February 10, 2013

Two of these things belong together

From an op-ed column in the New York Times, describing three countries

But there is one thing all three have in common: gigantic youth bulges under the age of 30, increasingly connected by technology but very unevenly educated.

If I tell you two of these countries are Egypt and India, can you guess the third?  Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

It might take a while: in the real world, the third country Friedman includes is better known for instituting draconian (but successful) population-growth controls thirty years ago.

Here are the population age distributions for Egypt, India, and somewhere else, from populationpyramid.net.

egyptindiachina

 

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »

Comments

  • avatar

    I am right at the tip of the recess in the last plot (age 29). Lots of my friends start to have their kids now (0-4). (One child policy is always a good topic in economics and I am living it) Happy Chinese New Year!

    11 years ago

  • avatar

    If you click on the China population pyramid above, it takes you to an interactive version of the chart.

    Follow the one-child recess until it disappears. By about 2095, curiously the pyramid becomes shaped like a certain birth control device.

    11 years ago