The Mystery of Merangin's Missing Women

Picture from here.

In 1990 economist and future nobel laureate Amartya Sen wrote a landmark article in the New York Times Review of Books entitled "More than 100 Million Women are Missing".  The essence of the article, based on demographic statistics and reason, was that in several parts of the world the normal proportion of men to women has been skewed by certain "cultural traits".  Sen points out that at birth, pretty much universally, boys outnumber girls by a ratio of around 105 boys to 100 girls.  However, since girls tend to be heartier than boys, boys experience greater childhood mortality.  In addition, women tend to be more resistant to disease.  This combined with a number of other factors means that women tend to have a longer life expectancy.  All of these conditions taken together means that in normal populations there are more women than men.

Sen's Logic

Amartya Sen photo from here.

Sen argues that in most of Asia (EXCLUDING SOUTHEAST ASIA and JAPAN) and North Africa this natural population bias has been disrupted.  He provides several examples; at the time the article was published the ratios in India and Pakistan were 94 and 90 girls born per 100 boys, respectively.  According to Sen there are a number of reasons for these unnatural disparities, ranging from female infanticide to sex-selective abortion to the neglect of female children, leading to a greater susceptibility to disease and a higher incidence of malnutrition, resulting in a far higher under-age-5 mortality for girls than for boys.  Moreover, a general disempowerment of women creates the social conditions necessary for the aforementioned dynamics to emerge.  In short, Sen argued that male children are preferred.  In all Sen estimates that there are more than 100 million "missing women".  Although Sen has his critics and some have attempted to refute his numbers and logic, there certainly is some truth to his thesis.

This brings us to Merangin district, where I've been doing some work over the past week.  As I was pouring over the socioeconomic statistics for the district, I noticed something strange about the population numbers.  I'll explain further in a moment, but first I want to introduce the population pyramid

Population Pyramids

Year 2000 pyramid for Mozambique from here.

A population pyramid is a graphical tool used by demographic geographers to display the breakdown of a population by age cohort and gender.  Normal population pyramids divide the population into 5 year age cohorts or blocks arranged chronologically with the youngest cohort on the bottom.  The cohorts are further divided by gender, so you can see how many males and females there are in each group.  Horizontal bars indicate the size of the cohort.  The graph is called a population pyramid because that's the shape of a normal growing population, as you can see with the example I've provided to the right.

I can't remember where I got this graphic.  Sue me.

Population pyramids are useful because they indicate whether a population is growing, holding steady, or shrinking.  These trends are important for planning; if you have an aging population then, as a policymaker you probably want to think about putting more public resources into improving healthcare.  If the population is growing, the leadership needs to think more about providing educational opportunities for the increasing numbers of youths.  It is important to remember that not all populations are growing.  Under normal circumstances, regardless of the overall structure of the population, there should be more women than men in every cohort.  Population pyramids can also show us the effects of certain historical events, as you can see from the graphic of the populations of East and West Germany.  Sometimes we see weird anomalies in population pyramids, and it's fun to try and come up with an explanation as to why there might be a weird gender distribution in certain cohorts.  Have a look at the population pyramids below and see if you can come with an explanation for the weird bulges in certain cohorts.  Once you make your guesses you might look at the wikipedia page for each place to see if you can confirm your answer.  I took the graphic from Rubenstein's Human Geography textbook which I use when I teach introductory geography.

The occurrence of war and epidemics can have a pretty significant impact on a population at certain times, which is reflected in the overall structure of the pyramid.  Similarly, the presence of colleges, military bases, prisons, and other facilities can account for demographic weirdness.

Merangin's Missing Women

Returning to my story, as I was going over demographic information I noticed something odd.  Unlike other districts in Indonesia, there are more men than women in Merangin.  At first I thought this might be accounted for by the presence of encroaching farmers that come from other districts to open up new land in the national park (presumably these would be mostly men working seasonally away from their families; I think that this probably accounts for some of the imbalance in the older cohorts), but a quick check of the age breakdown disproved this hypothesis as the disparity shows up among younger cohorts as well as old.  I made the population pyramid below using Excel; to make your own population see this great tutorial.

