Man’s Best Friend

A
Humans have been keeping pets for almost as long as we have been living in houses. Even in
the Greek legend of Odysseus, his dog Argus gets a mention - the faithful hound is the only one
who recognises him after his lengthy voyage.

Most animals were originally brought into households to work, as hunting dogs or using cats to
catch mice for example. But the advantages of keeping a pet go far beyond simply using them as
labour. Pets are widely accepted as having a beneficial effect on your health, but animals can
also have a positive impact on your emotional and mental well-being, too.

B
In 1995 the Australian National People and Pets survey discovered that pet owners visited their
doctors less often than their pet-less friends, and were at less risk of suffering heart attacks and
strokes. However, the major reason given for pet owners’ better physical health was that they are
more active than the rest of the population. Dog owners in particular take more recreational
walks, which improves their overall fitness levels. But the survey also uncovered the social
benefits of having a pet, saying: ‘Over 60 per cent of pet owners say that having a pet around
when people visit makes it easier to get into conversation and create a friendly atmosphere.’

C
So, does it matter what type of pet you have? Do different pets have different health benefits?
Dr McNicholas says it depends what kind of relationship you want to have with your pet. The
first is the ‘human’ type of relationship. This is when pets provide companionship and a
supportive role. Dogs or cats would fall into this category. The second is keeping a pet for social
reasons. Dog walkers always meet other dog walkers, for example. The third relationship is
when your pet is also your hobby - such as keeping exotic animals. In this category you benefit
from the calming effect of watching the animals but also gain the social aspect of joining clubs
or societies.

D
The health benefits of pets have become so widely accepted that many animals are now used in
hospitals as part of patients’ recovery programmes. The charity Pets as Therapy (PaT) has 3,500
dogs and 90 cats currently working for them. The animals make weekly visits to nearly 5,000
hospital wards, residential care homes or special care schools in a bid to boost patients’ well-
being. The animals may be used to help stroke victims regain the use of their limbs. ‘Patients
want to stroke the animals so this encourages them to move their arms or hands again,’ says
Maureen Hennis, chief executive of PaT. Both the PaT dogs and cats are taken into care homes
to provide comfort for the residents. Many of them have given up their own pets before going
into homes, so the animals help bring a sense of normality to their lives.
E
PaT animals also work with people suffering from depression. They can sometimes get through
the barriers these patients put up, where humans have failed in the past,’ says Maureen. PaT is
currently working with a psychologist from Sunderland Royal Hospital treating children with
animal phobias. The results so far have been ‘very encouraging’. We are enabling these children
to rejoin the community,’ says Maureen. ‘They can now walk to school or go to the park when
previously they were too frightened to do so.’

F
SeeSaw, a bereavement charity set up especially for children, also uses animals to build
emotional bridges. Kathy Moore, a counsellor and project co-ordinator for Macmillan Cancer
Relief, takes her dog Do-Good with her when she meets children who have a parent or sibling
who is dying from a terminal illness. Most children are unwilling to open up to a stranger, but
Kathy said Do-Good helps them learn to trust her. ‘He can provide such a good way into my first
contact with a child,’ she says. ‘Even if they are a little wary of me, most children can’t resist
Do-Good - he’s got a great personality and we all go on walks together.’

G
Despite the growing body of evidence that pets are beneficial for our health, scientists have not
been able to answer one crucial question - are dogs better than cats? Dr McNicholas says it does
not matter what type of pet you have, as long as it fits into your lifestyle. ‘If you hate long walks
but have ‘bouncy’ dogs that need walking, that is going to push your stress levels way up,’ she
says. ‘You need to do your homework beforehand, so both you and your pet can benefit from the
relationship. Animals really can give you unconditional love. They don’t care if you are having a
bad hair day - you can just be yourself.’

BLOOD SPORTS
Although the term "blood sports" is no longer in popular usage, the words are sufficiently
descriptive to suggest a workable definition. Violent sporting activities that inflicted serious
injuries, pain, or death—not as ancillary or accidental dangers but as direct goals—constituted
blood sports as they were understood by early modern English people and by colonial
Americans. Also called the "butcherly sports," these activities commonly pitted animals against
animals, humans against animals, or humans against humans.

Few sporting activities in the twentieth- or twenty-first-century United States would qualify as
blood sports in the truest sense of the phrase. Boxing and ice hockey do frequently spill blood,
but theoretically the rules of each sport are designed to prevent excessive injuries, not encourage
them. Bullfighting—illegal and not practiced in the United States—would qualify as a blood
sport, as would dogfighting, which is also illegal throughout the United States. So, too, would
cockfighting, which is illegal in forty-seven states, but wildly popular in several geographic
areas.
Dogfights and cockfights to the death were common. So, too, was bearbaiting, in which
participants ritually tortured a bear—as modern bullfighters torture a bull—and then inevitably
slaughtered the subject animal to the cheers of bloodthirsty spectators. Falconry also might
qualify as a blood sport, but if so, we may have to consider adding modern hunting, which many
present Americans would reject on the grounds that causing pain is never a primary goal of a
hunter. He or she would prefer a clean shot that delivered a minimum of pain instead of a slow,
lingering, ritual death. Although no one referred to public executions as blood sports, in a sense
they were: huge crowds in England and the English colonies gathered to watch criminals be
hanged sometimes in groups of more than five.

Neither a gentlemen nor a roughneck could back down without losing face in this highly status-
conscious male society. Fights, therefore, were epidemic in taverns, and they were bloody as a
general matter of course, beyond almost anything we could imagine in similar circumstances in
the twentieth or twenty-first centuries. Gouging eyes, tearing genitals, and biting ears were
commonplace. Curiously enough, however, fighters often made arrangements about what was to
be and what was not to be tolerated before the fighting began: thus, in a strange way, rules did
apply to these battles, and an honor code dictated adherence to them. But these bloody contests
were epidemic.

The same spirit of competitiveness and face-saving at all costs frequently

turned horse racing in the colonial south into a blood sport. The quarter horse and the quarter-
mile race—a slam, bam, twenty-five-second or so duel between two rivals—became the norm of
southern racing. But planters often arranged the races to take place in congested physical
circumstances, and riders commonly attacked each other during the race. Always a risky
business, horse racing in modern times tries to minimize injuries to man and beast, but, in the
colonial south, the win-at-any-cost culture promoted injuries to both. Well-praised was the rider
who unseated his opponent and left him to be trampled. And, of course, arguments over horse
races after they were finished often spilled over into bloody fights between partisans.

Cockfighting was more than just a means of recreation. Planters viewed their best cocks as
extensions of their own manliness and competed against their fellow gentlemen with an
ungentlemanly ferocity. They hired trainers or trained slaves to be cock handlers, arranged all-
day or sometimes two-day battles involving scores of cocks from a large surrounding geographic
radius, bet heavily on their own birds, and crowed in bloody triumph when they won. The birds
wore sharpened spurs and fought to the death. Males of all ages and stations in life—children,
poor farmers, and slaves—all formed the outer rings around the gentlemen who crowded the
cockpits. Some particularly successful cocks were known throughout a county and remembered
by name for years after they suffered the inevitable defeat.

Save the Animals: Stop Animal Testing

Using animals in research and to test the safety of products has been a topic of heated debate for
decades. People have different feelings for animals; many look upon animals as companions
while others view animals as a means for advancing medical techniques or furthering
experimental research. However individuals perceive animals, the fact remains that animals are
being exploited by research facilities and cosmetics companies all across the country and all
around the world. Although humans often benefit from successful animal research, the pain, the
suffering, and the deaths of animals are not worth the possible human benefits. Therefore,
animals should not be used in research or to test the safety of products.

First, animals' rights are violated when they are used in research. Tom Regan, a philosophy
professor at North Carolina State University, states: "Animals have a basic moral right to
respectful treatment .This inherent value is not respected when animals are reduced to being
mere tools in a scientific experiment". Animals and people are alike in many ways; they both
feel, think, behave, and experience pain. Thus, animals should be treated with the same respect
as humans. Yet animals' rights are violated when they are used in research because they are not
given a choice. Animals are subjected to tests that are often painful or cause permanent damage
or death, and they are never given the option of not participating in the experiment. Regan
further says, for example, that "animal [experimentation] is morally wrong no matter how much
humans may benefit because the animal's basic right has been infringed. Risks are not morally
transferable to those who do not choose to take them". Animals do not willingly sacrifice
themselves for the advancement of human welfare and new technology. Their decisions are made
for them because they cannot vocalize their own preferences and choices. When humans decide
the fate of animals in research environments, the animals' rights are taken away without any
thought of their well-being or the quality of their lives. Therefore, animal experimentation should
be stopped because it violates the rights of animals.

Animals feel pain in many of the same ways that humans do; in fact, their reactions to pain are
virtually identical (both humans and animals scream, for example). When animals are used for
product toxicity testing or laboratory research, they are subjected to painful and frequently
deadly experiments. Blindness, scarring, and death are generally the end results. Thus, because
animals are subjected to agonizing pain, suffering and death when they are used in laboratory
and cosmetics testing, animal research must be stopped to prevent more waste of animal life.

Finally, the testing of products on animals is completely unnecessary because viable alternatives
are available. Many cosmetic companies, for example, have sought better ways to test their
products without the use of animal subjects. Researchers can test the potential damage that a
product can do to the skin by using this artificial "skin" instead of testing on animals. Computers
have also been used to simulate and estimate the potential damage that a product or chemical can
cause, and human tissues and cells have been used to examine the effects of harmful substances.
All of these tests have been proven to be useful and reliable alternatives to testing products on
live animals. Therefore, because effective means of product toxicity testing are available without
the use of live animal specimens, testing potentially deadly substances on animals is
unnecessary.

However, many people believe that animal testing is justified because the animals are sacrificed
to make products safer for human use and consumption. The problem with this reasoning is that
the animals' safety, well-being, and quality of life is generally not a consideration. Experimental
animals are virtually tortured to death, and all of these tests are done in the interest of human
welfare, without any thought to how the animals are treated. Others respond that animals
themselves benefit from animal research. But the value we place on the quality of their lives is
determined by their perceived value to humans". Making human's lives better should not be
justification for torturing and exploiting animals. The value that humans place on their own lives
should be extended to the lives of animals as well.

Still other people think that animal testing is acceptable because animals are lower species than
humans and therefore have no rights. These individuals feel that animals have no rights because
they lack the capacity to understand or to knowingly exercise these rights. However, animal
experimentation in medical research and cosmetics testing cannot be justified on the basis that
animals are lower on the evolutionary chart than humans since animals resemble humans in so
many ways. Many animals, especially the higher mammalian species, possess internal systems
and organs that are identical to the structures and functions of human internal organs. Also,
animals have feelings, thoughts, goals, needs, and desires that are similar to human functions and
capacities, and these similarities should be respected, not exploited, because of the selfishness of
humans.

In conclusion, animal testing should be eliminated because it violates animals' rights, it causes
pain and suffering to the experimental animals, and other means of testing product toxicity are
available. Humans cannot justify making life better for themselves by randomly torturing and
executing thousands of animals per year to perform laboratory experiments or to test products.

Animals should be treated with respect and dignity, and this right to decent treatment is not
upheld when animals are exploited for selfish human gain. After all, humans are animals too.

The Importance of Art Appreciation and Art

Education
The term art encompasses a large variety of works, from paintings to sculptures, architecture to
design, and in modern times, digital art. Everyone can appreciate and marvel at art, and being
subjective in nature, different art forms appeal to different people. Art appreciation, however,
refers to the exploration and analysis of the art forms that we are exposed to. It can be highly
subjective, depending on an individuals personal tastes and preferences, or can be done on the
basis of several grounds such as elements of design and mastery displayed in the piece. Art
appreciation also involves a deeper look into the setting and historical implication and
background of the piece, a study of its origins.

Art is dynamic, with new trends and styles emerging at a fast pace. However, the final attempt of
the artist is that it speaks to the viewer on a personal level and can be interpreted in a variety of
ways. Art opens up the stream of subconscious and intends to personally touch every person that
comes across it.

Art appreciation is extremely relevant for multiple reasons. It is a good way to understand the
history behind the work, and the period from which the piece originated. Artists often reflect the
problems that they face, and the issues of the society in their work. By analyzing and putting
ourselves in the mind of the artist, we can better study how differently society functioned then,
compared to now. We can empathize and relate to the problems they faced on a personal level.

Art is meant to stimulate thought and conversation between its viewers. By reflecting on a piece
of art, we delve into our own experiences and nostalgia, thus a piece of art means something
different to every person that comes across it. Art appreciation helps open up the mindset of the
people, by listening to different perspective es and views as well as interpretations of the art, it
encourages thoughtful conversation and the understanding that there is more than one approach
to everything.

For many people, art is meant to express something that we ourselves feel unable to express or
convey. Through its visual medium it evokes feelings of joy, sadness, anger and pain. That is
why art appreciation is so important in bringing that one final element to complete the work, and
that is our

interpretation. Our perspective brings the artwork to life as it changes for every person around it.

It is important to foster art appreciation and analysis, as it helps us value the art in how it appeals
to us and what it means to each person. It delves into the history and the story behind the art, as
well as a look into the lives of the artists. It enables one to critically analyze a work, along lines
of design, mastery and techniques. Most importantly, however, art appreciation stimulates
though and analysis, provokes an individual to look past what meets the eye and open our mind
to the views of others.

Art education means different things to different people, but the crux of it, is that it imparts
knowledge and education in various fields of the arts like music, theatre, dance and visual arts.
Society functions in such a way now, that a majority of the manual and technical jobs that were
done by people before, can be done by machines. The main demand lies in innovation and
creativity, thinking outside the box and having good interpersonal skills.

Just like mathematics or science, art requires regular practice and is not something that can be
achieved through sporadic learning. Regular engagement and education in the arts has to be
imbibed in the school curriculum for it to have an effect on the students.

Some of the most obvious benefits of art education is that it encourages creativity and
engagement in a different way from what is usually taught in the school. Instead of being fed
facts they can explore their interests and indulge in what excites them the most. Apart from this,
art has a wide range of uses and influences on its students. It improves motor skills, simple
things like mastering a paint brush or using crayons and pencils help develop finer motor skills,
especially in younger children. Studying the arts also helps improve academic performance, not
just through creativity, but it improves learning in areas like math and science as well as the
literary field.

Art education also fosters collaboration and group learning. Often times, it brings people and
children together, helping them learn from, and aid each other as they persevere towards creating
something. It improves emotional balance and helps kids become team players. It also improves
accountability, as kids claim responsibility for their mistakes and accept their faults when
working together.

When creating something, the decision of what colors and what medium to use is left entirely to
our own choices and preferences. Art education helps improve decision making, boosts the self
confidence and makes children more self-assured, as they learn about what appeals to them, and
they directly influence how their final product will look. They can become self-learners,
constantly challenging themselves, and become more focused

on achieving their goals.

Today’s world is steeped in the Information Age. With all kinds of knowledge so readily
available at our fingertips, it doesn’t matter what you know, but rather how you use what you
know. Every academic and professional institution is looking for what you bring to the table in
terms of ideas, innovation and team-playing. An education in the arts is integral in developing
these fundamental, yet abstract components of human knowledge and skill. Learning about art in
all its forms makes students challenge the world they see around them, looking for multiple ways
to solve problems and create something new. The true talent of man now lies in his ability to
draw from many wells”, and art is the medium through which we can access those wells.

Art and Creative Acts That Were Censored

Freedom of speech and creativity are crucial for developing vibrant, pluralistic, and democratic
societies. In nearly all corners of the globe, whether through political satire, a protest song, a
poster or a doodle on a wall in a public space, artists remain creative and rebellious. Despite
censorship — or perhaps because of it — unwieldy artists and curators continue to be at the
forefront of the dangerous but necessary work of driving awareness and social change. Think of
places like Hong Kong where an entire Wikipedia page is now dedicated to Art of the Umbrella
Movement.

Yet throughout the world, freedom of speech and creativity continued to face acute threats in
2019. Whether through physical attack, legal prosecution, digital surveillance, detainment, or
intimidation, artistic creativity continued to pose existential threats to the axis of dominant,
hegemonic powers and states all around the world.

The past year proved that art continues to incite all manner of prohibition. In parts of the world
such as Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China artists were subjected to the censorship
and physical intimidation that journalists have historically endured. In most of these countries,
the rights of women, LGBTQ+ and other members of minority communities remain under
continuous threat, especially in autocratic societies with few governmental checks and balances
to protect artists and journalists.

In the West, censorship works differently. Due to the increasing prevalence of surveillance
technologies and the consolidation of major technology firms such as those involved in the
Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram merger, censorship has become embedded into the digital
infrastructure itself. While it may be simple and straightforward to identify unique cases of
physical intimidation and/or the curtailing of creativity due to political content, it is much more
difficult to track cultural and artistic censorship online where keywords and political content can
be filtered through sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.

The brief list below shows that the silencing of cultural expression continues to happen in
different forms all over the world. Contrary to popular opinion, censorship is not confined to
dictatorships. Whether in autocratic or democratic countries, the Global North or the Global
South, rich or poor

countries, unlawful attacks against art and creativity proliferated in 2019.

Australia
Anti-war artworks were censored from a major national touring exhibition at

Queensland Gallery. Works by one of the nine exhibiting artists, Abdul Abdullah, a Muslim
whose work addresses the politicization of Muslim identity within mainstream Australian
culture, were removed by gallery staff without warning. The works were taken down after local
city councilor, Martin Bella, led calls for their removal. The paintings depict Australian soldiers
in full battle gear with smiley faces drawn over their images. According to Esther Anatolitis,
executive director of the National Association of Visual Artists in Australia, the situation is
“deeply unfair to the veterans and veterans’ groups who’ve been misled on work they never saw
by an artist they never met.”

Brazil

Early in 2019, under the leadership of the newly elected far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, the
country literally dissolved its Ministry of Culture, the main source of art funding servicing a
country of 214 million people. The policy decision predictably enraged many of the country’s
artists and the staffs of art institutions, many of whom had existed on brink of precarity for quite
some time already, but who are now facing especially acute existential threats to their
programming. Since his election in January, Bolsonaro has also actively censored the media all
the while denying the devastating impact of wildfires destroying Brazil’s rainforests through a
disinformation campaign, censoring all art, culture and media that does not support his narrative.

China

In 2019, China ramped up a campaign of repression against the Uighurs, a Muslim minority
group located in the northwest of the country in the Xinjiang region, where the state has been
deploying an Orwellian mix of AI, facial recognition and “reeducation” camps. Alongside
Beijing’s suppression of the Uighurs, China continues to block the publishing of information on
a number of other issues including anything related to Tiananmen Square or Hong Kong
independence — issues that remain at the forefront of online content policing in the world’s most
populous country.
TikTok, the popular video-sharing platform founded in China, also stood accused this year of
preventing users from posting content relating to the Uighurs. While Shutterstock, the US-based
company that provides royalty-free stock images, photos, videos, and music on the internet, was
found to have been blocking political image searches in order to comply with China’s strict rules
on censorship.

In the visual arts, Hyperallergic reported in November that an exhibition by Chinese-American

artist Hung Liu had been censored after local authorities in Beijing objected to some of the works
and refused to issue import permits for others. According to the report, authorities voiced
concerns about works that depicted the artist as a young fighter at the end of China’s Cultural
Revolution. And earlier in the year, China’s boycott of a film festival in Taiwan helped raise the
event’s international profile.

Public Funding for Arts and Culture in 2019

Public funding for the arts in the United States comes from federal, state, and local governments.
Congressional allocations to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), legislative
appropriations to state arts agencies, and local government funds going to local arts agencies
provide useful indicators of public support for the arts and culture. Together, these agencies and
organizations distribute grants and services to artists and cultural organizations across the nation.

In Fiscal Year (FY) 2019, federal, state, and local public funding for the arts totaled $1.39
billion, for a total per capita investment of $4.19. Comprising this total were:
$155 million in appropriations to the NEA, an increase of 1.4% from FY2018. $370.5 million in
legislative appropriations to state and jurisdictional arts agencies, an increase of 3.6% from
FY2018.

$860.0 million in funds allocated by municipal and county governments to local arts agencies,1
which remained flat from 2018.

Trends Over Time

In nominal dollars (not adjusted for inflation), public funding for the arts increased by almost
20% over the past 20 years. State and local funding patterns correlate with periods of economic
growth and recession. State arts agency aggregate appropriations reached a high point in 2001,
while local funding reported a historical high point last year. Federal funding for the NEA has
displayed incremental growth after sustaining cuts during the last recession.

Despite these nominal dollar increases, public funding for the arts has not kept pace with
inflation. When adjusting for inflation, total public funding decreased by 18% over the past 20
years. In constant dollar terms, state arts agency appropriations decreased by 35%, local funding
contracted by 12%, and federal funds have increased by 9%.

Serving a Growing Population

Measuring public funding relative to total population provides an important yardstick,
considering that these funds originate from all taxpayers and are meant to benefit all residents.
As populations grow, public arts agencies need to serve more people. Combined, federal, state,
and local arts funding yielded a per capita investment of $4.19 in 2019. Federal, state, and local
funding contribute $0.47, $1.12, and $2.60 respectively. Combined per capita appropriations
have been increasing since 2012, but are still below nominal 2001 levels. When taking inflation
into consideration, total per capita appropriation equaled $2.87 in 2019. This analysis shows that
the value of the dollar, combined with a growing population, increases the strain on public arts
funding.

Looking Ahead
Most states are experiencing an increase in total appropriations for the arts. Based on preliminary
estimates for the year ahead, state arts funding is projected to reach its highest level in the last
twenty years in 2020. However, appropriations to state arts agencies are constantly in flux, and
mid-year changes are likely to occur.2 Also, not every state has seen this magnitude of increase.
Seventeen states will likely experience flat or decreased funding for the arts in 2020.
Additionally, twenty-eight states are still expected to invest less than $1.00 per capita for the
arts.3

Congress has yet to pass a federal budget for 2020 as of this writing. For the third year in a row,
the President recommended a complete elimination of the NEA for next year. However, the NEA
continues to receive broad support in
Congress from elected officials across the political spectrum, and both chambers have
recommended increases for the agency for 2020. Until Congress enacts the spending package for
the Department of the Interior — the budget bill in which the NEA is placed — continuing
resolutions have kept funding for the agency at FY2019 levels.

The outlook for local arts funding is harder to project. Although local arts funding is riding at an
all-time high, its growth has stalled in recent years, which mirrors the bleak budget conditions
reported by many cities and counties. Overall, cities’ revenue growth slowed down in 2018, and
almost two thirds of large cities are projecting recessions as early as next year.4 Given this
context, it will be important to monitor whether local spending on the arts may experience slower
growth, if not outright declines, over the next few years.

Implications for Grantmaking

As seen currently at the local level, appropriated funds to the arts and culture at all levels of
government ebb and flow as fiscal conditions shift. Grantmaking is directly affected by the
fluctuation of appropriations. By extension, organizations and individuals who receive grants and
other forms of support from government agencies are indirectly affected by revenue growth and
fiscal stability — or the reverse.

Local governments spend the most dollars on arts and culture when compared to states and the
NEA, but local arts agencies are less likely to focus their services on grantmaking. According to
the 2018 local arts agency census from Americans for the Arts, 59% of local arts agencies
operate direct grantmaking programs. Larger percentages of local arts agencies support direct
culture programming (85%) and manage cultural facilities (63%). 53% of local arts agencies also
provide non-grant contracts to individual artists, while one third provide non-grant contracts to
organizations.

Foundations and state arts agencies make significant grant investments in operating support.
Foundations spent approximately 26% of their arts and culture grant dollars on operating support
in 2017. In terms of the percentage of dollars invested, both foundations and state arts agencies
make the largest commitment to operational support. 37% of state arts agency grant dollars and
24% of all state arts agency awards went to operational support in 2018. The NEA’s statute
prohibits the agency from awarding operating support grants.

