Behind the Numbers: The PRB blog on population, health, and the environment

by Jay Gribble, vice president, International Programs 

More than 1,000 people have gathered on the shore of Lake Victoria at the Speke Conference Center outside of Kampala, Uganda, to discuss family planning—what we have learned from research and how to expand the implementation of best practices.

The opening plenary included a range of speakers, including the First Lady of Uganda. Many speakers have focused on family planning as a strategy to reduce maternal mortality. For years, family planning has been couched in terms of its health benefits to women and children. The idea of “too young, too old, too close, and too many” is familiar to family planning advocates because through helping avoid unplanned pregnancies, family planning is able to contribute to lower maternal and child mortality. These are critical to addressing the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to reduce poverty and improve the quality of life among the poor.

Yet there are other benefits of family planning that should not be overlooked. Not only is family planning a health strategy, but it is also a poverty reduction strategy. Evidence demonstrates that when women use family planning and have smaller families, their families are better off. Research from Bangladesh shows that through the long-term commitment to family planning and maternal-child health, families are healthier; they have greater assets; they live in more valuable houses; their children are better educated and have lower mortality rates. These benefits reinforce the importance of family planning as both a health strategy as well as one to reduce poverty and improve economic development.

We should also remember that family planning is intrinsically linked to women’s empowerment. When women can decide the timing, spacing, and number of children that they want to have, they and their children are healthier, but they are also more empowered. Recognizing that there are important gender aspects of health and development, family planning helps women better care for themselves, for their children, their families. It allows them to work and earn an income, to continue their education, and to have a say about their own lives and futures.

The conference theme makes an important statement: family planning—family health—family wealth. Let’s not limit the discussion of family planning to only one area of benefit. Good health is important, but family planning also reduces poverty and promotes gender equity.

by Mark Mather, associate vice president, Domestic Programs

Today the Census Bureau released another wave of economic data that showed a 13 percent increase in U.S. households receiving food stamps between 2007 and 2008. Who saw the biggest increase? It was families with two or more workers, who made up 26.9 percent of food stamp recipients in 2007 but jumped to 28.4 of recipients in 2008. The numbers, based on new data from the American Community Survey (ACS), provide more evidence of the recession’s wide-reaching impact, especially on lower-income working families.

Nationwide, about 9 percent of U.S. households reported receiving food stamps in 2008, according to ACS data. But ACS respondents are known to underreport participation in the Food Stamp Program. (For more information, see this report from the Census Bureau). The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, which administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program at the federal level, counted 12.7 million households receiving food stamps in 2008, compared with 9.8 million counted in the ACS. The latest numbers from the USDA, from June 2009, puts the number of households receiving food stamp benefits at nearly 16 million.

Photo used under Creative Commons from Clementine Gallot.

by Eric Zuehlke, editor

Our very own Mark Mather, associate vice president of Domestic Programs, has been getting a lot of media exposure recently based on his recent article on the social effects of the economic recession on the U.S. population on the PRB website.

As Mark notes in his article, recent data show that the recession is having an effect beyond employment and income, affecting homeownership rates, commuting patterns, marriage rates, and migration.

Here are some highlights:

American Public Media, Marketplace: Census data reflect recession effects

CBS News: Census data reflects recession’s impact 

The New York Times: Census data show recession-driven changes

by Charlie Teller, Bixby visiting scholar

In 1995, the international community proclaimed the goal of reducing hunger by 50 percent by 2015. However, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that while the number hungry fell from 900 million in 1970 to 875 million in 2005, it has risen to over 1 billion in 2009, related to the 2008 food price crisis. But do we really know the exact numbers of hungry and malnourished and the direct causal relationship to food prices, and now more recently the financial crisis?

After participating in an Institute of Medicine-organized workshop, “Mitigating the Nutrition Impacts of the Global Food Price Crisis,” held at the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington, DC, I’m afraid to report that we don’t have the answer to either the statistical or the causal questions. After all the media frenzy in the last year, the international community, which was well represented at the workshop by particpants from the academic, UN, donor, foundation, private sector, and NGO worlds, has to admit: we don’t know the impact of the food price crisis!

There was agreement that poverty, hunger, and malnutrition are long-term chronic AND structural problems, and should not be considered crises. There is also a consensus that the predominant food-first, food-aid, and acute feeding focus (mainly by the U.S. government and World Food Program) needs to be reoriented toward agricultural productivity, and food and nutrition security policies and strategies. The numbers show that the geographic focus should be on sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, among the most vulnerable populations, and that there should be NO artificial separation of food issues from nutrition issues. A final consensus was that the best group to ensure that crucial linkage is small-farmer women.

