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>> jennifer is the author of this 8 billion and counting, how migration shaped our world but she's also a former demographics consultant to the u.s. department of defense, professor, what is a crystalline for the defense department to? >> think same thing i do in the book try to show people with influence r how to read the flo, how do we use trends to better understand those questions that motivate department of defense, where the floor might break out or how could we encourage spread of democracy and was the difference betweenwh prosperity, the influences on that?

we looked at risk analysis, as you look at the globe try to understand where hotspots might be to pre-position your forces or age structure for example, how young the population is or where the whole hotspots might be. [inaudible question] >> it's changing which is interesting. the old populations have a greater chance of being more peaceful and democratic arinternally. there are exceptions but you would have a greater chance of outbreak of civil conflict with the younger age structure which sense, hard to govern a country where half the population is under the age of 20 for example the youngest country in the world, the region in africa and

nigeria are very young, high fertility and young and rapidly growing population. >> nigeria's population, 150 million or something, large number like that. >> in the 400 there. >> what are the tension spots in a country like that? >> it's interesting to start to watch the influence of aenvironmental change and how t intersects with population dangerous and nigeria is a country i and others have our eyes on because you've got rapid population growth and high fertility rates in the northern regions of the country along with in barnacle changes, there's a lot of people if the land size stays the same and you make a living on the land, you have to move or change how you make your living so we see migration from the north to the middle regions and outbreaks of

conflict, far more people have died from those conflicts. >> you said nigeria is almost 400 billion? >> it will be by mid century i, it's the most populous country in the world. >> does not benefit as of democracy? >> the answer probably not. we have to think about how you distribute resources when you have these populations, there's no trend inherently good or bad, it's what you do with your population trend but just because the country has young and growing population doesn't doom them to failure or collapse, it just means you have to pay attention to these investments we need to make in the country to make the most of that population so obviously a young and growing population and you think about opportunities, that can be tremendous

opportunity for economic growth and investment, a great labor force but you need to make sure you have governance, government control, i hate to use that word, basically not that they tell you what to do, it's legitimate use of force so there is security in those countries as well. >> why is the u.s. as successful as it might seem. >> i really worry the u.s. is becoming dysfunctional or maybe already is a dysfunctional democracy. when i think about the population trend thehe i u.s. in the midst ofn an on the horizon, there's such differences in generations in terms of demographic trends, older generations are far less diverse ethically than younger generations. we see this polarization

probably intensified in our elections over the next decade or sout at least. >> but what does that mean when you say becoming younger? >> younger generations are the most, the most ethnic minority. >> we are soon to be a minority majority country, right? >> it's more interesting to break it down by age group because we know different age groups vote in different ways and different parties so when you see older voters, compared to younger voters far more ethnicallyiv diverse, we keep seeing them pull apart in their interest, it's not to say all ethnic minorities are the same and it's not the case at all and we seen a lot of hispanic voters of younger ages, the republican already but where the dysfunctional democracy part comes into playy is are we so polarized we can't get things done? that's what i think is

happening. >> does that affect ourur traditions and teaching of civics and that kind of thing as well? >> i think it should. what i mean by that is who we are as a nation and any country as a nation comes out of counseling having the conversation on who we are.d he's okay to keepra having that conversation, it's constructive in building and reinforcing democracy to have those conversations. we've had a lot of stress over the conversations in the united states but is the process of having the talks that makes us strong democracy so we need to have those. >> every couple of years when there is conflict in the middle east we hear about populationof growth in the countries there. how do you interpret that? >> certainly one of the most useful things about population,

and analytical tool, it is a scene setter just like geography is, you step into the situation, what is theo population like? what is the geography like? to overlay the other variables so democracy is not destiny in any case and in the middle east, that is the case also but we have seen for example, there was a bulge of people entering into working ages who did not have meaningful job opportunities and couldn't afford to get married, low opportunity cost of engaging in violence so he was kind of the water for that. >> so who is responsible for lack of opportunity? >> it is the lack of opportunity where we think about governance with nigeria. there's a lot government can do and congress would do better

giving specifics on this. there's a lot government can do to make sure they have investment climate in the country that is favorable so people will come in and make sure there are jobs for people, very few formal sector jobs for people even in india, a lot of people in the informal sector so well educated population that has job opportunities, a real asset for countries but if there are not the opportunities that we can undermine the efforts of peace and stability. >> they teach in memphis, what you teach? >> environmental politics,tu migration and international studies department. >> the subtitle of your book, ability and catching how sex death and migration shaped our world. as a male-female thing or a

reproduction thing? >> ldit both, maybe nobody would have thought the book if i didn't put the s sex part in there. you will see some things ofnd gender throughout the book, a lot of people know about low fertility, the record low fertility so i think we have that choice and increasingly everyone in the world has that choice, some exceptions but what we see is when given the choice, they choose to have fewer children so a lot of that can come from strains and stresses within relationships, job markets, job opportunities foror womenan, it is hard to combine work and family for a lot of women, myself included out there in the world so that can exert downward pressure on fertility rates.

