Playing with the Pew Research numbers on global migration

Fascinating interactive from the Pew Research Centre on global migration. It allows you to search by country on the number of overseas born people living in that country, the number born in that country living elsewhere in the years 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2017. In each year, it lists numbers for both source and destination countries.

To illustrate with New Zealand:

• in 1990, there were 520,00 overseas born people in New Zealand. The three top source countries were the UK, 230,000, Australia 50,000 followed by Samoa on 40,000. In that year, there were 390,000 Kiwis living abroad. The top three destination countries were Australia 300,000, the UK 40,000 and the US 20,000.
• In 2017, the number of overseas born people in New Zealand had increased to 1,070,000 people. The top three source countries were the UK, 270,000, China 100,000 and India/Australia each on 70,000. In that year, the number of Kiwis living abroad had increased to 830,000. The top three destination countries were Australia, 670,000, the UK 60,000 and the US 30,000.

It's interesting just playing around with the interactive looking at different country patterns. However, it also allows you to compare countries or groups of countries, taking relative population sizes into account. Here the wikipedia list of country populations is useful.

Some of the types of questions that arise include:

• Are Canada, New Zealand and Australia in fact exceptional when it comes to the relative size of immigration? How do the three compare? 
• What do the stats tell us about relative migration patterns in Europe and the UK? 
• Which countries have the lowest immigration patterns measured by the number of foreign born?

At this point, I haven't attempted to answer questions such as this, just pointing to possibilities. .    

Saturday Morning Musings - elections, budgets & the patterns of political and demographic change in Australia

I have been off air, so to speak, since Monday because of the need to complete other things. Meantime, the election has ground on. This has been a very strange campaign, really two campaigns, The first is the official campaign, the second the surrounding analysis and commentary.  Of the two, the second is the more informed, interesting and indeed important for it is delineating the issues that either side will have to deal with following the election.

The official campaign is all about specific initiatives that may or may not be offset by spending cuts. Nobody is quite sure what might be cut, indeed, nobody is quite sure about anything. We may or may not buy some decrepit Indonesian fishing boats. We may or may not get the budget back into surplus. We may build this road or then again we may not. We may or may not develop the north. We definitely won't increase GST, but then again we may. I get confused, I must say, for I am not sure what any of it means. Neither side has really articulated a clear picture or clear principles that I can easily understand.  

At least with the second campaign, the surrounding analysis and commentary is drawing out key issues quite clearly.

It is clear, for example, that the Australian Government faces significant expenditure constraints that must be dealt with by tax increases or expenditure cuts or a combination of the two. The quantum may vary depending on your view about the size of government and the acceptable level of budget deficit, but the central principle remains true. I am not saying anything new, just stating an accepted fact.

We also face an uncertain economic outlook. Again, I am not saying anything new. Globally, there are signs of economic revival in the developing world, while the developing world is slowing. In a world awash with money, short term currency flows can have significant impacts as we have just seen, with flows from emerging markets to the US. Australian domestic activity on which tax revenues depend is sluggish. If we take the official estimates on which the Commonwealth budget is predicated, higher or lower results are equally likely. This increases budget uncertainty.

Of all the various issues raised during the election campaign, the one that has emerged as most important in a macro sense is productivity improvement. Without productivity improvement, the country's ability to fund things will be further constrained. Both sides agree on this, but neither has really articulated a coherent approach towards the issue. Grouping a series of sometimes ad hoc initiatives usually developed for other reasons under a productivity improvement mantra, Gonski or Mr Abbott's paid parental leave scheme come to mind, does not make for a coherent approach. 

I have come to think of this election as the pain election. With both sides trying to balance promises with cuts in the name of budget neutrality, each promise involves pain for someone else. In the case of Mr Abbott's paid parental leave scheme, as a simple example, shareholders will lose a degree of franking credit. Both sides are involved in a game of redistribution, redistributing a notionally fixed cake at the margin. That is why it is so important to have the detail of the Coalition promises and associated cuts elsewhere.

Since the final size of the cake is actually uncertain, we also need to make judgements about what might have to be done if the economy performs less well than expected. Given the promises and pledged expenditure cuts, just what flexibility will either side have in responding? What promises might have to be broken, what new cuts imposed, what taxes increased? I would feel a lot more comfortable if I could provide an indicative answer to those questions.

The latest public opinion polls (as always, the Poll Bludger provides a good entry point here) show Labor weakening. It is hard to see the Coalition losing; the only question in my mind is the size of the victory. However, the thing that now interests me is what the polls, as well as the qualitative analysis, might say about the future, the changing structure of Australia and Australian politics.

If we look at the detail of the latest poll, we find a very skewed voting structure based on age. To draw this out, I have selected some of the data and put it in the following table grouped by age.

Age Group	18-24 %	25-39 %	40-54 %
Labor	38	40	35
Coalition	32	40	49
Greens	21	12	9
Independent	3	3	3
Other	6	4	4
Prime Minister's Performance
Approve	59	50	41
Disapprove	35	42	54
Uncommitted	6	8	5
Opposition Leader's Performance
Approve	34	39	44
Disapprove	62	56	53
Uncommitted	4	5	3
Preferred Prime Minister
Gillard/Rudd	62	56	44
Abbott	34	37	47
Uncommitted	4	6	9

The age skew in the figures is very interesting from a longer term perspective. The Coalition vote is strongly skewed towards the 40+, the Green vote is heavily skewed towards the young (21% in the 18-24 age group is very high indeed), while Labor is strongest in those up to 39. This is a generational election in which older Australians have swung towards Coalition. younger Australians away from the Coalition. If this election were held tomorrow with voting limited to those under forty, Labor would romp in with strong Green support.

This pattern fits with my perceptions of the views of younger Australians. They are less likely to support stop the boats, more likely to believe that climate change is a real problem, more likely to be left of centre on social issues including gay marriage. The distribution shows why, from a Labor perspective, it is so important to try to minimise losses in this election. The age distribution vote skew is so pronounced that, if the voting intentions were to stay the same, each year that passes improves Labor's vote as the presently younger age cohorts age, the older cohorts diminish.

The Greens will obviously be pleased too. While their overall vote has apparently weakened (10% in this poll vs 11.8% at the last election), the high youth support does provide a base for subsequent Senate elections.

   There are a number of other interesting features in the numbers. However, I am out of time this morning. I am going to be watching the detailed pattern of voting on 7 September with interest not because of the overall result, but for what it may tell us about the longer term changing pattern across Australia.

Saturday Morning Meander - just a dash of this and that

Just browsing this morning, looking through my blog list. I enjoy its diversity.

Over on Geocurrents, The Geography of Happiness—According to Twitter reminded me of Winton Bates. The post reports on an attempt to measure relative happiness across the US through a statistical analysis of happy and sad words included in tweets. As an aside, I don't go to Geocurrents as often as I used to because of download problems. It's a very hungry blog that can crash my system.

Randy McDonald is a Canadian blogger with eclectic interests but a special focus on demography. He has a particular focus on the impact of falling birthrates and the consequent aging of populations. I don't always agree with his economic analysis, but he certainly educates me. As examples, consider these recent pieces on Bulgaria (Three notes on historical patterns of migration from Bulgaria) and Portugal (The Great Portuguese Hollowing Out). They are relevant to a current thread in my own thinking, the choice that Australia made to again become an open migrant country. I say again, because at the end of the Second World War Australia had ceased to be a migrant society; over 90% of the population was locally born.

The idea of sorcery or witchcraft is deeply embedded in most human societies. In Europe, the number of known trials that ended in execution is reported as 12,000. The number killed was certainly higher.

In 1735, the British Parliament passed an Act under which penalties for the practice of witchcraft were replaced by penalties for the pretence of witchcraft. A person who claimed to have the power to call up spirits, or foretell the future, or cast spells, or discover the whereabouts of stolen goods, was to be punished as a vagrant and a con artist, subject to fines and imprisonment.

