Economist, Oct 25, 2018 (III)

choi

(1) The cover of this issue is: Aussie Rules; What Australia can teach the world.  There is no need to read the rest of (1)(a) or (b).
(a) At page 5 there seems to be a summary of a Special Report on australia that starts at page 44.

Page 5: Beyond commodities | More Than Ore; Diversity helped the economy weather the end of the resource boom.
("At the height of commodities frenzy in 2013 [a graphic in this article shows "mining investment" as % of Australia GDP increased in 2011 (from 4% for years before), peaked in 2013 (9%) and fell back in 2016 (to 3%)] * * * Yet the collapse [surely 'collapse' is a misnomer'] in commodity prices was not the end for * * * Australia. In fact, it was a fillip for other industries * * * The plunge in [mining] investment allowed the central bank to lower interest rates, lifting the housing business [ie, construction]. The sinking currency, which lost 40% of its value against the greenback between 2011 and 2015, caused the number of foreign tourists and students to surge. It also encourages foreigners to snap up flats in Sydney and Melbourne, giving construction even more impetus. * * * The number of people visiting has risen by half since 2012, to more than 9m, and the amount they spend has increased by 43%, to A$21bn in the year ending in March * * * All told, tourism is Australia's fifth-biggest export. Education ranks even higher, behind only iron ore and coal. Some 540,000 foreign students enrolled in Australian educational institutional this year, up from 300,000 five years ago. They bring in A$40bn a year")
(b) Aussie Rules; The stellar performance of the Australian economy holds encouraging lessons for the rest of the world. (in the "Leaders" section -- also a summary).
("It has been growing for 27 years [per GDP growth rates] without a recession (GDP did not go into negative territory] -- a record for developed country. Its cumulative growth over that period [1991- ] is almost three times what Germany has managed [indeed, a graphic (heading: 'Dinkum Income': left panel ('GDP, 1991 = 100') -- in the first article 'The Wonder Down Under' in the 'Special Report[:] Australia' -- shows that by (including) 2017 Australia's GDP [real; nominal or per exchange rate: from the Web] has increased ~230%, whereas those of US and Canada (both ~190%), Britain (175%), France (150%), Germany (~140%) and Japan (125%) have trailed]. The median income has risen four times faster than in America. Public debt, at 41%, is less than half of Britain's.  Luck has had a hand in these feats, to be sure. Australia is blessed with lots of iron ores and natural gas, and is relatively close to [its customer] China, which hoovers [Hoover is a brand of vacuum cleaners] up such things. But sound policymaking has helped, too. After the last recession, in 1991 * * * Even more remarkable is Australia's enthusiasm for immigration. Some 29% of its inhabitants were born in another country -- twice the proportion in the United States. Half of Australians are either immigrants themselves or children of immigrants. And the biggest source of immigration is Asia, which is fast changing the country's racial mix. Compare that with America or Britain or Italy, where far smaller inflows have generated hostility among a big portion of the electorate")

Note for (b):
(i) dinkum (adj; First Known Use 1915): "Australia and New Zealand : AUTHENTIC, GENUINE —often used with fair  <I was fair dinkum about my interest in their culture>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dinkum
(ii) "Half of Australians are either immigrants themselves or children of immigrants"

Media release 3: Census Reveals a Fast Changing, Culturally Diverse Nation. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), June 27, 2017.
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookup/Media%20Release3

five consecutive paragraphs:

"The 2016 Census shows that two thirds (67 per cent) of the Australian population were born in Australia [this sentence does not contradict the next, as this sentence includes second-generation immigrants (born in Australia)]. Nearly half (49 per cent) of Australians had either been born overseas (first generation Australian) or one or both parents had been born overseas (second generation Australian).

"While England and New Zealand were still the next most common countries of birth after Australia, the proportion of people born in China and India has increased since 2011 (from 6.0 per cent to 8.3 per cent, and 5.6 per cent to 7.4 per cent, respectively).

"Of the 6,163,667 people born overseas, nearly one in five (18 per cent) had arrived since the start of 2012.

"In 2016, 83 per cent of the overseas-born population lived in a capital city compared with 61 per cent of people born in Australia. Sydney had the largest overseas-born population.

"In 2016, there were over 300 separately identified languages spoken in Australian homes. More than one-fifth (21 per cent) of Australians spoke a language other than English at home. After English, the next most common languages spoken at home were Mandarin, Arabic, Cantonese, and Vietnamese. Tasmania had the highest rate of people speaking only English at home with 88 per cent, while the Northern Territory had the lowest rate at 58 per cent.

* ABS published a torrent of online papers that days (including a handful of media releases), following the Aug 8, 2016 census in Australia.
(iii) "the biggest source of immigration is Asia"
(A) The ABS data demonstrate that in 2016 census, by country the largest source if immigration is England, followed by New Zealand -- but that by continent, Asia sent for immigrants to Australia than Europe. See
2024.0 - Census of Population and Housing: Australia Revealed, 2016. ABS, June 27, 2017 ("First Issue")
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/a ... ain%20Features22016

Quote:

"Australia's ethnic make-up bears little resemblance to that captured in our first national Census conducted in 1911. That Census revealed Australia as a relatively homogeneous nation. * * * In 1911, the year before the Titanic's lone voyage and three years before the outbreak of World War I, 18% of our population were born overseas. The most common birthplaces were England and Ireland, though there were also more than 20,000 Chinese-born migrants – a legacy from our gold rush days.

"Demography reveals closer ties to Asia[which is paragraph heading]  The proportion of overseas-born people from Europe has been in rapid decline in recent years – from 52% in 2001 [census] to 40% in 2011 [census], and 34% in 2016 [census]. That’s from one in every two migrants to one in every three in the space of 15 years.  Conversely, the proportion of migrants born in Asia has increased – from 24% of the overseas-born population in 2001 to 33% in 2011, and 40% in 2016. Again, in the space of 15 years, we’ve gone from one in every four migrants coming from Asia to two in every five.  England is still the most common birthplace of migrants to Australia (15%), but that share is less than half our 1966 number. The big movers over the past five years have been China (from 6.0% to 8.3%) and India (5.6% to 7.4%). Their combined figure (16%) means that, for the first time, there are more Australians of Chinese and Indian birth than of English birth.

(B) Australia Census: Five Takeaways from a Changing Country. BBC, June 27, 2017
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-40416350

View only the (sole) graphic (a bar chart) in this report.

choi

(2) Poverty in California | Amid Plenty, Want; How a prosperous state ended up with America's highest poverty rate.
("As the most populous state, it [California] also has by far the largest number of poor people, 7.4m [how it comes up with this number, Economist does not say; see next].  Many measures of poverty exist. The official poverty line is used as a guide to who should get federal assistance. The state where the largest share of people fall below that line is Mississippi; California is roughly in the middle. But the official poverty line is the same in every state and takes no account of different living costs or public assistance. So in 2011 the Census Bureau came up with a Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which most social scientists think [is] a better way of comparing levels of poverty across the country. By this yardstick, 19% of Californians were poor in the three years 2015, 2016 and 2017, the highest rate in the country excluding the special case of Washington, DC. the national average was 14.1%.  With its many undocumented immigrants, California poses special measurement Problems")

My comment: there is no need to read the rest.