Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s steps to increase immigration and raise the consumption tax are both signs that Japan’s shrinking population is as much opportunity as challenge. With an unemployment rate of 2.4 percent and a job market that by other measures is the tightest since the 1970s, something has to give. Robots will play a greater role, as will foreign-born ...

Nigeria’s population is growing rapidly. It now stands at 182 million, and is projected to exceed 300 million by midcentury, surpassing the US to become the world’s third-largest country. And thanks to a high fertility rate — more than five children per women, higher than the average for sub-Saharan Africa and more than double the global rate — that growth ...

Internet giant Amazon recently ran into a problem that eloquently illustrates the pitfalls of big data: It tried to automate hiring with a machine learning algorithm, but upon testing it realised that it merely perpetuated the tech industry’s bias against women. What’s most troubling isn’t the discovery itself. It’s that most companies using similar algorithms don’t even want to know. ...