The NEA invests over $50 million dollars in state arts agencies and regional arts organizations.
These dollars are not operating support for individual arts organizations, but they help enable
state arts agencies and local arts

agencies to make investments in operating support by increasing the total dollars agencies have
available for grants and services.

Outside of operating support, it is possible to compare a few other grant categories and activity
types. Foundations, state arts agencies, and the NEA all make investments in museums and arts
education. A key contrast between public and private sectors is investment in capital construction
and physical infrastructure. The NEA does not provide funding for capital construction, and
relatively few state arts agencies make grants for facilities. Foundations bear the load for funding
physical cultural infrastructure in the United States.

Why Is Art Important?

Art is all around us. Whether you hear your favorite song on the radio or drive by a gorgeous
mural, you experience art every day. We know that these meeting points elevate our everyday
experiences, but it’s common to lose sight of the overall impact of the arts on communities.

Our goal here is to dive into this topic and answer that question: “Why is art important?” By
answering it with insights from research, we hope to provide studio owners and teachers alike
with the solid information they need to share their love of the arts with their wider communities.

1. It promotes expression and creativity

As humans, we’re naturally drawn to art as a form of expression and communication. Toddlers
love to draw, sing, and dance. It’s a way for them to express themselves before they’re verbal.

In fact, participation in the arts may even assist kids with language, motor skills, and visual
learning development. Research indicates that young people who regularly participate in the arts
arefour times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement later on.

In therapy settings, art also provides an opportunity for digging deeper and expressing emotions
that are difficult to discuss.

Art therapy activities can help children (and adults) cope with their circumstances, both past and
present. In one important study, children between six and 12 were asked to draw a house as a
distraction after thinking about something upsetting. This group was able to improve their mood
when compared with children who were instructed to draw the negative event or simply copy
another drawing.
2. It helps all of us develop necessary soft skills

The importance of art in society goes far beyond what we do in our free time. It can also help
people work better.

When someone applies for a job, there are certain hard skills they need to have like data analysis
or bookkeeping. However, many employers also understand the very important need for soft
skills. These intangible attributes are hard to measure and often difficult to define. Some
examples include a person’s ability to adapt to change, think creatively, or collaborate with team

members.

The arts are a universal way to develop these necessary soft skills that make us better people and
coworkers in the workplace.

3. It provides historical context

Art and human history go hand-in-hand. This is why people dedicate their lives to studying cave
art, Shakespearean plays, and so much more.
When we take the time to dive into art created in the past, we can learn about other generations
and eras. We can study art to find out what those before us were facing and how they overcame
it. In the same way, future generations will learn about our current events through the art we
leave behind.

As the The Metropolitan Museum of Art puts it: “Looking at art from the past contributes to who
we are as people. By looking at what has been done before, we gather knowledge and inspiration
that contribute to how we speak, feel, and view the world around us.”

4. Art leads to healthy and thoughtful cultural discussions

Art is often controversial or groundbreaking. And when art creates a stir, it has the potential to
spark healthy conversations that lead to improvements across a society. Rather than impassioned
debate, art gives us an opportunity to analyze, respond to, and create social change.

How does this play out in direct impacts? Surveys show that high school students in the United
States who engage in the arts at school are twice as likely to volunteer than those who don’t.
They are also 20% more likely to vote when they become young adults.

5. It gives us a place to gather as a society

Beyond personal development, the overall social impact of the arts is essential to understand.
Cultures big and small unite through the arts to build better communities.
From fine art showings to community theatre in the park, the arts provide an opportunity to
gather with other people from all walks of life. Several case studies have actually demonstrated
that art in rural communities specifically can help boost economic growth. Further, it strengthens
the bonds between people in these places.
It’s also worth noting the importance of art in society when it comes to tourism. Cities like New
York City and Seattle are full of endless museums and theatres. But even in smaller communities
across the United States, and the rest of the world, the arts provide unique economic
opportunities. This type of tourism leads to jobs, revenue, and areas for growth.

What Is Art For?

To help us live better, more flourishing lives

For decades, Western culture has been reluctant to assign an inherent value or a purpose to art—
even as it continues to hold art in high esteem. Though we no longer seem comfortable saying
so, our reverence for art must be founded on a timeless premise: that art is good for us. If we
don’t believe this, then our commitment—in money, time, and study—makes little sense. In
what way might art be good for us? The answer, I believe, is that art is a therapeutic instrument:
its value lies in its capacity to exhort, console, and guide us toward better versions of ourselves
and to help us live more flourishing lives, individually and collectively.

Resistance to such a notion is understandable today, since “therapy” has become associated with
questionable, or at least unavailing, methods of improving mental health. To say that art is
therapeutic is not to suggest that it shares therapy’s methods but rather its underlying ambition:
to help us to cope better with existence. While several predominant ways of thinking about art
appear to ignore or reject this goal, their ultimate claim is therapeutic as well.

Art’s capacity to shock remains for some a strong source of its contemporary appeal. We are
conscious that, individually and collectively, we may grow complacent; art can be valuable when
it disrupts or astonishes us. We are particularly in danger of forgetting the artificiality of certain
norms. It was once taken for granted, for instance, that women should not be allowed to vote and
that the study of ancient Greek should dominate the curricula of English schools. It’s easy now to
see that those arrangements were far from inevitable: they were open to change and
improvement.

When Sebastian Errazuriz created dollar signs out of ordinary street markings in Manhattan, his
idea was to jolt passersby into a radical reconsideration of the role of money in daily life—to
shake us out of our unthinking devotion to commerce and to inspire, perhaps, a more equitable
conception of wealth creation and distribution. (One would completely misunderstand the work
if it were taken as an encouragement to work harder and get rich.) Yet the shock-value approach
depends upon a therapeutic assumption. Shock can be valuable because it may prompt a finer
state of mind—more alert to complexity and nuance and more open to doubt. The overarching
aim is psychological improvement.

Shock can do little for us, though, when we seek other adjustments to our

moods or perceptions. We may be paralyzed by doubt and anxiety and need wise reassurance; we
may be lost in the labyrinth of complexity and need simplification; we may be too pessimistic
and need encouragement. Shock is pleasing to its adherents in its assumption that our primary
problem is complacency. Ultimately, however, it is a limited response to impoverished thinking,
timid or ungenerous reactions, or meanness of spirit.

Another way of addressing these shortcomings is to pursue a deeper understanding of the past.
Vittore Carpaccio’s painting The Healing of the Madman offers a rare visual record of the Rialto
Bridge—then still made of wood—before it was reconstructed, so it has much to teach us about
the architecture of Venice circa 1500. It’s also highly instructive about ceremonial processions,
the prominent civic role of religion (and its intersection with commerce), how patricians and
gondoliers dressed, how ordinary people wore their hair, and much else. We also gain insight
into how the painter imagined the past; the ceremony depicted took place over 100 years before
the picture was painted. We learn something about the economics of art—the image is part of a
series commissioned by a wealthy commercial fraternity. In a less scholarly way, the richness
with which a past era becomes visually present allows us to imagine what it would have been
like to clatter across the wooden bridge, to be rocked along the canals in a covered gondola, and
to live in a society in which belief in miracles was part of the state ideology.

We value historical information of this kind for various reasons: because we want to understand
more about our ancestors and how they lived and because we hope to gain insight from these
distant people and cultures. But these efforts lead back, eventually, to a single idea: that we
might benefit from an encounter with history as revealed in art. In other words, the historical
approach does not deny that the value of art is ultimately therapeutic—it assumes this, even if it
tends to forget or dismiss the point. Hence the irony (to put it gently) of scholarly resistance to
the idea of art’s therapeutic benefit. Erudition is valuable only as a means to an end, which is to
shed light on our present needs.

Another approach sees art as a succession of discoveries or innovations in the representation of

reality. In this almost scientific way of evaluating art, we elevate artists who pioneered new
techniques, much as we prize explorers and inventors from history (“Who discovered America?”
“Who built the first steam engine?”). Leonardo da Vinci is crucial, in this view, because he was
an early adopter of sfumato, an artistic technique for showing shapes without using outlines.

Likewise, Paul Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire is seminal for being one of the earliest works to
emphasize the flat surface of the canvas. In his image of the

mountain as seen from Les Lauves, his property near Aix-en-Provence, Cézanne uses blocks of
paint to symbolize shrubs—though they are, on closer examination, equally colored marks
forming an abstract pattern. (This is most apparent if the top half of the painting is covered.) We
are presented not with the illusion of three-dimensional space but with the admission that this is a
two-dimensional work.

Cézanne’s approach is so familiar to sophisticated enthusiasts that it seems almost embarrassing

to point out that his technique explains little about the work’s value to us. The worth of an
invention can be assessed externally only in terms of the genuine benefits that it brings.
Technical discussions reveal only the changes in methods of design or production. The new ways
are not good in themselves; they are good only if we have reason to believe that they are better
than the old. Hence the technical view of art has a buried assumption: it presupposes that the
works in question are beneficial to us. It does not explain why this should be so but, like the
historical approach, takes this for granted. Technical advances are valuable insofar as they bring
new, or enhanced, therapeutic resources to the art form.

Advantages of Working for a Large Company

No matter how you define “large company,” the fact is that large companies tend to have certain
advantages you won’t find at smaller companies.
– Lots of Perks
One of the obvious benefits of working for a large company is that there are a lot of perks. For
example, most large companies can offer a range of insurance options. This includes not only
different options for medical insurance, but also supplemental insurance (like life insurance or
even pet insurance). And, because the company is large, they are usually able to negotiate a
better deal, which means there’s a good chance you’ll pay less out of pocket.

But, there are usually other perks at a large company, too. There may be tuition reimbursement,
on-site daycare, and even an on-site gym, restaurant, or dry cleaner. And, large companies are
generally more likely to offer remote work options and flexible work schedules.

– Resources
Large companies can offer their employees “more,” because they have more resources. For
example, large companies generally offer higher salaries and bonuses. They can also kick in
more for the employer share of insurance and may be more likely to contribute to other perks.
And, thanks to these resources, employees have more access to more resources. This means that
if you’re having technology problems, there’s usually an in-house support team to help you out.
Or, they might just give you a new computer.
Large companies may also contribute more to your training. This doesn’t just mean internal
training. It also means outside professional development. Large companies are happy to send you
to conferences and training sessions so you can learn new skills.
– Opportunities
Working at a large company gives you many professional opportunities. For starters, you will
have access to a larger network, which can pay dividends down the line.
And, your career path may be clearer. Most large companies have a specific set of rules for
evaluations, raises, and promotions. You’ll know what you need to do to get to the next level.
Because there is often higher turnover at large companies (yes, this can be a pro), there are likely
more opportunities more often to advance your career.
In the event that you aren’t advancing quickly, want to try out a new job, or even just want a
change of scenery, large companies tend to have more than

one location—sometimes even locations around the world. Moving to a new office or a new
position is often easy to do, giving you access to new locations, new people, and new
opportunities.
– Structure and Order
Large companies tend to have more order and structure. If you’re the kind of person that thrives
in a structured environment, a large company may be your thing. There are usually set training
programs in place, so you learn all the things you need to do to get your job done. Training and
policy manuals help guide you. And, there are almost always clear-cut procedures in place to
help you make decisions.

– Stability
While any company can find themselves on the wrong side of the economy, large companies
tend to be stable. The odds are pretty good that your position won’t suddenly disappear one
morning. And, even if it does, there’s also a good chance that you’ll get a severance package if
you are laid off.
As part of that stability, you can remain fairly certain that you will always get paid. While it is
illegal to not pay your employees just because of cash flow issues, it does happen. However,
large companies usually have access to cash reserves. So, you can remain nearly 100% certain
that you will still get your paycheck no matter what.

Disadvantages of Working for a Large Company

Of course, just like any job, there are cons to working for a large company.
– Less Creative Thinking
For a time, “thinking outside the box” was a big trend in business. It encouraged original and
free thinking to help employees and leaders come up with new solutions to problems, instead of
doing things “as we’ve always done them.”

The truth, though, is that many large companies don’t like to think outside the box. Large
companies are usually less open to change because they are risk-averse. While this caution helps
maintain company stability (a pro), it does mean that large companies are slow to change. It can
take forever to get things done thanks to the corporate structure, defined policies, and outlined
procedures.

– Hard to Get Ahead

While one of the pros of working for a large company is the opportunity for advancement, that
doesn’t mean it will come easily. Hard work may not be enough to help you get ahead. Success
in a large company has a specific definition, and when you bring up your accomplishments in a
performance review, if they’re not on “the list,” they may not count.
Working for a large company also means you work with a lot of people. This means that there is
competition everywhere. When a manager is deciding which salesperson to promote, they will
start with all of the people who hit the “goal” for earning that promotion. However, within that
group, the manager

will only promote those who did the most toward that goal and, if that’s not you, you probably
won’t get the promotion.
– You’re Just a Number
Of course, a large company is big. You knew that going in. But, what you may not have realized
is that when you work for a large company, it can be hard to feel seen as a person. Or, hard to
feel like you and your efforts make a difference at the company. When you’re one employee of
hundreds or even thousands (or hundreds of thousands), you may feel like a cog in a meaningless
wheel.

Advantages of Working at a Small Company

So, either the cons of working for a large company are enough to scare you off, or you just know
you’re a small-company kind of person. Like large companies, working for small companies has
its positives.
– Nimble

Small companies are usually more nimble than their large-company counterparts. Because
they’re often more specialized, when the market shifts, a small company is better able to shift
along with it.
And, when economic circumstances change, or the business model is failing, small companies
can “pivot” into something similar or something new if they have to.

– They Think Creatively

Small companies tend to encourage creative “outside the box” thinking and are more likely to
embrace change and even radical ideas. While this may be due to a lack of resources, being able
to apply creative solutions allows you to shine as an employee, and lets you test out theories and
find answers quickly.
– Lots of Opportunities
At a small company, you’ll likely wear a lot of different hats. Working as the social
media/content strategist/part-time customer service rep exposes you to a lot of aspects of the
business and teaches you a range of skills you may not have had a chance to learn otherwise.
Should you leave the company, you’ll have a unique skill set that other candidates may not.
There’s also a good chance you’ll work closely with company leaders, which can help you
become a better employee because you’ll understand how business works on a level that others
can’t.
– Community
One of the advantages of working at a small company is the opportunity to know all of your
coworkers. In many small companies, there is a feeling of community and the chance to develop
deep relationships. While these may not become personal relationships, they do give you more
insight into your coworkers.
For example, if a coworker is tired and cranky, at a small company, you may know that it’s
because they are experiencing a personal crisis (even if you

don’t know the details) or because they just had a baby and aren’t sleeping. You might learn that
someone leaves the office every day at 3:00 because of a physical therapy appointment or to
volunteer at the animal shelter. Understanding these nuances gives you a deeper insight into the
company and your coworkers, helping you become a better employee.

Disadvantages of Working for a Small Company

But, of course, with the pros, there are cons to working for a small company. – Advancement
Isn’t Easy
At a small company, you should have a job description. But, the odds are pretty good that you
don’t have much else. Small companies don’t usually have a list of accomplishments you have to
achieve before you get a promotion or even a raise. This means you may not have a clear road
map of how you can advance your career or even what the next step at the company is for you.

And, because the company is small, there is likely less forward momentum in your career. You
have to wait for someone to leave (which happens less often in a small company), or hope that
someone creates a new position (which also doesn’t happen often). And, while you may get a
title change each year, if your job duties aren’t changing, you aren’t really growing
professionally.

If you aren’t happy with your position or how quickly you’re advancing, you don’t have a lot of
options beyond leaving the company. Moving up or even sideways may mean leaving the
company for those opportunities.
– Fewer Resources

Even stable and long-lived small companies have fewer resources. They tend to generate less
revenue, which means less cash to go around. That may mean that your technology is older or
not the latest version—and that can include operating systems and software.

And, fewer resources also means you’ll get less professional support. While there may be some
internal training, there is likely very little outside training. There might be a small training
budget, but it may not allow you to attend outside training very often.

– Fewer Benefits
Having fewer resources can also mean fewer benefits. For starters, not all small companies have
to provide health insurance. That means the company may tell you to purchase health insurance
through the government. And, while some companies may offer you a small stipend to help
defray those costs, not all companies will.
If your small company does offer insurance, the odds are pretty good that you’ll have to pay
more out of pocket. Small companies aren’t able to bargain as much with insurance companies,
so the “deals” typically aren’t the best. And, you may not have a choice of plans and instead have
only one insurance plan option.
Most small companies also don’t offer additional insurance options, like life or

disability insurance. Some don’t offer retirement plans (with a salary match) or any of the other
perks you can find at large companies (like tuition reimbursement). You’re also less likely to
find small companies that offer remote work or flexible schedules.

– Less Security
Small companies can be unstable. Even a company that’s been around for 50 years can suddenly
find consumer tastes have changed or that their biggest account left.
– Less Policy and Procedure
Small businesses tend to have less formal policies and procedures in place. While this is a pro for
some people, there are those employees who feel lost without it. And, even for employees who
consider a lack of formal policy and procedure a pro, not having certain policies in writing can
make work difficult. How do you know when you need to go to HR with an issue? And, if they
don’t have a formal policy, how does HR make decisions?

Cultural Differences’ Impacts on International

Business
Introduction
Culture is the acceptable way of doing things in a given society. Members of the society learn to
conform with the cultural norms as they grow up. Cultural patterns in a society dictate the
appropriate responses to different social situations. Culture encompasses people’s thoughts,
words and actions. There are many different cultures and sub-cultures in the nations of the world.
Thus, effect of culture on international business cannot be underestimated. Understanding the
effect of culture on business is no longer a source of competitive advantage in International
Business. Rather, it has become a core competence, without which a multinational company
should conform to survive in business.

Importance of Understanding the Effect of Culture on International Business

Business operations are increasingly becoming global in nature. Trade, transport and
communication are drawing world economies closer to each other than before. This is evident in
the increased number of multinational companies in operation today. Any company that wishes
to take advantage of this shift towards globalization must understand the effect of culture on its
operations. A company may be forced to adopt local practises in order to succeed. This can only
be done with a proper understanding of the area’s culture.

Human capital has become highly mobile. Technological and transport development has enabled
people to work in different countries with ease. Sometimes, this can even be done
simultaneously. Consider the case of a CEO of a group with operations across the continent. This
executive may be required to be in different countries within the same week to represent his
company. This increases the need to understand different cultures and their effect on the
business. This knowledge will prevent such individuals from making mistakes that would cost
their companies business. What is normal and acceptable in one’s home country could be
considered offensive in another (Kershaw, 2009).

Companies are choosing to enter foreign markets via global alliances. The success of these
alliances depends on good relations between the parties involved. A company needs to
understand the cultural practises of all potential partners in order to choose one with whom to
work. This will enable

the company to choose suitable partners and therefore benefit from synergy. Knowledge about
culture and business also aids in negotiations for deals. Cultural practises could make the
difference between who gets the deal and who does not (Singer, 2000).
The domestic workforce is also becoming increasingly diverse. The major contributing factor is
immigration. People can travel to other countries and choose to stay for life. It is possible to have
dual citizenship thus enjoy the privileges of citizenship in more than one country. In countries
such as America, the population is so diverse that it would be impossible to attach one culture to
the whole population. Understanding employees’ cultural background can help management in
designing motivational reward packages (O’Neill, 1998).

Components of Culture

Culture penetrates almost all aspects of human life. Scholars have attempted to identify the
different components of culture. This paper will concentrate on the classification provided by
Terpstra. The first aspect of culture is social interactions. This refers to the relationship and
interactions between individuals and society, including their families. For example, it is common
practise in India for parents to pick out a spouse for their child. However, in other countries, this
is not so (Shaw, 2003). A company selling wedding planning services in India would thus focus
its advertising on the older generation since they have a major stake in the wedding ceremony. In
America, such a company would focus on the youth who are likely to be marrying since they
make their own decisions. Extended family is also extremely important in African societies. It is
common to find large extended families living together. This is not so in other parts of the world
(Porter and Millar, 1985).

Language is the second aspect of culture. This is the spoken part of a society’s culture. Some
words or phrases are unacceptable in particular societies. It is a taboo to mention reproductive
organs by name in African societies. In contrast, sex sells a lot in the western countries. An
American multinational seeking to enter an African market would not use similar advertising
campaigns at home and abroad. Such a move would result in bad publicity for the company in
Africa thus loss of sales (Kraakman et al. 2004).

The third aspect of culture is religion. This refers to a society’s beliefs in the supernatural that
cannot be proven except by faith. The influence of religion on business is evident mostly in the
Middle East where most countries are Islamic and governed by Sharia Law. Consider a
multinational that specializes in manufacture and sale of bikinis. The Middle East would not be
an attractive

market since religion dictates that women should cover their bodies completely with Buibuis.
However, a company manufacturing this traditional dressing for women is likely to succeed here.
Banks in the Middle East would also find it necessary to design products that do not involve
interest. Banks would avoid interest since Islam forbids giving and receiving of interest (Graham
et al. 1951).

Values system consists of what people believe to be right and wrong. This aspect of culture
influences businesses as it can dictate what consumers would or would not buy. Indians consider
cows to be sacred animals, thus opening butcheries in Indian towns would be considered very
offensive. None of the natives would buy the beef and the company would have to close down.
In contrast, butchery would be a great business in Africa where beef is taken with most meals.
Aesthetics in culture refers to a society’s perception of beauty. The fashion industry has
flourished in France due to the natives’ fascination with beauty. However, what is beautiful in
one nation may be considered outright ugly in another. This knowledge helps countries to adapt
their products to the country’s beliefs. In the western countries, petite women are considered
pretty. Thus a pharmaceutical company selling diet regimes would prosper. In Africa, plus sized
women are considered beautiful. In some parts, a man’s success is signified by his wife’s size.
Thin women are considered malnourished and it could be associated with poverty. An attempt at
selling diet regimes in such countries would fail miserably.

Education is the means by which one generation passes on its wisdom to the next. The attitude to
education would influence the purchase of goods such as books. Some countries consider
children’s education as a priority more than others. Selling children’s books in countries which
do not consider child education a priority might prove to be difficult. It is also true that particular
countries are predisposed to sciences while others enjoy arts more. Germans are thought to excel
at engineering and other science subjects. Thus establishing a university that offers such
education is likely to succeed.

Effect of Culture on Management of International Business

Management of international businesses involves bringing together people from diverse

backgrounds in order to achieve the goals of one organization. This can prove quite tricky
because of the huge impact culture has on business. Managers have to adjust their management
practises to suit the country in which they are operating. The management style must be aligned
to the society’s culture if it is to succeed. Hofstede identified four different perspectives from
which management is viewed by different societies (Scott, 2007).

Power distance is a measure of how people in the society perceive the difference in power
between leaders and their subordinates. In countries such as Israel, people expect to be treated as
equals. The difference in power between bosses and their subordinates is downplayed (Sheffrin,
2003). An autocratic or dictatorship method of management would be rejected by workers in
such countries. This is because they are used to relating on first name basis with everyone.
Employees can participate in decision making and are allowed to critique management’s
decisions. Malaysian workers on the contrary are used to autocratic and dictatorial leadership
styles. They are good at following orders and rarely question top management. Attempting to use
consultative leadership styles in such a country would be time consuming and may prove to be
ineffective (Machan, 2007).

Conclusion

This paper has shown the great impact cultural differences can have on international business.
These effects cut across the entire organization. However, cultural differences can be beneficial
to businesses. Multinational businesses stand to benefit from the pool of talent created by
cultural diversity. A company with operations in France and Germany benefits from the
scientific insight of the Germans and the Artistic taste of the French. If the company manages
this talent well, then it can benefit greatly from the synergy created. Innovative ideas can also be
exchanged. This would result in faster growth for the business (Boldrin et al. 2008).
Studies have shown that work efficiency increases with increase in cultural diversity of workers.
This is attributed to the increase in skills and experience available. New processes can also be
developed. These could be the key to a business’ success in a given market. The problem solving
efficiency also increases. Language skills improve since employees have to learn to cope with
others who may not speak English.

