demographics

20 May 2018

Posted on May 20, 2018 Leave a Comment

Late Hans Rosling’s “Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think” should be mandatory reading for anybody working in development. It is a fun and educating book. It uses anecdotes from Rosling’s eventful life to illustrate the absurdity of widespread development beliefs shaped by the media and activists. Because it is good storytelling, it sticks with you. It also infects the reader with Rosling’s passion for exploring data and taking the long view. So even if you think you have seen his bubble graphs or heard his monkey survey story one too many times, go and get yourself a copy.

McKinsey Global Institute’s “Notes from the AI frontiers” analyzes 400 applications of AI in 19 industries. It has useful maps of analytical techniques and AI potential per industry and functional areas. It shows that AI is mostly used in combination with traditional analytics: AI augments more often than it replaces. And it estimates the potential annual value creation of AI around $3.5-5.8 trillion with greatest promises in marketing, sales, supply chains and logistics.

I liked Iman Ghosh’s “A world of languages” and wished I had the time to merge its data with demographics to see what it would look like in 2030 and 2050. With Africa doubling its population by mid-century, the size of French will grow significantly, “making it the most-spoken language by 2050”. Wait. What? I need to share this with my kids as they start packing to come join me in France soon.

My quote this week is from Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya: “We are entering a new era, when the center of gravity for social change has moved to the private sector. It’s business, not government, that is in the best position to lead today. It’s not government hiring refugees, it’s business. It’s not government cutting emissions, it’s business. It’s not government standing up to gun violence, it’s business. It’s not government that’s going to end inequality, or create opportunity. It’s business.”

25 November 2015

Posted on November 25, 2015 Leave a Comment

Martin Ford’s “Rise of the Robots: Technology and the threat of a jobless future” just won the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year award (last’s year winner was Piketty). I read this book while preparing the last issue of Horizons where we looked at the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the future of work (and education needs). This is a well written and compelling book with a lot of killer facts: “global shipments of robots increased by more than 60% between 2000 and 2012” (p. 3); “The percentage of news articles that will be written algorithmically within 15 years: over 90%” (p. 85); “42 % of researchers in human-level AI believe a thinking machine will arrive by 2030” (p. 231). Unlike other publications on the topic, it is not too technology-optimistic. It shows that the new phase of automation brought by AI threatens all job types including white-collar ones. Ford argues that new machine-augmented jobs will not compensate for job losses: “While human-machine collaboration jobs will certainly exist, they seem likely to be relatively few in number and often short-lived. They may also be un-rewarding or even dehumanizing” (p. 126). He also claims that investments in education and training, which helped absorb previous technological revolutions, will not be sufficient to adjust to the AI disruption. His core policy recommendation is the adoption of a basic income guarantee that he argues could be supported by liberals seeking to promote equity as well as pragmatic conservatives seeking an “insurance against adversity”. In short: a good read with a broadening fan-club.

Yang and Chou’s “Impacts of being downwind of a coal-fired power plant on infant health at birth” shows that pregnant women living downwind from a coal-fired power plant increase their likelihood of having low birth rate babies by 42%, and this is true when they live as far as 40 miles away from the plant. This is one of the latest scientific reminder of the highly concerning effects of air pollution on human health, and that of children in particular. Two months ago, a study estimated that outdoor air pollution coming from different sources (e.g., transportation, heating, dust, fires) was responsible for 3.3 million deaths every year globally, a number predicted to double by mid-century. This is to be added to the 3.5 million people dying every year from indoor air pollution. These alarming facts and prospects are for a large part affecting Asia where some of our colleagues, e.g., Mongolia CO, working with partners and leading experts are identifying high impact interventions to reduce the impact of air pollution on children’s health.

My interactive tool this week is Fengler’s “What is my place in the world population?” which gives you a vivid picture of where you (or anybody else you choose, like a child you are working for) fits in the global population dynamics: How many people are older/younger than you? When will you be the 5/6/7^th billion person in the world? When are you expected to die? If you lived in another country, how long will you be expected to live? I would lose 10 years if I were in Paraguay, 20 in Cote d’Ivoire, and gain 2 in Japan.