This change reflected the arrival of a more sceptical age.  Yet the allure of witchcraft lingered in the public imagination. After all, who could forget the three witches in Macbeth?

Macbeth's witches retained the evil element. However, by the nineteenth century a more romanticised even erotic view appeared,  captured in this 1886  painting, Magic Circle, by English artist John William Waterhouse.  Yet the old versions were still there.

The form taken varies from society to society. Very ancient traditions still survive in this current age. I mention this now because of a story by Jenny Hayward-Jones on the Lowy Institute blog, Violence: PNG's women face a crisis. I missed the case she refers too.

Changing direction, Helen's post on ART and ARCHTECTURE, mainly Why did Breaker Morant and Daisy Bates marry???? reintroduced me to Daisy Bates. I read the post and its comments first, and then visited the Wikipedia article on her. Dear oh dear, that woman had a messy private life.

I'm not being in any way censorious, just curious. If the dates are correct, marrying one man in February 1885, a second in June 1885, all the while still being technically married to Morant strikes me as complicated!  

I don't think that I have actually mentioned the US Ploughshares blog before. Its the blog of the Ploughshares Literary Magazine and, as you might have guessed, it's all about writing. If you are interested in writing, it's worth a look.

Well, I'm out of time this morning. I must put this meander aside and move onto other things.

Musings on a visit to inland NSW

Monday morning flew to Dubbo on the early morning flight. Really quite uncivilised, the flight not Dubbo!, for it meant getting ready at a very uncivilised hour of the morning. At Dubbo, picked up a car and drove the 117k or so to Parkes for a workshop.

I hadn't been to either Dubbo or Parkes before. Somehow I'd always bypassed them in my trips through inland New South Wales.  Parkes is a pretty place.

Driving back to Dubbo from Parkes, we stopped at the radio telescope that featured in the 2000 film, The Dish. It was a fun movie and also a fun visit to the telescope.

I mention the trip in part because the countryside was so green after all the rain. After the wet drear of Sydney, the bright sun and warmth was a pleasant change.

It really has been very wet. Yesterday, some 8-9,000 people were evacuated from the large inland city of Wagga Wagga further south as the floods rolled down the Murrumbidgee River.

One person at the workshop was from Goodooga far to the north in New England's north west. They hope to be able to return to their flooded homes this Friday. Another person was from Forbes to the south, but had to leave because the flood peak was expected to reach Forbes at lunchtime.

I have mentioned before that the rivers that flow west from the ranges that run along Australia's east coast are very slow moving. This means that the floodwaters spread out and take long periods to clear.

Our visions of the world around us are formed in part by the transport routes we use. I was reminded of this yesterday by the road signs. Brisbane over 900k away, Adelaide over 1400k.

The modern coastal hugging aeroplane using population sees a thin slice. Inland, there is an entire network of highways running along the western slopes and plains that in fact follow the old stock routes. The sheep and cattle required to feed the Victorian gold fields went south along these routes. Now the trucks still follow them in an intricate web. Those driving between Adelaide or Melbourne to Brisbane and back know these roads. Sydney is distant, remote, over the ranges.

I knew these roads well when I worked in Canberra and drove often to Armidale. The now somewhat decayed remains of once prosperous villages and little are spread along them, reduced by the great twentieth decline in the rural population. It's hard to believe today that Sydney once had less than a third of the NSW population.

And yet the slow workings of economic and demographic change continue. While rural depopulation continues in some areas, the inland population is increasing again almost unseen. As part of this, the progressive break-up of NSW as a geographic and economic entity continues. Increasingly, Sydney lives in a world of attenuating links with its traditional hinterland.

This is not a political comment. Rather, I am interested in the patterns.

Each population centre exerts its own sphere of influence. The progressive centralisation of government services has speeded the decline of small centres. In some parts of NSW, there is no longer any real form of government service delivery presence at local level. Everything is delivered remotely or via not for profits.

The tyranny of distance is ever present. Just organising meetings of those involved in specific service activities is difficult because of driving times. And yet there is also a growing web of interlinked activities that continues below the horizon.

Mining is one key, as it has been over the many years since the gold rushes started.

The motel I stayed at in Parkes, the Station Motel, depends upon mining for its core business. The bloke I chatted to in a local Parkes cafe - he was wearing a Glen Innes top - has worked as a driller across NSW and into Queensland and is planning to return to his trade because of the money involved.

There are some stories here that I should write about, because the patterns fascinate me. However, that will have to wait.   

Myth of the mobile Australian

I first became aware of the myth of the mobile Australian back in 1980. Then, like most Australians, I accepted the view that Australians and especially young Australians were happy to move for work or adventure. After all, I worked in Canberra where everybody came from somewhere else!

There was a mining boom at the time, with problems in getting people to move to take jobs. Someone pointed to data suggesting that job mobility in Australia had declined quite sharply. I was surprised and asked why. The primary reason given was the rise of the two income household. 

Track forward.

A few years ago friends visited Australia from the US: Sally is US, Dave Australian. We were talking about universities and university choices.

In choosing universities, our daughters had opted for the local: any hope that I might have had that one or other might continue the UNE tradition was long gone;  even Canberra and the ANU were too far away from Sydney to be considered. Sally compared the Australian position to the US where it was normal to move to get the university of your choice. 

This local Australian stickiness was not in fact new.

During the very rapid growth in the Canberra based Commonwealth Public Service in the 1960s, the Service struggled to recruit graduates from Sydney or Melbourne: there were sufficient local job opportunities, so people stayed at home. I found exactly the same thing when I was involved in graduate recruitment a decade later.  Our recruits came from universities where local job opportunities were less. That's one of the reasons why, for example, the Armidale based University of New England came to have such a disproportionate share of senior people in Government relative to its size. There were no jobs in Armidale.

Australia has always been an urbanised country. Arguably, we were the world's first such country outside the city states. However, the current population dominance of the metro centres is both old and new.

Population was relatively centralised in the first period of European settlement. However, the population then spread with pastoral and later mining and agricultural expansion. In NSW, for example, Sydney's share of the state population fell to around a third. The growth in the capital cities relative to other parts of the country from the 1880s attracted attention because it was seen as unusual. The rise of the capital cities is one constant theme in the early official Australian year books.

The Australian population was clearly very mobile in the earlier periods of European settlement. People moved for work and in search of wealth. By the 1880s, the population was becoming less mobile with the rise of urban centres - the rise of the town is one theme in the history of colonial Australia. From then, mobility was primarily one way, to the capital cities.

Today the Governor-General Quentin Bryce and former cricket champion Glenn McGrath are combining to launch the Australian Year of the Farmer. Had you heard of it? I hadn't.

Population mobility in the nineteenth century and then the drift to the cities in the first part of the twentieth century meant that there were close family interconnections between country and city. Australia may have been urbanised, but people still had connections with the country.

These connections have attenuated with time. A survey released in conjunction with the Australian Year of the Farmer found that 22 per cent of city dwellers never visited a rural area, 69 per cent did so only once a year. The Year of the Farmer aims to reintroduce Australians to the country. The need for such a program would have seemed incomprehensible even fifty years ago.

As with so many things, mobility is not clear cut. We clearly have a mobility issue within Australia as evidenced simply by the rise of FIFO, the fly in, fly out worker. The rise and fall of the mining towns that once were a feature of Australian life have been replaced by an urbanised workforce that simply visits. Now politicians worry about ways to get people to move.

There are some complicated issues here that extend well beyond the simple question of mobility. For example, the shortage of experienced engineers in Australia means that mining developments bring in overseas engineers. In writing specifications, those engineers use terms and specs that they are familiar with; this favours overseas product. Arguably, we are getting neither the local benefits from development nor some of the down stream benefits that we once expected.