>> death. >> yes, death. we have some good news which may be harder to believe because we are coming out of the pandemic but noncommunicable diseases are now the top killer, things like cancer and stroke an' diabetes, that's better than being communicable disease but the thing to pay attention to and where i tried to focus attention in the book is on the divide between developed and less developed country, while globally we are making a lot of progress, so many countries in the world people die of preventable diseases like dehydration from diarrhea. >> how does that affect when it comes to demographics? what does that mean, what is the importance? >> one area we can pay attention to is how healthy is your working population? all of the countries in the world are moving toward population aging, even those with high fertility, they are aging. if you have a country likell

thailand or iran, they are aging rapidly and we know you want to make the most of your population a healthy long and working life so have you invested in the help of your workers so that time between they might be likely to die or retire is truncated so we want to work as long and healthy as possible and that is investment in your population with huge impacts for economic growth. >> we are living longer, life expectancy is longer, more and more seniors just in the united states alone, what is the effect of that? >> the more we can do to stay healthy as long as we live, the better. the united states, we don't do so well, statistic healthy life expectancy, how long are you living healthy without needing a lot of help in your care?

you want that to be as long as possible because living the last ten years of life sick and in need of care obviously has not grown even for women, special security, medicare and etc. >> let's take the third in your subtitle, migration and let'sf focus on the united states which is a hub for immigrants. >> one of the things i show in the book different than what a lot of people are on the circuit saying is migration is not inevitable, it is rare in the world. it dominates our new cycle in politics because it taps into a lot of emotion, it's change in its visible change so if you think about the united states

and the coming population aging we have, we are moving toward older population, we do need support people exiting the workforce so you think about what options we have to beef up the workforce today, immigration is a choice we maket but not inevitable so if you are a business leader thinking about immigration, need to realize politics is the gatekeeper there and as we mentioned before we are so polarized weed cannot get this country to have company has a immigration reform but we need to keep the conversation what we want and h other countries are having that conversation, japan, will this country in the planet and they've chosen not to think the doors open to immigrants but the conversation about who are we? we want to keep doing this? an important part of our democracy and we will shape our population going forward. >> 1970 time magazine the populationon explosion, what was the population of the world in 1970? 8 billion today. >> it would have been a little over three and a half billion.

>> in your view can the world support 8 billion, 10 billion, 12 billion people? >> it can and you might be surprised because i teach environmental politics to say that but i think we have to be careful when we say it can't becausee usually what people men when they say it can't, i'm not going to change anything but those people over there are having too many babies and they need to stop so i tried to refocus attention to say let's think about rich countries, think about consumption and try to curb that and technology, i'm an optimist, technology will help us have a healthy planet in the future and population growth is slowing so that is important to note as well. >> china, india, over a billion. how would you describe them as healthy society, healthy governments, where would you put them on the spectrum? >> i think they are really different and we will see rapidr

population aging, we have to talk about china the same way we talk about japan or russia, germany and etc. instead of working age population and india is a different story, still lower fertility but still population for a while. what they need to work on is making more use of women in the workforce, low female force participation, women are about half the population so important to invest in them and use them as a resource. they are really in two different places, thinking about investing, i think these are the places to go in different stages of their transition. >> for a long time china had a forced one child policy. they switched that ten or 20 years ago and as a policy.

>> they switched it not that long ago and what is interesting, he didn't see a big burst and birth after that and that's because social norms are very powerful beyond the decline with the policy in place, the impact, the missing girl problem, there are far fewer young women and young men but removing the one child policy hasn't made people say i can't wait to have two or three children in this big city. >> if we didn't at least mention europe in this. >> yes, certainly right now we are able to witness a migration surge in europe and it's no surprise to see how different the migrants have been treated

versus after the 2015 migrant prices. and how long for even ukrainians. >> there was a term you use in your book that's been around a long time -- [inaudible] >> when we think about internal population, one of the messages we seen over the last century is the shift from rural to urban populations. what is happening right now is current waves of urbanization in places where organization is low, they seem to look different than urbanization. in the past there were manufacturing jobs, opportunities in the cities,

they were pulled off the farm to live in the city and work. now people are leaving the farms, they be pushed off the farm and they go to cities and there are not as many jobs so there is not this industry and idolization and we still have a lot more research to do to understand, will urbanization be economic growth in africa? maybe not. even to think about how it might relate to conflict because lots of unemployed disappointment, people living there can be a recipe for that. >> how has migration affected a country like mexico? >> we have seen some return migration for mexico which is interesting as well. money sent home to families and friends have been a big part of

the economy for a lot of countries in the world, india is an example and mexico so it's been a resource for those countries in a lot of ways to have the money used for investment there. >> final question, it is readable, who did you write a four? >> i wrote it for anybody who wants to read the world. i want to take something that everybody knows a little bit about population but don't necessarily understand the nuances around it. it's filled with fun facts, my husband was reading and her turned to me and said did you know? then he realized, i do know, i read the book but i think it can help anyone trying to understand where we are headed and what investments we need to make today to shape the future they might want for their business or if we are talking about government, stability and

security in the future. >> jennifer is the author of the book called 8 billion and counting,, death and migration shaped our world. thank you for joining us. >> thank you so much, appreciate it. ♪♪ >> first lady in their own words, eight part series looking at the role of the first lady, their time in the white house and issues important to them. >> a great advantage to know what it's like because education is such an important issue both for a governor but also for president so that was very helpful. >> material from c-span's award-winning biography serious first lady. >> i'm very much the kind of person who believes you should say what you mean and mean what you say and take the consequences. >> c-span online video library, first ladies, lady bird johnson, betty ford, rosalynn carter, nancy reagan, hillary clinton,

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