In The News

Fewer Chinese Than Expected Apply to Have Second Child

Patti Waldmeir January 16, 2015
In September 1980, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party issued a letter outlining the goal of keeping the nation’s population below 1.2 billion by the end of the century and “made an appeal” to promote a policy of each couple having one child. The policy reduced poverty and infant mortality, and the population was reported at 1.25 billion in 1999. But now the elderly represent a...

10 Insights From a Decade of Measuring the Gender Gap

Saadia Zahidi November 20, 2014
Fair wages motivate employees to work hard to produce and innovate. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index suggests that unequal pay for women represents a huge lost opportunity for many nations. The index tracks national differences and progress, reports Saadia Zahidi of the World Economic Forum: Women are more educated than before though gaps linger for even primary education, and...

Surrogacy: Human Right or Reproductive Exploitation?

Joseph Chamie and Barry Mirkin October 28, 2014
With the spread of reproductive technology, surrogate parenting has risen sharply in recent years; it's estimated that half of all such births since 1978 occurred during the last six years. Regulations and costs for the practice vary worldwide, report demographers Joseph Chamie and Barry Mirkin, and with globalization of travel and communications, cross-border arrangements are on the rise. “...

Chinese Authorities Offer Money for Mixed Marriages

Jamil Anderlini September 4, 2014
Hoping for assimilation in multi-ethnic China and to curtail protests and unrest, Chinese officials have started paying cash bonuses for interracial marriages, reports Jamil Anderlini for Financial Times – an annual payment of $1600, or the 135 percent of average annual rural incomes, for up to five years. Uighurs, Mongolians and other minorities make up about 10 percent of the Chinese population...

Long-Term Answer to Border Crises: Empower Women

Marisol Ruiz August 19, 2014
Policy proposals to end the flow of children streaming across the southern border of the United States too often focus on enforcement, including increased military presence along the border or warehouse-like detention centers in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras – the three nations that so many try to flee. Such proposals miss the major challenge behind many border crises, that is, minimal...

Boko Haram Beyond Nigeria: Girls' Education Under Threat

Bina Shah June 11, 2014
Many are quick to blame Islam in the aftermath of Boko Haram’s kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria.. The real danger is not the religion, but rather fundamentalists’ beliefs that girls should not be educated, argues Bina Shah in an article for Al Jazeera. Directing anger at all Muslims is another form of extremism, she suggests, and the more pressing and solvable issue is that...

Re-Imagining Kinship

Amrita Nandy May 13, 2014
Valuing biological parenthood over other forms and the shame over childlessness is worldwide and can be pernicious. “Defining human relatedness through genes and blood has been a predominant and often unquestioned notion across most cultures,” explains Amrita Nandy, a Fox International Fellow at Yale University and a doctoral candidate at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, India. As a...