As I mentioned previously, Southeast Asia is an exception to Sen's observation of the missing women trend in Asia.  As far as I know, there's no evidence of any sort of sex-selective abortion or infanticide in Indonesia, and since the Merangin anomaly doesn't show up in other districts, there had to be some other explanation.  I asked my new friends at the planning office about this, and they were as vexed as I was.  One suggested that it could be explained by a lack of health facilities in the more far-flung parts of the district, but if this were the case boys would be affected as well.  We weren't able to come up with a good answer.  I had a colorful and imaginative conversation with my good friend Agung as we tried to come up with a possible solution, but because the various adolescent myths of the gender-determining merits of various copulative positions we'd heard were at odds (1), we didn't come up with a resolution.  As an open minded scholar, I can't rule out the influence of some hitherto-undocumented environmental factor or even the effects of thaumatology (2).

The only thing I've been able to come up with that makes any sense is that maybe encroaching farmers tend to bring male children with them to help work their newly-opened land, but I'm still looking for a definite answer to the mystery of Merangin's missing women.  If you have any ideas, drop me a line.

(1)  Most likely due to the fact that Agung is a product of the southern hemisphere, whereas I come from the northern hemisphere, and so the coriolis effect probably has some sort of influence.

(2)  The dark arts.

An Application of Central Place Theory: Merangin District, Sumatra

Map from here.  Note Jambi Province 

This week I'm down in Bangko, the capital of Merangin district for some research work.  Merangin is just east of Kerinci district, where I live.  It's one of the districts of Jambi province, which you can see from the map to the left.  One of the things I'm interested in is the long- and mid-range planning documents from the regional planning authority (BAPPEDA).  These documents have all sorts of information about the socio-economic aspects of the district, as well as information concerning the policy orientation of the government (i.e. what are the problems facing the district and what are the steps the government needs to take to address the problem).  Knowing these aspects of the district, which has about 20% of its territory covered by Kerinci Seblat National Park, helps me to understand the roots and context of current and potential conflicts between the people and institutions in the district and the park.  And, as a geographer, I like to look at the plans because they have all sorts of cool maps.


One section of the district's long-term (15 year) development plan describes the hierarchy of cities in the district.  As I read through the description, I was reminded of one of the classic models of geography: Walter Christaller's Central Place Theory.

Central Place Theory

Awesome GIF from Wikipedia

Walter Christaller was a German geographer active from the 1920s until around the 1950s(1).  He is most known for his Central Place Theory, which is a staple of introductory geography textbooks.  Central place theory is a model that attempts to describe (and predict) where and why cities of different sizes will be found on the landscape, and how they relate to one another.  The model has some basic assumptions, like most simple geographic models (recall my explanation of Von Thunen's model in a previous post).  It assumes that the world is an isotropic plain and that resources and people are distributed equally.  All people make rational decisions, and they will go to the closest place offering the goods or services they need.  Since the landscape is an isotropic plane, they can take the shortest distance to their destination.  

Christaller divided goods and services into different categories.  Simple or lower order services include things like markets and gas station and can be found in a lot of locations.  More specialized  or higher order services like universities are fewer and farther between.  Directly related to the order of service are two concepts which Christaller pioneered: threshold and range.  Threshold refers to the minimum population required to support a certain type of service.  Think about a minimarket, for instance.  They are everywhere because it doesn't take too many customers to keep a minimarket in business.  The threshold is low.  Range, on the other hand, is the maximum distance people are willing to travel to avail themselves of a service.  Returning to our minimarket example, you're probably not willing to travel too far to find a Circle K.  So the range is low as well.  However, there are some services, like movie theaters, ice skating rinks, Ikeas, etc, that you are willing to travel farther to access.  At the same time, these services need a lot more folks to keep them in business.  So the threshold and range are both high.  Cities or towns that provide only simple services are low order settlements, whereas larger cities that offer a more comprehensive range of services are high order settlements.  

Diagram from Hofstra University's excellent website.

Christaller's basic idea is that in a given region, there will only be a few high-order settlements, but there will be lots of lower-order ones.  What's more, settlements will be spaced equidistant from one another, and higher-order settlements will be surrounding by a number of lower order settlements, which rely on the bigger city for rarer goods and services.  There are several levels in the hierarchy, from huge metropolises on down to regional cities, towns, villages and hamlets.  You can see a diagram of the arrangement of the various classes of settlement to the right.  Each of the different types of settlement has a different market area; large (higher order) cities have bigger market areas.  Remember that people will go to the place closest to them offering the desired good or service; this accounts for the regular spacing (2).  In addition to this market principle (known in the theory as the k-3 principle) Christaller also described transportation (k-4) and administrative (k-7) functions, but we don't need to go into those here.  

