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Address (geography)

Address (geography)

An address is a code and abstract concept expressing the fixed location of a home, business or other building on the earth's surface.

Functions

Addresses have several functions: # Providing a means of physically locating a building, especially in a city where there are many buildings and streets, # Identifying buildings as the end points of a postal system, # A social function: someone's address can have a profound effect on their social standing, # As parameters in statistics collection, especially in census-taking or the insurance industry.

History

Until the advent of modern postal systems, most houses and buildings were not numbered. Streets may have been named for landmarks, such as a city gate or market, or for the professions of their inhabitants. In many cities in Asia, most minor streets were never named. This is still the case today in much of Japan. When postal systems were introduced, it became necessary to number buildings to aid in mail delivery.

Current addressing schemes

In most English-speaking countries the standard has become an alternating numbering scheme progressing in one direction up a street, with odd numbers running up one side and even numbers up the other, although there is significant variation on this basic pattern. Cities in North America, particularly those planned on a grid plan, often incorporate block numbers (explained below), quadrants (explained below), and cardinal directions into their street numbers, so that in many such cities, addresses roughly follow the Cartesian coordinate system. Japanese cities usually number buildings by block and neighbourhood (chome) rather than street; as a result most Japanese streets are unnamed. When building numbers were assigned in Florence, Italy, residential addresses were assigned blue or black numbers, while commercial addresses were assigned red numbers (written with a "/r" after the number). The two numbering sequences are independent; thus, 40/r is not necessarily anywhere near 40.

Block numbers

Block numbers are a system of assigning numbers based on distance rather than strictly sequentially. Typically, each block is assigned 100 numbers, such that the building numbers on that block vary only in the two least significant digits. For example, in Washington, D.C., the block of 7th Street, N.W., between D and E streets, N.W., is designated as the 400 block, meaning that building numbers on that block are in the range from 400 to 499 inclusive. It is common to indicate block numbers on street signs; for instance, the article on Pennsylvania Avenue shows a street sign indicating what is probably the most famous block number in the world. Some localities, such as the Borough of Queens in New York City, use a block numbering system in which a hyphen separates the hundreds digit from the tens digit. For example, a building number that might elsewhere be written 16709 is instead written 167-09. Some localities in the Midwest have a more elaborate system of block numbering. Such localities use compound block numbers to indicate the number of blocks from both the north-south and the east-west dividing lines. For example, an address might be of the form "N112 W16709 Such-and-such Street" rather than "16709 W. Such-and-such Street." Of course, such an address is in the northwest quadrant (see below) of the addressing system.

Quadrants

In cities with Cartesian-coordinate-based addressing systems, the streets that form the north-south and east-west dividing lines constitute the x and y axes of a Cartesian coordinate plane and thus divide the city into quadrants. The quadrants are typically identified in the street names, although the manner of doing so varies from city to city. For example, in one city, all streets in the northeast quadrant may have "NE" prefixed or suffixed to their street names, while in another, the intersection of North Calvert Street and East 27th Street can only be in the northeast quadrant.

Street-naming conventions

Street names may follow a variety of themes. In new developments, streets may all follow the same theme (e.g. bird species), or start with the same letter. Streets in Europe and Latin America are often named for auspicious dates. In many North American cities, such as Manhattan and Edmonton, Alberta, streets are simply numbered sequentially across the street grid. Washington, D.C., uses a system of numbered north-south streets combined with lettered and alphabetically named east-west streets; diagonal avenues are typically named after states.

Postal codes

Postal codes are a relatively recent development in addressing, designed to speed the sorting and processing of mail by assigning unique numeric or alphanumeric codes to each geographical locality.

Postal alternatives to physical addresses

For privacy and other purposes, postal services have made it possible to receive mail without revealing one's physical address or even having a fixed physical address. Examples are post office boxes and poste restante (general delivery).

Geographical Address Conventions in the Media

People may be said generally to get used to the form of geographical address used in their home location. However, this can cause confusion when people naturally extend their written generalisations from nationally used conventions to media where the audience is global. This can be observed most frequently with internet usage, and in films where a scene opens with the location listed on screen. A good example of this is Wikipedia, where a significant number of the contributors are Americans. For example it can be guessed that the contributors writing these phrases are Americans: Birmingham, England Birmingham, AL In the former example, the contributor can be guessed not to be from Birmingham in the UK because, although Birmingham is indeed a city in England, someone from Birmingham would be unlikely to use this format to describe their address. In the latter example it is common in the US to include state codes in addresses, which may be somewhat meaningless to persons outside of North America who are not accustomed to the US address format. In addition, the contributor in this latter example has assumed that others would not only understand from the use of a state code that their city of Birmingham is in the state of Alabama, but also that their city is in the USA. Another example of this phenomenon of US address forms being exported to a global audience is with Google Earth which is marketed globally -- try a search for Birmingham and then Birmingham, England. Next try St. Petersburg and St. Petersburg, Russia.

External links

- [http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/postal.html Frank's compulsive guide to postal addresses] Category:Human geography Category:Postal system

Census

A census is the process of obtaining information about every member of a population (not necessarily a human population). It can be contrasted with sampling in which information is only obtained from a subset of a population. As such it is a method used for accumulating statistical data, and it is also vital to democracy (voting).

Ancient and medieval censuses

Rome conducted censuses to determine taxes (see Censor). The Bible relates stories of several censuses. The Book of Numbers describes a divinely-mandated census that occurred when Moses led the Israelites from Egypt. A later census called by King David of Israel, referred to as the "numbering of the people," incited divine retribution (for being militarily motivated or perhaps displaying lack of faith in God). A Roman census is also mentioned in one of the best known passages of the Bible in the Gospel of Luke. The world's oldest extant census comes from China during the Han Dynasty. Taken in the fall of 2 AD, it is considered by scholars to be quite accurate. At that time there were 57.5 million living in Han China, the world's largest population. The second oldest preserved census is also from the Han, dating back to 140 AD, when only a bit more than 48 million people were recorded. Mass migrations into what is today southern China are believed to be behind this massive demographic decline. In the Middle Ages, the most famous census is the Domesday Book, undertaken in 1086 by William I of England "to find out ... what or how much each landholder had in land and livestock, and what it was worth," so that he could properly tax the land he had recently conquered. In 1183, a census was taken of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, to ascertain the number of men and amount of money that could possibly be raised against an invasion by Saladin, sultan of Egypt and Syria.

Modern censuses

Australia

The Australian census is run by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. It is carried out every five years, the last one being on August 7, 2001 and the next planned census is August 8, 2006.

Brazil

The Brazilian census is carried out by IBGE, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, every 10 years. The last one was in 2000.

Canada

The Canadian census is run by Statistics Canada. The first census conducted in Canada was conducted in 1666, by French intendant Jean Talon, when he took a census to ascertain the number of people living in New France. In 1871, Canada's first formal census was conducted, which counted the population of Nova Scotia, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Quebec. In 1918, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics was formed. In 1971, Statistics Canada was formed to replace the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, and consequently, took over its census job. Censuses in Canada are conducted in five year intervals. The latest census was conducted in 2001 and the next planned census is 2006. Censuses taken in mid-decade (e.g. 1976, 1986, 1996, etc.) are referred to as quinquennial censuses. Others are referred to as decennial censuses. The first quinquennial census was conducted in 1956. See also: Canada 2001 Census

Costa Rica

Costa Rica carried out its 9th population census in 2000. INEC, National Institute of Statistics and Census is in charge of conduct these census. Past Costa Rican censuses were realized in 1864, 1883, 1892, 1927, 1950, 1963, 1973 and 1984.