The effort involved in creating synergy in a culturally diverse organization may divert resources
from the major aim of the business. Training and awareness programmes take up time that
should have been spent working. Employee resistance could cause the failure of such initiatives.
The diversity in workplaces could also slow down the decision making process since everyone
has their own idea of how things should work. This could have been avoided by doing business
locally where the people share the same culture (Cooper, 2006).

Business organizations which operate across borders should invest time and other resources to
study the culture of their operating environments. This will

save such companies money that could have been spent paying fines for committing cultural
offences. The organization will also be spared the bad publicity that comes with disregarding
peoples’ culture. Knowledge about the society’s culture will also enable such an organization to
design customer responsive products. These products will lead to growth in sales revenue and
eventually profit. However, disregarding cultural differences can have devastating effects on a
multinational company. Sales revenue could be lost due to cultural ignorance. Potential
customers are likely to avoid businesses which are not operating in line with their norms and
values. One could conclude that the very success of an international business depends on the
adaptation to local cultures and sub-cultures (Machan, 2007).

What You Can Learn from Family Business

To many, the phrase “family business” connotes a small or midsized company with a local focus
and a familiar set of problems, such as squabbles over succession. While plenty of mom-and-pop
firms certainly fit that description, it doesn’t reflect the powerful role that family-controlled
enterprises play in the world economy. Not only do they include sprawling corporations such as
Walmart, Samsung, Tata Group, and Porsche, but they account for more than 30% of all
companies with sales in excess of $1 billion, according to the Boston Consulting Group’s
analysis.

Conventional wisdom holds that the unique ownership structure of family businesses gives them
a long-term orientation that traditional public firms often lack. But beyond that, little is known
about exactly what makes family businesses different. Some studies suggest that, on average,
they outperform other businesses over the long term—but other studies prove the opposite.

Our results show that during good economic times, family-run companies don’t earn as much
money as companies with a more dispersed ownership structure. But when the economy slumps,
family firms far outshine their peers. And when we looked across business cycles from 1997 to
2009, we found that the average long-term financial performance was higher for family
businesses than for nonfamily businesses in every country we examined.

The simple conclusion we reached is that family businesses focus on resilience more than
performance. They forgo the excess returns available during good times in order to increase their
odds of survival during bad times. A CEO of a family-controlled firm may have financial
incentives similar to those of chief executives of nonfamily firms, but the familial obligation he
or she feels will lead to very different strategic choices. Executives of family businesses often
invest with a 10- or 20-year horizon, concentrating on what they can do now to benefit the next
generation. They also tend to manage their downside more than their upside, in contrast with
most CEOs, who try to make their mark through outperformance.

So how do family-run firms manage for resiliency? We’ve identified seven differences in their
approach:

1: They’re frugal in good times and bad.

After years of studying family businesses, we believe it’s possible to identify

one just by walking into the lobby of its headquarters. Unlike many multinationals, most of these
firms don’t have luxurious offices. As the CEO at one global family-controlled commodity group
told us, “The easiest money to earn is the money we haven’t spent.” While countless
corporations use stock grants and options to turn managers into shareholders and minimize the
classic principal-agent conflict, family firms seem imbued with the sense that the company’s
money is the family’s money, and as a result they simply do a better job of keeping their
expenses under control. If you examine company finances over the last economic cycle, you’ll
see that family-run enterprises entered the recession with leaner cost structures, and consequently
they were less likely to have to do major layoffs.

2: Many show a surprising level of diversification.

Plenty of family-controlled companies—such as Michelin and Walmart—remain focused on a
core business. But despite a generation’s worth of financial wisdom that diversification is better
done by individual investors than at a corporate level, we found a large number of family
businesses—such as Cargill, Koch Industries, Tata, and LG—that were far more diversified than
the average corporation. In our study 46% of family businesses were highly diversified, but only
20% of the comparison group were. Some family firms had expanded into new lines of business
organically; others had acquired small entities in new fields and built on them. The CEOs we
spoke with say that as recessions have become deeper and more frequent, diversification has
become a key way to protect the family wealth. If one sector suffers a downturn, businesses in
other sectors can generate funds that allow a company to invest for the future while its
competitors are pulling back.

3: They are more international.

Family-controlled companies have been ambitious about their overseas expansion. They generate
more sales abroad than other businesses do; on average 49% of their revenues come from outside
their home region, versus 45% of revenues at nonfamily businesses. But family businesses
usually achieve foreign growth organically or through small local acquisitions—without big cash
outlays. And they are very patient once they enter a new market. “We accepted that we’d lose
money in the U.S. for 20 years, but without this persistence we would not be the global leader
today,” says one executive from a family-run global consumer products company.

4: They retain talent better than their competitors do.

Retention at the family-run businesses we studied was better, on average, than at the comparison
companies; only 9% of the workforce (versus 11% at nonfamily firms) turned over annually.
The leaders of family companies extol the benefits of longer employee tenures:

higher trust, familiarity with coworkers’ behaviors and decision making, a stronger culture.
These businesses have a lot in common with what the academics Karlene Roberts and Karl
Weick call “high-reliability organizations,” in which long-serving teams of specialists develop
efficient team dynamics and a collective mind-set that helps them achieve goals. Says the CEO
of one $10 billion diversified group: “We don’t have the smartest guys out there, but they know
their job like nobody else, and when a problem hits they can act immediately as a team—one that
has been there before.”

Interestingly, family businesses generally don’t rely on financial incentives to increase retention.
Instead, they focus on creating a culture of commitment and purpose, avoiding layoffs during
downturns, promoting from within, and investing in people. In our study we found that they
spent far more on training: €885 a year per employee on average, versus an average of €336 at
nonfamily firms.Examine these seven principles, and it becomes clear how coherent and
synergistic they are: Adhering to one of them often makes it easier to follow the next. Frugality
and low debt help reduce the need for layoffs, thus improving retention. International expansion
provides a natural diversification of risks. Fewer acquisitions mean less debt. Money saved
through frugality is invested wisely if the company keeps a high bar on capital expenditures.
Instead of working in isolation, these principles reinforce one another nicely.

When we talk with executives at family-controlled firms, they speak derisively about
competitors who “bet the farm” or “swing for the fences.” They talk about what keeps them up at
night. Though they realize they are missing opportunities by being overly prudent, they hope to
generate superior returns over time as business cycles turn from good to bad.

It’s evident that those cycles are speeding up. If that trend continues, the resilience-focused
strategy of family-owned companies may become more attractive to all companies. In a global
economy that seems to shift from crisis to crisis with alarming frequency, accepting a lower
return in good times to ensure survival in bad times may be a trade-off that managers are thrilled
to make.

The Difference Between Leadership and

Management
People often mistake leadership and management as the same thing, but in essence they are very
different. The main difference between the two is that leaders have people follow them, while
managers have people who simply work for them.

Leadership is about motivating people to comprehend and believe in the vision you set for the
company and to work with you on achieving your goals.

While management is more about administering the work and ensuring the day-to-day activities
are getting done as they should.

For a small business owner to be successful however, they need to be both a strong leader and
manager to get their team on bord with working towards their vision of success.

Therefore, leadership and management must go hand in hand. Even though they are not the same
thing, they are closely linked and complementary to one another. Any effort to separate the two
within an organisation is likely to cause more problems than it solves.

For any company to be successful, it needs management that can plan, organise and coordinate
its staff, and leaders that are inspiring and motivating them to perform to the best of their ability.

But, what does a leader do?

Leaders have a tendency to praise success and drive people, whereas managers work to find
faults. A successful leader paints a picture of what they see is possible for the company to
achieve and works to inspire and engage their people in turning that vision into a reality.

Rather than seeing individuals as just a particular set of skills, they think beyond what they can
do and activate them to be part of something much bigger.

A leader in business is well aware of how high-functioning teams can accomplish a lot more
when working together rather than individuals working autonomously.

Are you a manager or a leader?

There are many different types of leadership and management styles where different situations,
groups, or cultures may require the use of different styles in order to set a direction and ensure it
followed through.

One way to decipher which of the two you may be, manager or leader, is to count the number of
people outside your reporting hierarchy who come to you for advice.
The more that do, the more likely is it that you are perceived to be a leader. John Kotter,
Professor of Leadership at Harvard University, fears that too often employers use the terms
synonymously. If an organisation is run effectively, leadership and management will exist in
tandem.

How to become a good manager or leader?

Mentoring and formal training can help employees utilise and use their leadership skills.
According to research by the Chartered Management Institute, 90% of members who have
completed a management and leadership qualification found the experience improved their
performance at work.

There was also a “ripple effect” with 81% of those surveyed passed on their knowledge to
colleagues.

However, celebrating individual leaders can also cause some to forget that it is never just one
person running the show. Not everyone who is in charge of a team is both a leader and a
manager. In order to have a successful organisation there needs to be a mixture of both and
therefore celebrating all individuals who were a part of that achievement.

Many people are both a leader and a manager. Having managed people but along the way
realised that is not possible to buy people to follow you down a difficult path then start to act as
leaders.

The challenge then lies in making sure you are both leading your team as well as managing your
day-to-day operation.

Those who are able to do both, will create a competitive advantage.

Plus, understanding emotional contagion is a tool to success as your mindset can have a powerful
effect to becoming a successful leader.

5 Factors That Contribute to the Success of

Your Business
Owning a business is very appealing to people for many reasons -- you get to be your own boss,
work with amazing people, create your own schedule and turn a passion into a career. There is
nothing easy about it, though.

1. An innovative business idea

If you want a shot at surviving, especially in a competitive industry, you need to determine what
sets you apart from the other available options. Clever marketing or an exciting technology alone
won't guarantee that your target customers will be wowed by what you're offering -- you have to
offer real value and/or a new experience.
Richard Werbe, founder of micro-tutoring service platform StudyPool, explains his strategy for
coming up with an innovative business idea, saying, "You have to pay attention to trends. Most
people think they have to come up with an entirely original idea, but you can take current
popular trends and build from what you're already seeing out there, creating an improved service
or product."
The market will dictate whether your business will succeed -- nothing else -- and one way to
stack the odds in your favor is to have an innovative product or service that will be well-
received. You don't have to completely reinvent something -- just make it better.

2. The right talent

The long-term success of your business requires that you assemble the right talent to build your
brand. Your team is the company's backbone, and one cancerous person can completely derail
your progress. Whether you are building an on-site team or a remote workforce, one thing
remains the same -- the right talent matched with the same vision will greatly improve the
chances of success.
Kip Skibicki, founder of Top Notch Threads, understands the importance of assembling an all-
star team. "When I started my company, I didn't have a lot of connections, but I was committed
to building a team that shared my vision, along with possessing the desired experience and
know-how for each role," said Skibicki.
Building a business requires a tremendous amount of work during the startup phase. Long hours
and the up-and-down roller coaster ride is much more enjoyable when the entire team is willing
to push hard to accomplish goals and hit milestones together.

3. Your network
Building a personal network of like-minded entrepreneurs has several benefits. It gives you a
sounding board for when you have questions or want advice, which is a huge help, especially in
the early stages of a business. As your network grows, so do your resources.
I'm a member of several professional groups and I am constantly networking. Personally, my
network has been a huge part of my success, and seeing how beneficial ts has been led me to
start the Mastermind House, a new virtual networking opportunity for entrepreneurs.
"Every business, from a large law firm to a small single member startup, can benefit from having
a strong network. As you become more comfortable networking, your network's size and ability
to help you solve problems and make wise business decisions increases. I highly suggest you
carve out time from your schedule to dedicate to networking," advises Adam Zayed, founding
partner of Zayed Law Offices.

4. Hard work
If you're not willing to get your hands dirty and work in the trenches, you might as well not even
start. A lot of potential entrepreneurs have a false sense of what it's really like to own a business.
The media likes to glorify the startup life, but it's not all Lamborghinis and private planes. You
have to be willing to put the work in if you want to be successful.
Before launching the American International English Teachers' Association, Zac Grove was
helping other educational technology startups raise funds and build operations. This allowed him
to learn the industry ropes, later applying this knowledge to his passion project.
"After working in ed-tech, I realized that my passion in life was launching solutions to bring
about change. I would never have had the confidence to venture out on my own had I not first
paid my dues and learned about building a solid business by working at another venture," says
Grove. Consider developing the skills, insights and experience needed by working for another
company -- it's a viable option that can pay off long-term.

5. Sales
There is one thing that will quickly prove the viability of your product or service -- sales. Not
only do sales prove you have something viable, but it also injects revenue into your business,
allowing you to grow and avoid
Carlo Cisco is the founder and CEO of Select, a private community that offers access to
exclusive events and promotions at restaurants, hotels, nightlife venues and retailers. In order for
Cisco to create a footprint for his business, he prioritized sales from the beginning.
"As an entrepreneur, you're constantly selling your vision to current and prospective employees,
partners, investors and advisors," says Cisco. "Know your pitch and practice relentlessly. You
need to be confident pitching

one-on-one, to a room of hundreds of people or to senior executives."

Ideas are great, but without sales to accompany them they will likely fail. Mark Cuban constantly
talks about how success is based on sales. Entrepreneurs who are great at sales give their
business a competitive advantage.

The Role and Importance of Technology in

Business
In the last decades preceding the 90s, technology has overhauled the way we do things. Whether
it’s for business or social purposes, we no longer rely on traditional methods and means. Thanks
to the fast evolving technological advancements today, we shop, interact, live and research
differently from what we did 5 years ago. It’s no doubt that technology is the driver of success
for modern businesses. From marketing, to PR or security, everything has gone digital.

IT Is Indispensable

The role of technology in the business landscape cannot be overstated. It’s imperative that you
employ a workforce that is techsavvy at least in the basis. Getting your staff up to date with
emerging trends not only boosts productivity, but it has immense bearing on your bottom-line.
Today, the IT department in every business, big or small is indispensable. IT experts are largely
attributed to the changing dynamics at the organizational level. These experts are becoming
crucial given their capacity to help a business maintain its competitive edge.

Every business relies on technology in big and small ways. As technology evolves, businesses
have an overriding need to incorporate some form of technology. Simply, the same technology
cannot afford to remain at the backend; it’s an integral component of any discerning business
front end. There are several elements that technology has transformed for the better. Technology
contributes in:

Improving Communication

In many ways than one, technology simplifies communication. Whether it’s a social connection
or you are trying to relay mission critical data, things are no longer want they used to be. IT is
fundamental for effective communication internally and externally. In house, technology
streamlines the types off data relay that occur between sections or departments. There is a need
for an organisation to stay up to date with new email marketing tactics or ways of sending
company wide data via digital platforms. Externally, technology has made communication easy
and ubiquitous.

Propels Marketing and Business Growth

From an external communication point of view, a business will use new technology to advertise
and break into new markets. Forward thinking enterprises advertise digitally with a view to drive
traffic. Even though yours is a brick and mortar business, technology has to be part of your
marketing mix, if you expect to grow your revenue. Remember, a highly seasoned IT team is the
key to your success. You need experts who are conversant with search marketing, web
optimization and social media targeting.

Streamlines Decision Making

Decision making in any business is a critical process. You need technology to streamline the
decision making process. There is a need to keep track of customer and market data. Technology
in form of business relevant software facilitates error free reporting. You have a guarantee of
accuracy with metrics drawn from the finance, marketing and customer engagement
departments. It is technology that captures critical data and helps a business to see its weak areas,
and ways of how to strategize accordingly.

Boosting Your Competitive Edge

Nowadays, other businesses in the same niche as you are spending more to market and advertise.
The need to stay on top of the completion is crucial. Nobody wants to associate with a brand that
is barely visible online. Your competitors are using technology to weigh you up and to drive
their traffic. Technology is using viable online tools to drive your sales.

Enhancing Customer Relationship

Reputable CRM management systems let you discover what your customer base wants. It’s
advisable to target the right customer at the right time to avoid them crossing over to your
competitor. Even though the technology you rely on is compatible with your existing systems,
there is the issue of smart threats and cyber threats. The cloud storage makes it critical to have
robust cyber security measures to keep your assets and data safe.

Maintain Industry Relevance

Whether you are in the real estate, health, warehousing or freight industry, there is a form of
technology designed to inject efficiency into your operations. If you are leveraging these
technologies to break into new market, save lives, boost sales or for crop production module,
technology will have made its impact.

What remains is to ensure that you keep on top of things. Technology in the business landscape
is never static. You don’t want to be overtaken by events, trends or your competitors. Remember,
communication is one factor that you need to grow. Always make sure that you capitalize on
advanced communication methods and channels to stay relevant and wiser.

10 IMPORTANT BUSINESS SKILLS EVERY

PROFESSIONAL NEEDS
An Understanding of Economics

A baseline knowledge of economics can be a valuable asset in any industry. In addition to an in-
depth understanding of pricing strategies and market demand, studying economics can provide
you with a toolkit for making key decisions at your company.

For Nicholas Grecco, a former CORe participant who works as an educator and healthcare
administrator, the lessons learned in Economics for Managers were instrumental in helping his
organization decide to invest in solar energy.

“I knew investment in solar was a good opportunity, but the concept of willingness to sell (WTS)
helped me to understand and explain why,” Grecco says. “Because of extra incentives from the
city program and group purchasing power, the electrical contractors were willing to sell solar
energy systems for a much lower price than usual, thereby increasing our consumer surplus. By
explaining WTS, I was able to convince the owner to move forward with this project.”

2. Data Analysis Skills

Research shows that an increasing share of firms are using analytics to generate growth.
Companies such as Microsoft, Uber, and Blue Apron leverage data to improve their services and
operations. And according to LinkedIn, analytical reasoning is one of the most sought-after hard
skills in today’s job market.
Knowing how to summarize datasets, recognize trends, and test hypotheses can give you an
analytical framework for approaching complex business problems, and help you make informed
decisions that could benefit your firm. “Using data analytics is a very effective way to have
influence in an organization,” says HBS Professor Jan Hammond, who teaches the online course
Business Analytics. “If you’re able to go into a meeting, and other people have opinions, but you
have data to support your arguments and recommendations, you’re going to be influential.”

3. Financial Accounting Skills

Accounting know-how can be beneficial to your career, even if you’re not in a numbers-focused
role. While it can seem like an intimidating subject, it’s far more approachable than you might
think.
Concepts such as cash flow and profitability are useful for understanding your

organization’s performance and potential. And knowing how to read and interpret a balance
sheet is critical for communicating financial results.
Pankaj Prashant, an engineer who took CORe, says the principles he learned in Financial
Accounting helped him build on his technical background and advance his career.
“I’ve been keeping track of my company’s annual reports, and the accounting that I learned helps
me in understanding where the business may head in the future,” Prashant says. “I’ve also been
tracking a few other companies for investment purposes, and I’ve realized that I can make more
informed decisions with my improved knowledge of company financials.”

4. Negotiation Skills
Whether you’re just beginning your professional journey or operating at a senior level, it pays to
be an effective negotiator. In a recent report by the World Economic Forum, negotiation was
identified as one of the top 10 skills needed to thrive in the future workforce.
Honing your deal-making skills can not only help you secure value for your organization at the
bargaining table, but for yourself when advocating for a higher starting salary or raise.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to crafting a successful negotiation strategy. The key,
according to HBS Professor Mike Wheeler, who teaches Negotiation Mastery, is to be open to
improvisation and plan to think on your feet.
“However you happen to see yourself as a negotiator, most people you deal with likely have a
different style, at least to some degree,” Wheeler says. “To succeed, therefore, you must be agile.
That means flexing yourself so that you deploy different skills depending on the situation and
whom you’re dealing with.”

5. Business Management Skills

Strong managerial skills are intrinsically linked to organizational performance. A recent study by
Gallup found that managers account for 70 percent of variance in employee engagement,
underscoring the need for companies to develop leaders who can drive team productivity and
morale.
For seasoned and aspiring managers alike, it’s valuable to know how to lead meetings and
communicate organizational change. Equally important is being aware of the common missteps
team leaders often make.
In the case of Monica Higgins, a public relations account director, taking the online course
Management Essentials was a way to augment her managerial knowledge and develop a fresh
outlook in her role.
“I'm more aware of looking at things through a larger lens, from a variety of perspectives,”
Higgins says. “I've always been a fan of asking thoughtful, learning questions—as opposed to
making declarations—and I'm now a big fan of playing devil's advocate.”

6. Leadership Skills
Whether you hold a management position or not, leadership skills are vital to workplace success.
While some people think of leadership and management as one and the same, there's a difference
between the two. Whereas management is centered on implementing processes, leadership is
more focused on the people and vision that guide change.
In addition to honing your management skills, building up your leadership skills can be
beneficial in any profession. From learning to keep calm during times of pressure to developing
your own leadership style, these skills will help you understand how to bring your vision to life
and set your team up for success.

7. Effective Communication
In any business setting, professionals rely on communication to coordinate efforts and
accomplish organizational goals. Ineffective communication, or a lack of communication
altogether, can prove catastrophic.
Along with developing your skills, a large contributor to success in this arena is being able to
understand and adapt to the communication styles of others. Other key communication skills
include active listening, empathy, and reading body language.

8. Emotional Intelligence
Another essential business skill is emotional intelligence, and research shows it’s a leading
indicator of performance in the workplace. According to a recent study by TalentSmart, 90
percent of top performers have a high degree of emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is commonly broken down into four concepts: self-awareness, self-
management, social awareness, and relationship management. In short, this skill refers to your
ability to understand your emotions and how they impact certain situations, as well as your
ability to recognize and influence the emotions of others.
No matter your industry or position, having this awareness of yourself and those around you will
enable you to have more control over your interactions, as well as help you and your team
accomplish goals effectively.

9. Decision-Making Skills
All professionals need strong decision-making skills in order to navigate the complex challenges
they’ll face in the workplace. For those specifically working in business or management, the
need for these skills is even greater. Determining how to allocate resources, which employees
make up a team, and how to implement a new initiative across an organization are all decisions
that need careful consideration. With the growing number of tools and resources that can be used
to capture data, managers can fuel their processes with valuable insights to make data-driven
decisions, often leading

to better outcomes.

10. Networking
Networking is another critical business skill that all professionals should exercise.
Whether you’re looking for ideas or advice on a specific challenge, or want to make a career
change, the people who make up your professional network can act as an extension of your own
knowledge and connections.

If you want to make the most of your network, be open to opportunities to step out of your
comfort zone and build new relationships. Once you have your network in place, it’s important
to maintain the relationships you’ve formed and continuously find new ways to expand your web
of contacts.

Materialism vs consumerism
What is Materialism?
Materialism refers to people’s tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as
more important than spiritual values. We can describe this simply as one’s preoccupation with
material possessions. These material possessions can be anything – cars, gadgets, clothes,
jewellery, handbags, shoes, etc. We can even count one’s home as a material possession. For
someone who considers his home not only as a place of living but also a place that reflects his
social status and wealth, home is a material possession.

The importance placed on material possession varies from person to person. We describe people
with a high level of materialism as materialistic. They consider material possessions very
important to their lives, and they spend the majority of life acquiring these possessions and
showcasing them. There are also people with a low level of materialism. Non-materialistic
people are not very interested in acquiring possessions. But they may sometimes acquire material
possessions for some other goal.

Materialism may be an individual characteristic, i.e., it describes an individual’s preoccupation

with possessions. However, materialism can create several issues in society, including debt and
shopping addiction. This may also result in mental conditions like hoarding and self-esteem
issues, which may require professional help.

What is Consumerism?

Consumerism is basically a theory and a social and economic order that encourages the
acquisition of goods and services in increasing amounts. According to this theory, increasing the
consumption of goods is economically desirable. It describes the tendency of people living in a
capitalist economy to engage in a lifestyle of excessive materialism, which revolves around
wasteful or conspicuous overconsumption. Therefore, there is a very close connection between
materialism and consumerism. Consumerism can be seen in many economically developed
countries. Mass production of luxury goods, rising levels of personal debts, and saturation of
media with promotions for branded products are some indicators of an increase in consumer
spending. A rise in consumer spending can lead to an increase in production as well as economic
growth. However, there are many adverse social, economic, and environmental consequences of
consequences.

