In The News

World Population Trends Signal Dangers Ahead

Barry Mirkin April 3, 2014
Demographers are often called upon to predict the future by extrapolating from population statistics and trends. The United Nations has revised population projections upward, and demographer Barry Mirkin suggests the warning signs are clear: The globe can anticipate a billion more people in a decade and another 2 billion by the end of the century for a total of 10.9 billion. People live longer,...

Obama Seeks to Repair Frayed Ties With Saudi Arabia

Ellen Knickmeyer, Maria Abi-Habib and Ahmed Al Omran March 31, 2014
US President Barack Obama visited Saudi Arabia, its key Arab ally in the region, reinforcing relations, but with no policy changes announced. Saudi Arabia had hoped to convince the United States to supply Syrian rebels with more weapons and move cautiously on renewing ties or lifting sanctions for Iran, a strong ally to the Assad regime. “The Obama administration's reluctance to authorize...

Women More Educated Than Men But Still Paid Less

Joseph Chamie March 6, 2014
Women now outnumber men in global university attendance and graduation rates. Most gains are in developed nations; in some countries, as many as two thirds of graduates are women, though discrimination still lingers. Globally, the ratio is 93 men to 100 women; men tend to concentrate in engineering and the sciences while women gravitate toward less lucrative degrees in humanities and arts. Women...

The Plight of the Globe’s Domestic Workers

Susan Froetschel January 15, 2014
Domestic workers and diplomats may be but pawns for nations struggling with their own internal quarrels and place in the world. The arrest of an Indian consulate officer in New York City for filing false information on a nanny’s wages triggered outrage in India. The immediate official reaction was that Devyani Khobragade has immunity from arrest including a standard body search and that the crime...

Easing One-Child Policy May Be Too Late

Joseph Chamie January 7, 2014
A Chinese policy that generally limited families to one child has been revised: Couples can have two children if either spouse is an only child. But China may discover that increasing family size is tougher than reduction, warns demographer Joseph Chamie. “This mid-course correction in population policy will have marginal effect as China is aging at a much faster pace than occurred in other...

India Seeks to Regulate Booming “Rent-a-Womb” Industry

Nita Bhalla, Mansi Thapliyal October 2, 2013
India legalized commercial surrogacy in 2002 and is one of the few countries where women can be paid for carrying another’s child. Women’s rights groups criticize the $400 million industry for exploiting poor women and endangering their health to produce babies for rich clients, mostly from other nations: “The low-cost technology, skilled doctors, scant bureaucracy and a plentiful supply of...

Winners and Losers After Arab Spring

Lindsay J. Benstead, Ellen M. Lust, Dhafer Malouche, Gamal Soltan, Jakob Wichmann August 27, 2013
Each political transition underway since the Arab Spring has its own characteristics, reports a group of researchers who conducted post-election surveys in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. The international community should resist applying stereotypical responses. “A one-size-fits-all approach to the transition processes – and particularly to development assistance aimed at fostering democratization –...