Christaller used Central Place Theory in his role as a planner for several evil regimes in Europe.  Since the introduction of his theory, scholars in geography have attempted to apply it to other instances as well in order to prove or disprove its merits.  It has also influenced the discipline of regional planning, as we'll see below.  

Central Place and Merangin District?

The capital of Merangin district is Bangko.  Bangko is surrounded by a number of smaller towns, which in turn are surrounded by villages.  The district is mainly agricultural but there is some industry as well (most of which centers on the processing of agricultural commodities).  As you can imagine, there is a natural ranking of services in the settlements of various size in Merangin.  For instance, every village has a place to buy instant noodles or cell-phone credit.  Larger towns act as transportation hubs, and the capital city functions as an administrative, management, and financial center.  That's all common sense, and in my mind Christaller doesn't deserve much credit for describing the natural way that markets work.  

What is remarkable, though, is that way that the planners have adapted Christaller's ideas in their development planning.  Within Merangin district there are 9 subdistricts (kecamatans).  One of the problems the planners are hoping to solve, though, is an imbalance in the level of development and economic opportunities between subdistricts.  They are also hoping to develop a district-wide system where each subdistrict develops according to the resources located in the subdistrict; for instance, the subdistrict of Jangkat has lots of land with good soil and not many people, so the planners are hoping to increase the amount of palm oil and rubber plantations there.  Likewise, each subdistrict should be part of a larger system with the district capital (Bangko) at the top.  

In order to facilitate this vision, the planners have created a hierarchy much like Christaller's.  In the district system Bangko, the capital, is referred to as an Order 1 (Orde 1) center.  It is a center of transportation, located on the main overland route to the provincial capital at Jambi as well as the roads to other districts (Sarolangun, Bungo, and Kerinci).  It has the most complete economic facilities and is also a center of banking, trade, management, and communication.  In the words of the planning document, it is the Center of Regional Activities (Pusat Kegiatan Wilayah, PKW).  Beneath Bangko in Kota Rantau Panjang, the capital of Tabir subdistrict.  Rantau Panjang is an Order 2 (Orde 2) town in the district framework and is a center of local activities (Pusat Kegiatan Lokal, PKL).  It has good infrastructure and provides subregional services.  Then at Order 3 (Orde 3) we have Sungai Manau and Pamenang.  Both of these towns are about equidistant from Bangko.  In the planning framework they provide lower-order services to their hinterlands and are supposed to spur development in the areas immediately around them.  Lastly we find Muara Siau, a smaller town at Order 4 (Orde 4).  The quality of infrastructure is lower, and it provides still lower-order services to the mainly agricultural hinterlands surrounding it.

The planners of Merangin district use this framework to help plan what sorts of projects need to be developed in various places.  For example, they are working to develop higher-order transport facilities in the district capital, but in the lower-order centers they plan smaller-scale projects aimed at improving specific aspects of the economy in those places.  This helps them to distribute resources, like money and equipment, in a more efficient manner aimed at developing the district as a whole.  You can see the results in the map below, which divides the entire district into development zones, each with its own set of projects and targets.  I've labeled the various centers along with their order.  The spatial arrangement somewhat mirrors that predicted by Christaller, but more important, at least to me, is the function of the various centers.

We can see from this example that geographic models not only help us understand spatial distribution and organization from a theoretical perspective, but they are also important tools in policy making.  Central Place Theory has clearly influenced the planners in Merangin district and has helped them to formulate a development plan that specifically addresses the strengths and weaknesses of each subdistrict.

Notes

(1)  Christaller was not only a NAZI, but a COMMUNIST as well.  I faced something of a moral dilemma when writing this post....I am still somewhat ambivalent about describing a theory that was used primarily for organizing hostile occupations and oppression

(2)  Christaller adopted hexagons rather than circles because hexagons nest together perfectly without any overlap or gaps, unlike circles.

(3)  I am basing this on the 2006 long-range plan; in 2008-9 the authorities experienced a frenzy of new district creation, and now there are 26 kecamatans.