Conclusion
Materialism is one’s preoccupation with material possessions while consumerism is a social and
economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in increasing amounts.
Therefore, this is the main difference between materialism and consumerism. It’s also important
to note that materialism refers to a characteristic in an individual, while consumerism describes
society as a whole. When more and more people become materialistic, there is an increase in the
acquisition of goods and services, leading to consumerism.

How Has Technology Affected Social

Interaction?
The world is becoming increasingly digital. We do our shopping online, build our businesses
online, spend our downtime online, and even make life-long friends online. As of July 2020, 59
percent of the global population were active internet users. Bringing us closer to commodities,
the internet is set to become an even bigger part of our lives.

Technology is a fast-paced market, and every pioneer is in a race for first place on the podium.
New innovations are piloted every day in a desperate attempt to sell what the masses will buy—
tools to make our daily lives easier. As older generations warm to the idea of utilizing
technology in the face of a pandemic, we move eerily closer to a world where social interaction
is primarily digital.

But should we look at this as a positive or negative change? Will human interaction strengthen or
suffer as a result of new communication technologies? In this article we will explore the good,
the bad, and the ugly truth of technology’s impact on social interaction.

THE GOOD

There is no denying that the internet has had a positive impact on human communication.
Compared to pre-internet times, we are now more connected than ever before. Here are some of
the ways that technology has a positive effect on social interaction.

Instant global communication

Most of us now have the means to contact people on the other side of the world immediately. No
waiting for the postman, messenger pigeon, or message in a bottle—technology has broken down
the communication barriers that distance once presented. It is a phenomenon that is commonly
referred to as globalization.

Virtual connections
Video calling apps like Skype and Zoom mean people can now experience emotional
connections without having to be in the same room. This has been especially important
throughout the coronavirus crisis, where families from separate households were forced to stay
apart. The day the UK lockdown was announced, Zoom was downloaded 2.13m times around
the world—up

from 56,000 a day two months earlier.

Online dating

Technology has also made finding love much easier, with online dating increasing in popularity.
A report released last year predicted that more than 50% of couples will meet online by 2035.
The same report found 47% of people believe online dating makes it easier for introverted people
to find love.

Barrier-free interaction
Similarly, people who would otherwise have limited social interaction now have the option to be
part of online communities. People with disabilities can forget about their physical boundaries
inside a video game universe, while socially anxious people can gain confidence by practicing
interaction over the internet instead of face to face. Sending messages allows people the time to
process information and formulate a response, whereas face to face is more immediate. On the
other hand, this isn’t always a good thing.

THE BAD

Some would argue that the more anonymous and less immediate interaction associated with
digital communication is bad news. Behind the screens of smartphones and the keyboards of
computers, there are also more chances for deception—particularly for vulnerable people. Here
are some of the ways the technology has a negative impact on social interaction.

Decreased human contact

More and more people are beginning to rely on technology to communicate with their loved
ones, friends and associates. The coronavirus lockdown that forced millions of people to work
from home also accelerated online communication tools—meaning we get even less human
contact than ever before.

As remote working becomes the norm, transactional processes are automated with self-service
machines too. The increase in the use of technology to communicate could also cause a rise in
loneliness, especially among elderly people who may rely on these transactional encounters as
their primary source of social contact.

A rise in bullying
Technology has also made cyberbullying possible, and children are now

particularly vulnerable to harassment online. While cyberbullying is a worry for children, it is

also becoming a common challenge among adults too. Results from a YouGov poll conducted
last year showed that a quarter of adults have experienced cyberbullying. Given the disheartening
rise in suicide among victims of cyberbullying, it is clear to see that technology is not always a
healthy source of social interaction.

Online deception

Catfishing is the practice of creating a fake online identity with intent to manipulate, stalk, or
abuse a specific victim. It has become a scarily common activity among dating sites and social
media platforms and is the subject of a popular MTV reality TV show. A 2018 survey saw 9%
respondents say that being catfished had affected their mental health.

A platform for predators

Technology has also provided a platform for online predators to pursue their victims. And as UK
schools closed during the coronavirus lockdown, children were on their devices a lot more often
and faced with a sudden drop in social interaction. While there is not yet any overwhelming
evidence to suggest the pandemic caused an increase in predatory activity online, The National
Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) has said reports to their CyberTipline
increased by 106% during the first months of the pandemic.

The ugly truth

Whether we see it in a positive or negative light, or even a mixture of the two, the truth of the
matter is that technology has had a huge impact on the way we communicate with each other.
While it allows us to make instant connections with people on the other side of the world, it also
puts us at risk of loneliness, as well as new forms of harassment and manipulation.

But as new technologies are unveiled to the world, new laws and safety measures are likely to be
put in place too. These aren’t likely to protect everyone from the negative effects of technology,
but it also rests on our own shoulders to use the internet with caution. Equally, it is our own
responsibility to ensure we get enough real-life human contact in our daily lives, in addition to
digital social interaction.

Importance of Family Communication

Sometimes it may seem easier to look the other way instead of approaching a family member
with a problem, however, ignoring issues can cause more harm than good. Sidestepping issues
won't make the problems go away, but instead intensify the feelings you will have about future
disagreements. Understanding the importance of family communication will help you realize that
while sweeping things under the rug may be easier, it's not the wisest thing to do in the long run.

Reasons Why Family Communication Is Important

Reason #1: Reach Understandings

When you are able to communicate with family members, you will be able to share what you
believe and learn what others feel is right. While you may not agree, you may begin to
understand more about the reasons why they do what they do or say what they say. You could
even grow a better appreciation for them.

Reason #2: Solve a Problem

Many issues among family members arise because of miscommunication. Coming together to
talk about a particular problem can open the lines of communication so you can find solutions to
what is negatively affecting both of you.

Reason #3: End Gossip

Family members love to talk about one another, and sometimes the details of topics become
misconstrued. By the time it's been passed down the grapevine, facts are no longer facts. Going
to the family member people are gossiping about to ask about the situation is a great way to open
communication so that no one gets the wrong impression of the situation.
Reason #4: Encourage Support
A family system helps every one of its members through the good and the bad times. When a
family communicates well, everyone understands what loved ones need, making them better able
to provide support. Even if nothing can be done about the situation, just providing a listening ear
can make all the difference.

Reason #5: Provide Insight on Situations

Family members often disagree about how they should deal with their personal problems. While
it may be difficult to hear, sometimes it's good to

have a family member share another perspective of a situation. This enables the person dealing
with the issue to make an informed decision about what troubled him.

The problem occurs when the different perspective offends the family member, especially when
it dramatically goes against what he or she believes. If this happens, it's best to share the
perspective and then take a step back. It's your loved one's decision to take what you have said
into account.

Reason #6: Form Tighter Bonds

Trusting in family members by communicating with them will foster the love you share and
tighten your bonds. Many families grow apart because the individual members each become
wrapped up in their individual lives, and they forget to come to home base to talk about the
world around them. When problems do come up, if you've established a strong communicative
base with your family, you'll feel as though your family is a safe place to seek shelter.

Importance of Family Communication During Disagreements

Communicating with family members on neutral ground is easy. However, during disagreements
it may seem impossible to communicate anything to the other person. It's important not to turn
the other way though, or you could ruin the relationship you have with that person for many
years. Many families go through this and it causes strife for not just the two in conflict, but for
other family members as well.

If you often have family issues or you are currently in cahoots with your loved one, learn about
conflict resolution in family. Good communication helps both people come to an understanding,
which is the basis for all healthy familial relationships.

Difference Between Face to Face

Communication and Online Communication
Humans, by nature, are said to be social, enthusiastic living beings. To socialize and
communicate with people is crucial to a human as food, water, and shelter are for our survival.
Communication can be done by both face to face and online methods. Face to face
communication enhances the quality of a person’s life, whereas online communication has a new
domain of possibilities for communicating with people.

Face to Face Communication vs Online Communication

The difference between face to face communication and online communication is that in the face
to face communication, you can feel and see the presence of the other party, whereas, in online
communication, you cannot see the other party to whom you are communicating with.

Face to face communication is a traditional method of communication that allows you of being
able to see the opposite party you are talking to. This allows betterment in exchange for
communication and information both for a person and to whom he is communicating. Even
though the technology today is remarkable many still follow this kind of communication for
clarity. Face to face communication is also an informal type of discussion between friends,
family, colleagues, etc.

Online communication means when a person is communicating with another person via
computer using the internet through email, etc. Due to technology development in a remarkable
way, technology provides people with a significant way to communicate with other people and
carry their business. We can talk and text anyone we want through mail anytime we want
without having any boundaries for a person, whether the opposite person is online.

What is Face to Face Communication?

When one person puts forward his views and communicates his opinion to some other person,
and both exchange their opinions in the presence of both, this is called face to face
communication. In face to face communication, when people communicate with each other, they
get a speedy response immediately without any misunderstandings.

During this conversation, people can hear and see the feelings, facial expressions, and knowledge
of what context the opposite person is trying to talk about by observing his face. Through face to
face communication, people can express what they feel and ideology in a far better way. There is
eye contact in this type of communication. Statistics have shown that more than 70 percent of
people use face to face communication even with all the developing technology today.

Face to face communication is significant when it comes to discussion of important things since
there is immediate feedback from the opposite party. We learn better skills on how to co-ordinate
through face to face communication. The major drawback of face to face communication is that
when discussing a topic for a large group or large organization with many people, a person may
go through difficulties, especially when various departments in an organization are at different
places.

What is Online Communication?

Online communication is a platform where a person communicates with another person via a
computer or w mobile using the internet through email, WhatsApp, etc. Online communication
has widely embraced and enhanced and bought growth to our economy by bringing different
languages and geographical boundaries together on one platform for communicating. Through
online communication, a business can communicate 24/7 with its clients, which means a person
can start his business anytime he wants to and communicate worldwide.

There is a transformation of information in speed through online communication, which

unquestionably saves lots of time and money. Online communication has removed the gap of
Social-cultural and language barriers, making it easier for a person to communicate globally. It is
cheaper to send mail or a WhatsApp text to a person living in another country rather than a
phone call.

The major drawback of online communication is that even though the internet has allowed
connecting the entire work, some cultures have managed to customize the others, making
teenagers in India get a hand over western culture by acting, behaving, and dressing like them.
Although online communication is quick and easy, there is no data privacy, and there is a high
risk of insecurity of jobs.

Main Differences Between Face to Face Communication and Online Communication

Face to face Communication usually requires no cost as such, whereas online communication
requires the cost to set internet for which you need a WI-FI connection.

Face to face communication has specific rigid deadlines, whereas online communication is more
flexible in nature.

Face to face communication needs small and limited space, whereas online communication
includes large organizations altogether at one time.

Face to face communication is generally used as an informal communication method, whereas

online communication is used for formal communication.

There is the privacy of data and information in face to face communication, whereas there is no
privacy of information and data in online communication. Conclusion

We need to persevere and learn to keep a healthy balance between face-to-face and online
communication: the virtual and real worlds. With today’s rising technology that brings people
closer, it depends on nurturing and developing those connections through a traditional face-to-
face communication or modern online communication. Using one of the communication is
totally relied on from person to person according to their convenience of time, work, and money
with their patient experience of nature.

People can use online communication to spread awareness, have formal communication with
clients and jobs, and use face-to-face communication when vital decisions are to be taken or for
informal communications.
Rehabilitate or punish?
It's not a very good time to be a prisoner in the United States.

Incarceration is not meant to be fun, of course. But a combination of strict sentencing guidelines,
budget shortfalls and a punitive philosophy of corrections has made today's prisons much more
unpleasant--and much less likely to rehabilitate their inhabitants--than in the past, many
researchers say.

What is the role for psychologists? First and foremost, they are providing mental health services
to the prison population, which has rates of mental illness at least three times the national
average.

More broadly, they are contributing a growing body of scientific evidence to political and
philosophical discussions about the purpose of imprisonment, says Craig Haney, PhD, a
psychologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"Psychology as a discipline now has a tremendous amount of information about the origins of
criminal behavior," says Haney. "I think that it is important for psychologists to bring that
information to bear in the debate on what kind of crime control policies we, as a society, should
follow."

The punitive turn

Until the mid-1970s, rehabilitation was a key part of U.S. prison policy. Prisoners were
encouraged to develop occupational skills and to resolve psychological problems--such as
substance abuse or aggression--that might interfere with their reintegration into society. Indeed,
many inmates received court sentences that mandated treatment for such problems.

Since then, however, rehabilitation has taken a back seat to a "get tough on crime" approach that
sees punishment as prison's main function, says Haney. The approach has created explosive
growth in the prison population, while having at most a modest effect on crime rates.

As a result, the United States now has more than 2 million people in prisons or jails--the
equivalent of one in every 142 U.S. residents--and another four to five million people on
probation or parole. A higher percentage of the population is involved in the criminal justice
system in the United States than in any other developed country.

Many inmates have serious mental illnesses. Starting in the late 1950s and

1960s, new psychotropic drugs and the community health movement dramatically reduced the
number of people in state mental hospitals. But in the 1980s, many of the mentally ill who had
left mental institutions in the previous two decades began entering the criminal justice system.

Today, somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of people in prison are mentally ill, according to
U.S. Department of Justice estimates.
"Prisons have really become, in many ways, the de facto mental health hospitals," says former
prison psychologist Thomas Fagan, PhD. "But prisons weren't built to deal with mentally ill
people; they were built to deal with criminals doing time."

The mentally ill

The plight of the mentally ill in prisons was virtually ignored for many years, but in the past
decade many prison systems have realized--sometimes with prodding from the courts--that
providing mental health care is a necessity, not a luxury, says Fagan.
In many prison systems, psychologists are the primary mental health care providers, with
psychiatrists contracted on a part-time basis. Psychologists provide services ranging from
screening new inmates for mental illness to providing group therapy and crisis counseling.

They also provide rehabilitative services that are useful even for prisoners without serious mental
illnesses, says Fagan. For example, a psychologist might develop special programs for substance
abusers or help prisoners prepare for the transition back to the community.

But they often struggle to implement such programs while keeping up with their regular prison
caseloads. "We're focused so much on the basic mental health services that there's not enough
time or emphasis to devote to rehabilitative services," says Robert Morgan, PhD, a psychologist
at Texas Tech University who has worked in federal and state prisons and studies treatment
methods for inmates.

Part of the problem is limited resources, says Morgan: There simply aren't enough mental health
professionals in most prisons. Haney agrees: "Many psychologists in the criminal justice system
have enormous caseloads; they're struggling not to be overwhelmed by the tide."

Another constraint is the basic philosophical difference between psychology, which is

rehabilitative at heart, and corrections, which is currently punishment-oriented.
"Right now there's such a focus on punishment--most criminal justice or correctional systems are
punitive in nature--that it's hard to develop effective

rehabilitative programs," says Morgan.

Relevant research
To help shift the focus from punishment to rehabilitation, psychologists are doing research on the
causes of crime and the psychological effects of incarceration.
In the 1970s, when major changes were being made to the U.S. prison system, psychologists had
little hard data to contribute.

But in the past 25 years, says Haney, they have generated a massive literature documenting the
importance of child abuse, poverty, early exposure to substance abuse and other risk factors for
criminal behavior. The findings suggest that individual-centered approaches to crime prevention
need to be complemented by community-based approaches.

Researchers have also found that the pessimistic "nothing works" attitude toward rehabilitation
that helped justify punitive prison policies in the 1970s was overstated. When properly
implemented, work programs, education and psychotherapy can ease prisoners' transitions to the
free world, says Haney.

Finally, researchers have demonstrated the power of the prison environment to shape behavior,
often to the detriment of both prisoners and prison workers.

The Stanford Prison Experiment, which Haney co-authored in 1973 with Stanford University
psychologist and APA Past-president Philip G. Zimbardo, PhD, is one example. It showed that
psychologically healthy individuals could become sadistic or depressed when placed in a prison-
like environment.

More recently, Haney has been studying so-called "supermax" prisons--high-security units in
which prisoners spend as many as 23 hours per day in solitary confinement for years at a time.

Haney's research has shown that many prisoners in supermax units experience extremely high
levels of anxiety and other negative emotions. When released--often without any
"decompression" period in lower-security facilities--they have few of the social or occupational
skills necessary to succeed in the outside world.

Nonetheless, supermax facilities have become increasingly common over the past five to ten
years.

"This is what prison systems do under emergency circumstances--they move to punitive social
control mechanisms," explains Haney. "[But] it's a very

short-term solution, and one that may do more long-term damage both to the system and to the
individuals than it solves."

Capital punishment vs other punishments

Three quarters of Dallas, Texas voters say they prefer some version of life imprisonment over the
death penalty for people convicted of first-degree murder, a new poll has found.
The poll, which was conducted on June 16–17, 2021 by the independent polling firm, Public
Policy Polling (PPP), found broad support for sweeping changes in death-penalty policy in a
county that is responsible for the second most executions in the United States since capital
punishment resumed in the 1970s. By wide margins, Dallas voters said they believed the
county’s death penalty is affected by racial bias and that innocent people have been convicted
and sentenced to death. More than 80% said they would support the Dallas District Attorney’s
office reviewing the cases of the 19 people currently on death row from the county “to ensure
accuracy and fairness.” Nearly two-thirds said they would support the Dallas D.A.’s office
“pledg[ing] not to seek any new death sentences.”

Given a choice between life without parole, a life sentence with parole eligibility after 40 years, a
life sentence with parole eligibility after 20 years, or the death penalty as possible punishments
for first-degree murder, 75% of respondents chose some version of a life sentence. A plurality
(29%) favored life with the possibility of parole after 40 years, followed by life without parole
(26%), and life with the possibility of parole after 20 years (20%). Only 14% of respondents said
they preferred the death penalty. Twelve percent were undecided.

The poll is the second in just over a year to show a sea change in views on the death penalty in
Texas’s most prolific death-sentencing counties. According to the 2020 Houston Area Survey
conducted by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University, a record-low 20% of
Houstonians preferred the death penalty for murder. Houston is the county seat of Harris County,
which has executed more prisoners than any other county in the U.S.

“These results affirm what we’ve observed for the past decade,” said Kristin Houlé Cuellar, the
Executive Director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP), which
commissioned the poll. “Texans of all political persuasions are moving away from the death
penalty at a remarkable rate.”

In a press release accompanying the release of the survey results, TCADP characterized the
preference for the death penalty over the life sentencing alternatives as “noticeably low,” even
among demographic and political groups “that have historically supported capital punishment.”
TCADP did not release the raw data containing the results of the poll by demographic and
political subgroups, but the press release indicated that 26% of Republicans, 15% of those older
than 65, 24% of white voters, 20% of Protestants, and 18% of those with some college education
but who did not finish preferred the death penalty over life sentencing alternatives. “Even among
Trump voters,” Houlé Cuellar said, “support for capital punishment was notably low, with only
31% saying they preferred the death penalty over alternatives.”

Survey respondents expressed serious concerns about the way that the death penalty is
administered in Dallas County. By a nearly 4 to 1 margin, Dallas voters said they believed that it
was likely “that an innocent person has been convicted and sentenced to death in Dallas County.”
69% of respondents said it was very likely or somewhat likely that an innocent person had been
sentenced to death, while 18% said it was very unlikely or somewhat unlikely to have occurred.
An identical percentage said they believed that it is likely “that racial bias affects whether or not
a person will receive a death sentence in Dallas County,” compared to 20% who said it was
unlikely that race had affected death sentences. Asked to name their biggest concern about using
the death penalty, 64% of respondents said executing the innocent, 13% pointed to inequities in
its application, and 4% each pointed to its high cost and that it does not deter crime. 10 percent
listed other concerns and 4% said they weren’t sure.

PPP also surveyed Dallas voters on the county’s policies towards the death penalty. Asked their
views on whether the Dallas County District Attorney should pledge not seek any new death
sentences, 63% of poll respondents said they would support such a pledge. Only 26% said they
would oppose it. By an overwhelming 83% to 8% margin, poll respondents said they would

support the Dallas District Attorney reviewing the cases of the 19 individuals on death row in
Dallas to ensure integrity and fairness.

“Voters in Dallas County are sending a strong message that they value fairness and accuracy in
the criminal legal system,”

What makes a criminal?

For most of us, the fear of punishment or social rejection keeps us from behaviour deemed
unacceptable and prevents us from committing crimes. But how many would transgress if they
knew they could get away with it?

According to psychologist Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory, not that many. This is
because as children we have absorbed our society’s standards of conduct, which serve as
internalised moral restraints for the rest of our lives. This means that antisocial or criminal
behaviour would lead to feelings of guilt, shame and lowered self-esteem. However, there are
some who learn strategies to neutralise their moral compass, and it is these people who may pose
risks to society in later life.

For example, moral disengagement – the process of convincing oneself that ethical standards do
not apply in some contexts – allows us to rationalise criminal acts or those that harm others.
Research has found that moral disengagement can lead to antisocial conduct and greater
aggression by reducing sociable behaviour and feelings of guilt. Interestingly, it has also been
suggested that moral disengagement is greater in individuals with heightened psychopathic traits
– those people who are especially unable to empathise with others.

The making of them

In a recent empirical study of serious juvenile offenders, my colleagues and I reported that those
with increased levels of psychopathic traits also tended to be those who demonstrated moral
disengagement. The most prominent predictor of moral disengagement was a dimension of
psychopathy that refers to emotional deficits such as shallow affect, lack of empathy, and being
manipulative.
But how do people develop this higher level of moral disengagement and psychopathic traits in
the first place? These traits are associated with being a witness to violence and being a member
of a gang, for example. What this suggests is that exposure to a violent and anti-social
environment as a child or young adult may lead youths on a path that hardens into an attitude and
way of reasoning that is morally lax. It also appears that for some children victimisation may
result in the belief that violence is morally acceptable.

The influence of the environment on reasoning and the subsequent development of a criminal
social identity is an interesting issue. Professor Daniel Boduszek at the University of
Huddersfield introduced the Integrated

Psychosocial Model of Criminal Social Identity, a model which attempts to express the role of
psychological and social factors in the process that turns people towards criminal behaviour. The
argument is that social identity is based on group membership, which provides a person with a
sense of belonging in our social world. Group membership is also crucial for maintaining
positive self-image, and this is one of the reasons we form relationships and friendships.

A group in which criminal or aggressive behaviour is common may provide an alternative

identity for those adolescents who have been rejected by their family or more well-behaved
peers. Feelings of anger, frustration and hostility that are the result of peer rejection may be
further intensified by destructive or problematic parents, or insufficient parental supervision.
Consequently, the bonds that form among those in a gang or criminal social group fill the
emotional void, increasing the individuals’ sense of positive self-identity. A lack of parental
affection can be dangerous for another reason, because it can impede the development of
emotions such as guilt and empathy that are required to make moral judgements. This leads to a
reduced motivation to behave well.

Nature, nurture
Building on research findings, the key appears to be educational programmes that steer youths
away from antisocial peers, such as positive action programmes developed to encourage pro-
social behaviour among children. We also need to change attitudes among those young people
who have already developed antisocial tendencies. For example, the None in Three EU-funded
project, headed by Professor Adele Jones at the University of Huddersfield, aims to prevent
violence against women by giving children a specially designed pro-social video game with an
implicit message that such violence is unacceptable.

What is needed are more strategies that can help recognise children who lack this emotional
attachment to their parents or peers, who therefore have an increased need for acceptance from
outside the home and may seek and find it among criminal networks. Early intervention is key,
because such “neediness” is readily exploited by organised gangs, which offer a sense of
belonging and an immediate boost to self-esteem.

Finally, some parents may not be affectionate towards their children because they don’t know
how to express love. They themselves may come from families in which emotions were sparsely
communicated. These parents will benefit from parenting skills workshops, which would equip
them with the techniques for improving communication and building positive relationships with
their children.

If we are to break the intergenerational cycle of crime and violence, it’s vital that we target both
children and parents in an effort to reduce the emotional pain that can sow the seeds of
criminality.

