Too few nutrients and too many calories: climate change and the double burden of malnutrition in Asia

About half of children age under five worldwide who are classified as undernourished (84 million out of 151 million) or overweight or obese (17.5 million out of 38 million) live in Asia. Tackling malnutrition in Asia is however fairly complex since the nutritional transition, a consequence of rapid economic development and globalisation, made many Asian nations undergo the simultaneous burdens of under- and over-nutrition. The dual burden of malnutrition is characterised by a concurrence of undernutrition along with overweight and obesity within the same individual, household, community, region and/or country. Providing that household food security is closely linked to malnutrition, this raises questions about the implications of climate change on the dual burden of malnutrition. That climate change affects food availability, access, utilisation and stability is evident. Accordingly, households facing food insecurity due to climatic shocks may allocate food differentially. Adult members may receive low-cost high-calorie food inducing obesity, whilst children receive nutrient-poor foods leading to undernutrition. Little is known about the climate impacts on the double burden of malnutrition and how this affects population subgroups differentially. This Editorial discusses the potential impacts of climate change on the double burden of malnutrition and concludes with the recommendation of strategies to tackle the issue

Potential Implications of China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ Strategies on Chinese International Migration

Along with the flows of China’s foreign direct investment following the newly implemented ‘One Belt, One Road’ strategy by the Chinese government will likely generate movements of state employees, entrepreneurs, workers and accompanying family members to respective countries along the Belt and Road. It is not clear how large Chinese migration flows into these countries will be, who they are, how the public reception of the host society will be and how well the migrants will be integrated in the destination country. Based on extant data and literature on current Chinese migration, this paper describes trends and patterns of recent Chinese migration in Africa and Asia, analyses host country public perceptions on China and investigates integration patterns of Chinese migrants. Given that the ‘One Belt, One Road’ strategy has only been officially endorsed in 2015, it is still early to analyse its impacts on Chinese migration in the respective countries. Considering earlier Chinese overseas migration in the past decades, this paper presents potential migration and integration patterns one may expect following the Belt and Road initiative

The role of education on disaster preparedness: Case study of 2012 Indian Ocean earthquakes on Thailand's Andaman Coast

In this paper we investigate how well residents of the Andaman coast in Phang Nga province, Thailand, are prepared for earthquakes and tsunami. It is hypothesized that formal education can promote disaster preparedness because education enhances individual cognitive and learning skills, as well as access to information. A survey was conducted of 557 households in the areas that received tsunami warnings following the Indian Ocean earthquakes on 11 April 2012. Interviews were carried out during the period of numerous aftershocks, which put residents in the region on high alert. The respondents were asked what emergency preparedness measures they had taken following the 11 April earthquakes. Using the partial proportional odds model, the paper investigates determinants of personal disaster preparedness measured as the number of preparedness actions taken. Controlling for village effects, we find that formal education, measured at the individual, household, and community levels, has a positive relationship with taking preparedness measures. For the survey group without past disaster experience, the education level of household members is positively related to disaster preparedness. The findings also show that disaster-related training is most effective for individuals with high educational attainment. Furthermore, living in a community with a higher proportion of women who have at least a secondary education increases the likelihood of disaster preparedness. In conclusion, we found that formal education can increase disaster preparedness and reduce vulnerability to natural hazards

When the Well Runs Dry, Where Do We Go Now? Exploring Internal Migration due to Climate Stress in Asia and Central and South America

Whether the changing climate will lead to mass migration remains an unsettled puzzle for migration scholars. To this end, this poster aims to model internal migration flows taking into account socioeconomic, demographic, and environmental drivers. Migration flows and relevant socioeconomic information are obtained from Integrated Public Use Microdata Series for 15 countries in Central and South Americas and 11 countries in Asia over the period 1970-2011. Additionally, precipitation data are employed to identify drought events and rainfall variability which can be environmental driver of migration. Fitting a series of gravity-type spatial interaction models for each country and census year using Poisson regression, we find that people do move out from the areas frequently affected by drought to destinations that are generally more urban and have higher proportions of males. The shorter the distance between origin and destination the higher the migration, especially between contiguous geographical units

Bilateral Migration Measures

The size of migration corridors is typically compared based on the size or rate of the flow. Migration flow counts fail to control for heterogeneity in the population size of regions. Migration rates (or intensities) adjust for population size of either the sending or the receiving region, but not both. To this end, this paper proposes two alternative measures of bilateral migration that express the size of origin-destination corridors in relation to the total migration flows during a period or the total population. The proposed Standardized Migration Affinity (SMA) index and Standardized Migration Velocity (SMV) index enable us to describe migration systems of different geographical scales and identify prominent migration corridors that are disguised when studying bilateral migrant flow counts or rates. Using examples of internal migration in China, we illustrate the application of the proposed measures at various geographic levels

