Has the decline in fertility been mainly due rising childlessness? Or to declines in family size among people who have kids? It depends. A lovely decomposition analysis on completed cohort fertility: demographic-research.org/articles/volum…

For technical nerds: we're used to thinking about tempo distortions suppressing the TFR because we're used to age at birth rising, but age at birth fell during the baby boom and inflated the TFR: "the period TFR peaked at 3.7, whereas no cohort..achieved a value higher than 3.3"

Anne Morse Yep. I've made this point several times. x.com/Scientific_Bir…

Map of female literacy rates and fertility in Nepal: The Sudur Paschim province of Nepal has a female literacy rate of 57%, and a total fertility rate of 1.88 🇳🇵 nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal…

Epic article on #Palestine by Rafeef Ziadah just published by Development and Change based on her keynote at the recent hetecon conference. "Development as Erasure: Palestine, Genocide and ‘Reconstruction’" A must read. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/de…

Pl read

This is AMAZING.

#MustRead #Gaza #Palestine

A must read indeed!

The share of U.S. women age 40-44 who had ever given birth declined between 1979 and 2024 from 90% to 81%. This increase in childlessness was driven entirely by women without a college degree. The % has stayed the same for women with a college degree.

#China to launch $13.2 billion railway project connecting #Xinjiang via #Tibet , with parts ... - goo.gl/alerts/siGpUK #GoogleAlerts

Given that the late Thandika Mkandawire was a massive inspiration for me, I am incredibly honoured to have been invited to give this memorial lecture and, now as the day approaches, also increasingly nervous about it. tinyurl.com/Thandika-2025

📢 The 4th Thandika Mkandawire Memorial Lecture is here! 🗓 25 Sept 2025 | ⏰ 14:00–16:00 (CAT) 🎤 Prof. Andrew M. Fischer (ISS, The Hague, Erasmus University) 📍 Online (Teams) 🔗 codesria.org/thandika-mkand… #ThandikaLecture #SocialPolicy

📢 La 4ᵉ conférence à la mémoire de Thandika Mkandawire arrive ! 🗓 25 sept. 2025 | ⏰14h– 16h (CAT) 🎤 Pr. Andrew Fischer (ISS, Univ. Erasmus) 📍 En ligne (Teams) 🔗 codesria.org/fr/conference-… #ConférenceThandika #PolitiqueSociale

Indeed, as I was struggling to get a foothold, I regularly faced the 10%, and I have many times since as well. But in the end, it was good to have stayed true to myself, because I wouldn’t have wanted to be colleagues with that 10% either, because they were/are quite toxic.

Dimwit scores an own goal. According to these numbers, deaths were ~3.5% of population in Gaza. Taking his upper range estimates, deaths in Afghanistan were ~0.5%, Syria ~2.5%, Iraq ~3.5%. Only DRC higher. And actual numbers are certainly much higher in Gaza.

CHART: Consumption Makes Up Shrinking Part of China's Economy (Note: This isn’t just household consumption expenditure.) bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

This is a sleight of stats, comparing two different sources of data. Household expenditure is only one part of overall consumption. GFCF otoh is similar to other successful industrialisers in East Asia at similar levels of development. It’s what is needed to catch up.

This chart doesn’t actually show that. After near 100% in 2023, fell slightly below 50% in 2024 (contribution to GDP growth, not GDP). On avg that’s probably higher than current consumption/gdp ratio, hence increasing the ratio. And is roughly consistent with last 15 years.