What Are The Five Major Types of Criminal

Punishment?
Throughout history, society has developed different ways to simultaneously punish criminal
offenders while also ensuring the safety of the public. Those who study types of crimes and their
punishments learn that five major types of criminal punishment have emerged: incapacitation,
deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation and restoration.

Students in an online Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice learn these types of criminal
punishment as part of a curriculum that prepares them for success working in the criminal justice
field.

The Types of Criminal Punishment

The types of punishment listed by the University of Oxford handbook include the first four of the
following. The idea of restorative justice is newer. Today’s experts in criminology see it as a
valid criminal punishment option. Those who judge the types of crimes and their punishments
typically use one of the following approaches to guide them.

Retribution
This is one of the first forms of punishment – essentially the idea of “an eye for an eye.” Those
who favor retribution believe it gives the victims of crime, or society as a whole, a sense of
satisfaction knowing a criminal received the appropriate level of punishment for the crime
committed. Lawmakers face the task of determining these appropriate levels of punishment,
which can range from speeding ticket fine amounts to mandatory sentences for certain crimes.

Deterrence
Deterrence aims to prevent future crime and can focus on specific and general deterrence.
Specific deterrence deals with making an individual less likely to commit a future crime because
of fear of getting a similar or worse punishment. General deterrence refers to the impact on
members of the public who become less likely to commit a crime after learning of the
punishment another person experienced.

Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation seeks to prevent future crime by altering a criminal’s behavior. This typically
includes offering a host of programs while in prison, including educational and vocational
programs, treatment center placement, and
mental health counseling. This approach also typically gives judges the flexibility to mix in
rehabilitation programs as part of a criminal’s sentencing. The goal is to lower the rate of
recidivism, or people committing another crime after getting released from prison.

Incapacitation
This is another ancient approach that remains popular. Incapacitation simply means removing a
person from society. This includes incarceration in prison, house arrest and, in its more dire
form, execution. Many feel the flaw in this approach is that it doesn’t address rehabilitation or
recidivism, the latter of which tends to remain high in societies that practice incapacitation.

Restoration
This new approach to criminal justice calls for the offender to make direct amends to the victim
of their crime, as well as the community where the crime occurred. Judges use this approach
mostly with juvenile offenders. In this approach, the criminal and the victim meet so that the
offender can hear what the victim says about their experience with the crime committed. The
offender then strives to make amends and seek forgiveness.

These theories are intricately involved in studies on the types of crimes and their punishments.
Society developed each of them with the idea of ensuring appropriate punishment for criminals
and safety for society.

4 Technological Advances Changing Law

Enforcement
If you’ve ever watched a crime or detective show on television, they make solving crimes look
easy. Just collect a miniscule piece of evidence, run it through a computer, and – boom – you’ve
found the perpetrator.

The reality, of course, is that law enforcement and investigations aren’t quite that simple. It can
take weeks, months or even years to match a piece of evidence to a specific individual, if it can
be matched at all; however, that doesn’t mean that technology in the real world isn’t catching up
to Hollywood technology. New developments are taking shape every day, making it easier to
prevent and fight crime. So, while it might not yet be possible to match a single fiber to a
specific jacket sold in a little shop in an alley in Brooklyn – at least not within 42 minutes – there
are plenty of new technologies changing law enforcement.

Here are four technological advances in law enforcement already taking shape:

1. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

We’re still years away from having robots serve and protect, but law enforcement agencies are
already implementing artificial intelligence-based tools to help them prevent and manage crime.
Many law enforcement agencies use massive databases with information about individuals and
their criminal history and background; with AI, they can more easily make connections between
disparate systems. Combined with their own knowledge of investigations gained through the
study of criminal justice, these new algorithms can improve investigations and help law
enforcement agencies make better decisions regarding detention, prosecution and punishment.
For example, law enforcement agencies may use AI to assign a “risk score” to a suspect based on
their history and other data to make better decisions about whether they should be held pre-trial.
By accounting for various factors, criminal justice professionals can attempt to remove human
bias from these decisions. It may be possible to reduce incarceration rates and recidivism in this
manner, but agencies need to be aware that these tools may also have serious shortcomings.

2. Better Electronic Monitoring Systems

The concept of house arrest is nothing new, but technological advances are

making it a more workable option. When criminals are prosecuted for minor offenses, and they
present little to no risk to the community, using electronic monitoring systems to allow them to
serve their punishment at home has some benefits.

Although some argue that the option of serving a sentence in the comfort of one’s own home
won’t deter criminal behavior to the same degree that prison does, it may benefit society more
for low-level offenders to not be in prison. Instead, subjecting them to constant, intense
surveillance via GPS monitoring, audio and visual recording, and other technology-based
solutions can keep them out of jail, ultimately saving communities money.

3. Pre-Crime Technology
The best way to fight crime is to keep it from happening in the first place, and technology is on
the forefront of crime prevention. Again, AI tools and predictive analytics using big data are key
to making connections that can stop crime before it starts, but law enforcement is using other
tools in their work as well.

In Chicago, police officers are using technology called ShotSpotter, which triangulates
information to determine the exact location of gunshots. Combining that information with license
plate detection technology makes it easier for police to manage patrols in high-crime areas and
investigate shootings.

Facial recognition technology is also proving instrumental to fighting crime. Law enforcement
has used facial recognition at large events, for example, to identify individuals who are wanted
for crimes by comparing their faces to a database of hundreds of thousands of known offenders.
And at the border, U.S. Border Patrol agents are using sensor technology to evaluate physical
and psychological behaviors to determine whether individuals are likely to be entering the
country for nefarious purposes.

All of these technologies are developed with the single purpose of preventing crime, and we’re
only seeing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these tools.

4. Improved Officer Protection

We’ve already seen how the implementation of cameras – both body and dash cameras – has
changed law enforcement. Automatically recording interactions between the police and the
public has saved lives and improved outcomes, and the recordings have also reduced complaints
about officer behavior.

Technology is being used in other ways to more effectively protect officers. One of the more
exciting developments taking shape is the development of a sophisticated “smart belt.” Worn by
officers on duty, the belt monitors the officer’s movements and position, and it automatically
alerts backup or dispatch of trouble when necessary. Dispatch itself is also beginning to use more
sophisticated systems to collect and analyze real-time information, improving the safety of
officers as they respond to calls. Other tools being implemented to improve officer safety include
drones, robotic cameras and small robots that can be used in dangerous situations; for instance,
these robots can be used to surveil a hazardous scene or locate threats.

Is youth crime on the rise in Queensland?

In effect, no, although the explanation is also not so simple. Long-term analysis of overall
statewide crime data by the Queensland Government Statistician's Office shows the number of
reported offences against property and people – adjusted for population – has declined over the
past 20 years.

However, after a significant drop in property crimes throughout the 2000s, there has been an
"increasing trend from 2015-16" across all offences, it noted in the latest crime report published
in March.

This found that since 2009-10, the age of offenders has "shifted" towards 25 and older, while
there has also been a small increase in those aged 10-14, largely offset by a drop in the 15-19 age
group.

At a regional level, the overall crime rate in Townsville jumped 1.5 per cent from 2017-18 to
2018-19, and 9.5 per cent across the past nine years to 14.1 offences for every 100 people – one
of the highest above the statewide average of 10.3, but below inner-city Brisbane and
Queensland's sprawling outback region.

But the jump represented one of the smaller at a regional level when compared with single-year
increases of between 5 per cent and 10 per cent across some parts of the Brisbane, Moreton Bay
and Wide Bay regions, and more than 20 per cent over the nine-year period. The longer-term list
also expands to include Ipswich, Toowoomba and the Mackay, Isaac and Whitsunday regions.

Many so-called signal crimes climbed across both the year-on-year and nine-year data. While
robberies largely dropped in Brisbane, they rose almost everywhere else – including in the
Townsville, Logan-Beaudesert, Moreton Bay and Ipswich regions, which feature rates above the
state average.

Assaults have remained relatively stable apart from an increase on the Gold Coast. Beyond some
increases in Townsville, Moreton Bay and Brisbane's west, it's a similar story for sexual offences
– all sit on or above the state average.
Unlawful entries rose slightly in the past year but dropped across the longer-term, while the
unlawful use of motor vehicles rose statewide.

Compared with the 2017-18 report data, the number of children who

committed alleged offences against the person statewide (which includes homicides, assaults,
sexual offences and robberies) dropped by 16 to 4839.

Property offenders (including those who committed theft and unlawful entry or use of a vehicle)
rose by about 1000 to 27,641, while those who committed other offences (spanning traffic,
domestic violence, drug, and good-order offences, such as disobeying a move-on direction) fell
by about 1000 to 17,623. Respectively, each group represented about two-, three- and one-in-10
of all offenders.

Who are these young people?

The child offenders in the broad crime data, which does not represent a unique count of
individuals, are mostly male repeat offenders – a trend that is also seen in the broader population.
(Unique offenders aged 10-17 did drop 5.5 per cent across the previous year to a total of 11,936.)
The data captures offenders who faced criminal proceedings but not those who were cleared by
police.

Meanwhile, statistics from the Youth Justice Department showed that in 2018-19, about seven in
10 young people with proved offences were male, almost eight in 10 were older than 15, and one
in 10 had committed 44 per cent of all offences. The data also showed they were among some of
the most vulnerable groups.

A 2019 department census of 1846 young people found 80 per cent had used at least one
substance. More than half of these had either drunk alcohol or used marijuana, and one-fifth had
used ice or another methamphetamine. More than 40 per cent had mental health or behavioural
issues.

Like the broader justice system, young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were over-
represented, at 59 per cent. More than one-third had parents who had been held in adult custody,
and half were disengaged from school, training or work.

A total of 63 per cent had experienced or been affected by family and domestic violence –
including 14 per cent who were under a child protection order – and about one-fifth lived in
unstable or unsuitable accommodation.

Dr Goldsworthy said the varied and complex experiences of the young people largely traced
back to their home environment, adding: "The causes are multifactorial."
Most young people also tend to "grow out" of offending, Dr Goldsworthy said. "If someone loses
their car ... and they want justice, that's totally

understandable.
"But I guess if we're taking the long-term view, it's far better to move these children out of the
criminal justice system rather than keep them in there and necessarily hardwire them to be part of
that system."

What is being done and what more could change?

The Palaszczuk government announced a "historic" boost to police numbers statewide late last
month after an extra 130 officers were sent to Townsville from a "flying squad" to target
recidivist offenders and carry out prevention work.

A four-year Youth Justice Strategy, released by the government in 2019, included "four pillars"
recommended by former police commissioner Bob Atkinson in an earlier review: intervene
early, keep children out of custody, keep them out of court, and reduce reoffending. This later
morphed to include new laws denying bail to repeat offenders.

Announcing a Townsville crackdown on a "small, hardcore" group of young people in June,

Youth Minister Di Farmer also announced that Indigenous-led rehabilitation programs would
begin trials in that city, Cairns and Mt Isa.

In July, LNP leader Deb Frecklington also touted early intervention as part of an overhaul of the
youth justice system should her party win government. This would include a three-strike
detention policy to crack down on "young thugs", and laws to ensure a child's record stayed with
them into the adult court system.

The LNP would also move to scrap youth bail houses and trial five "community payback farms",
which youth advocates quickly linked to its infamous "boot camps". Similar ideas have been
backed by Katter's Australian Party and One Nation.

But many of those working within the sector have long argued that such tough approaches don't
help. A report released last month by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found 66 per
cent of young people in Queensland who were released from a supervised sentence in 2017-18
returned within one year – the highest rate in the country.

Along with detention, young people dealt with under the Children's Court can also be given
unsupervised sentences in the community, such as good-behaviour bonds. Diversionary actions,
such as warnings, cautions and restorative justice conferences, are also available. In Townsville
and

beyond, community-based committees have sought to bring police, experts and local leaders
together to form tailored responses.

An Australian Institute of Criminology report, released in August and reviewing 44 studies into
effective youth offender programs, found that while there was no "one-size-fits-all" approach,
those that considered the individual needs of young people and were culturally sensitive were
"best placed" to address the underlying causes of offending.
Meanwhile, a strong and sustained campaign is pushing to raise the age of criminal responsibility
to at least 14 – in line with global calls from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the
Child.

Dr Goldsworthy himself believes the number of young people going into detention could be
reduced "without touching the [age of] responsibility" through more nuanced policing. He also
favours a more evidence-based approach.

"You simply can't arrest your way out of these things," he said.

The role of the police in crime prevention

The adoption of the 2016 White Paper on Safety and Security and the 2016 White Paper on
Policing mark an important shift in conversations around crime and violence in South Africa.

The recent adoption of the 2016 White Paper on Safety and Security and the 2016 White Paper
on Policing mark an important shift in conversations around crime and violence prevention in
South Africa. Unlike previous policies, which placed police at the centre of safety, both White
Papers advocate for a more integrated and developmental approach to prevention that attempts to
confront the underlying causes of crime and violence.

Traditional approaches to safety and security use ‘tough on crime’ tactics that make little to no
impact on safety because they fail to address the underlying causes of crime and violence.
Recognising the limitations of these traditional approaches prompted policy-makers to look more
broadly at the underlying factors influencing crime and violence in South Africa.

Conversations about the need to move away from a police-centric approach to safety and security
are not new to South Africa. In 2011, the Department of Social Development (DSD) launched its
Integrated Social Crime Prevention Strategy (ISCPS), which aimed to create a framework for
facilitating a targeted and coordinated response by government by taking crime and violence
prevention beyond the purview of policing, and involve actors at the national, provincial and
local level.

Further, in 2012, the National Planning Commission adopted the National Development Plan
(NDP), which identified six priority areas for achieving a safer South Africa:

Strengthening the criminal justice system.

Professionalising the police service.
Demilitarising the police service.
Increasing the rehabilitation of prisoners and reducing recidivism. Building safety and using an
integrated approach.

Increasing community participation in safety.

Towards a multi-disciplinary, community-centred response
Accordingly, the ISCPS and the adoption of the NDP prompted the need to re-examine South
African policy on safety and security, and realign the 1998 White Paper on Safety and Security
with the objectives of the NDP and to

promote social crime prevention. In response, the Civilian Secretariat of Police (CSP) developed
the 2016 White Paper on Policing and the 2016 White Paper on Safety and Security.

The 2016 White Paper on Police aims to establish a framework for ‘an accountable, professional,
competent, and highly skilled police service’, while the 2016 White Paper on Safety and Security
promotes interventions to confront risk factors at individual, family, community and societal
levels. Accordingly, the two policy directives work together to create an inter-sectoral,
multidisciplinary response to crime and violence in South Africa.

The approach to policing espoused in the 2016 White Paper on Policing is one that is
demilitarized, community-centred, accountable, and adheres to human rights principles. In this
regard, traditional approaches of ‘declaring a war on crime’ and having ‘zero tolerance’ for
persons in conflict with the law, often ignore human rights, do not deter crime, and most
importantly, do not make people feel ‘safe’.

Additionally, by elevating the importance of a community-centred approach to policing, the 2016

White Paper emphasizes the importance of service delivery, and building sustainable
mechanisms for community support and participation.

Victims must be encouraged to report incidents of crime to the police, and obstacles that interfere
with a person’s access to critical law enforcement services need to be eradicated in order to
effectively curb future incidents of crime and violence from occurring. Further, building an
active citizenry is an essential part of creating long-term sustainable delivery of police services in
communities.

In calling for a new approach to policing, the 2016 White Paper clarifies the role of police as
responders to crime and violence, rather than as eradicators of crime and violence.
Accordingly, the 2016 White Paper on Safety and Security serves as a complementary
framework to ensure an inter-sectoral, multidisciplinary response to crime and violence in South
Africa because it calls on all of society to make South Africa safer by addressing the underlying
causes and crime and violence, and promoting access to education, healthcare, and employment
opportunities.

Why We Need More Women Working in Law

Enforcement
Women account for a small but growing percentage of police officers (11.6% nationally, up from
just 3% in the 1970s). However, the need to recruit, train and promote more female officers is
receiving far more attention than ever before.
The encouraging momentum toward creating a more balanced public safety force is fueled in
part by a growing appreciation of certain unique and valuable professional qualities that women
often bring to law enforcement. Such qualities (the three most important are described below) are
believed to enhance the ability of law enforcement agencies to make a positive impact on the
communities they serve.

Primary Benefits of Recruiting More Women in Law Enforcement

While most departments and law enforcement agencies are aware of the need to hire a diverse
workforce, diversity initiatives often focus more on ethnicity than gender. That’s a problem
because, with women making up such a small minority of law enforcement, almost half of the
population has been excluded from a career in which they could affect significant and positive
change.

This despite considerable evidence that women are having “a profound impact on the culture of
policing,” according to Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research
Forum, who told the Associated Press that “they bring their own set of skills to a traditionally
male-dominated culture, and that is very helpful.”

Citing research that women are skilled at using communication to help diffuse potentially
volatile situations, a practice that is increasingly being emphasized in many police and sheriff’s
departments, Wexler said, “departments who have had a lot of experience hiring women
recognize how invaluable they are in diffusing contentious situations.”

Here are three ways women are having a positive impact on law enforcement practices.

1. Women officers are less likely to use excessive force.

One of the two most widely acknowledged benefits of recruiting more women for careers in
criminal justice is the fact that, according to an article in The Atlantic, “Women officers are less
likely to use excessive force or pull their

weapon. They are defendants in lawsuits far less often than men, saving municipalities millions
in legal fees.”
This is especially important during a period when police use of force is under increased scrutiny,
often causing heightened tensions between police and the communities they serve.

2. Women officers are skilled at addressing violence against women and sex crimes.
One of the most critical areas where women in law enforcement can make a difference is in
addressing violence against women and sex crimes.

“It is absolutely critical to have women working in criminal justice,” said Jennifer Montoya, a
criminal investigator with the Department of Defense and now working toward her M.S. in Law
Enforcement Leadership at University of San Diego. “For example, with sexual assault cases, the
victim might want to talk to a woman. But that can’t always happen because there aren’t enough
females in the department and it ends up affecting the mission. These are human beings we are
dealing with. Sexual assault is an extremely sensitive issue and we need to be able to act
humanely.”
3. Women officers can help improve police-community relations.
The Washington Post shared findings on women’s aptitude for communication and restraint in
using force, reporting that “over the last 40 years, studies have shown that female officers are
less authoritarian in their approach to policing, less reliant on physical force and are more
effective communicators. Most importantly, female officers are better at defusing potentially
violent confrontations before those encounters turn deadly.”
“The dedication to ethical conduct and compassionate service is what law enforcement is, or
should be, all about,” said Tiffany Townsend, a San Diego sheriff detective who earned her
master’s degree in Law Enforcement Leadership from University of San Diego. “I believe I
provide a public service every time I go to work.”

Encouraging More Women to Pursue Careers in Law Enforcement

If women have such a positive impact on the profession, why aren’t there more women working
in law enforcement agencies today? The reasons vary, from stereotypes to recruitment
campaigns targeted at males to physical ability tests that favor male upper body strength.

Along with the growing awareness of their potential to make a positive impact, more needs to be
done to encourage women to enter the field of law enforcement. One example of a recruiting
effort aimed at women comes from the U.S. Border Patrol and a hiring push focused exclusively
on women.

According to Katherine Spillar, co-founder of the National Center for Women & Policing, “The
agency recognized that having just five percent women in its ranks impedes its ability to work
with the tens of thousands of migrant women who cross the U.S.-Mexico border each year, many
of whom suffer sexual assaults during their journey.”

Besides recruitment campaigns aimed at women, Montoya says encouraging young girls and
offering mentorship is another way to bring more females into the field. “I started in the Police
Explorers program when I was 15 and stayed in the program until I aged out at 21. ... The
Explorer program changed my life entirely — it was my first taste of law enforcement. If it
wasn’t for the Explorer program it would have been so much harder for me to get where I am
today.”

Cash vs. Credit Card: Which Is the Better Way

to Pay?
Credit card offers frequently tout the benefits and rewards you earn when you spend with a card,
but the perks of using credit cards aren't always enough to win the cash vs. credit card
showdown. For example, credit cards can tempt us to overspend, and the interest fees can get
costly if you carry a balance from month to month.

At the same time, that doesn't mean cash automatically prevails in every cash vs. credit card
battle, as cash has its own downsides. Carrying cash can be a safety risk, and getting your hands
on it -- particularly outside of banking hours -- can be a pain. Here's a look at both sides of the
cash vs. credit card conundrum.

The case for cash

Even in today's digital world, cash still has its place. For one thing, cold hard currency is all but
universally accepted, including at a number of small businesses that don't accept credit cards at
all. It's also convenient at certain events where cash-only lines can be shorter and faster. And that
spare $100 bill hidden in your glove box may be a lifesaver if your car breaks down and you
need to call for a midnight tow.

A cash payment can also net you a deal. Some smaller retailers and service providers offer
discounts to customers who pay with cash. Gas stations seem to favor the practice because the
margins on gasoline are already thin before credit card processing fees are added. Plus, cash
payments bring customers inside the store, where they're more likely to make additional
purchases.

Hard-line budgeting is another area where cash wins the cash vs. credit card argument. Many
financial pundits campaign for cash-only budgets because cash enforces a hard limit on
spending. Low-tech budgeting techniques, like envelope budgets, can be extremely effective for
the simple reason that once you're out of cash, that's it -- you're done spending.

When cash isn't king

Of course, cash does have its shortfalls, or there wouldn't be a cash vs. credit card debate. To
start, simply carrying cash on your person can be risky, and not just for your personal safety.
Cash is notoriously easy to lose or misplace, and it's exceptionally difficult to track down if lost
or stolen.

Being a cash-only consumer also has its unique inconveniences, particularly in terms of getting
cash when you need it. Even though there are thousands of ATMs in the United States, they
never seem to be nearby when you really need one. And if you do track one down, the fees can
be shocking.

Beyond the fees, banks tend to have ATM withdrawal limits that make it impossible to get more
than a few hundred dollars in a single day. If you need more than that, you'll have to make a trip
to the nearest bank branch, which is often even more inconvenient than finding the ATM in the
first place. That's even if the bank is open -- which it won't be if it's a holiday or past business
hours.

The case for credit cards

As useful as cash may still be, credit cards have a lot of advantages in the cash vs. credit card
debate. For instance, while cash is still the most widely accepted form of payment, credit cards
are accepted almost everywhere in the U.S. these days -- including some businesses that are now
forgoing cash entirely.

Furthermore, many services have definitely chosen a side in the cash vs. credit card dispute.
Credit cards are required by many hotels and rental car agencies when you make a booking, both
to ensure they have some recourse if you wreck your room or rental car, as well as to avoid
having too much cash on hand.

And while it can be a trouble spot for some, credit cards do enable you to make purchases even if
you don't have the cash to pay for them at the time. This can be especially helpful if you need to
buy food or pay bills while waiting for your paycheck to clear. Plus, using a credit card and
making on-time payments is a sure-fire way to build your credit score.

Credit cards also come out on top when it comes to safety and security in the cash vs. credit card
clash. Credit card users are protected against fraudulent credit card transactions, whereas you can
kiss lost or stolen cash goodbye. Most issuers offer $0 fraud liability, so you're not on the hook at
all. Even if there you are liable for unauthorized activity, it won't be more than $50.

Of course, we haven't even gotten to the rewards yet, which is the most frequent argument in the
cash vs. credit card battle. Nearly all cash back credit cards offer a minimum of 1% back on
purchases, with rates of up to 6% cash back for certain everyday purchases. And you can find
countless tales of cardholders' credit card spending earning all kinds of free flights and hotel
stays with their travel rewards cards.

Additionally, each major credit card issuer -- Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover
-- offers extra benefits for their cardholders, too. This can include everything from rental car and
travel insurance to retailer discounts and purchase protection.

Lastly, credit cards won't actually change any interest if you pay off your balance in full every
month. High interest fees are often an argument against credit cards in the cash vs. credit card
discussion, but this won't come into play if you don't carry a balance.

