The household registration (hukou) system in China, classifying each person as a rural or an urban resident, is a major means of controlling populatin mobility and determining eligibility for ...state-provided services and welfare. Established in the late 1950s, it was initially used to bar rural-to-urban migration. After the late 1970s reforms, an inflow of rural migrant workers was allowed into the cities to meet labor demands in the burgeoning export industries and urban services without, however, changing the migrants' registered status, thus precluding their access to subsidized housing and other benefits available to those with urban registration. While there have been many calls for reforming this system, progress has been limited. Proposed reforms have attracted increasing academic and media attention.
In How Population Will Transform Our World, Sarah Harper looks at fertility rates and age structures of populations in different regions of the world against the backdrop of urbanization and climate ...change, drawing out the profound implications and challenges for societies, economies, and the environment in the decades to come.
Global Burden of Disease and Risk Factors Lopez, Alan D; Mathers, Colin D; Ezzati, Majid ...
The World Bank eBooks,
2006, 04-02-2006, 2006-02-04, 20060101
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This volume is a single up-to-date source on the entire global epidemiology of diseases, injuries and risk factors with a comprehensive statement of methods and a complete presentation of results. It ...includes refined methods to assess data, ensure epidemiological consistency, and summarize the disease burden. Global Burden of Disease and Risk Factors examines the comparative importance of diseases, injuries, and risk factors; it incorporates a range of new data sources to develop consistent estimates of incidence, prevalence, severity and duration, and mortality for 136 major diseases and injuries. Drawing from more than 8,500 data sources that include epidemiological studies, disease registers, and notifications systems, Global Burden of Disease and Risk Factors incorporates information from more than 10,000 datasets relating to population health and mortality, representing one of the largest syntheses of global information on population health to date.
Just six decades ago, the world was experiencing remarkably high population growth rates, which led to the coining of the term ‘demographic bomb’ to describe concerns associated with population size. ...At the time, the global population was three billion. Since then, an extra billion people have been added every 12 years. However, the pre-eminent demographic challenge of the twenty-first century is population ageing, a global, irreversible and unprecedented trend. The number of people aged 65 and over has almost doubled since the turn of the century and currently accounts for 10% of the global population. An extra billion people are expected to age into the older category within the next 35 years. In Europe, half of the population is above 45 years of age, and the number of those above 65 years old is greater than the number of children under 15. Commonly referred to as the ‘silver tsunami’, it is feared that the increasing number of older people will have a destructive impact on economies and social systems. Never before have our lives been longer, our families smaller and our societies more multigenerational. The new reality of longevity requires a shift in how we approach ageing. This article explores ways to cope with the challenges of the silver era we are heading towards.
Human land transformation is one of the leading causes of vertebrate population declines. These declines are thought to be partly due to decreased connectivity and habitat loss reducing animal ...population sizes in disturbed habitats. With time, this can lead to declines in effective population size and genetic diversity which restrict the ability of wildlife to efficiently cope with environmental change through genetic adaptation. However, it is not well understood whether these effects generally hold across taxa. We address this question by repurposing and synthesizing raw microsatellite data from online repositories for 19 amphibian species sampled at 554 georeferenced sites in North America. For each site, we estimated gene diversity, allelic richness, effective population size, and population differentiation. Using binary urban‐rural census designations, and continuous measures of human population density, the Human Footprint Index, and impervious surface cover, we tested for generalizable effects of human land use on amphibian genetic diversity. We found minimal evidence, either positive or negative, for relationships between genetic metrics and urbanization. Together with previous work on focal species that also found varying effects of urbanization on genetic composition, it seems likely that the consequences of urbanization are not easily generalizable within or across amphibian species. Questions about the genetic consequences of urbanization for amphibians should be addressed on a case‐by‐case basis. This contrasts with general negative effects of urbanization in mammals and consistent, but species‐specific, positive and negative effects in birds.
From red to gray Chawla, Mukesh; Betcherman, Gordon; Banerji, Arup ...
2007, 06-15-2007, 20070101
eBook, Book
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Conventional wisdom holds that aging populations are unfavorable for economic growth because of their potential impacts on labor supply, productivity, and savings. When this is coupled with the ...increased spending pressures because of pension requirements and health care, aging societies are likely to face serious fiscal problems. This report addresses these concerns in the unique context of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union where many countries are aging rapidly without the economic resources and institutional capacity of other aging societies in Western Europe and Japan.
Concern about the size of the world's population did not begin with the "population bomb" in 1968. It arose in the aftermath of World War I and was understood as an issue with far-reaching ...ecological, agricultural, economic, and geopolitical consequences. The world population problem concerned the fertility of soil as much as the fertility of women, always involving both "earth" and "life."
Global Populationtraces the idea of a world population problem as it evolved from the 1920s through the 1960s. The growth and distribution of the human population over the planet's surface came deeply to shape the characterization of "civilizations" with different standards of living. It forged the very ideas of development, demographically defined three worlds, and, for some, an aspirational "one world."
Drawing on international conference transcripts and personal and organizational archives, this book reconstructs the twentieth-century population problem in terms of migration, colonial expansion, globalization, and world food plans. Population was a problem in which international relations and intimate relations were one. Global Population ultimately shows how a geopolitical problem about sovereignty over land morphed into a biopolitical solution, entailing sovereignty over one's person.
Pulsatilla patens s.s. is a one of the most endangered plant species in Europe. The present range of this species in Europe is highly fragmented and the size of the populations has been dramatically ...reduced in the past 50 years. The rapid disappearance of P. patens localities in Europe has prompted the European Commission to initiate active protection of this critically endangered species. The aim of this study was to estimate the degree and distribution of genetic diversity within European populations of this endangered species. We screened 29 populations of P. patens using a set of six microsatellite primers. The results of our study indicate that the analyzed populations are characterized by low levels of genetic diversity (Ho = 0.005) and very high levels of inbreeding (FIS = 0.90). These results suggest that genetic erosion could be partially responsible for the lower fitness in smaller populations of this species. Private allelic richness was very low, being as low as 0.00 for most populations. Average genetic diversity over loci and mean number of alleles in P. patens populations were significantly correlated with population size, suggesting severe genetic drift. The results of AMOVA point to higher levels of variation within populations than between populations.The results of Structure and PCoA analyses suggest that the genetic structure of the studied P. patens populations fall into three clusters corresponding to geographical regions. The most isolated populations (mostly from Romania) formed a separate group with a homogeneous gene pool located at the southern, steppic part of the distribution range. Baltic, mostly Polish, populations fall into two genetic groups which were not fully compatible with their geographic distribution.Our results indicate the serious genetic depauperation of P. patens in the western part of its range, even hinting at an ongoing extinction vortex. Therefore, special conservation attention is required to maintain the populations of this highly endangered species of European Community interest.
Résumé The presence of geoheritage of international value is the basis of any candidature as a UNESCO Global Geopark. Within the framework of the elaboration of a roadmap for the creation of a UNESCO ...Global Geopark in South-East Tunisia, a geological and geomorphological study was carried out. The selected geoheritage can be divided into two main families : palaeontological and sedimentological sites, which provide complete documentation of the opening of the southern Tethysian margin, from the Triassic to the Cretaceous, and geomorphological and landscape sites (cultural geomorphosites), which offer an exceptional range of adaptations of human societies to the morphoclimatic context. This analysis of the geoheritage is the basis for the implementation of a strategy of geoconservation, geotouristic enhancement and, ultimately, the creation of a geopark in the Djebel Dahar. It demonstrates the importance of the interrelationships between the cultural, tangible and intangible, heritage and the geomorphological context.
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