Posts Tagged ‘population’
“You can’t be at the pole and the equator at the same time”*…
Harvard grad student Bill Rankin, the proprietor of the fascinating Radical Cartography, has created maps that display the sum of all population living at each degree of latitude or longitude (circa 2000). As one can see above, there’s a decided northerly bias: roughly 88 percent of the world’s population lives in the Northern Hemisphere; about half, north of 27 degrees north. As Rankin observes, “taking the northern and southern hemispheres together, on average the world’s population lives 24 degrees from the equator.”
As for longitude, there’s a wholly-unsurprising skew to Asia…
[TotH to Geekosystem]
* Vincent van Gogh
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As we search for the strength in numbers, we might send exploratory birthday greetings to Claude-Joseph Désiré Charnay; he was born on this date in 1828. An archaeologist and an inveterate traveller, Charnay is remembered both for his explorations of Mexico and Central America, and for his pioneering use of photography to document his journeys. Using the then-newly available wet collodion process (which was, coincidentally, invented by Frederick Scott Archer, who died on this date in 1857), Charney became expert at producing large photographic plates in difficult field conditions; he thus created an early photographic record of various cultures (and with Le Plongeon, various archaeological sites) around the world.
Picking on somewhere your own size…
source (and larger view)
TotH to +Basil Doeringsfeld.
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As we ruminate on redistribution, we might note that today is “St. Distaff’s Day.” The distaff, used in spinning, was the medieval symbol of women’s work (to wit, the use of “distaff” as an adjective denoting the female side of a family). In many European cultures, women resumed their household work after the twelve days of Christmas, which ended yesterday. The tradition of St Distaff’s Day is more amusing than a simple resumption of chores however, as it involved men and women playing pranks on each other– as memorialized by Robert Herrick in his poem “Saint Distaffs Day, or the Morrow After Twelfth Day” (in Hesperides).
Firing blanks…
Since the early 70s, academics and NGOs concerned with population growth have understood that the single most effective “lever” a society can pull to achieve population “control” (short of authoritarian birth bans, a la China) is the enhancement of women’s roles in the economy and society– the better educated, the more engaged a country’s women, the lower its fertility rate– and almost always, the more robust its economy, the more stable its polis, the healthier its environment, etc., etc. [c.f., e.g., here].
While experience continues to support this understanding, research is also suggesting that there may be another, complementary force at work; Pacific Standard reports that “French Semen Is Not What It Used To Be.”:
French men are losing sperm, and not in the fun way, according to a new study in Human Reproduction. Researchers examined semen samples given by 27,000 French men at fertility clinics, and found that the average sperm concentration fell more than 32 percent between 1989 and 2005.
Those findings echo a growing heap of research going back to the 1970s suggesting that the semen quality of men in industrialized countries is steadily declining. The most commonly-cited explanation is chemicals in the environment. Bear in mind, though, the supposed sperm-concentration drop is not a settled matter – many of the studies over the years were poorly designed, had overly-small sample sizes or were otherwise flawed. But if the ranks of men’s sperm are being thinned, for whatever reason, it could have serious implications for couples’ chances of conceiving.
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As we ponder potency, we might send biological birthday greetings to Erasmus Darwin; he was born on this date in 1731. Erasmus was an accomplished doctor (he declined an offer to be personal physician to Charles III), but is better remembered as a key thinker in the “Midlands Enlightenment”– a founder of the Lunar Society of Birmingham and author of (among other works) Zoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life, which contained one of the first formal theories of evolution… one that foreshadowed the theories of Erasmus’ reader– and grandson– Charles.
By the numbers…
The 2010 Census results are in. The headlines: men are living longer; marriage isn’t.
Some highlights…
Since the 2000 census, the number of men in the U.S. increased by 9.9 percent. Woman grew 9.5 percent. There are more men than women under the age of 34, because “more boys than girls tend to be born.”
But above age 85, the number of women is double that of men. Female life expectancy is 80.8 years; male, 75.6 years.
Baby boomers are aging: The 45-plus group grew 25.6 percent since 2000, while the under-45 group only increased 1.4 percent. The median national age was 37.2 years, from 35.3 in 2000. Seven states now have a median age of over 40. Maine is oldest, at 42.7; Utah is youngest, at 29.2.
The share of U.S. households with married couples fell to 48.4 percent, down from 51.7 percent in 2000– the first time the number dropped below 50 percent. In 1950, married couples made up 77 percent of households.
More descriptive demographics in this AP report and at the Census Bureau’s site.
As we do our best to age gracefully, we might recall that it was on this date in 1933 that Walt Disney’s edifying fable “Three Little Pigs” was released. Winner of the 1934 Academy Award for Best Animated Short, “Three Little Pigs” was ranked #11 on the list of 50 Greatest Cartoons, and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Practical Pig, Fiddler Pig and Fifer Pig sing “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” (source)
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