Denmark

The first Danish census was in 1700-1701, and contained statistical information about adult men. Only about half of it still exists. A census of school children was taken during the 1730s. Following these early undertakings, the first census to attempt completely covering all citizens (including women and children who had previously been listed only as numbers) of Denmark-Norway was taken in 1769 [http://www.rhd.uit.no/census/ft1769.html]. At that point there were 797 584 citizens in the kingdom. Georg Christian Oeder took a statistical census in 1771 which covered Copenhagen, Sjælland, Møn, and Bornholm. After that, censuses followed somewhat regularly in 1787, 1801, and 1834, and between 1840 and 1860, the censuses were taken every five years, and then every ten years until 1890. Special censuses for Copenhagen were taken in 1885 and 1895. In the 20th century, censuses were taken every five years from 1901 to 1921, and then every ten years from 1930. The last census was taken in 1950. Currently, Det Centrale Personregister is doing the censuses using their register of Danish citizens. It is possible to search a portion of the Danish censuses online at [http://ddd.dda.dk/ Dansk Demografisk Database], and also view scanned versions at [http://www.arkivalieronline.dk/ Arkivalier Online].

France

Napoleon Bonaparte began the census in France as a means of determining the number of potential soldiers under his rule. Today, the census in France is carried out by INSEE. Since 2004, a partial census is carried out every year, and the results published as averages over 5 years.

Germany

The first large-scale census in the German Empire took place in 1895. Attempts at introducing a census in Germany sparked strong popular resentment in the 1980s since many quite personal questions were asked. Some campaigned for a boycott. In the end the Constitutional Court stopped the census in 1980 and 1983. The last census was in 1987. Germany has since used population samples in combination with statistical methods, in place of a full census.

Greece

Census takes place every 10 years and is carried out by the National Statistical Service of Greece [http://www.statistics.gr]. Last census was in 2001.

India

The decennial census of India is the primary source of information about the demographic characteristics of the population of India which is the second biggest country of the world in terms of population. The first census in India is dated 1872. It started as far back as in 1860 and was finished in 1871. Starting from there, a population census has been carried out every 10 years, latest being the fourteenth in February - March 2001. Census is carried out by the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India, Delhi under the Census of India Act, 1948. The act gives Central Government many powers like to notify a date for Census, power to ask for the services of any citizen for census work. The law makes it compulsory for every citizen to answer the census questions truthfully. The Act provides penalties for giving false answer or not giving answers at all to the census questionnaire. One of the most important provisions of law is the guarantee for the maintenance of secrecy of the information collected at the census of each individual. The census records are not open to inspection and also not admissible in evidence. Census happens in two phases, first House Listing and House Numbering Operations and second actual population enumeration phase. Census is carried out by the canvassing method. In this method, each and every household is visited and the information is collected by a specially trained enumerator. 9th February 2001, the first day of the 2001 census was celebrated as the census day.

Source

- [http://www.censusindia.net/ Website of the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India]
- [http://www.unfpa.org/sustainable/docs.htm Banthia J.K., Ex Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. "Mobilising Support for India’s Census - Constraints and Challenges"]

Italy

The census in Italy is carried out by ISTAT every 10 years. The last four were in 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001.

Japan

Japan collects census information every five years. The figures show the English translation of the 2005 census form. The form solicits information on name, sex, relationship to head of household, year and month of birth, marital status, nationality, number of members of household, type and nature of dwelling, floor area of dwelling, number of hours worked during the week prior to October 1, employment status, name of employer and type of business, and kind of work. Image:CensusSide1.png|Explanation of census form, side 1 Image:CensusSide2.png|Explanation of census form, side 2

Latvia

The most recent census in Latvia was in 2000. Before that, it was about 6 censuses, most part of these previous censuses was in the USSR time. The census in Latvia is carried out by Centrālā Statistikas Pārvalde (Central Statistical Bureau).

New Zealand

The census in New Zealand is carried out by Statistics New Zealand (Te Tari Tatau), every five years. The last was in 2001, the next will be in 2006. See New Zealand Census of Population and Dwellings.

Poland

The census in Poland is carried out by GUS every circa 10 years. The last one occurred in 2002.

Portugal

The census in Portugal is carried out by INE every 10 years. The last one occurred in 2001.

Romania

The first census in Romania was carried out in 1859. Nowadays it is carried every ten years by the Institutul Naţional de Statistică (INSSE). The last one occurred in 2002.

Russia/USSR

In Russia, the first All-Russia Population Census was carried out in 1897. All-Union Population Censuses were carried out in the USSR (which included RSFSR and the other republics) in 1920, 1926, 1939, 1959, 1970, 1979, and 1989). The first (post-Soviet) All-Russia Population Census was carried out in 2002. Next census is tentatively planned for 2010. Currently, the census is the responsibility of the [http://www.gks.ru Federal State Statistics Service.]

South Africa

The census in South Africa is carried out every 5 years by Statistics South Africa. The only two to date were in 1996 and 2001.

Ukraine

The first post-soviet census in Ukraine was carried out by [http://www.ukrcensus.gov.ua/eng/ State Statistics Committee of Ukraine] in 2001, 12 years after the last All-Union census in 1989.

United Kingdom

In the 7th century, Dalriada (now Scotland) was the first territory in what is now the UK to conduct a census, with what was called the "Tradition of the Men of Alba" (Senchus fer n'Alba'). England took its first Census when the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086 for tax purposes. The UK census as we know it today started in 1801 (championed by John Rickman who managed the first four up to 1831), partly to ascertain the number of men able to fight in the Napoleonic wars. Rickman's 12 reasons - set out in 1798 and repeated in Parliamentary debates - for conducting a UK census included the following justifications:
- 'the intimate knowledge of any country must form the rational basis of legislation and diplomacy'
- 'an industrious population is the basic power and resource of any nation, and therefore its size needs to be known'
- 'the number of men who were required for conscription to the militia in different areas should reflect the area's population'
- 'there were defence reasons for wanting to know the number of seamen'
- 'the need to plan the production of corn and thus to know the number of people who had to be fed'
- 'a census would indicate the Government's intention to promote the public good' and
- 'the life insurance industry would be stimulated by the results.' The census has been conducted every ten years since 1801 and most recently in 2001. The first four censuses (1801-1831) were mainly statistical (that is, they were mainly headcounts and contained virtually no personal information). The 1841 Census was the first to record names of all individuals in a household or institution. Because of World War II, there was no census in 1941. However, following the passage into law (on 5 September 1939) of the National Registration Act a population count was carried out on 29 September 1939, which was, in effect, a census. The census is undertaken by the government for policy and planning purposes, and the (statistical) information is also sold to interested parties. Public access to the census returns is restricted under the terms of the 100-year rule and the most recent returns made available to researchers are those of the 1901 Census. The census is usually very accurate, and with a fine of up to £1,000 for those who do not complete it, filled in by a high percentage of the population. An exception may have been the census conducted during the years of the poll tax (1991), when some people avoided it in case it was used for enforcing the tax. The 2001 census was the first year in which the government asked about religion. Perhaps encouraged by a chain letter that started in New Zealand, 390,000 people entered their religion as Jedi Knight (more than either Sikhs, Buddhists or Jews), with some areas registering up to 2.6% of people as Jedi.