While some areas struggle to get workers, while overall mobility is down, the Australian population still moves. However, the pattern of mobility is different.

One element is the increased importance of life style considerations.

The flight to the sea that saw large increases in population in certain parts of the coastal strip was driven by life style considerations rather than jobs. Indeed, the jobs weren't there when the population started moving and those jobs that have come have been lower level service jobs. The end result in places has been social dislocation.

A second element in the changing pattern of mobility has been the changing patterns of migration to this country. The new settlers are mobile, but in different ways.

During the first period of mass migration after the Second World War, the new settlers actually spread quite widely, if with concentrations in particular areas. The Greek families that came to Armidale, for example, formed links with each other. Their children and grandchildren left to pursue new opportunities, but links remained. The Greek families may no longer live in Armidale, but they still hold regular gatherings.

I have the strong impression that this type of cross-geographic linking within Australia no longer occurs. I know Sydney best. The Chinese and Indian young, for example, are mobile but between Sydney and their home countries or, sometimes, other parts of Asia. They are much less likely to move within Australia. This reflects changing economic conditions, as well as cultural factors.

I first became really aware of the locational impacts of culture a few years ago when looking at problems associated with attracting professionals to regional NSW. The Asian emphasis on education meant that many professional courses, those with the highest entry scores, were increasingly dominated by Asian students including both overseas and local born. Those students were highly unlikely to leave Sydney upon graduation; they had no links with and limited knowledge of the rest of NSW.

I haven't attempted to spell out all elements in this muse, simply point to what I see as some features. Mobility is important because it affects economic activity. It is also important because it affects attitudes and cultures. The common assumption that the Australian population is relatively mobile acts to conceal quite significant demographic changes.  

Migration to Australia by country

Michael Jeremy pointed me to some new material being released by the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship providing country profiles on Australia's migrant groups. So far, ten countries are covered.

I mention this because the profiles provide interesting comparative insights into the varying patterns of migration that are steadily changing this country.

As an example, at the end of June 2009 the Australian Chinese born population totaled 350,960 or 1.6 per cent of the total population. Over half this group lived in NSW. By contrast, the Indian born population totaled 305,840 of which the NSW share was around 40 per cent, with Victorian increasing in popularity.

I won't comment further at this point. I just thought that you might find the profiles interesting.      

Musings on the new UN population projections

Just a few notes this morning. The UN has released new global population projections. You will find them here. I quote from the official press release.

The current world population of close to 7 billion is projected to reach 10.1 billion in the next ninety years, reaching 9.3 billion by the middle of this century, according to the medium variant of the 2010 Revision of World Population Prospects, the official United Nations population projections prepared by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which is being launched today (3 May). Much of this increase is projected to come from the high-fertility countries, which comprise 39 countries in Africa, nine in Asia, six in Oceania and four in Latin America.There is some interesting stuff there.

There is some interesting stuff there for those interested in demography. The following table shows some of the UN mid range projections for Australia's immediate region. Comments follow the table. 

Country/region	Population 2015 '000	Population 2050 '000	Population 2100 '000
Asia	4 375 482	5 142 220	4 596 224
Australia	23 793	31 385	35 908
Australia/New Zealand	28 394	37 063	42 232
Bangladesh	158 317	194 353	157 134
China	1 369 743	1 295 604	941 042
Fiji	896	1 017	1 005
India	1 308 221	1 692 008	1 550 899
Indonesia	251 880	293 456	254 178
Japan	126 072	108 549	91 330
Malaysia	30 714	43 455	46 946
Oceania	39 355	55 233	65 819
New Zealand	4 601	5 678	6 323
Papua New Guinea	7 645	13 549	18 113
Pakistan	189 648	274 875	261 271
Philippines	101 421	160 604	177 803
Republic of Korea	49 120	47 050	37 221
Singapore	5 375	6 106	5 659
Sri Lanka	21 709	23 193	19 888
Timor-Leste	1 301	3 006	4 742
Vietnam	92 443	103 962	82 604

Like all projections, they are just that, projections. The Australian numbers are arguably too low, less than the equivalent Australian mid-range projections. That said, I just want to point briefly to a few key points:

You can see the total Asian population peak and then decline. This seems to happen faster than I remember from pervious projections. I haven't checked.

The exact country pattern within Asia will be affected by migration. The Japanese, for example, have reservations about new settlers. I wonder whether they will maintain that as aging and population decline continues?

By contrast to Asia, Australia and New Zealand show continued population growth. Their population remains miniscule compared to Asia, but is projected to rise from the equivalent of .65% of the Asian population to .78%!

One of the things I love about Australia and New Zealand is the constantly changing diversity of the two countries because of their open-door non-discriminatory migration policies. As an entrails' watcher, I like working out what might happen next,

Now look here at the population numbers for Oceania, essentially ANZ plus the PNG and the Pacific Islands. They are projected to rise from 39.4 million to 65.8 million, heavily driven by growth in PNG.

One side effect of that is likely to be a major rise in the both the absolute numbers of and proportion of the Pacific island population in both Australia and New Zealand. This really began first in NZ, but then spread to Australia, in part because of the free movement of peoples between the two countries.

   People sometimes talk about the Asianisation of Australia and New Zealand and especially Sydney and Auckland. While this is misleading, Asian is a geographic descriptor that acts to conceal diversity, it is sometimes a somewhat useful descriptive tool. However, while I am sure that the total Asian proportion of the Australian and New Zealand population will continue to rise over the next twenty years, I suspect that the Pacific component will rise faster. Further, I expect that the composition of the Asian population will change.

Australia and New Zealand will never be able to match the growing economic attractiveness of India and China and perhaps other Asian countries as well. You can just make more money in these countries than you can in ANZ.

However, I also suspect that our non-discriminatory immigration policies and relatively open societies are likely to become increasingly powerful economic weapons in the battle across Asia for skilled workers and professionals flowing from an aging population. Why put up with the hassle of gaining entry to a China or Japan when ANZ is easier?

If I'm right, then this is going to be pretty important in the years ahead.       

NSW elections, population & a carbon tax

In NSW election wrap-up provided an overview of the results of the NSW election. Counting has continued slowly, but all lower house seats have now been finalised. The outcome is:

• Liberals 51 seats, up 27
• Labor 20 seats, down 30
• Nationals 18 seats, up 5
• Independents 3 seats, down 3
• Greens 1 seat, up 1

The main changes since the first projections are the final Green victory in the inner west Sydney seat of Balmain, while the Nationals have gained a further seat at the expense of Labor. Legislative Council counting continues. There the main question lies in the final seat: will this be gained by the Greens or Pauline Hanson.

I will do a more detailed wrap up on the New England Australia blog, along with comments on the newly announced Liberal-National ministry. I will also set out the criteria that I will be using to assess the early performance of the new Government.

While my attention has been elsewhere, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released new population estimates for Australia for the year ending 30 September.  The annual population growth rate for was 1.6%, has been declining since the peak of 2.2% for the year ended 31 December 2008 and was the lowest recorded since the year ended 30 September 2006.    

The decline in the population growth rate was due entirely to a fall in net migration. You can see just how important migration is to the population growth from the ABS chart.

A little later, the ABS also released more detailed regional population analysis. Again, I will comment on these on the New England Australia blog.

The rate of growth was a significant issue at the last Federal election, with battles between big and little Australians. This debate was a little misguided simply because net migration (those arriving minus those leaving) depends upon factors beyond the Government's immediate control. In the year ending 30 September, Australia needed 255,800 new arrivals just to offset the number of residents leaving the country. What is more interesting is the distributional and compositional effects.

