Monday, November 20, 2006

Children's Playgrounds




One of the main markers of health status internationally is the age distribution of a population. Countries in the majority world tend to have a young population with lots of childfren and not many elderly people - you can imagine it as a pyramid if you want. (They always call it a pyramid, but when anyone draws it, it looks much more like a triangle to me, but who am I to quibble with some of the most eminent epidemiologsts the world has ever known!) In the rich nations, there are more elderly people and fewer children - hence we worry our politicians and economists about superannuation/pensions in the future.


Here, I suspect there are a lot of children. Partly because I think I know most (?all?) of the families with preschool children now, and there seem to be a lot of them. But partly because there seem to be an awful lot of children's playgrounds around on this very small island.


Anyone care to research health status and its correlation with number of playgrounds per head of population? No? Ah well.

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