United States

The United States Constitution mandates that the census be taken at least once every ten years (U.S. Congress could require a more frequent census by legislation), and that the number of members of the House of Representatives from each state be determined accordingly. In addition, Census Bureau statistics are used for apportioning Federal funding for many social and economic programs. But there is not a federal census legislation (nor for federal voting). The first U.S. Census was taken in 1790 by the local U.S. Marshals. Census-takers went door-to-door and recorded the number of people in each household, and the name of the head of the household. Slaves were counted, but for apportionment purposes each counted as only three-fifths of a citizen. American Indians being neither taxed nor considered during apportionment, were not counted. The first census counted 3.9 million people, less than half the population of New York City in 2000. The 2000 census counted over 281 million people. In 1902, a Public Law established the Census Bureau as a permanent Federal agency. Until the 2010 census, there were two forms of questionnaire – long and short. Currently, the plan is to replace the Long form in 2010 with the American Community Survey (ACS), but funding for ACS is not assured, in which case there may be a long form in the 2010 census. Computer algorithms (based on complex sampling rules) determine which form was mailed to a given household (in practice, of those households whose locations are on the Census Master Address List), one in six receiving the long form. This was supplemented by census workers who go door-to-door to talk to people who fail to return the forms. In addition to a simple count of residents, the Census Bureau collects a variety of statistics, on topics ranging from ethnicity to the presence of indoor plumbing. While some critics claim that census questions are an invasion of privacy, the data collected by every question is either required to enforce some federal law (such as the Voting Rights Act) or is required to administer some federal program. Congress gives approval to every question asked on the Census. Despite a massive effort, the Census Bureau has never been able to count every individual, leading to controversy about whether to use statistical methods to supplement the numbers for some purposes, as well as arguments over how to improve the actual head count. The Supreme Court has ruled that only an actual head count can be used to apportion Congressional seats; however, cities and minority representatives have complained that urban residents and minorities are undercounted. In several cases, the Census Bureau will recount an area with disputed figures, provided the local government pays for the time and effort. The State of Utah protested the figures of the 2000 decennial census because it lost a seat in the House of Representatives to North Carolina. Had the Census Bureau been able to count the numbers of Utahns living overseas, including many Mormon missionaries, Utah would have retained the seat. To minimize the burden on individuals and to provide improved data, the Bureau is preparing several alternative methods for gathering economic, demographic, and social information, including the American Community Survey and record linking of depersonalized administrative records with other administrative records and Census Bureau surveys. By law (92 Stat. 915, Public Law 95-416, enacted on October 5, 1978), census records are sealed for 72 years; in an era when life expectancy was under 60 years, this attempts to protect individual's privacy by prohibiting the release of such information during their expected lifetimes. Thus, the most recent Census released to the public was the 1930 Census, released in 2002. Indexes to some of the U.S. Censuses have been produced over the years, making the process of searching old census records much easier. Some indexes of census records have been produced by amateur volunteer genealogists. Due to the sheer volume of information, and the manual methodologies involved, the indexing used to be limited to the head-of-household. These indexes were published in bound volumes and are often available in regional libraries along with microfilm rolls that can be researched. While valuable, indexes produced from these censuses can be problematic to use. The original census records from this era were completed by hand by census enumerators; this leads to problems in handwriting recognition and variations in spelling of surnames within the original documents. The 1880 to 1920 censuses have indexes of last names, produced using the Soundex system; the indexing project was performed by the Works Progress Administration. The Soundex system is tolerant of variations in spelling; names with similar sounds but different spellings have the same encoding. The chief motivation in producing the Soundex name indexes was to assist citizens in finding census records to provide evidence of age, especially for those born before the advent of governmentally-approved birth certificates. (Verification of age was needed to establish eligibility for old-age benefits such as Social Security). Partial Soundex indexes of the 1930 census are available; resources from the Works Progress Administration were diverted towards support of World War II efforts before the project was completed. With the advent of computers, and more recently, the Internet, expanded indexes including all family members are beginning to appear on genealogy websites. These are accompanied with hypertext links that take the researcher directly to an image of the original census page, without having to travel to a regional library and scroll through endless rolls of microfilm. Genealogists view censuses as secondary sources of information; primary sources of information such as birth certificates are viewed as more reliable. Still, census information often provides useful information for genealogists and clues on where to proceed to find further primary source documents.

Local

In additional to the decennial federal census, more localized versions are often used. An example of this is Massachusetts, which takes a statewide census every fifth year. Likewise, each community in Massachusetts takes a municipal census each year. Category:Population

Sources

- [http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/miscellaneous/000507.html U.S. Census Press Release on 1930 Census]
- [http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/spring_2002_soundex_projects.html U.S. Census Press Release on Soundex and WPA]
- Bielenstein, Hans. "Wang Mang, the restoration of the Han dynasty, and Later Han." In The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1, eds. Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank, 223-90 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).

External links

- [http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/census/ Census at the U.S. National Archives]
- [http://www.censusfinder.com Census Finder - Links to census records online for the U.S., UK and Canada]
- [http://www.histpop.org Online Historical Population Reports Project (OHPR)]
- [http://statbel.fgov.be/census/links_en.asp Links to the official websites of various national censuses] Category:Data collection ko:인구 조사 ja:国勢調査 simple:Census

Insurance

Insurance, in law and economics, is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of potential financial loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a potential loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for a reasonable fee and duty of care.

Principles of insurance

The timing or occurrence of the loss must be uncertain. The rate of losses must be relatively predictable: In order to set premiums (prices) insurers must be able to estimate them. If the coverage is unique, the insured will pay a correlatingly higher premium. Lloyd's of London often accepts unique coverages. (e.g. the insuring of Tina Turner's legs) The losses must be predictable on a macro level: Insurers need to know how much it would be required to pay when the insured event occurs. Most types of insurance have maximum levels of payouts, but not all do, notably health insurance. The loss must be significant: The legal principle of De minimis dictates that trivial matters are not covered. Furthermore, rational insurance uses existing insurance when the transaction costs dictate that filing a claim is not rational. The loss must not be catastrophic: If the insurer is insolvent, it will be unable to pay the insured. Note that, in the United States, there exists a little-known system of Guaranty Funds to reimburse insured people whose insurance companies have become insolvent. [http://www.ncigf.org] This program is run by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). [http://www.naic.org/]

Indemnification

An entity seeking to transfer risk (an individual, corporation, or association of any type) becomes the 'insured' party once risk is assumed by an 'insurer', the insuring party, by means of a contract, defined as an insurance 'policy'. This legal contract sets out terms and conditions specifying the amount of coverage (compensation) to be rendered to the insured, by the insurer upon assumption of risk, in the event of a loss, and all the specific perils covered against (indemnified), for the term of the contract. When insured parties experience a loss, for a specified peril, the coverage entitles the policyholder to make a 'claim' against the insurer for the amount of loss as specified by the policy contract. The fee paid by the insured to the insurer for assuming the risk is called the 'premium'. Insurance premiums from many clients are used to fund accounts set aside for later payment of claims - in theory for a relatively few claimants - and for overhead costs. So long as an insurer maintains adequate funds set aside for anticipated losses, the remaining margin becomes their profit.

Example: home insurance

For example, let us assume a home is purchased for $100,000. Knowing the loss of the home from a peril would cause significant financial loss, insurance coverage is ordinarily acquired in the form of a homeowner's policy. The insurance company charges the insured a premium, of perhaps $1,000 a year in this example, for assuming liability for the risk. At this point, the risk of loss has been transferred from the insured to the insurance company. In the event of a covered peril, the insurer pays the claimant the amount of loss according to the terms of the contract, in ordinary circumstances, which may amount to the cost of replacing or repairing the home.

How an insurance company makes money

A customer might pay one or more premium payments over time. The company collects these payments from one or more customers. If something happens which triggers a claim, the company then pays out a certain amount of money. If, during the lifetime of all of the company's insurance contracts, it pays out less than it has taken in, it makes what is known as an underwriting profit. One measure of an insurance company's performance is their loss ratio (incurred losses and loss-adjustment expenses divided by net earned premium). The loss ratio is added to the expense ratio (underwriting expenses divided net premium written) to determine the company's combined ratio. The combined ratio is a reflection of the company's overall underwriting profitability. A combined ratio of less than 100 percent indicates a profit, while anything over 100 is a loss. Two companies that are famous for achieving underwriter profit are American International Group and Berkshire Hathaway. In many cases a company's combined ratio is greater than 100 percent, however the company still manages to make money. This is because in between the time the company collects premiums and when it pays out claims, it can invest that money. The return from these investments can offset an underwriting loss resulting in profit. For example, if a company has to pay out 10 percent more than it took in, but made a 20 percent return on its investment, then it made a 10 percent profit. However, since most insurance companies consider it only prudent to invest in risk-free government bonds, or other lower risk and lower return forms of investments, it's important that the extra amount it has to pay out compared to what it has to take in is less than the percent return of these investments. If it isn't, the company loses money. The extra amount that a company has to pay out can be considered a "cost of funds" and be compared to an interest rate of the same company borrowing money. Because of this, most insurance companies don't have a goal just to have any amount of profit over the cost of funds, but rather to have this cost of funds to be lower than what they would have been able to get by borrowing somewhere else. If this isn't the case, the insurance company does not add any value to their owners, who theoretically could have borrowed money from somewhere else and made the same investments themselves.

