A slight delay

I apologize for a lack of posting this week. I found out yesterday that I've been accepted into the MSc in Economics for Development program at Oxford University, so resulting jubilation took up most of my time yesterday!

The Dragon Stirs

"A century ago, the French scientist Gustav Le Bon pointed to the smaller brains of women - closer in size to gorillas', he said - and said that explained the "fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason" in women.

Overall size aside, some evidence suggests that female brains are relatively more endowed with gray matter - the prized neurons thought to do the bulk of the brain's thinking - while men's brains are packed with more white matter, the tissue between neurons."

This is taken from a recent NYT article on the differences between men and women that may affect perceived aptitude.

Many of you may have heard of the comments made by Harvard president Lawrence H Summers at a recent economics conference. Summers suggested that there might be innate differences in intelligence between men and women on a genetic level, which could explain for the lack of female involvement in science and mathematics.

In Summer's defense, he certainly wasn't defending the position, just merely trying to stir up debate on the subject. However, in the politically correct world of today, he might have gone about it a better way.

However, it is still an interesting question. Is it even possible to account for all the environmental factors that could explain this discrepancy? Many women that I have talked to have felt like they were discriminated against in the (high school) classroom. Are women actively discouraged to enter the science or maths? If there were innate differences between men and women in terms of intelligence, and either party came out on top, would the other be discouraged from participating in study that requires a high level of cognition?

I think it's an interesting, but perhaps superficial debate. Shouldn't we be talking more about the wage gap than about a minor intelligence gap?

Oh, and if you don't have a Nytimes.com account and wish to see the articles I link, use

username: kargos@rocketmail.com
password: demographer

The Reds and the Blues of having children

This is an interesting New York Times Op-Ed piece by David Brooks that was forwarded to me by my thesis adviser. It describes an interesting divide on the Red State/Blue State border: a difference in desired number of children. This relationship is most evident in this passage:

"You can see surprising political correlations. As Steve Sailer pointed out in The American Conservative, George Bush carried the 19 states with the highest white fertility rates, and 25 of the top 26. John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest rates."

It's a pretty interesting article, although it seems to be written from the point of view of a natalist, as it does a lot to lavish goodwill. From the point of view of an economist, having experience studying the relationship between female income/rights and fertility, I find this passage to be the most important:

"Natalists resist the declining fertility trends not because of income, education or other socioeconomic characteristics. It's attitudes. People with larger families tend to attend religious services more often, and tend to have more traditional gender roles."

I would like to see research on this issue which takes into account the mother's income as opposed to a more tradition family income. What could be shrouded in this is a situation where we have well-educated mothers who assume "traditional roles" as housewives, and so have no obvious opportunity cost to having lots of children. The income effect is shrouded by a well-off husband. Of course, we'll be able to find examples to the contrary (many of my friends, for instance), as there are plenty of women who desire to have a high paying job AND lots of children (the feasibility of which may be questionable). However I bet the shrouded income effect dominates in the Red States.

Low-fertility Europeans more fertile?

According to a New York Times article by Nicholas Wade, Icelandic researchers may have isolated a portion of DNA on the 17th chromosome that may cause Europeans to be more fertile than the rest of the world.

"The region is not a single gene but a vast section of DNA, some 900,000 units in length, situated in the 17th of the 23 pairs of human chromosomes. In some Icelanders, the Decode team found, the section runs in the standard direction but in others it is flipped. Looking for any physical consequence, the Decode researchers found that women carrying the flipped or inverted section tend to have slightly more children."

In turns out that 1 in 5 Europeans have this chromosome inversion. I think this is an interesting find, because, in recent years, Europe has been known for it's dramatic depopulation, which is due partially to emigration, but also to a sharp decline in its fertility rates. We should be thankful that this gene is most common in an area of the world where people have already decided to have less children and rare in places like Africa and Asia, where they are struggling to keep population under control.

Welcome to The Demographer

Many of you, my well-read friends, may be familiar with The Economist, the UK-based news magazine which covers a broad range of topics from economics and finance to politics and science. It is easily read by any with an open mind, whether or not you are interested in their political analysis or their famed 'Big Mac' index, which can often be found on the back page.

Why bring up The Economist when the title of this blog is The Demographer? For a start, I've always believed that what truly makes The Economist interesting isn't the subject matter, but the way it addresses the various topics. I believe the title of the magazine conveys its perspective in its analysis, as it attempts to maintain a voice of reason and rationality. Because of this, it is hard to place The Economist's political base. The paper has at times supported Thatcherite conservatives, and yet endorsed Senator Kerry in the last presidential election. Its own self-assessment may shed some light:

"It is to the Radicals that The Economist still likes to think of itself as belonging. The extreme centre is the paper's historical position."

I digress from an introduction to my own blog. My reason for titling it as such isn't just to convey its intended topic: the study of population in the world today. I want to convey the same sense of perspective that The Economist does. Not only will you read posts and articles on this site about demography, but you will also read every day articles looked at from the intended perspective of someone interested in demography. I might also note that the title is not my own; I am nothing but a soon to be graduate student in economics who likes to apply his abilities to the study of people's most basic human choices and constraints.

Enough with this introduction, I'll go ahead and post the first article I stumbled across recently. Enjoy.