Teaching Comparative Government

While Nigeria is considering a national birth control policy, China seems about to abandon its birth control policy China to scrap population targets, health official says China will not set a population target in the future and will give people more freedom around childbirth, a health official said, in the next step of a gradual loosening of decades of tight population-control policies… Wei Yunpeng, deputy director of the Population Monitoring and Family Development Division of the National Health Commission, was speaking at a conference hosted by his administration and the United Nations Population Fund. Wei’s comments are the latest sign that the government is moving to end decades of restrictive birth-control policies, fuelling speculation that China might announce removing birth limits at an upcoming meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee. Parliament removed “family planning” policies from the latest draft of a revised civil code scheduled for adoption in 2020, another...

Can the people in Nigeria overcome culture, ethnicity, and economics to become Nigerians? Most news reports about the conflicts between farmers and herders in Nigeria's Middle Belt come from southern sources and seem to describe the herders as evil invaders. This report seems more balanced. Nigerian Herders Face Threat From Farmers Competing for Land Across parts of Nigeria, conflicts that mirror the 20th Century range wars in the American West have broken out between farmers and herdsmen vying for land, leading to bloody battles. In the first six months of this year, these clashes killed an estimated 1,300 people –- six times the number who died in the war with the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram in the same period, the International Crisis Group says. About 300,000 people have been forced from their homes because of violence between farmers and herders, conflicts that are often exacerbated by religion, ethnicity and even the erratic weather patterns that accompany climate ch...

What's the Russian equivalent of 200,000 to 300,000 people protesting in Washington, DC? Does 10,000 people protesting in Moscow make the grade? Russia pension protests: Fresh anti-reform rallies held Further protests against pension reforms have taken place in Russia, despite the recent concessions offered by President Vladimir Putin. Independent observers say more than 10,000 people took part in rallies in Moscow. Other cities also saw demonstrations. Communist protesters in Moscow The initial proposal was to raise the retirement age for women to 63 from 55, and for men to 65 from 60. On Wednesday he said the pension age for women would only be raised to 60. Mr Putin has said reform is a financial necessity, but it has been met with a hostile reception and led to a steep fall in his popularity… Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has previously said the decision was motivated by the fact that Russians are living longer and leading more active lives… In a TV address last week, Mr P...

Like many other European countries, Russia is facing an aging population. That means paying for pensions becomes more and more difficult. How does Russia's population distribution compare with that of other countries you're studying? Do those countries face more, less, or similarly difficult problems? What are the political consequences of those problems? Russia protests: Thousands rally over plan to raise pension age Thousands of people have taken part in protests in cities across Russia to express their anger at government proposals to raise the pension age. Demonstrators in the capital, Moscow, carried banners reading: "We want to live on our pensions, not die at work." The government says it wants to raise the pension age from 60 to 65 for men, and from 55 to 63 for women, to help cope with a shrinking workforce. Communist Party protesters But unions warn many people will not live long enough to claim a pension. Russian men have a life expectancy of just 66, while...

The dilemmas facing rural migrants in urban China In China’s cities, young people with rural ties are angry Over the past 40 years, hundreds of millions have [moved from village to city], providing the blood, sweat and tears of China’s economic miracle. The Communist Party has often congratulated itself that such a vast movement of people has happened without mass unrest. But those… who have left rural areas more recently challenge the party’s sense of security. They face a wider range of problems than earlier participants in the rural exodus. They are dissatisfied with their lot and have little to lose. They may prove less quiescent than their predecessors. When observers of China think of threats to the party, they often focus on the rapid growth of the country’s new middle class… But many Chinese analysts… fret about turmoil created by members of a social underclass: poor workers in the cities whose family ties are rural… A study published in 2009 in the Beijing-based Economic Res...

If Nigeria now has the seventh largest population and will be third largest by 2050, what country's populations will it surpass by 2050 ? NPC Puts Nigerian Population at 198m, Seventh Largest in the World The National Population Commission (NPC) has put Nigeria’s current population at 198 million people with urban population growing at an average annual growth rate of about 6.5 per cent… Eze Duruiheoma Chairman of NPC, Mr. Eze Duruiheoma… “Nigeria remains the most populous in Africa, the seventh globally with an estimated population of over 198 million. “The recent World Population Prospects report predicts that by 2050, Nigeria will become the third most populated country in the world… In terms of demographics, he noted that the class of the population mostly engaged in urbanisation and migration were young people, adolescent girls and boys, women of child bearing age and the working age population. He said existing urbanisation trends, coupled with internally displaced persons ...