Determination of rate structures

The insurer uses actuarial science to quantify the risk they are willing to assume. Data is generated to approximate future claims, ordinarily with reasonable accuracy. Actuarial science uses statistics and probability to analyze the risks associated with the range of perils covered, and these scientific principles are used by insurers, in conjunction with additional factors, to determine rate structures. For example, many individuals purchase homeowner's insurance policies by signing a contract paying a premium to an insurance company. If a covered loss occurs, the insurer is obliged by the terms of the contract to honor the insured's claim. For some policyholders, the amount of insurance benefits received from their insurer will greatly exceed the expense of premiums paid. Others may never make a claim or receive any benefit other than the peace of mind rendered by the security of an insurance policy. When averaged, the total claims expense paid by an insurer should be less than the total premiums paid by their policyholders, with the difference allocated to overhead and profit. Insurance companies also earn investment profits. These are generated by investing premiums received until they are needed to pay claims. This money is called the 'float'. The insurer may make profits or losses from the value change in the float as well as interest or dividend on the float. In the United States, the underwriting loss of property and casualty insurance companies was $142.3 billion in the five years ending 2003. But overall profit for the same period was $68.4 billion, at the result of float. Some insurance industry insiders, most notably Hank Greenberg, do not believe that it is forever possible to sustain a profit from float without an underwriting profit as well.

Gambling analogy

Some people erroneously consider insurance a type of wager (particularly as associated with moral hazard) that executes over the policy period. The insurance company bets that you or your property will not suffer a loss while you put money on the opposite outcome. The difference in the fees paid to the insurance company versus the amount for which they can be held liable if an accident happens is roughly analogous to the odds one might expect when betting on a racehorse (for example, 10 to 1). For this reason, a number of religious groups including the Amish and Muslims avoid insurance and instead depend on support provided by their communities when disasters strike. This can be thought of as "social insurance", as the risk of any given person is assumed collectively by the community who will all bear the cost of rebuilding. In closed, supportive communities where others will actually step in to rebuild lost property, this arrangement can work. Most societies could not effectively support this type of system and the system will not work for large risks. For very large risks, Western insurance can also run into difficulties. This is the reason why most homeowner's insurance does not cover floods. A company that sells homeowner's insurance in a given city can fairly accurately estimate how many fires, tornadoes, and so forth it can expect to pay out. However, a flood may impact a large percentage of the city and the company might be unable to deal with this. An example of this is what happened with Hurricane Katrina. However, since in gaming or gambling the game is supposed to be fixed at the start so that the odds are not supposed to be affected by no-game elements by the players. In fire insurance on the other hand, insurers require that policyholders do risk mitigation like installing sprinklers thereby reducing the odds of loss. In addition, after a loss, say disability, insurers specialize in providing rehabilitation to reduce the loss after it occurs. It is only when the odds of the bad outcome nor the severity of loss can be mitigated that insurance is not true insurance. That is when the existence of the fire policy entices a criminal into arson insurance is not truly insuring anything. The gambling analogy holds with insurance in terms of risk and reward. The difference is in the motivation behind the process. When gambling, you are assuming risk that you would not otherwise be exposed to that has the possibility of either a loss or a gain (speculative risk). With insurance, you are managing risk that you could not otherwise avoid, and which does not present the possibility of gain (pure risk). In other words, gambling is not an insurable risk.

History of insurance

Early methods of transferring or distributing risk were practiced by Babylonian traders as long ago as the 2nd millennium BCE. The Babylonians developed a system which was recorded in the famous Code of Hammurabi, c. 1750 BC and practiced by early Mediterranean sailing merchants. If a merchant received a loan to fund his shipment, he would pay the lender an additional sum in exchange for the lender's guarantee to cancel the loan should the shipment be stolen. A thousand years later, the inhabitants of Rhodes invented the concept of the 'general average'. Merchants whose goods were being shipped together would pay proportionally divided premium which would be used to reimburse any merchant whose goods were jettisoned during storm or sinkage. The Greeks and Romans introduced the origins of health and life insurance c. 600 AD when they organized guilds called "benevolent societies" which acted to care for the families and funeral expenses of members upon death. Guilds in the Middle Ages served a similar purpose. The Talmud deals with several aspects of insuring goods. Insurance became far more sophisticated in post-Renaissance Europe, and specialized varieties developed. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, the growing importance of London as a centre for trade led to rising demand for marine insurance. In the late 1680s, Mr Edward Lloyd opened a coffee house which became a popular haunt of ship owners, merchants and ships’ captains, and thereby a reliable source of the latest shipping news. It became the meeting place for parties wishing to insure cargoes and ships, and those willing to underwrite such ventures. Today, Lloyds of London remains the leading market for marine and other specialist types of insurance, but it works rather differently to the more familiar kinds of insurance. (See Lloyd's of London). Insurance as we know it today can be traced to the Great Fire of London, which in 1666 devoured 13,200 houses. In the aftermath of this disaster Nicholas Barbon opened an office to insure buildings. In 1680 he established England's first fire insurance company, "The Fire Office", to insure brick and frame homes. The first insurance company in the United States provided fire insurance and was formed in Charles Town (modern-day Charleston), South Carolina, in 1732. Benjamin Franklin helped to popularize and make standard the practice of insurance, particularly against fire in the form of perpetual insurance. In 1752, he founded the [http://www.contributionship.com/ Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire]. Franklin's company was the first to make contributions toward fire prevention. Not only did his company warn against certain fire hazards, it refused to insure certain buildings where the risk of fire was too great, such as all wooden houses. In the United States, regulation of the insurance industry is highly Balkanized, with primary responsibility assumed by individual State insurance departments. Whereas insurance markets have become centralized nationally and internationally, State insurance commissioners operate individually, though at times in concert through a national insurance commissioner's organization. In recent years, some have called for a federal regulatory system for insurance similar to that of the banking industry. In the State of New York, which has unique laws in keeping with its stature as a global business center, attorney general Eliot Spitzer has been in a unique position to grapple with major national insurance brokerages. Spitzer alleged that Marsh & McLennan steered business to insurance carriers based on the amount of contingent commissions that could be extracted from carriers, rather than basing decisions on whether carriers had the best deals for clients. Several of the largest commercial insurance brokerages have since stopped accepting contingent commissions and have adopted new business models.