Even if you need to carry a balance, many cards offer 0% intro APR periods which allow
cardholders to finance their balances at 0% for more than a year. Compared to the average rate
on a personal loan -- the most likely alternative to a credit card in many cases -- this benefit can
be worth hundreds of dollars on its own.

Where credit cards fall flat

When folks discuss cash vs. credit cards, the potential for abuse is a common argument against
credit cards. With average interest rates over 14%, carrying debt on your credit card can certainly
get costly. Unless you have the self-discipline to pay off your credit card debt every month, you
may want to stick with cash.

Another potential downside to a credit card is the annual fee. Some cards, especially those with
the most lucrative reward points, will charge an annual fee to use your card. Luckily, it's easy to
find a card with no annual fee, even one that offers cash back and reward points.

Credit card payments can also cost you money if transaction fees are passed onto the cardholder.
So-called convenience fees of 2% to 3% are often charged if you use a card to pay certain bills
like college tuition, rent, insurance premiums, utility bills, and federal or state taxes.
A place for both
In the end, there is no one right answer to the choice of cash vs. credit cards. There is a time and
place for cash and credit. Each payment method has its advantages and disadvantages -- and
neither are perfect for every type of purchase.

If you don't have a problem keeping up with your card payments, credit cards are definitely a
great way to make most purchases. They offer the best fraud protection, rewards on your
purchases, and additional benefits like rental car insurance, purchase protection, and the ability to
build credit -- benefits you don't get with cash or a debit card.

At the same time, it's always a good idea to have at least a little cash on hand. You may find
yourself at a business that doesn't accept cards, or standing in a long line when a cash-only
option would be quicker. And, should the power go out or the card readers malfunction, cash
may be just the ticket to getting on with your purchase and going about your day.

Spending vs saving: how to find the perfect

balance
Becoming financially independent for the first time can be an exciting but overwhelming time.
Whether you’ve received your first pay cheque or student loan instalment, it can be tempting to
spend it all at once. But in reality, you’ll need to dedicate a significant portion of your income to
rent, food and bills. Research shows that 78% of students worry about making ends meet.
Despite this, one in five have never budgeted.

After the essential costs have been paid, it’s important to devise a plan of how to utilise any
spare money. Instead of impulse spending, you’ll thank yourself later for learning how to balance
saving for your future with buying the occasional treat.

Learn how to budget

Being aware of your fundamental expenses is the first way to take control of your finances. This
will help you avoid spending beyond your means and reach long-term goals.

Recent findings from NatWest revealed that 42% of students don’t use any budgeting methods to
help their money go further and 6% said they don’t consider what they’re spending at all.

Claire: “Every single student I know has blown most of their student loan on holidays, nights out
and new clothes. The best way to avoid this is to plan your budget in advance.”

To begin your financial plan, assess your monthly income. This is especially vital if you work
freelance or rely on tips. If you earn more than expected or have a slow month, it could affect
your budget for the following month.

Use a notebook, online spreadsheet or budgeting app to make a note of your monthly financial
obligations and subtract this amount from your income.
Claire: “Ensure you pay your bills and make any essential purchases the day you get paid so you
don’t have lots of cash in your bank account to tempt you into non-essential spending.”
This can include rent, bills, student loan payments and insurance premiums.

Ashley: “Seeing your spending habits written down can be a wake-up call. If your budget
amount outweighs your income, something needs to go. Be

honest with yourself about what you can actually afford and what you can live without.

“The budget might highlight areas you could cut costs. Small purchases, like a takeaway lunch or
a morning coffee, might seem harmless but they can add up to a surprisingly large fee.”

After factoring these vital payments into your budget, your next priority might be fixed-cost
automated payments such as a Netflix subscription or gym membership.

Dennis said: “Most of it is common sense and maths, but budgeting is also an emotional process
which can be challenging. It’s also difficult if you’re flat-sharing with friends or a partner who
might have different views and priorities.”

When you begin the next month’s budget, consider what worked and what didn’t. You might
decide to make adjustments as time goes on if your financial priorities change.

Organise utility costs

Be aware of how much your utility bills cost, and keep track of any changes. This can be tricky if
someone else is responsible for organising these payments. But being oblivious to the exact
amount could result in overspending and not having enough to cover the cost.

It may also be beneficial to create a joint account so that everyone can easily check outgoings.
But only do this with people who are financially secure and can be trusted to pay on time.

Ashley: “If you share a joint account with someone who has bad credit, makes late payments or
if the account goes overdrawn it could impact your credit score. This could stop you from getting
a mortgage or even a mobile phone contract in the future.”

If all payments come out of one person’s bank account, it can be difficult for everyone to keep
track of the costs. If anybody doesn’t transfer their share of the bills on time, the responsibility
falls onto the account holder.

Ashley: “If you find it difficult to keep on top of numerous different bills, use a bill-splitting
service that puts all utilities into one monthly payment for each person. Only having one cost to
consider makes budgeting much simpler.”

How much should you save?

If you have any money left over, envisage your saving goals and work them into your budget.
Caroline: “I’d look at all the things that are important to you in the short, medium and long term
and allocate some money to each. Put some money in a different bank account that’s harder for
you to access.”

Saving while you’re young will make things much easier when you’re ready to buy a house, get
married or are in desperate need of a holiday.

Caroline: “I think Millennials do save but, in my experience, they don’t know what to do with
the money and the housing market, so the money just sits in cash and then tempts spending.”

A report from last year found that 53% of 22- to 29-year-olds had no money set aside in a
savings account or an ISA (individual savings account) between 2014 and 2016.
Caroline: “My philosophy is that you can spend your money how you like, but ideally you could
be doing a little bit of everything. It’s this idea of balance and starting small that should be
promoted.

“Even if it feels impossible to save for a house or pointless saving for retirement, if you start
with something—even £25—it opens the door to the possibility of it happening, and allows you
to work on a plan to increase these contributions over time.”

Allow yourself occasional treats

Saving is important, but if it forces you to abandon your social life, hobbies or love for new
things, you’ll most likely feel deprived. This can result in reckless, unplanned and impulsive
spending.

Dennis: “A good guide is to allocate 50% to needs, 30% to wants and 20% to saving. Automate
the savings process and only spend what’s left over. If you want to control your spending, set a
weekly allowance, take it out in cash and leave the cards at home.”

Saving less so that you can afford the occasional treat could actually lead to more money being
saved in the long run.

Caroline: “Have a fun pot. I’d suggest putting 5-10% of your income into here every month and
don’t be afraid to use it. But remember once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

Eliminate bad spending habits

Treating yourself to the occasional swanky dinner or new outfit may seem

harmless, but try not to get carried away and always stick to the allocated amount in your budget.
Ashley: “Due to the peer pressure young people often face, or urge to compare ourselves when
scrolling social media, it’s hard not to turn to material goods to feel better and develop
irresponsible spending behaviour.”

Online platforms such as Instagram and YouTube are brimming with sponsored and aspirational
content which constantly encourages people to spend.
Claire: “Social media is so powerful these days. For millennials, it’s a massive part of their
everyday lives. From perfect holidays to perfect outfits, there’s always someone posting their
new purchases, which the impressionable younger generation try to live up to.”

Australian research from last year discovered 88% of students say social media has some impact
on their spending habits, and over a third of students cited FOMO (fear of missing out) and peer
pressure from social media as spending triggers.

Caroline: “We often have a false impression of how others live their life. We can assume they
have the money to pay for what we see, but it’s not always the case.”

In the 2018 Student Lifestyle Survey,74% of students said they bought new clothes and shoes
before moving to university.

Caroline: “Education is needed about living life in your own lane and learning what makes you
—not someone else—feel first class. Choose to spend your money in a way that feels good to
you.”

Despite what you see on Instagram, most people can’t afford to live the life of luxury. But no
matter what other people are buying, it’s crucial that you don’t get swayed to spend
irresponsibly. By creating a money management plan, you will find financial stability and
prevent making messy mistakes that could land you in tremendous debt.

Globalization and Economy

Put simply, globalization is the connection of different parts of the world. In economics,
globalization can be defined as the process in which businesses, organizations, and countries
begin operating on an international scale. Globalization is most often used in an economic
context, but it also affects and is affected by politics and culture. In general, globalization has
been shown to increase the standard of living in developing countries, but some analysts warn
that globalization can have a negative effect on local or emerging economies and individual
workers.

A Historical View

Globalization is not new. Since the start of civilization, people have traded goods with their
neighbors. As cultures advanced, they were able to travel farther afield to trade their own goods
for desirable products found elsewhere. The Silk Road, an ancient network of trade routes used
between Europe, North Africa, East Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, and the Far East, is an
example of early globalization. For more than 1,500 years, Europeans traded glass and
manufactured goods for Chinese silk and spices, contributing to a global economy in which both
Europe and Asia became accustomed to goods from far away. Following the European
exploration of the New World, globalization occurred on a grand scale; the widespread transfer
of plants, animals, foods, cultures and ideas became known as the Columbian Exchange. The
Triangular Trade network in which ships carried manufactured goods from Europe to Africa,
enslaved Africans to the Americas, and sent raw materials back to Europe is another example of
globalization. The resulting spread of slavery demonstrates that globalization can hurt people just
as easily as it can connect people.

The rate of globalization has increased in recent years, a result of rapid advancements in
communication and transportation. Advances in communication enable businesses to identify
opportunities for investment. At the same time, innovations in information technology enable
immediate communication and the rapid transfer of financial assets across national borders.
Improved fiscal policies within countries and international trade agreements between them also
facilitate globalization. Political and economic stability facilitate globalization as well. The
relative instability of many African nations is cited by experts as one of the reasons why Africa
has not benefited from globalization as much as countries in Asia and Latin America.

Benefits of Globalization

Globalization provides businesses with a competitive advantage by allowing them to source raw
materials where they are inexpensive. Globalization also gives organizations the opportunity to
take advantage of lower labor costs in developing countries, while leveraging the technical
expertise and experience of more developed economies.

With globalization, different parts of a product may be made in different regions of the world.
Globalization has long been used by the automotive industry, for instance, where different parts
of a car may be manufactured in different countries. Businesses in several different countries
may be involved in producing even seemingly simple products such as cotton T -shirts.

Globalization affects services too. Many businesses located in the United States have outsourced
their call centers or information technology services to companies in India. As part of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), U.S. automobile companies relocated their
operations to Mexico, where labor costs are lower. The result is more jobs in countries where
jobs are needed, which can have a positive effect on the national economy and result in a higher
standard of living. China is a prime example of a country that has benefited immensely from
globalization. Another example is Vietnam, where globalization has contributed to an increase in
the prices for rice, lifting many poor rice farmers out of poverty. As the standard of living
increased, more children of poor families left work and attended school.

Consumers benefit too. In general, globalization decreases the cost of manufacturing. This means
that companies can offer goods at a lower price to consumers. The average cost of goods is a key
aspect that contributes to increases in the standard of living. Consumers also have access to a
wider variety of goods. In some cases, this may contribute to improved health by enabling a
more varied and healthier diet; in others, it is blamed for increases in unhealthy food
consumption and diabetes.

Downsides

Not everything about globalization is beneficial. Any change has winners and losers, and the
people living in communities that had been dependent on jobs outsourced elsewhere often suffer.
Effectively, this means that workers in the developed world must compete with lower-cost
markets for jobs; unions and workers may be unable to defend against the threat of corporations
that offer the alternative between lower pay or losing jobs to a supplier in a less-expensive labor
market.

The situation is more complex in the developing world, where economies are undergoing rapid
change. Indeed, the working conditions of people at some points in the supply chain are
deplorable. The garment industry in Bangladesh, for instance, employs an estimated four million
people, but the average worker earns less in a month than a U.S. worker earns in a day. In 2013,
a textile factory building collapsed, killing more than 1,100 workers. Critics also suggest that
employment opportunities for children in poor countries may increase the negative impacts of
child labor and lure children of poor families away from school. In general, critics blame the
pressures of globalization for encouraging an environment that exploits workers in countries that
do not offer sufficient protections.

Studies also suggest that globalization may contribute to income disparity and inequality
between the more-educated and less-educated members of a society. This means that unskilled
workers may be affected by declining wages, which are under constant pressure from
globalization.

Into the Future

Regardless of the downsides, globalization is here to stay. The result is a smaller, more
connected world. Socially, globalization has facilitated the exchange of ideas and cultures,
contributing to a world view in which people are more open and tolerant of one another.

Top 8 Global Economic Challenges: An

Assessment of Global Risks and Priorities
The beginning of 2007 offers a conflicting picture of the global economy for those trying to
discern trends, challenges and opportunities. Concerns about energy security and climate
sustainability are converging-finally bringing consensus in sight on the need for action in the
United States, but prospects for breaking the global stalemate are still years away. While some
developing countries are succeeding in bringing hundreds of millions out of poverty, too many
are still mired in a doom spiral of conflict, poverty, and disease- despite the entry of new
philanthropists, advocates and global corporations into the field of development. China’s
projected 9.6 percent growth rate is sending ripples to the farthest reaches of the planet-creating
opportunities but also significant risks. The United States remains in the “goldilocks” zone, but
this is premised on continued borrowing from abroad at historically unprecedented rates while
many Americans fret about widening inequality and narrowing opportunity. While the United
States concentrates on civil war in the Middle East, most leaders in the region are preoccupied
with putting an outsized cohort of young people to work and on the road to becoming productive
citizens.
What are the most important challenges we face and what are the potential solutions? In
Washington, D.C., where short-term political wrangling too often crowds out the harder and
more important long-term challenges, this inaugural publication of Brookings Global Economy
and Development seeks to put the spotlight squarely back on the most consequential issues
demanding action. It seeks to size these issues, offering policymakers and leaders a concise and
clear view of the critical challenges as viewed by leading experts in the field. From economic
exclusion of youth in the Middle East to a pragmatic approach to energy and environmental
security, this “top 10” is intended to mark core issues and shed light on opportunities and
challenges with a broader and longer-term perspective.

When we gather a year from now, we would expect many of these challenges to remain front and
central, but we would hope this publication would elevate their visibility and help sustain a
dialogue on their resolution.

1. Energy and

Energy and environmental security has emerged as the primary issue on the global agenda for
2007. Consensus has recently been forged on the potential

Environmental Security

for long-term economic, national security and societal damage from insecure energy supplies and
environmental catastrophe, as well as the intense need for technological advances that can
provide low-polluting and secure energy sources. Yet despite growing global momentum, there
is still little agreement on the best set of actions required to reduce global dependency on fossil
fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. Confounding the international policy challenge is the
disproportionate impact of high oil prices and global warming across nations, insulating some
countries from immediate concern while forcing others to press for more rapid change.

2. Conflict and Poverty

In a world where boundaries and borders have blurred, and where seemingly distant threats can
metastasize into immediate problems, the fight against global poverty has become a fight for
global security. American policymakers, who traditionally have viewed security threats as
involving bullets and bombs, are increasingly focused on the link between poverty and conflict:
the Pentagon’s 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review focuses on fighting the “long war,” declaring
that the U.S. military has a humanitarian role in “alleviating suffering, ? [helping] prevent
disorder from spiraling into wider conflict or crisis.”

3. Rise of New Powers

The rise of “emerging powers”-a group that usually includes the so-called BRICs (Brazil, Russia,
India, and China), but which sometimes is applied more broadly to include South Africa, Mexico
and others-is reshaping the global economy and, more gradually, international politics. Growing
much faster than the rest of the world, these economies are changing the structure of
international production and trade, the nature and direction of capital flows, and the patterns of
natural resource consumption. At the same time, the growth of these countries is beginning to
shift the global distribution of power forcing the great powers to come to terms with the reality
that they will need to share management of international rules and systems in the coming
decades.

The private sector is becoming a significant player-indeed some might say the dominant player-
in shaping the global economic and development agenda. Multinational corporations with
operations that span the globe, and in some cases capacities and networks that match those of
governments, have a particularly important role to play in helping to spread the opportunities and
mitigating some of the risks of globalization.

Global Corporations, Global Impact

5. in the Middle East

The Middle East has before it what could be one of the greatest demographic gifts in modern
history-a potential economic windfall arising from a young and economically active workforce.
Today, young people aged 15- to 24- years old account for 22 percent of the region’s total
population, the highest regional average worldwide. With the right mix of policies, this
demographic opportunity could be tapped to spur economic growth and promote stability.

6.
The private sector is becoming a significant player-indeed some might say the dominant player-
in shaping the global economic and development agenda. Multinational corporations with
operations that span the globe, and in some cases capacities and networks that match those of
governments, have a particularly important role to play in helping to spread the opportunities and
mitigating some of the risks of globalization.

7.
From responding to the threat of pandemic flu to efforts to control the spread of HIV/AIDS, the
world has begun to realize that global health issues are relevant for any citizen, regardless of
nationality, residence or status. Despite improvements in the world’s collective ability to battle
disease with advances in medicine and technology, global health needs remain unmet, making
the entire world vulnerable to health crises. In particular, the poor continue to suffer
disproportionately from inadequate health services, exacerbating their struggle out of poverty.

8.
Today’s global challenges-nuclear proliferation, the deadlock of global trade negotiations, the
threat of pandemic flu, and the fight against global poverty-cannot be solved by yesterday’s
international institutions. To resolve the world’s most pressing problems, which touch all corners
of the globe, we must adapt our global governance approaches to be more representative and thus
more effective by encouraging and enabling the key affected countries to take an active role in
generating solutions.

Economic Exclusion
Global Corporations, Global Impact
Global Health Crises
Global Governance Stalemate
6 FACTORS FOR SUCCESSFUL
DEVELOPMENT
Since 1945 the United Nations has established the contemporary global, obligation to address the
economic and social well-being of ordinary citizens. A very new concept when written into their
charter: “The United Nations shall promote higher standards of living, full employment, and
conditions of progress and development in the economic and social order.”

Over time, for at least economists and policy makers, this development agenda has become
synonymous with “improving economic opportunities through increased production of goods and
services.” The implicit assumption is that economic growth will increase quality of life
standards, life expectancy, improve nutrition and health.

Since 1945, there have been impressive advancements in the elimination of extreme poverty, but
still many professionals wonder how to accelerate growth even more throughout the world –
particularly in Africa and South Asia, two regions with a great number of poor. The issue has
prompted economists and policymakers to analyze the importance of several factors, policies and
institutions, finding six factors for successful development:

1. Social inclusion – With a healthier and more educated population, nations can enjoy a more
effective economic and political life. Illiteracy is a major barrier to participation in the economy.
Without widespread education, citizens are more easily manipulated by un-just governments –
allowing for the empowerment of counter-productive leadership.

2. Quality management – Governments must manage their national macro-economic

environment; if there is no over-arching/holistic governance, the nation loses its credibility both
in private sector business, and the citizenry. The “political capital” of a country cannot be
wasted, and moreover, if public resources and urgent needs are not continually addressed, then
the country falls into a burden of “catch up” where they are always behind in development,
comparatively.

3. Transparency and accountability – Transparency is essential to prevent corruption and

financial fraud, and promotes citizen participation. Experience shows that trust in one’s
government encourages citizens and businesses to pay their taxes, thus advancing development
and social services. Companies invest and expand more, creating greater confidence in the
government and a “virtuous circle” of development ensues.

4. Technology and innovation – Economic production is no longer just about capital and labor,
now knowledge and innovation are just as important. It has been proven that technology gaps can
explain the disparity in productivity between different countries. Technological adoption,
knowledge dissemination and information communication technology (ICT) are imperative for
national competitiveness.
5. Economic opportunities – Increasing the access and use economic resources to citizens is
imperative. Free and open access to markets can contribute significantly to development; access
to goods, labor and financial markets for personal use, production and exchange; especially the
promotion of small-businesses.

Administrative Infrastructure – Business and society often come down to bureaucratic needs:
issuance of licenses, permits, birth certificate, passport, filing taxes, starting a business,
registering a title, property rights, contract settlements, foreign trade authorization, hiring an
employee, use the public health services, etc. The efficiency of bureaucracy is pertinent to
advancing greater and more equal access to public resources.

Extremes of Wealth and Poverty

Inequality is a major global issue, weakening the social cohesion necessary for stability and
security, the subject of Sustainable Development Goal 10. Poverty results from failures of
redistribution within the economic system, stagnating wages, chronic unemployment and lack of
opportunity, while less attention has been paid to the increasing global wealth going to the
already-wealthy as returns on capital, producing a social backlash. A new multilateral specialized
agency should be created within the reformed UN system specifically to address growing
economic inequality and to promote more equitable distribution of the world’s resources.

From 1980 to 2016 the world economy has grown enormously, but the benefits have been
distributed very unevenly. The bottom ten percent still has essentially no income. The next ten to
forty percent has seen more than a hundred percent growth in income, but from a very low base,
and mostly in China. The middle classes from fifty to ninety-five percent income groups have
grown only fifty percent at best over 36 years, while the top 0.001 percent has seen their income
grow by nearly 250 percent. New wealth has gone increasingly to the top.

This reflects a system that rewards capital rather than labour, particularly through an institutional
structure of multinational corporations which sometimes go out of their way to reduce their tax
liabilities and evade national
regulation and in some cases tending naturally to monopoly positions, and chartered to generate
maximum profits, excess capital and dividends for their shareholders, wealth which is often
located in tax-free havens.

A recent literature review published in Finance & Development indicates that “tax havens
collectively cost governments between US$500 to US$600 billion a year in lost corporate tax
revenue” and notes that US$200 billion of this is lost to low-income countries, substantially
higher than the total of official development assistance and a proportionately much higher share
of GDP than in the case of the advanced economies.

Succeeding generations of corporations have captured the wealth creation from primary
production including minerals and fossil fuels, manufacturing, industrial agriculture, various
forms of intellectual property, and now information technologies and big data. National policies
have directed this wealth to the state where corporations are state-owned, with some reasonable
distribution in social democracies, and almost entirely to the shareholders in more market-based
economies, with more or less concern for social and environmental impacts. These impacts have
been most extreme where weak national governance and corruption have left corporations free
reign to exploit labour and resources.

In such a globalized economy beyond national control, only global systems of regulation and
taxation, comparable to what was necessary at the national level in the 20th century to control
monopolies, can bring the wealth creation of the economy back into balance with environmental
imperatives to stay within planetary boundaries, and social imperatives to distribute that wealth
equitably for the benefit of all of humanity.
Is technology bridging or widening the gap?
If we’re not careful, technology could expand the gap between the rich and the poor.
It’s easy to paint a rosy picture of the future.

As robotics and AI start to take on manual, repetitive and mundane tasks, people will be free to
enjoy more leisure time without sacrificing productivity or quality of life. Smarter cities will lead
to happier, healthier and safer populations. Automated and electric vehicles will eliminate
congestion and pollution. Access to better information will remove cultural divides and create
more cohesive societies.

However, there is an equally good chance that technology will actually increase the gap between
the rich and the poor, remove jobs and create disparity between nations and create more
congestion in our networks. Indeed, left unchecked, this is the more likely scenario.

Yes, the automation of labor could conceivably allow every human being to work fewer hours
and enjoy more leisure time. However, that assumes that the impacts of automation are evenly
distributed and the benefits of automation are shared equally among all stakeholders. The more
likely outcome is that laborers will be made redundant while knowledge workers continue to toil
at their desks; shareholders will profit while workers lose out.

Automated cars could certainly reduce congestion, but only if automation leads to a reduction in
the number of cars on the roads, and the number of vehicle miles traveled, not just the effort of
driving. Smarter cities, if placed in the hands of authoritarian governments, could lead to less
personal security and privacy, not more. And we are already seeing how increased access to
information can build walls between groups rather than remove them.

In much the same way, the adoption and availability of technology could also increase the gap
between the developing world and mature markets. However, it could also allow developing
markets to leap ahead of the mature markets.

Consider, for example, the rapid adoption of solar generation in Africa, Asia and Latin America
versus that in Europe and North America. Or the fact that the vast majority of smart cities are
being built in the developing world while cities in the mature markets struggle to smarten up.
Lacking legacy

infrastructure and onerous or mis- focused regulation, developing markets could reap significant
dividends from the advance of technology.