Photo used under Creative Commons from 10b travelling

Very little was said by the many prominent speakers about the relevance of population, reproductive health, and family planning factors and policies to hunger and malnutrition. The comprehensive and professorial opening keynote speech on the current food price crisis and its future reported that population growth rates were “dropping, although not as rapidly as some would prefer” (P.P.Anderson). The U.S. congressman on the closing panel who co-sponsored the important report: “Roadmap to End Global Hunger” noted the need to ensure that nutrition and food security programs are integrated with global health interventions, mentioning eight of them, but reproductive health/family planning was not included in what he called a comprehensive package. Only one of the dozens of speakers emphasized long-term population, environmental, and water resource constraints on agriculture and food production.

There were three demographically relevant points made during the workshop:

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by Charlie Teller, Bixby visiting scholar 

Teaching an entire semester’s graduate course in three weeks at the end of the academic year seemed a dubious task under normal conditions. But teaching it at the end of Ethiopia’s long dry season with shortages of electricity and water, not to mention scarcity of recent publications and slow internet speed in the mountainous capital city of Addis Ababa, made it even more challenging.

I had taught at the Flagship University of Addis Ababa’s Institute of Population Studies for four years in the mid-to-late 1990s, and served as external thesis examiner off and on since then, but now the government really needed more Ph.D demographers as it greatly increased its student intake in higher education, even pushing to start a Ph.D program on top of an already overstretched masters degree program.

In one of the poorest countries in the world, with 13 million food insecure, the second largest population in Africa (nearly 80 million), and an annual population growth rate around 2.6 percent, we discussed theories of population and development and debated models of the demographic transition. In a secret ballot early on in the course, I was not surprised to find out most of the 22 mature graduate students were Malthusian pessimists or even alarmists.

The job of a good professor is to challenge his students into reconsidering their cynicism and, in this constrained setting, provide rays of hope that things might get better. In the past few years, my Ethiopian colleagues and I had published evidence that the country was unexpectedly progressing better along the demographic transition than most of its neighbors, and that it was surprisingly on track to meet many of the 2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), especially in education and health.

In just a few weeks, in spite of the lack of computers, electricity, and inability to download publications from the internet, the students were able to work in  teams of two to three to read recent literature and access demographic and development data through sharing CDs, photocopies, and handouts. They closely assessed the quality of differing estimates of progress since 1990 on the MDGs: the 1993 National Population Policy and its ICPD+15 (2008) goals, and the 2005-08 Poverty Reduction Strategy.

Ethiopian population graduate students prepare outside on campus at dark when electricity went out. (Photo by Charlie Teller)

In their final exam, I asked if any had changed their minds away from pessimism, and why. To my pleasant surprise, some had after seeing progress on the some of the MDGs and social change in their own younger generation, calling themselves revisionists, neutralists,or cautious optimists.  They became convinced of the importance of using rigorous research methods and reliable indicators to closely monitor and evaluate the pace of the demographic transition and socioeconomic and gender inequities, as well as capacity building in research and training.

If these keen students in such a resource-constrained environment can learn so quickly, can’t a country under population pressure use its resilient and adaptive skills to begin to believe in their capacity to accelerate the demographic transition?    ?

by Carl Haub, senior demographer 

Few automobile introductions have attracted more media interest that Tata Motor’s new “one lakh” car, the Nano. That’s one lakh, or 100,000, rupees, roughly equivalent to US$ 2,000. The actual price to the consumer after taxes, dealer markup, etc. starts at about $2,500 for the Standard model. For $3,000, you’ll get the CX model with air conditioning and $3,500 will get you the LX, which adds power windows and electric central locking. So much for the $2,000 car.

In a sense, the Nano is an “almost car.” Its rear-mounted 33-horsepower two-cylinder engine is more like a motorbike engine and its tiny trunk area is accessible only by pulling the back seats forward. Despite its concept as a city car, few owners are likely to hesitate to take it on the open road. It is not at all unusual to see families of four travelling from city to city on a two-wheeler. Roof racks will likely be a popular accessory. But its appeal to those who now ride two-wheelers is that it gets one out of the rain.

Photo used under Creative Commons from Jaaziel.

The little car got off to a slow start when its planned factory in Singur, West Bengal was protested due to its need to take over agricultural lands. The protesting lasted for several years and Tata finally pulled out, leaving the partially-completed factory abandoned. Enticed by very generous (and controversial) financial incentives from Chief Minister Narendra Modi of the western state of Gujarat – no stranger to controversy himself – Tata is now building a new plant in Sanand in that state. So, full production has been subject to a serious delay.

The much-publicized first ordering period was held from April 9th to the 25th of this year when the first buyers could place a deposit or pay in cash in advance. A total of 203,000 vehicles were ordered – not bad at all for a car that promised something of a wait. Or a very long wait: A lottery will soon be held for the first 100,000 lucky buyers who can expect to receive their Nano anytime from this July to the end of next year. Many of those losing out in the lottery will likely have to wait until sometime in 2011 or when the new factory can come up to speed. Cancellations of up to 50 percent among the losers are being predicted although interest is being paid on all deposits.