Types of insurance

Any risk that can be quantified probably has a type of insurance to protect it. Among the different types of insurance are:
- Automobile insurance, also known as auto insurance, car insurance and in the UK as motor insurance, is probably the most common form of insurance and may cover both legal liability claims against the driver and loss of or damage to the vehicle itself. Over most of the United States purchasing an auto insurance policy is required to legally operate a motor vehicle on public roads. Recommendations for which policy limits should be used are specified in a number of books.
- Casualty insurance insures against accidents, not necessarily tied to any specific property.
- Credit insurance pays some or all of a loan back when certain things happen to the borrower such as unemployment, disability, or death.
- Financial loss insurance protects individuals and companies against various financial risks. For example, a business might purchase cover to protect it from loss of sales if a fire in a factory prevented it from carrying out its business for a time. Insurance might also cover failure of a creditor to pay money it owes to the insured. Fidelity bonds and surety bonds are included in this category.
- Health insurance covers medical bills incurred because of sickness or accidents.
- Liability insurance covers legal claims against the insured. For example, a homeowner's insurance policy provides the insured with protection in the event of a claim brought by someone who slips and falls on the property, and brings a lawsuit for her injuries. Similarly, a doctor may purchase liability insurance to cover any legal claims against him if his negligence (carelessness) in treating a patient caused the patient injury and/or monetary harm. The protection offered by a liability insurance policy is two-fold: a legal defense in the event of a lawsuit commenced against the policyholder, plus indemnification (payment on behalf of the insured) with respect to a settlement or court verdict.
- Life insurance provides a cash benefit to a decedent's family or other designated beneficiary, and may specifically provide for burial and other final expenses.
- Annuities provide a stream of payments and are generally classified as insurance because they are issued by insurance companies and regulated as insurance. Annuities and pensions that pay a benefit for life are sometimes regarded as insurance against the possibility that a retiree will outlive his or her financial resources. In that sense, they are the complement of life insurance.
- Total permanent disability insurance insurance provides benefits when a person is permanently disabled and can no longer work in their profession, often taken as an adjunct to life insurance.
- Locked Funds Insurance is a little known hybrid insurance policy jointly issued by governments and banks. It is used to protect public funds from tamper by unauthorised parties. In special cases, a government may authorise its use in protecting semi-private funds which are liable to tamper. Terms of this type of insurance are usually very strict. As such it is only used in extreme cases where maximum security of funds is required.
- Marine Insurance covers the loss or damage of goods at sea. Marine insurance typically compensates the owner of merchandise for losses sustained from fire, shipwreck, etc., but excludes losses that can be recovered from the carrier.
- Nuclear incident insurance - damages resulting from an incident involving radioactivive materials is generally arranged at the national level. (For the United States, see Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act.)
- Political risk insurance can be taken out by businesses with operations in countries in which there is a risk that revolution or other political conditions will result in a loss.
- Professional Indemnity Insurance is normally a mandatory requirement for professional practitioners such as Architects, Lawyers, Doctors and Accountants to provide insurance cover against potential negligence claims. Non licensed professionals may also purchase malpractice insurance, it is commonly called Errors and Omissions Insurance and covers a service provider for claims made against them that arise out of the performance of specified professional services. For instance, a web site designer can obtain E&O insurance to cover them for certain claims made by third parties that arise out of negligent performance of web site development services.
- Property insurance provides protection against risks to property, such as fire, theft or weather damage. This includes specialized forms of insurance such as fire insurance, flood insurance, earthquake insurance, home insurance or boiler insurance.
- Terrorism insurance
- Title insurance provides a guarantee that title to real property is vested in the purchaser and/or mortgagee, free and clear of liens or encumbrances. It is usually issued in conjunction with a search of the public records done at the time of a real estate transaction.
- Travel insurance is an insurance cover taken by those who travel abroad, which covers certain losses such as medical expenses and theft.
- Workers' compensation insurance replaces all or part of a worker's wages lost and accompanying medical expense incurred due to a job-related injury. A single policy may cover risks in one or more of the above categories. For example, car insurance would typically cover both property risk (covering the risk of theft or damage to the car) and liability risk (covering legal claims from say, causing an accident). A homeowner's insurance policy in the US typically includes property insurance covering damage to the home and the owner's belongings, liability insurance covering certain legal claims against the owner, and even a small amount of health insurance for medical expenses of guests who are injured on the owner's property. Potential sources of risk that may give rise to claims are known as "perils". Examples of perils might be fire, theft, earthquake, hurricane and many other potential risks. An insurance policy will set out in details which perils are covered by the policy and which are not.

Types of insurance companies

Insurance companies may be classified as
- Life insurance companies, who sell life insurance, annuities and pensions products.
- Non-life or general insurance companies, who sell other types of insurance. In most countries, life and non-life insurers are subject to different regulations, tax and accounting rules. The main reason for the distinction between the two types of company is that life business is very long term in nature — coverage for life assurance or a pension can cover risks over many decades. By contrast, non-life insurance cover usually covers a shorter period, such as one year. Insurance companies are generally classified as either mutual or stock companies. This is more of a traditional distinction as true mutual companies are becoming rare. Mutual companies are owned by the policyholders, while stockholders, (who may or may not own policies) own stock insurance companies. Reinsurance companies are insurance companies that sell policies to other insurance companies, allowing them to reduce their risks and protect themselves from very large losses. The reinsurance market is dominated by a few very large companies, with huge reserves. Captive Insurance companies may be defined as limited purpose insurance companies established with the specific objective of financing risks emanating from their parent group or groups. This definition can sometimes be extended to include some of the risks of the parent company's customers. In short terms, it is an in-house self-insurance vehicle. Captives may take the form of a "pure" entity (which is a 100% a subsidiary of the self-insured parent company); of a "mutual" captive (which insures the collective risks of industry members) and of an "association" captive (which self-insures individual risks of the members of a professional, commercial or industrial association). Captives represent commercial, economic and tax advantages to their sponsors due to the reductions on costs they help create, the ease for insurance risk management and the flexibility for cash flows they generate. Additionally, they may provide coverage of risks which are neither available nor offered in the traditional insurance market at reasonable prices. The types of risk that a captive can underwrite for the parent include property damage, public and products liability, professional indemnity, employee benefits, employers liability, motor and medical aid expenses. The captive's exposure to such risks may be limited by the use of reinsurance. Captives are becoming an increasingly important component of the risk management and risk financing strategy of their parent. This can be understood against the following background:
- heavy and increasing premium costs in almost every line of coverage;
- difficulties in insuring certain types of fortuitous risk;
- differential coverage standards in various parts of the world;
- rating structures which reflect market trends rather than individual loss experience;
- insufficient credit for deductibles and/or loss control efforts. There are also companies known as 'insurance consultants'. Like a mortgage broker, these companies are paid a fee by the customer to shop around for the best insurance policy amongst many companies . Similar to an insurance consultant, an 'insurance broker' also shops around for the best insurance policy amongst many companies. However, with insurance brokers, the fee is usually paid in the form of commission from the insurer that is selected rather than directly from the client. Third Party Administrators are companies that perform underwriting and sometimes claims handling services for insurance companies. These companies often have special expertise that the insurance companies do not have.

Life insurance and saving

Certain life insurance contracts accumulate cash values, which may be taken by the insured if the policy is surrendered or which may be borrowed against. Some policies, such as annuities and endowment policies, are financial instruments to accumulate or liquidate wealth when it is needed. See life insurance. In many countries, such as the US and the UK, tax law provides that the interest on this cash value is not taxable under certain circumstances. This leads to widespread use of life insurance as a tax-efficient method of saving as well as protection in the event of early death.

Financial viability of insurance companies

Financial stability and strength of the insurance company should be a major consideration when purchasing an insurance contract. An insurance premium paid currently provides coverage for losses that might arise many years in the future. For that reason, the viability of the insurance carrier is very important. In recent years, a number of insurance companies have become insolvent, leaving their policyholders with no coverage (or coverage only from a government-backed insurance pool with less attractive payouts for losses). A number of independent rating agencies, such as Best's, provide information and rate the financial viability of insurance companies.

Controversies

Insurance insulates too much

By creating a "security blanket" for its insureds, an insurance company may inadvertently find that its insureds may not be as risk-averse as they should be (since the insured assumes the risk belongs to the insurer). This problem is known to the insurance industry as moral hazard. To reduce their own financial exposure, insurance companies have contractual clauses that mitigate their obligation to provide coverage if the insured engages in some kind of behavior that grossly magnifies their risk of loss or liability. For example, liability insurance providers do not provide coverage for liability arising from intentional torts committed by the insured. Even if a provider was irrational enough to try to provide such coverage, it is against the public policy of most countries to allow such insurance to exist, and thus it is usually illegal.

