The debate over strange demographics in parts of the arab world has been partially resolved. It looks likely that the oil rich state habit of importing a lot of foreign workers for their labor needs explains away a lot of the 'heart beat' pattern I alluded to in my earlier article. But nobody yet seems to have come up with a decent explanation for the 'ascending' pattern.
This is a much smaller trend but I wish someone would explain it. Why is it that some arab states are bucking the near universal trend of men dying before women even while women have a perfectly ordinary lifespan difference (women usually live longer and this trend holds). Something unusual is going on in these numbers and it would be useful to understand what.
Posted by TMLutas at January 7, 2004 10:31 AM