The discussion on migration links directly to the question of skills shortages. According to a story in the Australian, up to eight million Australian workers don't have the reading, writing or numeracy skills to undertake training for trade or professional jobs. Indeed, it is argued that standards now are lower than they were in the 1960s.

This is a perennial issue and one not easily addressed by current analytical methods. I say this because there is apparent conflict in the data as compared to the anecdotal evidence. Perhaps a fuller comment later.

   In Fault lines in Australian politics I referred to the anti and pro carbon tax demonstrations. These have continued. I haven't commented on the detail of the Australian Government's proposals because I don't feel competent to do so. I just haven't worked through the detail in my own mind.

If we start from the premise as I do that climate change is an issue that we need to address, then some form of price on carbon is inevitable. Beyond that point, the issue is defining the best way to do it.

One thing that does concern me is the argument that a carbon price can come without cost to the majority of the community. More precisely, that there will be a cost that can be offset by compensation. People don't believe this and they are right to be cautious. Apart from anything else, even if on average costs and compensation are equal for low and middle income earners, there are likely to be considerable distributional differences within that average.

Well, its coming up on 6.50. Time to prepare for the week.  

Saturday Morning Musings - managing population decline

A tweet by Mathew Ingram drew my attention to a fascinating statistic from the Boston Globe: eight of the 10 largest cities in the United States in 1950, including Boston, have since lost at least 20 percent of their population. In the case of Detroit, more than half the city's population has gone over the last fifty years, leaving vacant city buildings and entire boarded up blocks.

The photo shows Detroit's main train station, opened in 1913 but not used since 1988.

We live in a world in which part is experiencing, rapid population growth, part facing actual population decline. In Belarus for example, the total population has fallen from 10,045,000 in 1999 to 9,500,000 in 2009. This decline is likely to continue. Not only is the population aging, but there is also a growing gender imbalance - there are now 1150 women for every 1,000 men, an imbalance part linked to population aging.

Belarus is not alone. A number of other countries are already experiencing or will soon face population decline.

We live in an urbanised world. Countries like Australia have been urban for many years, other countries like China are urbanising now at a very rapid rate.

The next photo shows Detroit's spectacular Spanish Gothic United Artists Theater. This was built in 1928, closed in the 1970s

Those of us from regional Australia have experienced population decline at first hand. Schools, stores, banks, civic facilities all close.

Small scale decline can be ignored,especially when the rest of the country is growing. But what do you do when major urban centres, metropolitan cities, go into population decline?

As populations fall, so do rate bases, civic services and urban developments. Vast patches of desolation emerge. It becomes harder to maintain things, not just because costs have to to be spread over smaller populations, but also because large slabs of infrastructure designed for specific populations have to be maintained to meet diminishing needs.

You see, the pattern of decline is not uniform. Some areas suffer more than others. So some areas are still okay, other's bear costs that cannot be related to population. People fight to maintain areas and services, but ultimately they go. 

The photo shows Detroit's Wilbur Wright public school closed in 2005.

Now all this may seem a long way from Australia. After all, we are presently worried about the size of the population increase, not issues associated with population decline. Yet we do need to think about it.

For the present, our problems lie not in the overall size of the population, but in its structure and distribution. This, by the way, is not an argument for more decentralisation, although that may be important. Rather, I am trying to tease out a few broader issues.

We have an aging population. This means that we have to invest more in aged care. We have a population in which the number of households is rising faster than the population, reflecting both changing social patterns and underlying demographic trends. So we need to build more housing of one type or another to match this faster growth.

The Australian population is not uniformly distributed. A self-evident statement I know, but I am thinking not just in raw numbers, but of the varying structure of of the population across space. Retirement areas, for example, have very different population structures from outer metropolitan areas. Then there is internal migration, the progressive shifts of population across space and time.

We have already seen examples of the impact of this type of shift. In Canberra, for example, the city's rapid growth required shops and schools in certain areas to meet rapid population growth. Just thirty years later, maturation meant declining needs for those shops and schools. This created significant adjustment problems.

When I look at Australia just at present, I see the Canberra example writ large. If you just crunch numbers for some areas popular with retirees or simply aging because the young are leaving but ignoring future internal migration, the numbers show fast population declines within a not so distant time horizon. In this event, it's not just the aged care facilities that will become redundant, but large slabs of the commercial and civic infrastructure as well.

Just at present, we tend to respond to this type of challenge in two ways. Either, we say the market will work it out or, alternatively, we go all prescriptive. I am not sure that either is very sensible.

When I read the Boston Globe analysis, I think that the think that interested me most was the differential nature of the responses. As part of this, the idea of using contraction as a device to improve overall life style and livability attracted me. I don't know that I have very clear or sensible ideas here. I just found it interesting as an alternative way of thinking.  

Sunday Essay - scoping Mr Abbott's immigration targets

Congratulations to Pakistan on winning the cricket and to the Wallabies for their victory over South Africa.

The rush to try to stay in the middle ground continues in Australia's Federal election with Opposition Leader Abbott announcing that the coalition would limit immigration to 170,000 and the Australian population growth to 1.4%. By this he means, I think, net immigration. Well, what might this mean?

The following table shows Australia's population increase in the year ended December 2009.

Natural Increase		154,900
Add new migrants	508,000
Less Australians leaving	230,300
Net overseas migration		277,700
Total population increase		432,600

If I interpret Mr Abbott correctly and had the cap been in place in 2009, the numbers would have looked like this:

Natural Increase		154,900
Add new migrants	400,300
Less Australians leaving	230,300
Net overseas migration		170,000
Total population increase		324,900

If you compare the two tables, the target set by Mr Abbott would have involved a reduction in net migration of 107,700, bringing migration down to 61.22% of its previous level. You can also see just how difficult it is to achieve a precise numeric outcome. Not only do many factors contribute to new immigration, but  the level of Australian emigration is now so high that it has a very powerful influence on the net migration number.

Leads and lags are important in all this. I have used 2009 numbers because these are the latest figures. In fact, the Government has already put in place greater controls on immigration, including changes to student visa arrangements, that are already bringing down the number of new migrants. It seems quite likely that these will of themselves bring net migration levels down below 170,000 to perhaps as low as 140,000 or even 100,000. In this event, you can probably expect the debate to reverse itself.

But what would have happened at state and territory level in 2009 had the cap been in place?

The following table shows increases in state or territory populations before and after the cap on the assumption that net migration fell by the same proportion in each jurisdiction. Assuming that I have made no silly mathematical errors, the single most important change is that Queensland would have moved from third to first in the growth rankings, with NSW falling from first to third. This result reflects the continued importance of net internal migration from NSW to Queensland.  

State	Population change 2009	Net migration actual	Net migration capped	Population change capped
NSW	115,798	78,787	48,233	85,244
Victoria	114,580	77,502	47,447	84,525
Queensland	106,560	53,265	32,609	85,904
WA	58,668	38,078	23,311	35,357
SA	21,228	17,349	10,621	14,500
ACT	6,386	3,775	2,311	4,922
NT	4,932	1,909	1,169	4,192
Tasmania	4,442	2,046	1,253	3,649

There is nothing very profound in this analysis. I am just using a few simple numbers to scope one element of the debate over population and immigration. It helps when you consider the screaming headlines Abbott to slash immigration.     

Minerals, politics and economic change

In a post yesterday, Is Australia's trade position as good as it seems?, I wondered about the real strength of the Australian trade position. I may be right, but in the meantime growth continues.

The employment figures released yesterday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics were remarkably strong. The graph from the ABS gives a good visual picture of the trend.

David Uren in the Australian has a useful analysis of the numbers. Just to quote one part:

Western Australia generated half the new jobs last month and is regaining the role it had from 2005 to 2007 as the leading economic performer, with unemployment in that state now down to 4 per cent, a full percentage point drop since February.