The number of orders in April was considered well below expectations, although that number has never been well defined. And, interestingly, half of the orders were for the pricey LX and only 20 percent for the basic Standard model. It is likely that quite a few were purchased by comparatively wealthy non-resident Indians (NRIs) overseas as gifts, especially as huge numbers of weddings took place this April, an auspicious period.

So, the Nano may revolutionize Indian roads, but not right away. But where will most Nanos ply? Even at its low price, the car is well beyond the means of most Indians except some in big cities. It should become almost ubiquitous in Delhi, India’s richest city but, in other states the story is likely to be different.  Uttar Pradesh, next door to Delhi with about 180 million population in 2004,  boasted a grand total of 391,000 cars in 2004 while Delhi, with 14 million population, had 1.2 million.

Who bought Nanos? Given the preference for the LX model, it may just be that fewer owners of two-wheelers actually traded up than were expected. Perhaps the Nano will become India’s favorite second car among the upper middle class. That would be a real revolution while trying to park all those additional cars would be a real adventure.

by Bill Butz, president and CEO

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Benjamin Disraeli

“It is easy to lie with statistics, but it is easier to lie without them!” Frederick Mosteller

This series of posts from PRB experts focuses on some of the important measures researchers and policymakers use when dealing with population, health, and the environment. We discuss definitions and controversies, quirks in their uses, and pitfalls to avoid. Along the way we relate some of our own experiences with uses and misuses (just keep these stories to yourself!). Look out for upcoming posts on income, the homeless, undocumented immigration, population density, urban and rural, carrying capacity, carbon footprint, hunger and malnutrition, the elderly, race and ethnicity, and household and family.

This week, we tackle the measurement of poverty.

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by Bill Butz, President and CEO, Population Reference Bureau  

I’ve led a relatively privileged life, never economically poor or deprived of basic needs. But I’ve been around data and research on poverty throughout my career. At RAND, I surveyed and studied how poverty, fertility, health, and economic opportunities interact in Guatemala and Malaysia. At the Census Bureau, much of the official U.S. statistics on poverty, income, education, and health were my responsibility. At the National Science Foundation, we funded much academic research on poverty in the U.S and elsewhere. And now at PRB, we turn relevant data and research about poverty and other topics into clear and evidence-based information for decision makers. So, based on a life’s experience and on the scientific evidence—if I were Lead Adviser, what would I do to substantially reduce poverty? Here’s how I’ll spend the first billion dollars:

• I will spend $300 million to build schools, develop relevant curricula, train teachers, and ensure effective primary schooling—all to eliminate functional illiteracy in poor countries. In spite of real progress over the last 30 years, about a billion people, most of them female, entered this century unable to write their names or read a book. Most won’t, for this reason, use new farming techniques or work in a modern factory. They’re stuck. Based on recent progress, we know how to increase literacy through schooling.
• I will spend $300 million to increase the availability of effective and affordable contraceptives to women and men who want to reduce or space their births. More children than desired causes poverty. Based on the evidence, we know how to create a more enabling environment to lower birth rates. See PRB’s policy brief, Ensuring a Wide Range of Family Planning Choices for more information.
• I will spend $200 mllion to teach disadvantaged U.S. children age 4-6 cognitive skills along with noncognitive skills like motivation and perseverance, all of which are necessary for success in school and jobs. If necessary, I will pay for this by shifting resources from formal schooling and remedial job training, neither of which works without the basic skills. We don’t know exactly how to impart these skills in ways consistent with parental roles, so the first dollars will go into research and controlled field trials. See James J. Heckman’s article “Skill Formation and the Economics of Investing in Disadvantaged Children.”
• I will spend $200 million to eliminate child undernourishment in the world. A third of all child deaths globally, three and a half million each year, is due to nutrition-related causes. Many of those who survive have less energy and health for school and work. This exacerbates poverty. We know how to eliminate undernutrition (overnutrition—obesity—is tougher) and doing so isn’t expensive as these things go. See James Levinson and Lucy Bassett’s PRB brief on malnutrition, The Lancet’s Series on Maternal and Child Undernutrition, and PRB’s seminar on improving child nutrition for more.  

The list of challenges goes on: bad governance, industrialized country agricultural policies, HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases, food maldistribution, lack of employment opportunities and more. Indeed, my top priorities will not succeed in some places without complementary investments. Still, to lead is to choose. You see how this “adviser” would choose. If you were Lead Adviser instead, what would you choose to do?

(If you really like the priorities game, see Copenhagenconsensus.com and the UN Millennium Development Goals 2008 Report)