demography, revisited
Jun. 29th, 2008 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitouthttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29Birth-t.html?ex=1372305600&en=bcd12e2cc156fea4&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
This _10 page_ article in the NYT starts out kinda weak but improves steadily throughout. Highlights include: who has really low birth rates, what they're thinking about doing about it, what works and what doesn't, Saxony-Anhalt's regional shrinkage plan, etc. Some interesting ideas in here about how to get women to have a couple of kids in a developed nation (generous or flexible; rhetoric and cash payments not so much; policies and societies which (a) emphasize women working outside the home and (b) fathers participating in child care are crucial). The concluding bit is, *sigh* really spectacularly weak.
No, you _can't_ have a country in which everyone lives in a nursing home. But long before it gets to that point, it's pretty easy to better line up when people become unable to contribute to society in some meaningful way and when they die. You can support healthier lifestyles. You can support the work of those who are aged but still, in some way, capable. And you can modify your health care system to be a little less biased to breathing the meat; initial baby steps would include respecting DNRs.
This _10 page_ article in the NYT starts out kinda weak but improves steadily throughout. Highlights include: who has really low birth rates, what they're thinking about doing about it, what works and what doesn't, Saxony-Anhalt's regional shrinkage plan, etc. Some interesting ideas in here about how to get women to have a couple of kids in a developed nation (generous or flexible; rhetoric and cash payments not so much; policies and societies which (a) emphasize women working outside the home and (b) fathers participating in child care are crucial). The concluding bit is, *sigh* really spectacularly weak.
No, you _can't_ have a country in which everyone lives in a nursing home. But long before it gets to that point, it's pretty easy to better line up when people become unable to contribute to society in some meaningful way and when they die. You can support healthier lifestyles. You can support the work of those who are aged but still, in some way, capable. And you can modify your health care system to be a little less biased to breathing the meat; initial baby steps would include respecting DNRs.
a bit more on a related topic
Date: 2008-06-30 02:49 am (UTC)http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/06/29/vital_help_for_caregivers/
One of the real issues, as near as I can tell, is that demographers as a group tend to be extrapolating sort of a current, normative approach, rather than actually paying attention to what's evolving on the ground. You cannot predict the future by mindlessly extending a current trend.