Over the past three months, Western Australia and Queensland have led the employment growth, with more than 30,000 jobs created in each state, against just over 20,000 in NSW and Victoria.

Ultimately, jobs created are reflected in population numbers. Given the relative size of the state populations, an increase of 30,000 jobs in WA (population 2,270,276) as compared to 20,000 in NSW (population 7,191,500) and Victoria (population 5,496,408) is striking.

It takes time for economic shifts of this type to be fully reflected in population shifts. Initial increases in one type of employment are followed by other types. In legal services, for example, Perth lagged for some time because work stayed with the big eastern state firms. However, by August 2007, increases in remuneration in Perth were leading the nation. Actual amounts paid were still behind Sydney and Melbourne, but the gap was closing.

Another example is skilled employment in supporting activities. As mining expands, so do engineering activities required to maintain the mines. With time, this creates a series of often small engineering firms making parts and servicing equipment. This leads to a further increase in activities required to service those firms themselves.

I am not saying anything profound here. I am just interested in patterns, something I discussed a little most recently in Australia's economic fragmentation.

In the WA case, we have job increases leading to population increases feeding further job increases. This puts WA in a very different class from some parts of NSW.

In the case of the NSW (New England) North Coast, the rapid growth in population from the start of the eighties was linked to life style - retirement, tourism, coastal living in general. Jobs followed this increase, but they were generally lower paid service jobs. The North Coast now has some of the poorest areas in Australia measured by average incomes, with some of the highest areas of welfare dependence in the country. The population is also older.

Within NSW, only the coal mining areas of the Hunter and Liverpool display anything approaching the WA pattern and for the same reasons. However, here the higher level jobs remain in Sydney, as indeed they do in Perth in the WA case.

Shifts in economic power are inevitably associated with shifts in political power. This was one of the things that made the debate over the resources super profits tax so interesting. The intent of the tax was to capture a greater share of mining company profits and then redistribute them to parts of the country not benefiting directly from the growth in mining. I am not sure that it was ever quite put that way, but that was the practical effect.

This is not the first time that this has happened in Australian history. Federation itself and the associated imposition of the tariff barriers that was part of the price of Federation redistributed incomes from the export sectors to import competing sectors.

If you look at the responses to the tax, WA as a state was most directly affected and responded most strongly. It wasn't just the mining tax, but also other financial issues including the treatment of GST.

Queensland, too, was directly affected, but here the state response was more muted and lagged. Unlike WA, Queensland has large population areas not directly associated with mining who could be expected to support the original proposals. It wasn't until on-ground protests from mining areas gathered strength that the Premier came out in somewhat belated opposition.

The position in NSW was different again. Here the population in the resource rich areas constitutes a very small part of the total state population. At no stage so, far as I am aware, did the NSW Premier express serious concerns, despite the implications for state revenues from mining royalties.The on-ground concerns were there, but had much less impact on this debate. However, they did help fuel the re-emergence of new state support.

None of this should be construed as a comment on the tax itself, simply an analysis of the responses.

One of the interesting things about the spread of economic literacy in Australia is that people are far more aware of the flow-on effects.

If you look at official Australian material over the first decades of the 20th century such as the year books, you will find lots of comment, of concern, about the rise of metro populations. You will also find recognition that this was associated with industrialisation and the tariff. However the various linkages weren't fully understood. It would be many years before the theory of customs unions would provide a solid theoretical framework to analyse the differential impact of Federation.

The fact that people now have more knowledge is a good thing, although it does complicate life for governments! Still, the on-ground effects of change do remain clouded. I will continue to watch developments with interest.

Ms Gillard and the importance of population planning

I am leaving the current froth and bubble of Australian politics aside for the present until it all settles down. Instead, I have been trying to get my mind around just one thing, what Ms Gillard's rejection of a "big Australia" in population terms might actually mean.

As it happened, last week the Australian Bureau of Statistics released Australian new population estimates, including population projections. So it seemed appropriate to look at the numbers. I am also featuring the issue in this week's Armidale Express column since it is a little while since I wrote on demography there.

As with a lot of these things, actually looking at the numbers is a good first start.

One of the the things that I have mentioned before that we all tend to forget is the large number of Australians who leave the country. We actually need immigrants just to keep the population stable. As an example, assume that we had wanted a zero increase in the Australian population in calendar 2009. To achieve this, we would still have needed a bit over 77,000 new overseas migrants. Had we wanted to limit the total population increase just to the natural increase, the number of new migrants rises to 230,000.

There are all sorts of leads and lags built into the migration statistics. However, the thought that we might still need significant migration just to stand still or even grow slowly is not a common one.

For someone like me interested in the economic entrails, one of the most interesting issues lies in the nature of the dynamic effects on population distribution and the pattern of economic activity across the country. Forget the overall macro-effects, the usual frame of debate, and instead focus on the impact on particular regions and cities.

At one blow, the adoption of a zero or low growth population target would invalidate the key assumptions on which a lot of current planning is based. Of all Australian cities, the effects would be most pronounced in Sydney and possibly also Adelaide. Depending on the target set and the assumptions used, both cities could experience an actual population decline. This comes about because, on current population dynamics, both are heavily dependant on overseas migration for new people.

To flesh this out a little, it seems likely but not certain that internal population dynamics, the movement of people within Australia, would retain current patterns because these are in part driven by shifts in economic activity. The faster growing areas would continue to grow. However, with lower overall population growth, their relative share of the Australian population would increase at a faster rate. Conversely, the relative shares of other parts of Australia would decline at a faster rate. 

These shifts would flow through in a whole variety of ways. They would affect infrastructure investment, building industries, housing prices and electoral boundaries. They would affect the size of the Australian workforce.

I am not saying that all this is necessarily bad. At a purely personal level, while I am a supporter of migration, I do struggle with the idea that our big metropolitan conurbations should take so many more people when other parts of the country need people. I would be more comfortable if planning actually took into account where we wanted people to go, rather than the simple application of trends.

You can see why I find all this fascinating? That said, I don't actually expect the changes to be as dramatic as might be suggested by my analysis. In practice, the most likely outcome is simply some cut in overall migration numbers sometime in the next few years. This is likely to happen anyway, given the changes that have been made to the treatment of overseas students.      

Australia's economic fragmentation

Back in the late 89s and early 90s the consulting team that I then led did a fair bit of economic, demographic and analysis looking at long term trends across Australia. Forecasting is a risky business. Really, our aim was simply to determine trends and possible outcomes. In doing so, we worked at state and regional level.

One thing that we pointed to was the likely fragmentation of Australia into a series of sub-economies performing in very different ways and with very different internal and external linkages. We linked this not just to different locations and resources bases, but also to the progressive winding back of the tariff barriers that had supported, forced, intra-Australian trade. In our view, this fragmentation was going make it increasingly difficult for Australian Governments to manage as though their jurisdictions were in fact single entities.

Some things we got right, some wrong. For example, we underestimated immigration and hence population growth. This was especially important in the case of Sydney, for while that city's growth has been lower than the national average, it has still been faster than we projected. We also did not take into account Melbourne's capacity to re-invent itself as a life style city. Melbourne's growth has been significantly higher than projected.   

In all this, the overall fragmentation process has occurred broadly as projected. I mention this now because the on-going process has reached an absolutely fascinating stage.

At Federal level, we have the Rudd Government attempting to impose national consistency across an increasingly disparate country. In doing so, the Government is struggling to find an effective mechanism to bridge the gap between broad national approaches and regional variation. The methods so far used such as the ARIA remoteness classification simply do not work very well. 

State Governments face similar problems, although this is most pronounced in the geographically larger states, NSW, Queensland and Western Australia. The problems are most pronounced in NSW because the state is affected by the relative and changing drawing power of the Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Canberra capital cities. NSW is the only state where the capital metro centre has to contend with rival metro centres on or close to its borders or, indeed, within its territory. 

