Migration

Around two years ago, I noticed an irritating book about population by one Danny Dorling, presently an eminence at Oxford. See reference 1.

Then much more recently, I claimed falling water tables as one of the drivers for the crisis in Syria. See reference 2.

This morning I notice a short piece in 'Scientific American' by Robert Engelman about how the projected increase in the world's population during the current century - in very round numbers from 6bn to 11bn - will in some large part be down to Africa, large parts of which remain badly governed by people who all too often think that big families are good. Most of these people are men, men who might also think that big families are manly, although that is starting to change.

The numbers are illustrated in the chart left. Poor quality due my being reduced to scanning the thing in from hard copy as the computerised version of the article to which my nearly-new subscriber status gives me access does not seem to include the diagrams.

My point being that these numbers suggest that there are going to be an awful lot of unemployed, hungry and angry young men in Africa by the second half of the present century. Which is going to make for a great deal of trouble: hardship, violence and migration. The rest of the world had better learn how to cope with it - or better still how to get the numbers down.

PS: as it happens, I learned later in the day that Dorling did a book review in yesterday's Observer about a book about the shocking state of housing for poorer people in the US. In the normal way of such things in newspapers, the total of 220 square inches was accounted for as follows: 115 to the accompanying picture (obviously a picture which is worth a thousand words. Perhaps it cost as much as a thousand of Dorling's words); 25 to the head-line and 5 to the sub-line. Of the remaining 75, 63 contained a short essay about said housing, 10 were about the book which was the subject of the review and the last 2 square inches were a puff for Dorling's next book.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=population.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/old-favourite.html.