An important quote which has been attributed to many, including Benjamin Franklin, Cicero, Marie Curie, and Mark Twain, is in fact originally from Blaise Pascal’s Lettres Provinciales [1657]: “I have made this [letter] longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.”

9 October 2015

Posted on October 9, 2015 Leave a Comment

Patrick Cockburn, the author of “The rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the new Sunni revolution”, is said to be the first expert who predicted the rise of ISIS. The seasoned reporter argues that “the birth of the new state was the most radical change to the political geography of the Middle East since the Sykes-Picot Agreement was implemented in the aftermath of the First World War”. And he offers a blunt and bleak account of how that happened: the marginalization of Sunnis in Shia-led Iraq, the breeding of violent activists through decades of war, the failures of the US-led “war on terror”, the influence of the Wahhabi ideology, the Saudi (financial) support, the Iraqi army dysfunctions, the denial and misreading of Western governments…His analysis zooms in on ISIS’ capture of Mosul in June 2014 and its expansion throughout Iraq and Syria in the following 100 days. He describes the functioning of a sophisticated organization: military strategies, tax collection system, detailed operations reporting, and social media mastering. And he shows the complexity of the Iraq and Syria situations with multiple internal conflicts, many players fighting for different reasons, and an ethnic disintegration possibly gone too far to re-create unitary states. To my frustration, the author is silent about what could be done and ends his book with this line: “ISIS has many enemies, so numerous indeed that they should be able to overwhelm it in the long term, but their disunity and differing agendas mean that the Islamic State is fast becoming an established geographic and political fact on the map”.

Vivek Wadhwa tells us that “These technologies will shift the global balance of power in the next 20 years”: clean energy, fracking, robotic manufacturing, and digital manufacturing. Interesting list. Plausible scenarii. Less convincing are the geopolitical implications drawn by the author (America reinvents itself, Russia and China stir up regional unrest, oil producers go bankrupt and the Middle East breeds instability), because they are not substantiated enough in the article.

My graph this week is from the Global Monitoring Report 2015/16 “Development goals in an era of demographic change”. The IMF/World Bank flagship report looks at future development challenges and opportunities through a demographic lens and offers a typology of countries based on their ability to capture demographic dividends. There is a clear link between this typology and the income-based one. “Pre-dividend” countries are mostly low income countries; “early-dividend” countries are lower MICs; “late-dividend” countries are upper MICs; and “post-dividend” countries are HICs. For each group, the report identifies national policy priorities as well as opportunities to leverage international trade, migration, and international finance to make the most of demographic dividends. This analysis is useful to think and articulate the foundational nature of our work in different demographic contexts. I would recommend reading the 20-page executive summary.

My quote this week is from Charlie Munger in his 2003 Herb Kay Memorial Lecture [H/T Shane Parrish] “Academic Economics: Strengths and Weaknesses, after Considering Interdisciplinary Needs”: “If you don’t get elementary probability into your repertoire you go through a long life a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest”.

18 September 2015

Posted on September 18, 2015 Leave a Comment

The High Level Panel on Humanitarian Cash Transfers just launched its report “Doing cash differently: how can cash transfers transform humanitarian aid”. [See here for a podcast]. It is a good report. It argues that while not a panacea, giving cash is often better than giving stuff in humanitarian contexts. And it clearly says that it is a modality that empowers recipients and helps restore their dignity. Two big messages. One, today only 6% of humanitarian aid is delivered as cash and vouchers. This should increase. Appeals should have cash as the default modality. Important investments should be made in preparedness so that cash can be delivered quickly, when possible as part of existing social protection systems. Two, there are too many cooks in the humanitarian kitchen and scaling up cash transfers offers an opportunity for remodeling. Appeals with large cash schemes could shake up the cluster systems and create incentives for country teams to work across silos. The private sector could be in charge of delivery as much as possible so that humanitarian actors can focus on targeting, analyzing and monitoring.
We did a paper on cash for emergency-affected people earlier this year and messages align. We also argued that cash offers an opportunity for international organizations to not just do but also enable: just think of us supporting the creation of digital platforms to facilitate peer-to-peer cash transfers that contribute to people-led development. Such initiatives could be tested in countries with high level of exposure to disasters, existing remittance systems and good mobile penetration: that’s many countries.