Dropping below state or territory level to local or regional level, you find a sometimes crazy patchwork quilt of change.

There are some commonalities. For example, three to four hours is about the maximum that people will drive to get away for a weekend. If you draw a three to four hour driving time circle around each major centre, you get a feel for the areas directly affected by metropolitan growth. So Beechworth and the gold fields (Victoria), the Hunter Valley wineries (NSW) and the Stanthorpe Granite Belt and its wineries (Queensland) all reflect the impact of adjoining metropolitan centres.

Another pattern of development links to resource rich areas. The coal fields of the Hunter and of Queensland, the mines and gas fields of WA all display some common features. They are a cash cow for Governments, but their growth creates local pressures that can translate into anger. Just to quote one recent comment on a recent post.

Jim, the mood in Newcastle and the Hunter is one of anger and resentment. Whereas the Hunter was the stumbling block for New England in 1967, it could now be the springboard. It is the jewel in the New England crown that would guarantee the instant success of the new state.

I for one am looking for a new state movement to be reborn and would join it an support it with enthusiasm. We are overdue for it. Perhaps we could start with an unofficial referendum throughout the north with the next council elections. A strong YES vote would give us the platform to push for a new secession referendum.

A third pattern of development links to life style. The reinvention of Melbourne is the biggest example, but it is replicated elsewhere at both regional and local level. At regional level, we have the retirees on the New England/NSW Mid North Coast, at local level in the same region Bellingen as a counter-culture centre.

Within these commonalities, there are great differences that I love, for history and geography creates different patterns. Beachworth or Bright in Victoria feel totally different from Stanthorpe in Queensland.

Change takes time, and then the effects can be unexpected. At a time when housebuilding in Sydney is at its lowest ebb for many years, the WA Government has a development well underway that will ultimately add 13,000 people to Broome in the Kimberley Region of WA, doubling the population of the local LGA.

Now this might not sound a big number. However, it has to be set in context.

WA has always been marked by a very high population in Perth. At the 2001 census, Perth's population (statistical division) was 1,325,392 out of a total WA population of 1,832,008 (72.36%), in 2006 1,455,078 out of a total state population of 1,959,088 (73.76%). So Perth's dominance has increased. 

The low population in the rest of the state - 506,616 in 2001, 514,010 in 2006 - spread over such a vast area has always created service delivery problems. Further, the increasing centralisation of the state has progressively reduced the direct political influence of the rest of the state.

However, influence is affected not just be relative numbers, but also by absolute numbers. Quite simply, if Broome's population doubles from 13,000 to 26,000, then this has a variety of flow-on effects and not just in terms of local services. Among other things, it means a likely rise in the number of community activists.

Depending on the judgements that one makes about resource developments, one scenario could see development of a scale in the Kimberley that would make it a significant counter-balance to the previous dominance of the south-east in WA. That could have quite profound dynamic effects on WA life and politics.

I don't want to overstate this. It is simply an example of a change process.

Finishing by returning to NSW, a study by BIS Shrapnel for The Urban Taskforce, a Sydney based property development lobby group, suggests that the NSW economy has become something of a cot case, that Melbourne will regain its position as Australia's biggest city. At the same time, a survey by the NSW Business Chamber of Commerce suggests current poor performance by the NSW economy is essentially a Sydney problem.

Things change all the time. The difficulty, however, is that the concept of a "NSW economy" is really a statistical construct that really makes very little sense. If we really want to address questions of economic performance across NSW, then we have to break the state up into its constituent economies. Sydney's economic problems need to be addressed as Sydney's economic problems.                  

Australian population aging and the third Intergenerational Report

The Australian Government is about to release the third Intergenerational Report into the impact of population aging in Australia.

I covered the release of the second report Back in April 2007 in a brief note, Australia's Aging Population - Treasurer Costello releases second Intergenerational Report. The links in that post to both the 2007 report and then Treasurer Costello's speech still work.

The main difference between the first report in 2002 and the 2007 report is that a combination of higher than expected births and immigration had slightly reduced the aging impact. While this effect has continued, the projected aging is still dramatic. The Sydney Morning Herald's Dan Harrison writes:

Australia must dramatically raise productivity if it to meet the challenges of an ageing population, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said last night.

Speaking in Melbourne on the first day of a national tour in the lead-up to Australia Day, Mr Rudd said by 2050, there would be only 2.7 working-age Australians for every one aged 65 or more. There are now about five working-age Australians for each citizen over 65. Four decades ago there were 7.5.

The report's expected release comes at a time of renewed debate about the projected size of the Australian population, with many arguing that Australia simply cannot sustain a population of the size now projected. The word "sustain", by the way, is a slippery one when used in this context because it means different things to different people.

Given demographic trends, Mr Rudd argues (as did the previous Government) that productivity growth is the only way that Australia can manage such a shift in the proportion of working and non-working Australians.

In some of my past posts and in my professional advice, I have tried to point to the implications of an aging population in general and in specific sectors. I must say that I have found it difficult to get people to focus on the issues involved.

Mr Rudd's emphasis on the need for productivity improvement is important, although I am sceptical about the country's capacity to achieve this within current policy and institutional settings. However,we also need to recognise that the aggregate data used in the Intergenerational Reports actually conceals distributional impacts that are already with us. There is remarkably little discussion on those impacts.

Starting with a simple statistic, the NSW public sector workforce (public servants, nurses, teachers, police etc) has been getting older quite rapidly. Now, some fifty per cent are due to retire over the next ten years. That's a huge number. It cannot be accommodated through people working past the traditional retirement age (60 for women, 65 for men).

Compulsory retirement was abolished in the NSW public service some time ago. Many public sector workers (I am not sure of the exact proportion) are over 60, a growing number over 65. The effect of later retirement has just pushed the NSW public sector demographic time bomb a little to the right.

Many of the professions such as dentistry, law and medicine display a similar if less pronounced age skew. Here, as with the NSW public sector, past workforce planning decisions created an age skew. We simply didn't train enough people.

There are major geographic differences in the age structure of populations across Australia. At local and regional level, the projected national 2050 structures are already emerging. In some cases they have emerged. 

Back in November 2006 in  NSW Ten Year Plan - New England's needs I looked at some demographic trends from a purely regional perspective. Just to quote a few statistics from that post:

Taking NSW as a whole, between 1998 and 2003 the workforce of Greater Sydney grew by 205,000, the rest of NSW by just 18,000. In New England, the workforce increased by 0.7 per cent in the Hunter and Mid North Coast, 0.5 per cent in Richmond-Tweed, but actually declined in Northern (Northern Tablelands, North West) by 1.7 per cent. This low workforce growth has created a very real choke point for economic development. In simplest terms, it means that economic growth especially in inland regions will hit capacity constraints very quickly. There are already significant problems in filling skilled vacancies especially in high growth areas.

Population growth in New England as a whole has been greater than workforce growth. The difference is largely but not completely explained by the movement of retirees into in areas like the Mid North Coast. Northern has been losing young people, Richmond-Tweed and the Mid North Coast lost young but gained working age people and retirees. The Hunter gained young and working age, but experienced proportionately greater gains among seniors. Retention of young people is a key issue for much of New England.

The New England population is aging and aging faster than the Sydney population. In 1954, the proportion of over 55s ranged from 13 per cent in the Hunter to 15 per cent in other regions. In 2001, the proportion of over 55s ranged from 25 per cent in the Hunter to 30 per cent in the Mid North Coast. In 2021, the range is projected to be from 37 per cent in the Hunter to 47 per cent on the Mid North Coast.