Complexity of insurance policy contracts

Insurance policies can be complex and some policyholders may not understand all the fees, regulation and coverages included in a policy. As a result, people could buy policies at unfavorable terms. In response to these issues, governments often make detailed regulations that set down minimum standards for policies and govern how they may be advertised and sold. Many individuals purchase policies through an insurance broker. The broker can counsel the policyholder on which coverage to purchase and limitations of the policy. A broker generally holds contracts with many insurers which allows the broker to "shop" the market for the best rates and coverage possible.

Redlining

Redlining is the practice of some insurance companies to deny the issuance of coverage in specific geographic areas, usually due to an increased likelihood of risk; the validity of the assessment may be real or perceived, though it is often attributed to discrimination. Evaluation of risk, when an insurer determines a premium or premium rate structure, considers quantifiable factors, including location, credit scores, gender, occupation, marital status, and education level. However, the use of these essential factors, whether inappropriately or not, are often considered to be 'unfair' or discriminatory by some consumers and their advocates, sometimes leading to political disputes about insurers' determination of premiums and possible government intervention to limit the factors used. A refutation to this is that the job of an insurance underwriter is to properly categorize a given risk as to the likelihood that the loss will occur. Any factor that causes a greater likelihood of loss should in theory, be charged a higher rate. This is a basic principle of insurance and must be followed for insurance companies or groups to operate properly, even for non-profit organizations. Thus, discrimination of potential insureds by legitimate factors is central to insurance. Therefore the only thing that can be considered legitimately "unfair" are practices that discriminate against a given group without actual factors that show that the group is a higher risk. So, eliminating real factors discriminates against other insureds by forcing them to bear part of the cost of the disallowed perceived factors.

Health insurance

Health insurance, which is coverage for individuals to protect them against medical costs, is a highly charged and political issue in the United States, which does not have socialized health coverage. In theory, the market for health insurance provision should function in a manner similar to other insurance coverages, but the skyrocketing cost of health coverage has disrupted markets around the globe, but perhaps most glaringly in the US. Please see health insurance for a discussion of this category.

Dental insurance

Dental insurance, like health insurance, is coverage for individuals to protect them against dental costs. Dental insurance usually goes hand-in-hand with health insurance, with most people in the United States receiving it included in their health insurance plan from their employer. Along with receiving dental insurance from your employer, there are ways to receive dental insurance through resellers and companies for individuals and families; although this way tends to be too expensive for most people.

Insurance Patents

New insurance products can now be protected from copying with a business method patent. This may lead to the more rapid introduction of new insurance products as insurance companies will invest more heavily in new product development if they can be reasonably assured that their patents will keep those products from being copied. A recent example of a new insurance product that is patented is telematic auto insurance. It was independently invented and patented by a major US auto insurance company, Progressive Auto Insurance ([http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5797134.html US patent 5,797,134]) and a Spanish independent inventor, Salvador Minguijon Perez ([http://v3.espacenet.com/origdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=EP0700009&F=8&RPN=EP0700009&DOC=cca34af1984f0dc47b32e9a9722ad1a148 European Patent EP0700009B1]). The basic idea of telematic auto insurance is that a driver's behavior is monitored directly while the person drives and this information is transmitted to an insurance company. The insurance company then assesses the risk of that driver having an accident and charges insurance premiums accordingly. A driver that drives a lot of distance at high speed, for example, will be charged a higher rate than a driver that drives small distances at low speed. A British auto insurance company, Norwich Union, has taken a license to both the Progressive patent and Perez patent. They have made additional investments in infrastructure to developed a commercial offering called "Pay As You Drive" or PAYD. Many independent inventors are in favor of patenting new insurance products since it gives them protection from big companies when they bring their new insurance products to market. Independent inventors account for 70% of the new US patent applications in this area. Many insurance executives are opposed to patenting insurance products because it creates a new risk for them. [The Hartford] insurance company, for example, had to recently pay US$80 million to an independent inventor, Bancorp Services, in order to settle a patent infringement and theft of trade secret lawsuit for a new type of corporate owned life insurance product invented and patented by Bancorp.

The insurance industry and rent seeking

Certain insurance products and practices have been described as rent seeking by critics. That is, insurance companies have been alleged to have certain products or practices that are only useful due to certain government laws (especially tax laws), and that the insurance industry in these cases generally adds no economic value but instead supports politicians who will continue the legal regime which gives the insurance company these benefits. For example, in the United States the current tax rules generally allow owners of variable annuities and variable life insurance to invest in the stock market and defer paying any taxes until withdrawals are made. Often this tax avoidance is the only benefit gained from purchasing these products instead of a mutual fund. Another example is the legal infrastructure which allows life insurance to be held in an irrevocable trust which is used to pay an estate tax while the proceeds itself are immune from the estate tax.

Glossary

- 'Combined Ratio' = loss ratio + expense ratio. Loss Ratio is calculated by dividing the amount of losses by the amount of written premium. Expense ratio is calculated by dividing the amount of operational expenses by the amount of earned premium. A lower number indicates a better return on the amount of capital placed at risk by an insurer.

Quote

- Hank Greenberg told his board of directors, "you can't even spell 'insurance'"[http://editor.slate.msn.com/default.aspx/id/2116167/nav/ais/] (hearsay, April 2005)

External links

- [http://www.iii.org/media/facts/statsbyissue/industry Insurance industry statistics in the U.S.]
- [http://www.insuranceonline.org.uk UK Insurance company reviews and links]
- [http://www.1click-insurance.co.uk/ Insurance directory for buying insurance in the UK]
- [http://www.eh.net/encyclopedia/?article=murphy.life.insurance.us Life Insurance in the United States through World War I]
- [http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/section/insuranc_TheHistoryofInsurance.asp Columbia Encyclopedia: The History of Insurance]
- [http://www.life-assurance-bureau.co.uk/faq-general/faq-home.htm Huge list of insurance based topics - also includes general finance]
- [http://www.insurance-owl.com Insurance information Centre]
- Category:Service industries ja:保険

Asia

Asia is the central and eastern part of Eurasia, and the world's largest continent. Defined by subtracting Europe from Eurasia, Asia is either regarded as a landmass of its own, or as part of Eurasia. The demarcation between Asia and Africa is the isthmus of Suez (although the Sinai Peninsula, being a part of Egypt east of the canal, is often geopolitically considered a part of Africa). The boundary between Asia and Europe runs via the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, to the Black Sea, the Caucasus Mountains, the Caspian Sea, the Ural River to its source, and the Ural Mountains to the Kara Sea at Kara, Russia. About 60 percent of the world's human population lives in Asia. Asia as a political division consists of the eastern part of Eurasia and nearby islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, often excluding Russia. Pacific Ocean

Etymology

The word Asia entered English, via Latin, from Ancient Greek Ασία (Asia; see also List of traditional Greek place names). This name is first attested in Herodotus (c. 440 BC), where it refers to Asia Minor; or, for the purposes of describing the Persian Wars, to the Persian Empire, as opposed to Greece and Egypt. Even before Herodotus, Homer knew of a Trojan ally named Asios, son of Hyrtacus, a ruler over several towns, and elsewhere he describes a marsh as ασιος (Iliad 2, 461). The Greek term may be derived from from Assuwa, a 14th century BC confederation of states in Western Anatolia. Hittite assu- "good" is probably an element in that name. Alternatively, the ultimate etymology of the term may be from the Akkadian word (w)aṣû(m), cognate of Hebrew יצא, which means "to go out", referring to the direction of the sun at sunset in the Middle East. This may be compared to a similar etymology proposed for Europe, as being from Semitic erēbu "to enter" or "set" (of the sun). These etymologies presuppose an originally Mesopotamian or Middle Eastern perspective, which would explain how the term "Asia" first came to be associated with Anatolia as lying west of the Semitic speaking area.

