where Do We Go?” Issues in Medical Ethics, Vol. IX, No.4, October 2001.
  11. Nussbaum, Martha, The Clash Within: Violence, Hope and India’s Future, Harvard University Press, (forthcoming, 2007).
  12. Sarkar, Tanika, “Semiotics of Muslim Terror: Muslim Children and Women in Hindu Rashtra,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.XXXVII, 2002, No.28, p. 2874.
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