Using another measure of aging, elderly (over 70) people living alone already constitute more than 6.1 per cent of households in Richmond-Tweed and Mid North Coast, 5.6 to 6.1 in Hunter and Northern. With aging, the proportion of elderly will continue to increase, with (in the absence of change) the highest impact in those areas already aging fastest. This has significant implications for local council operations in terms of the rate base (down) and the required scale of council support operations (up). Population aging is probably the greatest single public policy challenge facing New England over the next twenty years.

In the three and a bit years since that post was written, the trends identified have continued. As a simple example, we need to build age care facilities to meet immediate and emerging needs knowing that the facilities constructed may become redundant within decades.

As I write, Mr Rudd's speech on this issue is being reported on radio. He is again emphasising the need for improved national productivity. My argument is that while this is important, we have to drop below the macro aggregates to analyse the actual effects that are already on us.  

Saturday Morning Musings - Population change in Australia

Some time ago I began a Pacific Perspective series. One of the drivers at the time was a feeling that modern Australians had lost sight of Australia's Pacific and especially Oceanic connections and that this loss of perspective had come back to bite us. 

I was reminded of this still to be continued series by an article in the New Zealand Herald during the week. It appears that 126,000 of the 765,000 people in the world with Maori ancestry, one in six, now live in Australia. I haven't tried to total all the Pacific Island groups now living in Australia, but the combined total is quite high and will continue to rise.

Continuing the demographic theme, on Thursday the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its population estimates for Australia for the year ended June 2009. These showed that the quite remarkable transformation of Australia is continuing.

Generally, the commentary focused on the headline number: the estimated resident population rose by  443,100 persons, no less than 2.1%. This is quite a remarkable number in itself. It means that Australia now has one of the fastest rates of population increase in the world.

The graph from ABS shows the growth pattern over the last few years. You can see the upward trend, as well as the way in which growth has been driven by net overseas migration.

In this most recent period, net overseas migration contributed 64.4% to the total, natural increase 35.6%.

Now here I want to drop below the headline numbers and look at some elements in population growth.

The preliminary estimate for births  at 300,900 was 4.6% higher than the figure for the year ended 30 June 2008 (287,700). The total fertility rate (TFR) for the year ended 30 June 2009 was 1.978 babies per woman.

These numbers show that the mini-baby boom has continued, with the fertility rate now only just below the population replacement level. This means that demand for things like schools will be greater.

The net natural increase (births minus deaths) was 157,800 persons. With zero immigration, Australia's population would have grown by 0.7%.

We now come to an interesting comparison.

The estimated number of Australian residents who left the country, 225,200, was significantly greater than the net natural increase of 157,800. Had immigration been set at zero, the Australian population would actually have declined!

I do not have statistics on the mix of people leaving the country. It includes not just locally born, but also overseas born residents (citizens and others) going for a variety of purposes. If we look at Australia's rapidly growing Indian and Chinese communities, for example, there is a clear pattern of departure for both locally and overseas born to take advantage of the economic rise of those countries. Further, in at least the Indian case, the growth of the Indian entrepreneurial class provides a network around the world that facilitates cooperation and movement.

This may be true for China as well. However, here my impression is that movements are far more back to China.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with this, by the way, from a national viewpoint. It is part and parcel of life, linking Australia into international networks in a way that would have seemed inconceivable even forty years ago.

Now we come to a statistic that continues to worry me a little.

With an estimated 225,200 permanent residents leaving, we needed 510,600 overseas arrivals to achieve a net gain on overseas migration of 285,300 persons. Why does this worry me?

First, I need to outline something I don't know.

Just as the permanent residents leaving includes previous migrants, so the new arrivals include returning Australians. I will come back to this in a moment. 

On the surface, the gross immigration rate equates to 2.3% of the Australian population. This is a very high rate. If all those new arrivals were in fact new, ie no returning Australians, then in ten years time 2.3% moves to 23%, ignoring population increase in the meantime. Obviously we cannot do that, but I am using the numbers to make a point, that we are engaged in a major exercise in national change.

My worry is that I don't know what this actually means in terms of scope and impact.

Forget, for a moment, green house gas issues. This label was immediately attached to the latest numbers. The argument here went that Australia should reduce immigration to reduce its green house gas emissions.

Australia's changing population is a complex mix. Further, it is a mix with considerable geographic variation, creating a changing mosaic across space and time. This has considerable implications.

  Consider, for example, the provision of school education in NSW.

Resources are tight, so the Government does all sorts of projections trying to work out at local level where demand will rise and fall, where primary education will need to be contracted, where expanded. This is hard enough in its own right, but the NSW Government also has to factor in changes associated with the on-ground impacts of migration and emigration, including internal movements of Australians.

In area A, total pupil numbers are increasing. However, overseas migrants are moving in, locals moving out. A school that was predominantly Anglo in the broad sense if with a migrant mix, is now a melting pot. Alternatively, another ethnic group may have become dominant in place of the Anglo.

The Government has to respond to these changes: more English as second language teachers may be required; staff have to be trained to deal with cultural differences that may vary greatly, not just in dealing with students but also with parents; school programs may need to be adjusted.

These issues are not new at one level.

In my review of Don Aitkin's book that began with  Train Reading - Don Aitkin's What was it all for? 1, I referred to those of the Armidale High School Leaving Certificate class of 1953 who became teachers.

They entered the profession at a time when the combination of mass migration and the baby boom had really stretched schools. Many found their early experience in schools dominated by the children of migrants as the most enjoyable and valuable part of their teaching careers.

While the issues are not new, there are far more complexities today in part because the migrant mix is so varied. All this can create planning nightmares.

I think that I will pause here, perhaps resuming at another time.            

Who wants to leave, to stay - net results by country

My thanks to demography.matters for his one.

Gallup did a large survey of where people would like to live covering 136 countries. The US came in number one. However, they also took into account people in individual countries who wanted to leave those countries and then expressed the net results in terms of the size of the countries' population. This dropped the US to number twelve.

So what does this mean? Well, if everybody could move freely, the top five countries measure in terms of the resulting increase in the country population compare to now are:

• Singapore + 260%
• Saudi Arabia + 180%
• New Zealand + 175%
• Canada + 170%
• Australia + 145%.

The five countries that would lose most people would be:

• Congo (Kinshasa) - 60%
• Sierra Leone - 55%
• Zimbabwe - 55%
• Haiti - 50%
• El Salvador - 50%.

In terms of countries in Australia's immediate region, we find

• Malaysia +25%
• Japan +5%
• India, Indonesia and China all - 5%

There are all sorts of problems with the numbers, of course. Still, its interesting.

You can find all the results here.

Postscript: I see that Geoff Robinson has posted on this as well.

Where to find the new NSW population projections

The Sydney media today has extensive coverage of the new NSW population projections made by the NSW Department of Planning.

These numbers are quite important for those who live in the state because this is the data the State Government uses for planning purposes. There is no attempt in NSW to use policy to affect population distribution through, for example, economic development action. Rather, the Government simply goes with the projections, making them something of a reinforcing prophesy.

I am completing a full analysis of the numbers for the New England, Australia blog - to say that the projections for Northern NSW are depressing would be an understatement.

In the meantime, those who want access to the original report can find it here.

Postscript

I have now put up my first post on the numbers, New NSW Population Projections 2006-2036 - what do they mean?. Recognising the qualifications I have made, I think that the analysis shows the need to avoid the type of breathless reporting, here for example, that has been so prominent today. It is sensible to look at the assumptions involved before jumping to conclusions.

I found one very odd thing in this first analysis. Assuming that I have not made a silly error, the projections show an actual decline in the population of NSW outside Sydney between 2006 and 2016. I don't believe this. On the surface, it just does not make sense.

Later note: I was right. It did not make sense and there was a silly mathematical error, now corrected!