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. There are no institutions dedicated to ensuring that the
benefits of technology are shared equally. In fact, as governments and private companies vie for
every competitive advantage and technological edge, the potential for the gap to widen is only
growing.
We believe that governments at all levels must start to grapple with the question of equality now.
When investing in new technologies, decision-makers will need to consider not only whether
their investments make financial and operational sense, but also whether they make sense
socially. Governments will need to return to their roots of securing the greatest benefits for the
greatest numbers of people and to the modes of the less fortunate.

The alternative is that we allow technology to advance unchecked. And, in doing so, sow the
seeds of our own discontent.

Technology Isn't Destroying Jobs, But Is

Increasing Inequality
Amid the concern around the automation of jobs, a long-standing truism has perhaps been
overlooked. Whilst the likes of the Frey and Osborne paper predicted a pretty widespread
demolition of 47% of all jobs, the reality is that those with low-skilled, routine jobs are far more
at risk.

The thing is, those with low skills have been on the receiving end of pretty much every shift in
the labor market over the past decade. For instance, MIT research found that not only has the
recent economic recovery generally passed low-skilled workers by, the same has been true for
much of the last 50 years. Since the financial crisis, jobs have returned en masse, with 300,000 or
so created in December alone, with income rising at a similar pace. That is not true for low-
skilled work however, as incomes for this group have barely moved for 50 years!

What's more, when jobs return after a recession or other economic shock, they are nearly always
requiring higher skills than before the shock. Far from being a destroyer of jobs therefore, what
technology does seem to do is help inequality between those with skills and those without.

Rising inequality
A good example of this comes from a recently published study from the University of California,
Los Angeles, which explores how technology (in the broadest sense) has affected wages over the
years. The research examined the introduction of something as relatively mundane as broadband
into Brazil between 2000 and 2009.

It revealed that the technology coincided with an increase in wages across the labor market, but
whereas the average employee saw wages rise by just 2.3%, those in managerial positions saw a
9% rise, and those in the boardroom saw an even more impressive 19% boost to the income. The
hypothesis proposed by the researchers is that the new technology allowed the more productive
workers to be even more productive, thus widening the income gap between them.

This is common with most new technologies, as it tends to improve the relative position of
skilled workers. In other words, technology often does the routine tasks for us, thus allowing
highly-skilled people to focus more on non-routine, abstract tasks that really set them apart. The
routine tasks are
often the bread and butter of the low-skilled worker however, so the new technology harms their
prospects.

Unequal skills
This unequal boost to earnings from new technologies is compounded by incredibly unequal
digital skills. Back in 2016, the OECD found that over 50% of adults could only just complete
the most basic of digital skills. They could write an email, but spreadsheets or word processing
were largely beyond them.
What's more, there is little sign that those skills are going to be developed. In 2017 a report from
the U.K. government explored both attitudes and access to adult education among those with low
skill levels.

The report reveals that adult education in the U.K. is declining, and participation declines more
as we age. What’s more, those that do engage in education as adults tend to be wealthier and
come from a high existing skill level.

Those with fewer qualifications to begin with would often cite barriers such as a lack of
confidence, lack of interest and a sense that they're too old.

So what can be done? A good place to start is in the early educational opportunities that people
receive. The report found that the single biggest predictor of later participation in education is
earlier participation. In other words, if people enjoyed learning at school and found it interesting
and engaging, then they are more likely to carry that on into adult life.

Those from lower socioeconomic groups could also benefit from more support to help them learn
effectively. For instance, while people of all sorts encountered barriers to learning, those from
higher socioeconomic groups were better able to overcome those barriers, whereas those from
lower socioeconomic groups succumbed to them.

The report also commends the route being taken by many MOOC platforms of breaking down
courses into more manageable chunks that can allow a more flexible approach to learning that
allows the student to overcome time pressures.

They also advocate adopting a unique approach to targeting specific groups. For instance, face-
to-face contact is particularly valuable in engaging new learners, especially if it comes from
intermediary bodies with strong roots in the local community.

"A longitudinal study of people who had undertaken community learning courses in the U.K.
found that many benefits, including improved basic skills and motivation to apply for work, were
felt most strongly among learners who

lacked qualifications, came from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and/or lived in the most
deprived areas," the report says.

Inequality as a result of technological innovation isn't a forgone conclusion, but it's clear that
society as a whole needs to get much better at improving the skills development of all citizens if
the dividend is to be spread more widely. Sadly, there is little evidence that governments even
understand this dilemma, much less are actively looking to address it.

Americans Grade Math as the Most Valuable

School Subject
PRINCETON, NJ -- Math is the clear winner when Americans are asked to say which school
subject has been most valuable to them in their lives, followed by language arts -- English,
literature, or reading -- and science. Math and English were also the top two subjects when
Gallup first asked this question in 2002.

The results, from Gallup's Aug. 7-11 Work and Education poll, are generally similar to those
from 11 years ago. The most notable difference is a sharp increase in the percentage mentioning
science, from 4% to 12%. While still well behind math and English, science has now moved
ahead of history into third place in the rank order of subjects.

The question does not specify which level of school -- grade school, high school, college, or
postgraduate study -- respondents should use in assessing the value of subjects. Thus,
respondents were free to look back over their entire educational history to select the subject they
thought was
most valuable to them.
However, responses do differ according to Americans' own level of educational attainment, with
math increasingly less likely to be mentioned by those with higher levels of education.
Specifically, 43% of those with a high school education or less say math has been most valuable,
compared with 19% among those with postgraduate education.

In contrast, the importance of English rises with higher levels of formal education, tying math as
the most important among four-year college graduates and coming in first among postgraduates.
It could be that those with higher education levels are more likely to use written communication
as a part of their jobs.

English also ranked ahead of math as postgraduates' choice for most valuable subject in 2002.
Postgraduates are about as likely to mention science as math as the most valuable subject for
them.

Women Divided in Views of Most Valuable Subject

Men overwhelmingly say math has been the most valuable subject in their lives, with English
and science essentially tied for second. Women are as likely to mention English as math as the
most valuable subject.
Math is also the top subject across household income levels and among Republicans, Democrats,
and independents. And while math is No. 1 among political conservatives and moderates, math
and English are essentially tied among liberals.

Implications
Proponents of focusing on the "three R's" in school -- reading, writing, and arithmetic -- would
be happy to know that U.S. adults report math and English are the school subjects that have been
most valuable in their lives. While there is public support for teaching students skills such as
critical thinking and communication in addition to core subject material, the poll results show the
importance of teaching math and English in schools.
Those who want to see an increased emphasis on STEM (science, technology,

engineering, and math) training for today's students will also be encouraged to note that math
and science are two of the top three subjects Americans mention, but cautioned by the high
ranking of English.
Americans may have a bit of a love-hate relationship with English and math, particularly math.
When Gallup asked Americans in 1989 to name their favorite school subjects, math led, with
26%, followed by history (18%) and English (13%). But in the same poll, math tied English as
Americans' least favorite subject.

How technology has changed education?

For better or worse, we’re living in a technology-driven world. Since the internet exploded onto
the scene in the ’80s and ’90s, became accessible to the average family in the early 2000s, and
eventually began to fit into our pocket with the development of smartphones, it’s safe to say
technology is on an upward trajectory, and it shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon.

Today, the internet dominates many aspects of our life. We’re so used to it that we don’t even
think about all the areas it touches. It helps us communicate with our friends and family. It’s an
invaluable tool in the kitchen as we look up recipes and ingredients. If we’re attempting DIY
repairs on our car, we might look up a tutorial on YouTube. We access our entertainment online.
Whenever we have any question, from the most mundane to the most complicated, we ask the
internet.
There’s one facet of our life, however, where we might not often think about the effects of
technology, and that’s the realm of education. Today, we want to spend some time examining
how technology has found its way into the halls of schools across the country and around the
globe, and all the ways technology has changed education.

How Does Technology Impact Education?

In many ways, education has not changed at all. The foundational system is still in place. A
teacher instructs a student or a group of students, who use their studies to learn to become
members of society. A few will then go on to become teachers themselves, and pass their
knowledge along to the next generation. Books are frequent educational tools, and students will
read these, write essays, reword my essay, conduct research, participate in debates and projects,
and even gain hands-on experience that will help them better understand and navigate the world
and their future careers.

While much of this tried-and-true model still exists today, changes are popping up. So how has
technology affected education today? Let’s look at a few of the most common ways.

1. Greater Accessibility
In the past, students and teachers alike needed to be physically present in the same location for
learning to take place. Thanks to the way internet technology allows for instant and convenient
communication over great distances at the click of a button, this is no longer the case.

How has technology changed learning? In the realms of higher education, it has led to the
exciting possibility of online degrees. Established traditional schools now offer some of their
courses online, while other schools have sprung up that operate entirely online, with students and
teachers never once meeting face to face. In primary and secondary schools, this same
technology allows for cyber-schooling, where children can complete their work from the comfort
and convenience of home.

Online schooling such as these examples has helped immensely in breaking down geographic
barriers that have long prevented many students from reaching certain educational institutions.
For example, imagine someone who wants to study a highly specific program only available at
one school across the country, but is unable to attend due to family commitments that don’t
allow her to uproot her life and move. Thanks to online education, she can now complete her
degree.

Increased Flexibility

The idea of flexibility due to the internet goes hand in hand with improved accessibility. Online
classes have freed students from having to attend school at specified times, something that is
often impossible due to work or family responsibilities. Instead, course materials are available
online, and students have the freedom to study and complete classwork whenever their schedule
permits. As long as they complete work by the assigned deadline, it’s up to them to plan how to
use their time.
Technology has opened the doors of education to many who might otherwise be unable to attend
a traditional school. Anyone working full-time, for instance, will now be able to continue their
job while getting an education. Parents with young children can also find opportunities to attend
school. Kids who are extremely serious about a sport and train for hours during the day now have
the freedom to fit their schooling around their busy schedule.

3. Differing Interactions between Teachers and Students

With the development of online educational programs, the interactions between teachers and
students have undergone a fundamental shift. There are advocates on both sides of this matter,
with some saying this change is for the better and others saying it’s for the worse. Perhaps the
most helpful position to take is that this change is neither wholly negative nor entirely positive,
and instead has both pros and cons.

For example, because this interaction is online, class time is no longer

students’ only opportunity to ask their teachers questions and request information. Instead, they
can take advantage of emails, instant messaging, and texting to ask their professors questions
anytime, rather than having to wait for the next class, when the question is no longer fresh in
their mind.

On the other hand, however, these technologies mean neither student nor teacher will have the
benefit of a face-to-face conversation, where nonverbal cues aid communication, and additional
topics may come up that supplement the original discussion.

4. Advent of Online Testing

Along with online education comes the advent of online testing, which is hugely beneficial for a
whole host of reasons. Foremost among those reasons is the fact that online testing is impartial
and entirely fair. If a machine is grading the test and automatically correcting wrong answers, it’s
impossible to show any signs of bias. Additionally, online testing can be an excellent solution for
those who suffer from test anxiety and are distressed by taking tests in a room with a group of
other people. Finally, it’s also much better for those with busy schedules, who may struggle to be
at a testing center at a particular time.

Online testing isn’t without drawbacks, however. Most notably, it is only effective for multiple-
choice tests, not for essay or short answer questions. Students can still take essay-based tests
online, but a human teacher will need to grade them.

5. Improved Ability to Meet Special Needs

In the past, a rigid classroom structure defined the world of academia. Each student had the same
experience, no matter their differing needs or abilities. While some students could function well
in this environment, others had unmet needs.

Technology improves a school’s abilities to meet the needs of all types of students. Now,
students with hearing, speaking or seeing impairments, or those who are largely housebound, can
still receive a quality education. Technological advancements can also meet the needs of students
with intellectual, social, or developmental disabilities. No matter what a student’s unique needs
may be, technology affects education for the better by improving our ability to create learning
environments that work for everyone.

6. Availability of Online Learning Content

Learning used to take place exclusively in a classroom setting. Educational tools were either
books or officially produced videos. One of the ways the Internet has changed education is by
allowing anyone to share their knowledge with the world by publishing an educational blog post,
e-book, or

YouTube video.

The far-reaching benefit that comes out of this is that it makes it easier for anyone to learn.
Imagine if you were planning a trip to Italy, and wanted to gain a fundamental knowledge of
conversational Italian. No longer must you sign up for a class at a local university, or even visit
your local library to check out a stack of dense textbooks. Now, all you need to do is pop open
your laptop or phone and find a free app that’ll teach you.

7. Greater Emphasis on Interactivity

Much of our traditional educational model focuses on the idea of passivity, where students sit
back and listen to a teacher talk, or read words on the page of a textbook. This concept leaves
very little room for interactivity and engagement, however, beyond what the student can
manufacture in themselves.

Technology, on the other hand, tends to be more interactive. Students can engage directly with
interactive models and videos, navigate websites, browse the internet for research, and more. For
example, imagine the difference between trying to memorize a list of every country in the world
from a book, versus an interactive tool that asked you to click on every nation as it prompted you
with a name. Interactive tools help spark a broader interest in the subjects at hand, leading to
improved retention and a desire to pursue topics further.

8. Heightened Ability to Keep up With Current Events

Let’s say the only teaching tools a teacher has are textbooks, most of which contain information
that’s at least a year or two old, due to the lengthy publishing process. That may not have been a
problem in the past, but the world today is moving faster than ever, thanks to technology. If the
only information you have to share with students is a few years old, you may as well be decades
behind.

Technology allows teachers to keep students up to date on not only current events, but also
brand-new research and cutting-edge discoveries. Through using PowerPoint, YouTube,
blogging technology, and the power of a good search engine, teachers can help their students
understand the modern world they’re living in much better than if they didn’t have these tools.

9. Adaptability and Personalization

Educational spaces are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that what helps one student learn
may be virtually useless to someone else, and what makes no sense to one student may be the
only thing that clicks with another. Everyone’s brain works differently, and everyone has a
unique learning style

— yet, for many years, all those students read from the same textbook.

How does technology affect education? It solves problems by allowing room for far greater
adaptability. Students can benefit from having a range of tools and learning technologies at their
fingertips, so if one solution doesn’t work for a student, another might. If the students in question
are still young children, teachers can better personalize learning plans and incorporate different
technologies that will help a specific student.

10. Shifting Classroom Dynamics

With the arrival and popularization of internet technology, the dynamic in classrooms —
particularly college classrooms — is experiencing a shift. Where the professor may once have
been the sole source of knowledge, the internet has changed this. All the information in the world
is available online, and students are extremely capable of looking things up for themselves,
rather than needing to absorb this information during class time.

Because of this, many classrooms are shifting, so students spend homework time learning new
concepts and ideas, while they spend class time debating these ideas and discussing their various
implications. In this type of classroom, the teacher is less of a lecturer and more of a moderator
and mentor. Professors will likely offer office hours in case students have additional questions or
concerns about the material.

This same model applies to online schools, which often expect students to gather information
independently before sharing their thoughts on discussion boards and forums, where professors
act as moderators. Students can contact their professors via text or online messages, or else they
may host office hours in local public spaces such as libraries and coffee shops.

11. Preparing Students for a Technology-Based World

Because books and face-to-face lectures have dominated intellectual and academic spaces for so
long, there are plenty of people who felt a bit scandalized by the sudden inclusion of video
presentations, iPads, e-books, and podcasts into these spaces.

But it’s essential to realize almost every other facet of today’s world relies on these technologies.
When students leave high school and college to find a job, these jobs will almost certainly
involve technology of some kind. Even if they don’t, internet technology will inundate other
facets of their personal lives. The inclusion of these technologies into the classroom is about
preparing students for a world that will be full of them. The technology is not only there to
supplement the learning — it’s there so students will learn to use it and integrate it into their
lives.

Redefining the Role of the Teacher: It's a

Multifaceted Profession
Imagine a school where teaching is considered to be a profession rather than a trade. The role of
teachers in a child's education -- and in American culture -- has fundamentally changed.
Teaching differs from the old "show-and-tell" practices as much as modern medical techniques
differ from practices such as applying leeches and bloodletting.

Instruction doesn't consist primarily of lecturing to students who sit in rows at desks, dutifully
listening and recording what they hear, but, rather, offers every child a rich, rewarding, and
unique learning experience. The educational environment isn't confined to the classroom but,
instead, extends into the home and the community and around the world. Information isn't bound
primarily in books; it's available everywhere in bits and bytes.

Students aren't consumers of facts. They are active creators of knowledge. Schools aren't just
brick-and-mortar structures -- they're centers of lifelong learning. And, most important, teaching
is recognized as one of the most challenging and respected career choices, absolutely vital to the
social, cultural, and economic health of our nation.

Today, the seeds of such a dramatic transformation in education are being planted. Prompted by
massive revolutions in knowledge, information technology, and public demand for better
learning, schools nationwide are slowly but surely restructuring themselves.

Leading the way are thousands of teachers who are rethinking every part of their jobs -- their
relationship with students, colleagues, and the community; the tools and techniques they employ;
their rights and responsibilities; the form and content of curriculum; what standards to set and
how to assess whether they are being met; their preparation as teachers and their ongoing
professional development; and the very structure of the schools in which they work. In short,
teachers are reinventing themselves and their occupation to better serve schools and students.

New Relationships and Practices

Traditionally, teaching was a combination of information-dispensing, custodial child care and
sorting out academically inclined students from others. The underlying model for schools was an
education factory in which adults, paid hourly or daily wages, kept like-aged youngsters sitting
still for standardized lessons and tests.

Teachers were told what, when, and how to teach. They were required to educate every student
in exactly the same way and were not held responsible when many failed to learn. They were
expected to teach using the same methods as past generations, and any deviation from traditional
practices was discouraged by supervisors or prohibited by myriad education laws and
regulations. Thus, many teachers simply stood in front of the class and delivered the same
lessons year after year, growing gray and weary of not being allowed to change what they were
doing.

Many teachers today, however, are encouraged to adapt and adopt new practices that
acknowledge both the art and science of learning. They understand that the essence of education
is a close relationship between a knowledgeable, caring adult and a secure, motivated child. They
grasp that their most important role is to get to know each student as an individual in order to
comprehend his or her unique needs, learning style, social and cultural background, interests, and
abilities.

This attention to personal qualities is all the more important as America continues to become the
most pluralistic nation on Earth. Teachers have to be committed to relating to youngsters of
many cultures, including those young people who, with traditional teaching, might have dropped
out -- or have been forced out -- of the education system.

Their job is to counsel students as they grow and mature -- helping them integrate their social,
emotional, and intellectual growth -- so the union of these sometimes separate dimensions yields
the abilities to seek, understand, and use knowledge; to make better decisions in their personal
lives; and to value contributing to society.

They must be prepared and permitted to intervene at any time and in any way to make sure
learning occurs. Rather than see themselves solely as masters of subject matter such as history,
math, or science, teachers increasingly understand that they must also inspire a love of learning.

In practice, this new relationship between teachers and students takes the form of a different
concept of instruction. Tuning in to how students really learn prompts many teachers to reject
teaching that is primarily lecture based in favor of instruction that challenges students to take an
active role in learning.

They no longer see their primary role as being the king or queen of the classroom, a benevolent
dictator deciding what's best for the powerless underlings in their care. They've found they
accomplish more if they adopt the role of educational guides, facilitators, and co-learners.

The most respected teachers have discovered how to make students passionate participants in the
instructional process by providing project-based, participatory, educational adventures. They
know that in order to get students to truly take responsibility for their own education, the
curriculum must relate to their lives, learning activities must engage their natural curiosity, and
assessments must measure real accomplishments and be an integral part of learning.

Students work harder when teachers give them a role in determining the form and content of
their schooling -- helping them create their own learning plans and deciding the ways in which
they will demonstrate that they have, in fact, learned what they agreed to learn.

The day-to-day job of a teacher, rather than broadcasting content, is becoming one of designing
and guiding students through engaging learning opportunities. An educator's most important
responsibility is to search out and construct meaningful educational experiences that allow
students to solve real-world problems and show they have learned the big ideas, powerful skills,
and habits of mind and heart that meet agreed-on educational standards. The result is that the
abstract, inert knowledge that students used to memorize from dusty textbooks comes alive as
they participate in the creation and extension of new knowledge.

New Tools and Environments

One of the most powerful forces changing teachers' and students' roles in education is new
technology. The old model of instruction was predicated on information scarcity. Teachers and
their books were information oracles, spreading knowledge to a population with few other ways
to get it.

But today's world is awash in information from a multitude of print and electronic sources. The
fundamental job of teaching is no longer to distribute facts but to help children learn how to use
them by developing their abilities to think critically, solve problems, make informed judgments,
and create knowledge that benefits both the students and society. Freed from the responsibility of
being primary information providers, teachers have more time to spend working one-on-one or
with small groups of students.

Recasting the relationship between students and teachers demands that the structure of school
changes as well. Though it is still the norm in many places to isolate teachers in cinderblock
rooms with age-graded pupils who rotate through classes every hour throughout a semester -- or
every year, in the case of elementary school -- this paradigm is being abandoned in more and
more schools that want to give teachers the time, space, and support to do their jobs.

Extended instructional periods and school days, as well as reorganized yearly schedules, are all
being tried as ways to avoid chopping learning into often arbitrary chunks based on limited time.
Also, rather than inflexibly group students in grades by age, many schools feature mixed-aged
classes in which students spend two or more years with the same teachers.

In addition, ability groups, from which those judged less talented can rarely break free, are being
challenged by a recognition that current standardized tests do not measure many abilities or take
into account the different ways people learn best.

One of the most important innovations in instructional organization is team teaching, in which
two or more educators share responsibility for a group of students. This means that an individual
teacher no longer has to be all things to all students. This approach allows teachers to apply their
strengths, interests, skills, and abilities to the greatest effect, knowing that children won't suffer
from their weaknesses, because there's someone with a different set of abilities to back them up.

To truly professionalize teaching, in fact, we need to further differentiate the roles a teacher
might fill. Just as a good law firm has a mix of associates, junior partners, and senior partners,
schools should have a greater mix of teachers who have appropriate levels of responsibility based
on their abilities and experience levels. Also, just as much of a lawyer's work occurs outside the
courtroom, so, too, should we recognize that much of a teacher's work is done outside the
classroom.

New Professional Responsibilities

Aside from rethinking their primary responsibility as directors of student learning, teachers are
also taking on other roles in schools and in their profession. They are working with colleagues,
family members, politicians, academics, community members, employers, and others to set clear
and obtainable standards for the knowledge, skills, and values we should expect America's
children to acquire. They are participating in day-to-day decision making in schools, working
side-by-side to set priorities, and dealing with organizational problems that affect their students'
learning.

Many teachers also spend time researching various questions of educational effectiveness that
expand the understanding of the dynamics of learning. And more teachers are spending time
mentoring new members of their profession, making sure that education school graduates are
truly ready for the complex challenges of today's classrooms.

Reinventing the role of teachers inside and outside the classroom can result in significantly better
schools and better-educated students. But though the roots of such improvement are taking hold
in today's schools, they need continued nurturing to grow and truly transform America's learning
landscape. The rest of us -- politicians and parents, superintendents and school board members,
employers and education school faculty -- must also be willing to rethink our roles in education
to give teachers the support, freedom, and trust they need to do the essential job of educating our
children.

Problems at School? How to Handle the Top 4

Issues
At some point as a parent, you will likely be faced with the dreaded email from your child’s
teacher telling you that your kid has crossed the line and that you need to come in for another
conference.
Or the principal will call to tell you that your teen has missed the last week of school altogether,
unbeknownst to you.

Maybe you’ve discovered that your child’s grades have plunged from acceptable to barely
passing.
What’s a parent to do? Carole Banks, MSW addresses the top four school problems parents
struggle with the most.