Geographical Regions

See also Geography of Asia. As already mentioned, Asia is a subregion of Eurasia. For further subdivisions based on that term, see North Eurasia and Central Eurasia. Some Asian countries stretch beyond Asia. See Bicontinental country for details about the borderline cases between Asia and Europe, Asia and Africa and Asia and Oceania. Asia itself is often divided in the following subregions:
- North Asia
- Central Asia
- East Asia (or Far East)
- Southeast Asia
- South Asia (or Indian Subcontinent)
- Southwest Asia (or West Asia)

North Asia

This term is rarely used by geographers, but usually it refers to the bigger Asian part of Russia, also known as Siberia. Sometimes the northern parts of other Asian nations, such as Kazakhstan are also included in Northern Asia.

Central Asia

There is no absolute consensus in the usage of this term. Usually, Central Asia includes:
- the Central Asian Republics of Kazakhstan (excluding its small European territory), Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan.
- Afghanistan, Mongolia, and the western regions of China are also sometimes included.
- Former Soviet states in the Caucasus region. Central Asia is currently geopolitically important because international disputes and conflicts over oil pipelines, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Chechnya, as well as the presence of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan.

East Asia (or Far East)

This area includes:
- The Pacific Ocean islands of Taiwan and Japan.
- North and South Korea on the Korean Peninsula.
- China, but sometimes only the eastern regions Sometimes the nations of Mongolia and Vietnam are also included in East Asia. More informally, Southeast Asia is included in East Asia on some occasions.

Southeast Asia

This region contains the Malay Peninsula, Indochina and islands in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean. The countries it contains are:
- In mainland Southeast Asia, the countries Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
- In Maritime Southeast Asia, the countries of Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia (some of the Indonesian islands also lie in the Melanesia region of Oceania). East Timor (also Melanesian) is sometimes included too. The country of Malaysia is divided in two by the South China Sea, and thus has both a mainland and island part.

South Asia (or Indian Subcontinent)

South Asia is also referred to as the Indian Subcontinent. It includes:
- the Himalayan States of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh.
- the Indian Ocean nations of Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

Southwest Asia (or West Asia)

This can also be called by the Western term Middle East, which is commonly used by Europeans and Americans. Middle East (to some interpretations) is often used to also refer to some countries in North Africa. Southwest Asia can be further divided into:
- Anatolia (i.e. Asia Minor), constituting the Asian part of Turkey.
- The island nation of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea.
- The Levant or Near East, which includes Syria, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and the Asian portion of Egypt.
- The Arabian peninsula, including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Yemen and occasionally Kuwait.
- The Caucasus region, including Armenia, a tiny portion of Russia and almost the whole of Georgia and Azerbaijan.
- The Iranian Plateau, containing Iran and parts of other nations. Also see Gulf States, for a different grouping involving several of the above countries.

Economy

Main article: Economy of Asia In terms of gross domestic product (PPP), Asia's largest economy wholly within Asia is that of the PRC (People's Republic of China), however the economy of the E.U. (European Union), one state of which (Cyprus) lies within Asia, is the largest in the world. The E.U.'s status as a supranational union, rather than a sovereign state, makes the claim questionable, especially since, when considered alone, the economy of Cyprus is one of the smallest in both the E.U. and Asia, and not many times larger than that of East Timor, the Asian state with the smallest economy (although as of 2005 there is no reliable data for either Iraq or North Korea). Over the last decade, China's and India's economies have been growing rapidly, both with an average annual growth rate over 6%. PRC is the world's third largest economy after the E.U. and U.S.A., followed by Japan and India as the world's fourth and fifth largest economies respectively (then followed by the European nations: Germany, U.K., France and Italy). In terms of exchange rates however, Japan has the largest economy in Asia and the third largest in the world. Trade blocs:
- Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
- Association of Southeast Asian Nations
- Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement
- Commonwealth of Independent States
- South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
- South Asia Free Trade Agreement (proposed)

Natural resources

Asia is by a considerable margin the largest continent in the world, and is rich in natural resources, such as Petroleum and iron. High productivity in agriculture, especially of rice, allows high population density of countries in the warm and humid area. Other main agricultural products include wheat and chicken. Forestry is extensive throughout Asia except Southwest and Central Asia. Fishing is a major source of food in Asia, particularly in Japan.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing in Asia has traditionally been strongest in East and Southeast Asia, particularly in PRC, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. The industry varies from manufacturing cheap goods such as toys to high-tech goods such as computers and cars. Many companies from Europe, North America, and Japan have significant operations in the developing Asia to take avantage of its abundant supply of cheap labor. One of the major employers in manufacturing in Asia is the textile industry. Much of the world's supply of clothing and footwear now originates in Southeast Asia.

Financial and other services

Asia has three main financial centers. They are in Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo. Call centers are becoming major employers in India, due to the availablity of many well-educated English speakers. The rise of the business process outsourcing industry has seen the rise of India and China as the other financial centers.

Early history

Main article: History of Asia The history of Asia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal regions, East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East, linked by the interior mass of the Eurasian steppe. The coastal periphery was home to some of the world's earliest known civilizations, with each of the three regions developing early civilizations around fertile river valleys. The civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and the Yangtze shared many similarities and likely exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel. Other notions such as that of writing likely developed individually in each area. Cities, states and empires developed in these lowlands. The steppe region had long been inhabited by mounted nomads, and from the central steppes they could reach all areas of Asia. The earliest known such central expansion out of the steppe is that of the Indo-Europeans, who spread their languages into the Middle East, India, and in the Tocharians to the borders of China. The northern part of Asia, covering much of Siberia, was inaccessible to the steppe nomads, due to the dense forests and the tundra. These areas were very sparsely populated. The centre and periphery were kept separate by mountains and deserts. The Caucasus, Himalaya, Karakum Desert and Gobi Desert formed barriers that the steppe horsemen could only cross with difficulty. While technologically and culturally, the urban city dwellers were more advanced, they could do little militarily to defend against the mounted hordes of the steppe. However, the lowlands did not have enough open grasslands to support a large horsebound force. Thus the nomads who conquered states in China, India, and the Middle East were soon forced to adapt to the local societies.

Population density

The following table lists countries and dependencies by population density in inhabitants and km². Unlike the figures in the country articles, the figures in this table are based on areas including inland water bodies (lakes, reservoirs, rivers) and may therefore be lower here. The whole of Egypt, Russia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey are referred to in the table, although they are only partly in Asia.

Religion

A large majority of the people in the world who practice a religious faith practice one which was founded in Asia. Religions founded in Asia and with a majority of their contemporary adherents in Asia include:
- Bahá'í Faith (slightly more than half of all adherents are in Asia)
- Buddhism (Japan,Sri Lanka, Korea, Singapore, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia, India)
- Hinduism (India, Singapore, Malaysia, Nepal, Bali)
- Islam (Central, South, and Southwest Asia, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia)
- Jainism (India)
- Shinto (Japan)
- Sikhism(India, Malaysia, Hong kong)
- Taoism (China, Vietnam, Singapore, and Taiwan)
- Zoroastrianism (Iran, India, Pakistan) Religions founded in Asia that have the majority of their contemporary adherents in other regions include:
- Christianity (South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, East Timor, India and the Philippines)
- Judaism (slightly fewer than half of its adherents reside in Asia)

References

External links

- http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/asia.html
- http://www.freeworldmaps.net/asia/index.html
- [http://www.alloexpat.com AlloExpat - Asia Information & Forums]
- [http://www.asiaexpat.info Asia Expat Forum - Discuss this region with expatriates] Category:Continents zh-min-nan:A-chiu ko:아시아 ms:Asia ja:アジア simple:Asia th:ทวีปเอเชีย

Grid plan

The grid plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid.