The Open Budget Survey 2015 is also out. Conducted in 102 countries by independent local researchers it ranks country based on the quality of three budget features: transparency, participation, and oversight. Overall it is not great: ¾ of countries don’t share enough information with 20% of these giving none. The majority of countries does not engage the public in the budget process, and does not have appropriate oversight. Only 4 countries score well on the three fronts simultaneously: Brazil, Norway, South Africa and the United States [were you, like me, expecting a Scandinavian quartet?]. You can check ranking by country,here.

My map this week is from Max Galka’s “The global extremes of population density”. Unbelievable: the blue zone and red zone hold the same number of people. Each represents 5% of the global population. What’s red covers Bangladesh plus 3 Indian provinces. I am just returning from South Asia and indeed density matters: the 8-country region will account for about 23% of the world population through mid-century, this is some serious footprint for reaching any type of global goals.

My quote of the week is from Andrew Moravcsik’s [Anne-Marie Slaughter’s husband] “Why I put my wife’s career first”: “At the end of life, we know that a top regret of most men is that they did not lead the caring and connected life they wanted, but rather the career-oriented life that was expected of them. I will not have that regret.”

21 August 2015

Posted on August 21, 2015 Leave a Comment

Ashlee Vance’s “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the quest for a fantastic future” tells the story of the Silicon Valley superstar heading Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity. The book shows how these three businesses are re-shaping the electric car, space travel, and household solar energy industries. It gives a detailed technical account of Musk’s professional endeavors and weaves in vivid descriptions of his intense management style and chaotic private life. What drives Musk is not the money. It is to create a better future for humanity by solving sustainable energy and “becoming a multi-planetary species with a self-sustaining civilization on another planet – to cope with a worst-case scenario happening and extinguishing human consciousness”. This goes against the over-used saying that typically follows a description of all the bad things happening on earth: ‘There is no Planet B’. Musk’s agenda is to do what he can to help clean up the mess on this planet (universalize sustainable energy) while kick starting Plan B on Planet B (significantly reduce space travel costs to bring one million humans to colonize Mars over the next century). Wow. And he plans on dying on Mars. For me, the 360-page book was a fascinating journey into industries I know little about, and into the life of an extra-ordinary person. At times, I could not absorb all the technical details and had to skip a few pages. And I missed a good analysis of the danger of a “personality cult” approach to progress. The author is, no doubt, a huge Elon Musk fan and, at times, portrays him as a self-made visionary genius who revolutionizes industries almost by himself. Amanda Schaffer’s “Tech’s Enduring Great-Man Myth” nicely articulates this issue and reminds us that most breakthrough innovations attributed to the Steve Jobs and Elon Musk of this world were largely made possible by earlier substantial public investments.

In her lunch with the FT [paywall], Mariana Mazzucato argues that the contribution of the state in the success of private tech companies should be acknowledged and paid back: “So when Justin Bieber goes into space and unfortunately comes back, part of the price he’s paid to SpaceX goes to NASA’s budget. It’s all NASA technology. That way NASA can fund its next mission.” I’ll make this my quote of the week.

Dani Rodrik’s “Back to fundamentals in emerging markets” looks at the end of the emerging markets golden era and draws a few lessons. Looking back, it questions the relevance of country groupings such as BRICS given the now-heavily-exposed diversity of their growth patterns. Looking forward, it urges for a refocus on real economy and governance reforms, away from heavy reliance on foreign finance. [Tu peux trouver une version française de l’article ici.]

My graph of the week is by World Bank’s Tariq Khokhar who uses the UN’s 2015 Revision of World Population Prospects data to extract 4 powerful charts heavily picked up by the (social) media [Why couldn’t the UN authors take this extra user-friendly step? I wonder]. Looking at regional population dynamics from now to 2100, the message is clear.