Empowering girls, delaying marriage: Exploring the role of marital age and education on domestic violence in India

Domestic violence represents the most important component of violence against women. Whilst some literature report female empowerment as a protective factor against domestic violence, some literature find the opposite because the husband may attempt to compensate for the enhanced status of his wife. This paper aims to investigate the effects of female empowerment in the form of marital age and education on domestic violence in India, where intimate partner violence is amongst the highest in Asia. The analysis is based on the sample of eligible women aged 15-49 with valid response on domestic violence in the 2015- 2016 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) (n=9722). Upon estimating a series of instrumental variable (IV) regressions using age at menarche as an exogenous and strong instrument, we establish a causal relationship between empowerment and domestic violence taking into account the endogeneity of marital age and education. We further disentangle the relationships between domestic violence and age at marriage and education, separately. In addition, we investigate how maritage age and education influence domestic violence through labour market participation and spouse quality channels. We find that: i) empowered women do experience less domestic violence; ii) marital age and education are partially complementary; iii) labour market participation and spousal quality are relevant mediators of these relationships. Policies aiming at reducing domestic violence in India hence should be holistic, focussing on investing in education both for women and men and improving the conditions of the women’ labour market

Influence of Older Generation's Fertility Behaviours on Daughter's Desired Family Size in Bihar, India. VID Working Paper 04/2014

This paper investigates the associations between preferred family size of married women aged 16-34 in rural Bihar (India) and the fertility behaviours of their biological mother and mother-in-law. This information is based on scheduled interviews of 450 pairs of index women (i.e. women central in our analysis) and their mother-in-laws conducted in 2011. Preferred family size is first measured by Coombs scale, allowing us to capture latent desired number of children, and then categorized into three categories (low, medium, and high). Ordered logistic regression is employed to estimated the preferred family size of index women. We find that family size preferences of index woman is not associated with mother's fertility but with mother's education. Mother-in-law's desired number of grandchildren is positively associated with preferred family size of index woman and remains significant even after controlling for relevant socioeconomic characteristics. However, in the case where index woman has higher education than her mother-in-law, her preferred family size gets smaller. This suggests that education may provide women with greater autonomy in their decision making on childbearing

Demographic perspectives in research on global environmental change

The human population is at the centre of research on global environmental change. On the one hand, population dynamics influence the environment and the global climate system through consumption-based carbon emissions. On the other hand, the health and well-being of the population are already being affected by climate change. A knowledge of population dynamics and population heterogeneity is thus fundamental to improving our understanding of how population size, composition, and distribution influence global environmental change and how these changes affect population subgroups differentially by demographic characteristics and spatial distribution. The increasing relevance of demographic research on the topic, coupled with availability of theoretical concepts and advancement in data and computing facilities, has contributed to growing engagement of demographers in this field. In the past 25 years, demographic research has enriched climate change research—with the key contribution being in moving beyond the narrow view that population matters only in terms of population size—by putting a greater emphasis on population composition and distribution, through presenting both empirical evidence and advanced population forecasting to account for demographic and spatial heterogeneity. What remains missing in the literature is research that investigates how global environmental change affects current and future demographic processes and, consequently, population trends. If global environmental change does influence fertility, mortality, and migration, then population estimates and forecasts need to adjust for climate feedback in population projections. Indisputably, this is the area of new research that directly requires expertise in population science and contribution from demographers

Applying Concepts and Tools in Demography for Estimating, Analyzing, and Forecasting Forced Migration

Among demographic events (birth, death, and migration), migration is notably the most volatile component to forecast accurately. Accounting for forced migration is even more challenging given the difficulty in collecting forced migration data. Knowledge of trends and patterns of forced migration and its future trajectory is, however, highly relevant for policy planning for migrant sending and receiving areas. This paper aims to review existing methodological tools to estimate and forecast migration in demography and explore how they can be applied to the study of forced migration. It presents steps towards estimation of forced migration and future assessments, which comprise: (1) migration flows estimation methods using both traditional and nontraditional data; (2) empirical analysis of drivers of migration and migration patterns; and (3) forecasting migration based on multidimensional population projections and scenarios approach. The paper then discusses how these demographic methods and tools can be applied to estimate and forecast forced migration