Sunday Essay - for Ramana: India and Australia

This photo shows the Guru Nanak Gurdwara ('The Temple on the Hill'), the second Sikh temple built in Woolgoolga, a seaside town on the New England/NSW North Coast.

Woolgoolga was Australia's first truly integrated multi-race town.

The first Sikh settlers came to Woolgoolga in the 1940s. Initially they worked as labourers on the banana plantations, but later acquired leasehold and freehold banana plantations. Sikh migrants from other parts of Australia were attracted to this area once they were aware of an established Sikh community.

The establishment of the Sikh community was made possible by the welcome of the host community. There are anecdotes of locals assisting the Sikh migrants in business, financial affairs, correspondence and encouragement to maintain their culture and religion. There were three members of the host community on the committee which built the First Sikh Temple of Australia in Woolgoolga.

Today over 95% of Woolgoolga's banana industry and 10% of that in Coffs Harbour is owned and operated by Australians of Sikh ancestry.There are 2,500 Sikhs in the Coffs Harbour City Council area and 450 students enrolled at Woolgoolga Public School of whom 21% are Sikhs. Of Woolgoolga High School's 877 students, 12% are Sikhs.

While my post Lunch with Noric - and a request for advice has so far drawn only two on-line comments, one from New Zealand, the other from India, it has already proved remarkably valuable in terms of post ideas.

In an off-line exchange, Kanagaroo Valley David raised some issues relevant to the global financial crisis. One of his comments helped trigger the following post, Saturday Morning Musings - finance 101 and the global financial crisis, while the exchange also led me to look at some demographic data trying to scope the Australian superannuation impact.

Jason Kemp, another friend of Noric's, commented on the blogging process:

In summary - I'm not so sure that you need to do any more than being true to yourself and to hold up the your mirror to see if those reflections might also add value to others.

There is an issue here with a personal blog. If you try to target to reader interests, does one risk losing the flavour that attrated people in the first instance?

Ramana Rajgopaul wrote that he would like to read more about Australia specific posts which will be of interest to non Australians. He concluded:

I personally believe that there is more to be benefited between Australia and India than what has been going on. Australia has tended to lean more towards China than India, and I would like to know why.

I think that Ramana is right that India has slipped down the Australian consciousness relative to China, cricket notwithstanding. As a simple example, I have written far more about the Chinese in Australia and about China than I have about India.

At a personal level, I have probably taken India for granted.

I grew up at the tail end of a world in which Commonwealth countries were still marked pink on the map. Thousands of Australians had served in India and the surrounding region in the Australian army, the British Army and indeed in some cases the Indian Army.

I was eight when Sir William Slim was appointed Australia's Governor General. Slim was immensely popular in Australia. He had led the fight against the Japanese in Burma where the Japanese had come close to threatening the allies' Indian base. This included an attack into Assam in early 1944 by 80,000 Japanese troops, an attack halted at the hill settlements of Imphal and Kohima where a vastly out-numbered and somewhat rag-tag allied force held off attack after attack in fierce hand to hand fighting. By late 1944, Slim's 14th Army was the Second World War’s largest Army of Commonwealth troops with nearly a million men in its service.

At secondary school, these things were still fresh. We saw documentary footage of the war, while stories of the fighting were popular in the school library. Kipling's books were still popular. I did some Indian history, and also studied India in geography. There were family connections as well, since my Uncle's family were Anglo, perhaps more correctly Australian, Indian and still had business interests there. There were books about India in various family homes.

My point in this somewhat rambling discourse is that many Australians had a familiarity with India. The Indian friends I met at University and then in Canberra spoke English and were in some way part of the family. I understood something of their world, including the complexities of relations affected by ethnic, religious and caste divides.

China, by contrast, was more alien, strange. There was, and I suspect that this is still true, far less mixing between Anglo Australians and the Chinese including Australian born than between Indians and Anglo Australians.

Just as Imperial and Commonwealth connections had contributed to familiarity, so that familiarity declined as the Commonwealth connections weakened. Australians had less access to India. However, I think that there were other factors as well.

The first was partition. British India with all its own strange complexities was replaced by two states, then three as Pakistan broke up. From an official Australian perspective, the complexities of relations between India and Pakistan made for a sometimes difficult balancing act. This was further complicated by some of the official policies adopted by the new Indian Republic - non-aligned, prickly, in some ways inward looking. The difficulties can be illustrated by the 1962 war between India and China.

On October 20, 1962, China invaded India to try to achieve a military settlement to a long-running territorial dispute. This was a major conflict that could have escalated into a very major war. Isolated, India appealed for help. However, there was little appetite for a potential conflict with China.

A complicating factor for India in the dispute, and one that affected Australian attitudes, was India's occupation of the Portuguese colony of Goa.

Goa had been a Portuguese colony since 1510. The Portuguese were determined to maintain control. On 12 December 1961, the Indian Army seized control of Goa. To many Australians, there was little apparent difference between China's use of force to try to settle a territorial dispute and India's unilateral action in Goa less than twelve months before.

I remember this one clearly because towards the end of 1962 I attended a meeting in Armidale addressed by the Indian High Commissioner setting out India's case against China. Still at school, I asked about Goa. Apart from reducing the High Commissioner to a state of fury, I still remember being surprised at how much support I got from the audience.

Economics was the second factor leading to reduced familiarity.

The economic importance of India to Australia declined in the immediate Post War period. On the Australian side, the Government's controls on investment overseas by Australians limited our international expansion to all parts of the world, not just India. More importantly, India's own rigid centralised but very inefficient controls took India outside the economic main stream.

Those Australians who did have Indian interests found it harder and harder to do business in the country, harder to access funds. Informal bazaar exchange systems became the major mechanism for many in getting funds out of the country around the rigid exchange control rules.

By 1970 many saw India as an economic basket case, doubting that the country could ever develop as a modern economy. Few, if any, foresaw India's later rise.

As India declined in popular awareness, China rose. The rise in formal relations is well charted in a speech by Alexander Downer.

The first trade agreement between the two countries was signed in 1973. In 1972, the value of two-way trade was just A$113 million. By 2001-02, two-way trade had reached A$19 billion.

Beyond the rise in economic relations, I think that there was also a romance with China that extended beyond the familial feel still attached to India.

Australians have come to recognise that India has arisen as an economic power, if with a lag. We now talk about India and China in one breath. We also worry about how to balance the relations between India, China and the US, about our place as at best a mid-size power whose relative position must decline. However, there are some aspects of India's evolving position that may not be so well recognised.

In numeric terms, the Chinese and Indian diasporas dominate globally among distributed peoples. We know both in Australia, although China is better recognised.

One of the features of the Indian diaspora has been an explosion in the global distribution of young, well educated Indian professionals and entrepreneurs. TiE-The Indus Entrepreneurs - can be taken as an example.

TiE was founded in Silicon Valley in 1992 by successful entrepreneurs and professionals with roots in the Indus region. Today TiE has over 12,000 members spread over 49 chapters in 11 countries, including Australia.

I know this group quite well. They are generally young, globally mobile and ambitious. No matter where located in the world, they tend to retain their links to India. They form the global cutting edge of Indian intellectual and economic expansion.

I currently have problems with excel and consequently was unable to download the latest migration statistics. As I remember the figures, Australia is now admitting more Indian than Chinese migrants and by a surprising margin.

A number of our Indian migrants as well as younger Australian born Indians also leave, attracted by greater opportunities elsewhere. Like other members of the growing Australian diaspora, most retain some links with this country.

Based on Indian population growth (India will pass China as the world's most populous country), proximity, language and existing family connections, the Indian proportion of the Australian population must grow.

The Indian settlers who came to and were welcomed at Woolgoolga, who helped form Australia's first multi-racial society, were the leading edge of what is now a wave.

India, China and Australia - to my mind this is the triangle that will come to dominate our thinking over the next twenty years.