Ancient grid plans

The grid plan dates from antiquity; some of the earliest planned cities were built using grids. A workers' village at Giza, Egypt (2570-2500 BC) housed a rotating labor force, and was laid out in blocks of long galleries separated by streets in a formal grid. Many pyramid-cult cities used a common orientation: a north-south axis from the royal palace, and an east-west axis from the temple, meeting at a central plaza where King and God merged and crossed. During the same period in history, Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley (present-day Pakistan) was built with blocks divided by a grid of straight streets running north-south and east-west. Each block was subdivided by small lanes. Hammurabi (17th century BC) was a king of the Babylonian Empire who made Babylon the world's first great metropolis. He rebuilt Bablylon, building and restoring temples, city walls, public buildings, and building canals for irrigation. The streets of Babylon were wide and straight, intersected approximately at right angles, and were paved with bricks and bitumen. The tradition of grid plans is continuous in China from the 15th century BC onward. Guidelines put into written form in the Kaogong ji during the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) stated: "A capital city should be square on plan. Three gates on each side of the perimeter lead into the nine main streets that crisscross the city and define its grid-pattern. And for its layout the city should have the Royal Court situated in the south, the Marketplace in the north, the Imperial Ancestral Temple in the east and the Altar to the Gods of Land and Grain in the west." The first planned Greek city was probably Miletus, built after 479 BC. Its gridded design has been credited to Hippodamus (although this may be apocryphal), a Greek intellectual associated with the Pythagoreans. The grid plan was a common tool of Roman city planning, based originally on its use in military camps known as castra. One of the most striking extant Roman grid patterns can be found in the ruins of Timgad in modern-day Algeria. The Roman grid is characterized by a nearly perfectly orthogonal layout of streets, all crossing each other at right angles, and by the presence of two main streets, set at right angles from each other and called the cardo and the decumanus. Teotihuacan, near modern-day Mexico City, is the largest ancient grid-plan site in the Americas. By 150 AD, the city's grid covered eight square miles.

Asia from the first millennium AD

As Japan and the Korean peninsula became politically unified in the 7th century AD, those societies adopted Chinese grid-planning principles in numerous locations. The ancient capitals of Japan, such as Fujiwara-Kyô (694-710 AD), Nara (Heijô-Kyô, 710-784 AD), and Heian-Kyô (794-1868 AD) used grid plans. So did Kyongju in Shilla (present-day Korea), also of the same era. The grid-planning tradition in Asia continued through the beginning of the 20th century.

Europe and its colonies

New European towns were planned using grids beginning in the 12th century, most prodigiously in the [http://www.nucouncil.net/nucouncil.asp?a=spf&pfk=3&gk=59 bastides] of southern France that were built during the 13th and 14th centuries. Medieval European new towns using grid plans were widespread, ranging from Wales to the Florentine region. Many were built on ancient grids originally established as Roman colonial outposts. The Roman model was also used in Spanish fortification settlements during the Reconquista of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was subsequently applied in the new cities established during the Spanish colonization of the Americas, after the founding of La Laguna (Canary Islands) in 1496. In 1573, King Phillip II of Spain compiled the [http://www.arc.miami.edu/Law%20of%20Indies.html Laws of the Indies] to guide the construction and administration of colonial communities. The Laws specified a square or rectangular central plaza with eight principal streets running from the plaza's corners. Hundreds of grid-plan communities throughout the Americas were established according to this pattern, echoing the practices of earlier Indian civilizations. The grid plan became popular with the start of the Renaissance in Northern Europe. In 1606, the newly founded city of Mannheim in Germany was the first Renaissance city laid out on the grid plan. Later came the New Town in Edinburgh, and many new towns and cities in Australia, the United States and Canada.

Early United States

Arguably the most famous grid plan in history is the plan for New York City formulated in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, a visionary proposal by the state legislature of New York for the development of most of upper Manhattan. Often, some of the streets in a grid are numbered (First, Second, etc.), lettered, or arranged in alphabetical order. (Washington, DC has examples of all three). In the westward development of the United States, the use of the grid plan was nearly universal in the construction of new towns. One of the largest advantages of the adoption of grid plan was that allowed the rapid subdivision and auction of a large parcel of land. For example, when the legislature of the Republic of Texas decided in 1839 to move the capital to the new site along the Colorado River, the functioning of the government required the rapid population of the town, which was named Austin. Charged with the task, Edwin Waller designed a fourteen block grid that fronted the river on 640 acres (2.6 sq km). After surveying the land, Waller organized the sale of 306 lots nearly immediately, and by the end of the year the entire Texas government had arrived by oxcart to the new site. The use of the grid on the American frontier was not, however, strictly functional. In the case of Austin, Waller designed a broad north-south thoroughfare, Congress Avenue, that bisected the grid leading up from the river to the site where the new Texas State Capitol was to be constructed. The main east-west thoroughfare was Pecan Street, later renamed Sixth Street. The two thoroughfares have remained the primary arteries through downtown to this day, illustrating a successful adaption of the Roman plan to the New World.

Late 19th century to the present

Ildefonso Cerdá defined a concept of urban planning, based on the grid, that he applied to the Barcelona Eixample. In the United States, the grid system was widely used in most major cities and their suburbs until the 1960s. However, during the 1920s, the rapid adoption of the automobile caused a panic among urban planners, who claimed that speeding cars would eventually kill tens of thousands of small children per year. They called for an inwardly focused "superblock" arrangement that minimized through automobile traffic and discouraged it from traveling on anything but arterial roads; traffic generators, such as apartment complexes and shops, would be restricted to the edges of the superblock, along the arterial. This paradigm prevailed between approximately 1930 and 1960, especially in Los Angeles, where notable examples include Leimert Park (an early example) and Panorama City (a late-period one). In the 1960s, traffic engineers and urban planners abandoned the grid virtually wholesale in favor of a "street hierarchy." This is a thoroughly "asymmetric" street arrangement in which a residential subdivision--often surrounded by a noise wall or a security gate--is completely separated from the road network except for one or two connections to arterial roads. In a way, this is a return to medieval styles: as noted in Spiro Kostof's seminal history of urban design, The City Shaped, there is a strong resemblance between the street arrangements of modern American suburbs and those of medieval Arab and Moorish cities. In each case, the community unit at hand--the clan or extended family in the Muslim world, the economically homogenous subdivision in modern suburbia--isolates itself from the larger urban scene by using dead ends and culs-de-sac.

Cardinal directions

Four Cardinal Directions

Four directions are north, east, south and west. Or forward, back, left and right. Cardinal directions or cardinal points are the four principal directions or points of the compass in plane. The Four Cardinal Directions correspond to the following degrees of a compass: North: 0 (= 360) degrees, East: 90 degrees, South: 180 degrees and West: 270 degrees (see azimuth).

Germanic origin of names

During the Migration Period, the Germanic languages' names for the cardinal directions entered the Romance languages, where they replaced the Latin names borealis (or septentrionalis), australis (or meridionalis), occidentalis and orientalis. See French language#The Franks.

Five Directions

Traditional Chinese culture and some others view the center as a fifth principal direction. In Asia, each direction is often identified with a color, and geographical or ethnic terms may contain the name of the color instead of the name of the corresponding direction. [http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/5dirns.htm Ireland] [http://www.yoniversum.nl/dakini/dirtib5.html Tibet] [http://www.shaolin.org.cn/html/html/ci/wufangfo/wufangbaofo.htm China] Color metaphors for race#Central Asia

Central Asia

The five cardinal directions were historically identified with colors. This was common to the Central Asian cultural area and was carried west by the westward migration of the Turks. These directional color terms were applied both to geographic features and sometimes to populations as well.
- North: Black
- Heilongjiang "Black Dragon River" province in Northeast China, also the Amur River
- Black Sea: north of Turkey
- Kara-Khitan Khanate
- South: Red
- Red River (Vietnam): south of China
- Red Sea: south of Turkey
- East: Green or Blue (青 "qīng" corresponds to green or blue)
- Qingdao (Tsingtao) "Green Island": a city on the east coast of China
- West: White
- White Sheep Turkmen
- Ak Deniz "White Sea" in Turkish indicates the Sea of Marmara, the Aegean Sea, or the Mediterranean Sea
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