Demography in the USA
Vladimir Kozlov, LCSR associate researcher and assistant professor of HSE, shared his impressions of this trip «Demographic Data Analysis, Education and Decision Making».
On January 23 – February 10, 2012 Mississippi Consortium for International Development with the support of United States Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs organized a study tour for Russian demographers and ROSSTAT staff across the USA. The topic of the trip was «Demographic Data Analysis, Education and Decision Making». Vladimir Kozlov, LCSR associate researcher and assistant professor of HSE, shared his impressions of this trip.
The tour was organized by the Foreigners Visits program, which is financed by United States Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. This program was established more than 65 years ago. Annually about 4000 visitors from more than 100 countries came to the USA in the framework of this program. This year demographers were invited for the first time.
It was planned by the organizers that demographers and statisticians should have visited and explored the work of various statistical, federal, public, economic, political, cultural and educational institutions. As a result, we had a chance to visit 4 big American cities and the majority of educational and scientific centers that work on demographic problems. Eventually, we didn’t not only gain priceless experience and new contacts, but several times experienced changes of time zones and seasons, and got a lot of positive impressions.
Washington. The tour started from the capital of the United States. America met us with the first snow of the season and Siberian, according to local standards, frosts (-4 C in the afternoon). However, by the beginning of our trips around the country the weather set up and the spring came. The schedule in Washington and its suburbs (eg. Baltimore) was really tough. It included visits to some branches of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (including National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Center for Population Research, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion), statistical institutions (U.S. Census Bureau), and some independent centers (Pew Global Research Center, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) and John Hopkins University. Besides, we had time to watch the game of NHL. Visit to Washington ended with the workshop dedicated to the problems of Russian demography, where I made the report on demographic education in Russia.
Detroit. The next point of our tour was ‘City of engines’, extremely interesting city of Detroit. Former not only U.S. but world’s center of automobile industry looks like the great example of massive open-air social experiment, which has got out of control and now is developing according to its own rules. So the more astonishing it was for me to look at it. Instead of visiting state structures, this time we focused on NGOs, which were engaged on different social problems like attraction of foreign businessmen to the city, care for elderly, the rehabilitation of former prisoners and professional mapping. Also we went to the University of Michigan, where we had a brilliant chance to meet Barbara Anderson, who worked on demographic problems in Russia for a long time.
San-Francisco. As experts say, San-Francisco is the most European city in the USA. In fact, to my mind, it really reminds Europe: wide pavements, green streets, well-developed public transport and architecture which is so different from the most American cities. And, of course, the ocean, sunny weather, palm trees, famous trams and the world’s biggest Chinatown. Besides, visiting San-Francisco it is impossible to pass by two competing Universities, Stanford University and UC Berkeley. Apart from their silent competition, there is the spirit of freedom and strong influence of traditions in both places. At Stanford University we discussed the article which was devoted to the influence of anti-alcohol campaign in USSR in 1980-s on mortality, and took a tour around the Center of population studies. By the way, they said, Paul Ehrlich, the author of The Population Bomb, still read lectures at the Center, but unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to meet him. In Berkeley we met with one of the founding fathers of Human Mortality Database, John Wilmoth.
New-York. The last stop was the Big Apple, which was obviously prepared at the end of the trip, in order to get better acclimatization before Moscow. In New York you strongly feel hustle and bustle of big city. Everything is moving on a great speed, only if it is not a rush hour. There were not much places of visit but all of them were quite remarkable. First of all, it is worth to point out UN Organization (especially, the Department of Social and Demographic Statistics, where we took part in very long and interesting discussion about the size of migration flows in Russia). We have also visited City University of New-York (CUNY), where we got acquainted with some classics of demography professors Shiro Horiuchi and Neil Bennett. By the chance, we managed to visit Princeton Office of Population Research. By the end of the trip, we came with some essential cultural and tourist program.
Finally, I can admit that the trip turned out to be extremely intensive, interesting and, I hope, useful from the point of view of further partnership.
By Vladimir Kozlov