1. Acting Out in School

When your child acts out in school, it can be worrisome, frustrating and embarrassing. On top of
the actual misbehavior, you fear that he’ll make a bad name for himself—that his reputation as a
troublemaker will follow him from grade to grade.
You may also feel judged—and blamed—by teachers and other parents for what your child does
at school.
Some kids act out when they’re feeling left out or left behind. Make sure that your child is
capable of doing the class work he is being asked to do, for example. Being behind (or ahead of)
the class can create boredom, frustration, and anxiety—which may lead some kids to act out
verbally or physically.

Don’t Punish Your Child Twice

Try to leave discipline for acting out at school to school officials—don’t punish your child twice.
In most cases, letting the school hold your child accountable is enough. But in chronic or severe
acting-out situations, it is important to work with the school to understand exactly what is going
on. You may then need to work with some local support services to address the behavior.

Don’t Assume Your Child Will Figure Things Out on His Own
Sometimes parents assume that their kids will figure out things on their own. But if you’re
dealing with a chronic issue, you have to face facts: your child has not figured it out by himself
and he is not likely to do so. You need to help him.
So talk to the teacher—that’s your best first step. You need a sense of why he’s acting out and
what’s happening in order to know how you can help your child change.
Pay close attention to what your child says at home. She should know that all

experiences are okay to share.

A word of caution: one important lesson James Lehman teaches us in The Total
Transformation® program is to support the school authorities in front of your child. If your child
hears your criticism of school officials and her teachers, she is likely to be disrespectful to them
in class—and also to you.

2. Dropping Grades
If your child’s grades are dropping, rule number one is to become an investigator. In other
words, really find out what’s going on with your child.
Is he having problems at home or with other kids at school? Is he having a tough time adjusting
to middle school or high school? Are his study habits poor—and can you work on that together?

For some kids, learning disabilities and medical problems may play a role. And for still others,
drug and alcohol use may be the cause of falling grades. The main thing for you to do is find out
the “why” and then come up with a plan to help your child. Here are some steps you can take
immediately:

Meet with Your Child’s Teacher

Call your child’s teacher and ask for a meeting. Tell her what you are seeing at home—and then
ask what she has observed in the classroom. Ask her for any ideas she might have to help your
child get back on track.

Set up More Structure at Home

A common problem for many kids is a lack of structure in their after-school schedule. Make sure
sports or other clubs do not come first, with homework being fit in at the end of the day (when
your child is exhausted).
Prioritizing play before work teaches your child that play comes before work—and is therefore
more important than work. Clubs or sports should not come before school work and family time
for your child.

The bottom line is that schoolwork has to be prioritized, and a structure has to be set up so it isn’t
squeezed in at the last minute.
Be Realistic in Your Goals

When you structure your child’s study time to help him bring his grades back to an acceptable
level, be realistic in your goals. Remember, it took time for your child to get behind, so you need
to allow time for him to catch up.

Get actively involved in your child’s homework by reviewing it and helping with study
strategies. I also recommend that you try to be present during study time. I know that many
parents work and can’t be at home with their children after school. As a working parent and
grandparent myself, I

completely understand and sympathize with that situation. If you or your spouse can’t be there,
try to get your child into in an after-school program or ask another trusted adult to be there with
them.

Don’t Restrict Your Child from Privileges Until His Grades Improve

Understand that restricting your child from all of his privileges until he brings his grades up
usually backfires. In effect, you end up taking away the tool that you need to actually motivate
your child to improve.

Instead, I recommend that you require your child to study for a certain amount of time each day
to earn those extras that night. You do your homework, you get your privileges. This will teach
your child the habits he needs to get better grades.

Talk to Your Child About What’s Going On

Have a frank conversation with your child about his grades. Say:
“Look, I’ve been letting you manage your homework on your own, but it’s not working. Now
we’re going to set up a study time every day where I supervise your work. No phone and no
internet during this time.”

“When your grades improve we can talk about letting you self-manage again. But in the
meantime, we have to seriously set aside some time to work on this.”

And remember to ask your child about his day and show that you are interested. Ask questions
that require a longer answer than “yes” or “no.” In parent coaching sessions, I’ve found that
when parents really make a consistent effort to keep up with their kids, they are seldom caught
unawares when it comes to dropping grades or poor school performance.

3. “I hate my teacher!”
Every so often, your child will have a teacher that he just can’t seem to get along with.
Sometimes it’s a simple personality conflict. Other times, your child is having difficulty
responding to authority. It is okay to validate how he feels about his teacher.
Allow your child to share with you what it’s like in class. Don’t tell him he’s wrong or that he
shouldn’t feel a certain way. Once your child has been heard, he’ll be more receptive to hearing
your ideas about what he can do to make the situation better.

But be careful, don’t agree with him and say, “Yeah, you’re right. Your

teacher is a jerk.” When you undermine the teacher’s authority, you are giving your child
permission to disrespect her.

Learning to Get Along

If your child is old enough, he has to learn to accept the fact that certain teachers require things
that he might not agree with. It’s a fact of life that not every teacher is able to give your child
what he would like to have. It’s a fact of life that some teachers are quite strict; they’re not warm
and fuzzy.

As a parent, you definitely would not want to ask them to do their job differently. Instead, work
on helping your child. Say something like:

“You know, you’re going to meet a lot of people in life, and you have to learn how to get along
with them. Even though this teacher isn’t your favorite, part of your job this year is to get
through it, be respectful, and do your best. I wonder how we can figure out how to do that?”

There’s nothing wrong with asking the teacher for some ideas, as well.

Meet With the Teacher

If the teacher does seem to be at fault, meet with him or her and share what your child’s
experience has been. You will want to try to find some middle ground if at all possible.
You might also want to bring in another administrator or official, like the school social worker,
to this meeting. This will keep things civil and give you some support should you need it later.

4. Skipping School
If your child is skipping school—either playing sick or skipping out of classes—again, you first
need to investigate and find out why. Is your child failing, or being bullied, or under the
influence of alcohol or drugs? Does he have physical problems?

Anxiety
Some kids develop anxiety around going to school and they can have stomach aches or
headaches as a result. Younger kids might cling to parents and cry. A lot of kids will say they’re
sick in order to avoid school because they have anxiety about it.

If there’s an anxiety issue at play, a visit to your child’s pediatrician to determine whether
counseling is in order might be your best course of action. A skilled counselor can gently get
your child over the hump and teach them ways of coping with their nervousness about school.

Ultimately, the reason why your child is missing school chronically needs to
be understood so it can be resolved. For example, if your child is being bullied, you will need to
work with the school to make sure your child is protected and that it stops.

Risky Behavior
It’s no secret that failing to attend school can lead your child or teen to become involved in risky
behaviors, especially if he is not supervised consistently at home.

If your child skips school chronically, you may have to involve community services. Ask them to
address the underlying reasons for school truancy. The juvenile justice system does not like the
idea of kids skipping school and loitering around town, so there may be hope there.

You might call up your local police department and say:

“I can’t get my child to go to school. Are there any resources available in this community to help
me get him back on track?”
Understand that if your child is chronically skipping school, it’s usually the result of a problem
that has built up for quite some time. Often it’s the end of a long string of problems, rather than
the beginning. For this reason, I believe this is an issue that’s important to nip in the bud at an
early stage.

So when your child’s grades start dropping or he’s coming home moody and sad, intervene then.
Keep the communication open and always stay interested in what’s happened to your child from
day to day. It will pay off in the end, I promise you.

Single-sex education: the pros and cons

Single-sex education (teaching boys and girls in separate classrooms or schools) is an old
approach that’s gaining new momentum. While single-sex education has long existed in many
private schools, it’s a relatively new option for public schools. The National Association for
Single-Sex Public Education estimates that approximately 400 public schools now offer some
form of single-sex education. What is fueling this movement? And what are the risks and
benefits of single-sex education?

A driving force in the single-sex education movement is recent research showing natural
differences in how males and females learn. Putting this research into practice, however, has
triggered a debate that extends beyond pure academics. Political, civil rights, socioeconomic and
legal concerns also come into play. As the debate heats up, it helps to understand all sides of the
issue.

Making the case for single-sex education

Those who advocate for single-sex education in public schools argue that: Some parents don’t
want their children to be in mixed-gender classrooms because, especially at certain ages, students
of the opposite sex can be a distraction.
Leonard Sax and others agree that merely placing boys in separate classrooms from girls
accomplishes little. But single-sex education enhances student success when teachers use
techniques geared toward the gender of their students.

Some research indicates that girls learn better when classroom temperature is warm, while boys
perform better in cooler classrooms. If that’s true, then the temperature in a single-sex classroom
could be set to optimize the learning of either male or female students.

Some research and reports from educators suggest that single-sex education can broaden the
educational prospects for both girls and boys. Advocates claim co-ed schools tend to reinforce
gender stereotypes, while single-sex schools can break down gender stereotypes. For example,
girls are free of the pressure to compete with boys in male-dominated subjects such as math and
science. Boys, on the other hand, can more easily pursue traditionally “feminine” interests such
as music and poetry. One mother, whose daughter has attended a girls-only school for three
years, shared her experience on the GreatSchools parent community: “I feel that the single
gender environment

has given her a level of confidence and informed interest in math and science that she may not
have had otherwise.”

Federal law supports the option of single-sex education. In 2006, Education Secretary Margaret
Spellings eased federal regulations, allowing schools to offer single-sex classrooms and schools,
as long as such options are completely voluntary. This move gives parents and school districts
greater flexibility.

What critics say about single-sex education

Those who claim single-sex education is ineffective and/or undesirable make the following
claims:

Few educators are formally trained to use gender-specific teaching techniques. However, it’s no
secret that experienced teachers usually understand gender differences and are adept at
accommodating a variety of learning styles within their mixed-gender classrooms.

Gender differences in learning aren’t the same across the board; they vary along a continuum of
what is considered normal. For a sensitive boy or an assertive girl, the teaching style promoted
by advocates of single-sex education could be ineffective (at best) or detrimental (at worst). For
example, a sensitive boy might be intimidated by a teacher who “gets in his face” and speaks
loudly believing “that’s what boys want and need to learn.”

Students in single-sex classrooms will one day live and work side-by-side with members of the
opposite sex. Educating students in single-sex schools limits their opportunity to work
cooperatively and co-exist successfully with members of the opposite sex.

At least one study found that the higher the percentage of girls in a co-ed classroom, the better
the academic performance for all students (both male and female). Professor Analia Schlosser,
an economist from the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv, found that elementary
school, co-ed classrooms with a majority of female students showed increased academic
performance for both boys and girls. In high school, the classrooms with the best academic
achievement were consistently those that had a higher percentage of girls. Dr. Schlosser
theorizes that a higher percentage of girls lowers the amount of classroom disruption and fosters
a better relationship between all students and the teacher.

The American Council on Education reports that there is less academic disparity between male
and female students overall and a far greater achievement gap between students in different
racial, ethnic and

socioeconomic groups, with poor and minority students children faring poorly. Bridging that
academic chasm, they argue, deserves more attention than does the gender divide.

Single-sex education is illegal and discriminatory, or so states the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU) . In May 2008, the ACLU filed suit in federal court, arguing that Breckinridge
County Middle School’s (Kentucky) practice of offering single-sex classrooms in their public
school is illegal and discriminatory. The school doesn’t require any child to attend a single-sex
class, yet the suit argues that the practice violates several state and federal laws, including Title
IX and the equal Educational Opportunities Act.

What's the point of school uniform?

A shirt, tie and blazer may not be the ingredients for my favourite outfit, but if I were given the
choice, I wouldn’t throw away the idea of school uniform. Wearing a uniform is a badge of
pride, creates an identity for a school and is an important part of being a school student.

“Uniforms show that you are part of an organisation. Wearing it says we’re all in this together,”
Jason Wing, head teacher at the Neale-Wade academy in Cambridgeshire, says.

“Also, if you wear your uniform with pride, it means you are half way there to being respectful,
buying into what the organisation is all about.’’

Claire Howlette, an English teacher, agrees: “Uniforms give students a sense of belonging to a
particular school and create an identity for the school in the community.”

My school is one of many that seem to be reverting to a more formal uniform – this September I
will be wearing a shirt and blazer instead of my old jumper and polo shirt. A number of students
have complained about the change, but general opinion is that the jumpers and polo shirts were
“childish”.

A school uniform teaches students to dress smartly and take pride in their appearance. Howlette
says: “Uniforms help students to prepare for when they leave school and may have to dress
smartly or wear a uniform.”
Some people believe that a school uniform can improve learning by reducing distraction,
sharpening focus on schoolwork and making the classroom a more serious environment,
allowing students to perform better academically.

Perhaps most importantly, a uniform means students don’t have to worry about peer pressure
when it comes to their clothes. When everyone is dressed the same, worrying about what you
look like isn’t so important. There is no competition about being dressed in the latest trend,
which would put a great deal of financial pressure on students and parents. Potential bullies have
one less target for their insults; it’s hard to make fun of what someone is wearing when you’re
dressed exactly the same.

In America, where a majority of schools do not have a uniform, roughly 160,000 children miss
school every day due to fear of attack or intimidation by other students. This might not be
directly linked to what they’re wearing, but

having a uniform can be a safety net for many students who might otherwise suffer from
bullying. A strict uniform gives the impression that rules are strict too, perhaps helping maintain
a sense of order at school.
Although wearing a school uniform is less expensive than buying a whole wardrobe of outfits,
uniform can still be pricey. Many schools have a specific supplier, and wearing cheaper
alternatives can result in punishment if the black skirt you’re wearing isn’t exactly the right black
skirt. Finding uniform that fits you, especially if you’re limited to one shop, can also be a
struggle.

Recently the Liberal Democrats held a conference about the cost of school uniforms across
England. The education minister David Laws is to issue new guidance to end the practice of
using a single uniform supplier, enabling parents to shop around for uniform. If schools decide to
change their uniform, for example with a new emblem or colour, changes should be restricted to
one or two items, preferably with sew-on logos. Changing from a one-supplier system could help
families with the cost of school uniform.

Although it might seem a shame to miss out on those two years of dressing as you like at school,
I welcome the smart dress code. Not only does it make getting dressed each morning a lot easier,
but it sets sixth formers up as role models for younger students, and that’s important.

Macy Vallance, a year-eight student, says: “I like uniforms because everyone is the same and no
one can be left out by the way they are dressed. Our new uniform looks smarter, which is good.”

My uniform might not be what I would wear in my own time, but it gives me a sense of
belonging, takes away the pressure of what to wear and deters the bullies. School uniform isn’t
fashionable, but that’s exactly why I think it should be here to stay.

Standardized testing
Standardized testing has ignited a national debate in the last few years (or decades), and many
parents feel understandably concerned about their children being judged on the basis of tests that,
in some cases, don’t seem to reliably correlate with actual learning or with successful college and
career outcomes.

In the United States, both public and private schools use standardized assessments each school
year. In public schools, students must undergo many tests to ensure they are meeting state or
federal standards. Private schools have more leeway, although at Whitby we do require our
students from Grade 2 on to complete the Comprehensive Testing Program from the Educational
Records Bureau and the International Schools Assessment from the Australian Council for
Educational Research.

At Whitby, we believe that standardized testing can benefit students—as long as it’s looked at in
the right light. Below we’ll discuss some of the benefits of standardized assessments, as well as
some of the ways standardised assessments can be negative for students.

The Pros and Cons of Standardized Testing

Pro # 1. Standardized testing is a metric for learning

When Whitby students are assessed through standardized testing, we gain a valuable metric we
can use to check the quality of our curriculum. With exams created and given by an independent
organization, standardized test scores are useful because they come from a neutral source and
give us data that we can compare to other independent schools across the United States and with
other international schools across the globe.

Pro # 2. Standardized testing helps pinpoint areas for improvement

When we receive standardized test data at Whitby, we use it to evaluate the effectiveness of our
education program. We view standardized testing data as not only another set of data points to
assess student performance , but also as a means to help us reflect on our curriculum. When we
look at Whitby’s assessment data, we can compare our students to their peers at other schools to
determine what we’re doing well within our educational continuum and where we need to invest
more time and resources.

Pro # 3. Standardized tests can help schools evaluate progress

Assessment data is also useful for year-over-year internal comparisons. We

compare data over a number of years to find trends—and then trace any changes back to their
source. If the math scores of our fourth grade students suddenly jump, we want to identify what
change led to the improved performance, and how we can continue to implement this within our
curriculum. We’re also able to use a student’s historical assessment data to monitor their
progress and uncover any challenges they may need to overcome (as well as identifying places
where they have already improved and excelled.)

Now let’s take a look at what we view as the most concerning aspects of standardized
assessment:
Con #1. Test scores can impact confidence
A big disadvantage of standardized testing is that it’s easy to interpret a student’s score as the
sole judgement of that student’s ability. We’re constantly emphasizing at Whitby that the number
is only one point of data within an array of internal assessments across many subject areas that
provide us with information on a student’s learning progress. There are many cases where
students have demonstrated clear understanding within a subject or concept through various
assessments, but aren’t as skilled at taking multiple choice tests. Nevertheless, it can be hard on a
student if they feel that they didn’t perform as well as they’d like. In worst case scenarios,
instead of determining the entire picture of learning through a review of all assessment data with
their teachers, a student might determine their success based on a standardized test score that is
taken once a year..

Con #2. There’s pressure to “teach to the test”

When standardized exams become all important in a school or district, it has a massive impact on
teaching and learning. Educators frequently start “teaching to the test” if they feel that their
evaluations (and jobs) solely depend on how well students perform. Educators may also stop
trying new techniques and teaching methods in the classroom. With every minute counting on
the way to their students’ next exam, teachers will worry that an untested method will backfire
and their students will score worse than before. This comes at the cost of inquiry, engagement,
creativity and risk taking in student learning.

Con #3. Scores don’t provide a true picture of a student’s ability

Far too many people wrongly assume that standardized testing data provides a neutral
authoritative assessment of a child’s intellectual ability. Cultural factors, unfamiliarity with
testing methods, test anxiety, and illness can wreak havoc with how well a student performs. For
that reason, it’s important to dig deeper when looking at a student’s test scores. Does a low score
indicate a lack of knowledge about the subject or a problem with taking the standardized test?
For example, an excellent writer could struggle with

picking out the right answer in a multiple choice grammar and punctuation test. Yet that same
student could excel at composing well-thought out, logical essays about the literature they read
and enjoyed in class.
It’s also easy to assume that students who score high in math are good at processing information
and reasoning abstractly, but that’s not always the case. In fact, researchers have found that high
standardized scores have little correlation with memory, attention and processing speed. High
test scores could simply mean a student excels at rote memorization and multiple choice test
taking.

Our Final Assessment

Standardized testing is truthfully a very difficult issue, because we do need internal and external
assessments to measure student success. Assessments are useful when they’re used as data to
help schools improve the quality of the teaching and learning. They become harmful, however,
when tests are used to judge students’ natural abilities and when educators are put under pressure
to “teach to the test.” Schools and parents should always look at standardized tests not as a value
judgement on the student, but as an additional data point that can provide some perspective on
student learning.
Education aid gets children into school but it's
not the smartest solution
The education piggybank is poised to be replenished, but what poorest countries really need is
sustainable domestic financing

On Thursday, the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) will launch a campaign in Brussels to
raise $3.5bn (£2.1bn). The replenishment event, featuring more than 600 education leaders from
more than 70 countries, hopes to support low-income states with robust plans to achieve progress
towards education goals.

Refreshing this global pot is important, but even more so is securing increases in domestic
resources for education, which can raise substantially more money and which is much more
sustainable.

Indeed, GPE hopes to secure $16bn in domestic pledges from developing countries – but more
could be done. All of us working in the education aid business should be seeking to make
ourselves redundant over the next 10 to 20 years by supporting the creation of sustainable
domestic financing of education. To be effective, we need to focus in four areas.

First, it is vital to increase education spending. The GPE encourages governments to commit
between 15% and 20% of national budgets, or 4-6% of GDP for education – but it needs to be
much tougher in refusing to support any country that reduces its spending on education against
either of these indicators.

In 2001, of the 49 countries presently supported by GPE who have credible data, 35 spent less
than 20% of their budget on education. Five of these states – Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Eritrea, Nigeria, Pakistan and Zimbabwe – spent less than 10%.

It may be shocking, but perhaps not so surprising, that some of the countries with the biggest
education challenges are spending the least on education: shocking because these are precisely
the countries that need to spend more; unsurprising because low spending is probably a key
reason for their failure to make more progress. Funding from the GPE should always help to
leverage increases in domestic spending – rather than plug gaps left by deliberate government
inaction.

Second, taking steps to increase the overall size of government budgets

could hugely increase the domestic resources available for education. Some countries are
spending a reasonable share of their budgets on education but too often the size of the
government budget overall is much smaller than it could or should be.

Governments can do this by increasing tax to GDP ratios, and one of the easiest ways to do this
is to stop giving away harmful tax incentives. ActionAid estimates that $138bn annually is given
away unnecessarily in tax incentives to multinational companies by developing countries.
Governments can also do more to challenge tax avoidance. Our report on Associated British
Foods in Zambia showed that aggressive tax avoidance by just one company deprived the
government of funding that could have provided primary education for 48,000 children.

Strengthening tax-revenue authorities should be a priority for aid. Indeed, one Unesco report
(pdf) showed that for every dollar spent in aid to support tax systems $350 in tax revenue was
raised. Unfortunately, under 0.1% of aid is being spent on supporting tax systems.

Third, there is a case for increasing the sensitivity of the budget to policy priorities. Some
governments in Africa continue to invest a disproportionate percentage of their schools budget
on tertiary education, which benefits a small but powerful elite.

A more progressive and sensitive approach involves targeting spending to redress disadvantage –
for example, investing in social protection/cash transfers for the poorest, spending more in
primary (a benchmark of 50% of spending to primary education makes sense in low-income
countries) and investing more in inclusive education, to bring children with disabilities into
school.

Pasi Sahlberg from Harvard University has shown that countries that invest sensitively to make
their education systems more equitable make significant progress in improving overall learning
achievement. This contrasts with education systems that target improving their position in global
league tables, where progress is rarely made and performance often drops. The GPE should be
rewarding countries that are pursuing greater equity.

Lastly, but perhaps most important, is ensuring the independent scrutiny of education budgets. If
people are not confident that budgets allocated will be properly spent, it is difficult to advocate
for more resources. There are many positive examples of national and local budget tracking
(pdf), of community audit groups monitoring school budgets and of budgets being posted on
school walls to ensure full transparency. These are crucial for ensuring that

governments are held to account by their own citizens rather than feeling accountable to external
donors.

By focusing on increasing these four areas, GPE can make a transformative contribution, helping
to build long-term, sustainable education systems that will be adequately financed long after
GPE has left the scene.

Importance of Science Education in Schools

Why is science education important in our schools? We are surrounded by technology and the
products of science every day. Public policy decisions that affect every aspect of our lives are
based in scientific evidence. And, of course, the immensely complex natural world that
surrounds us illustrates infinite scientific concepts. As children grow up in an increasingly
technologically and scientifically advanced world, they need to be scientifically literate to
succeed.

Ideally, teaching the scientific method to students is teaching them how to think, learn, solve
problems and make informed decisions. These skills are integral to every aspect of a student’s
education and life, from school to career. With a graduate degree in science education such as the
online Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction in Science Education from the
University of Texas at Arlington, teachers can use what they learn about science instruction
techniques and curriculum design to advance science education and student learning as a whole.

How Is Science Involved in Students’ Everyday Lives?

Science is everywhere. A student rides to school on a bus, and in that instance alone, there are
many examples of technology based on the scientific method. The school bus is a product of
many areas of science and technology, including mechanical engineering and innovation. The
systems of roads, lights, sidewalks and other infrastructure are carefully designed by civil
engineers and planners. The smartphone in the student’s hand is a miracle of modern computer
engineering.

Outside the window, trees turn sunlight into stored energy and create the oxygen we need to
survive. Whether “natural” or human-derived, every aspect of a student’s life is filled with
science — from their own internal biology to the flat-screen TV in the living room.

Scientific Inquiry and Scientific Method

Perhaps even more important than specific examples of science in our lives are the ways we use
scientific thought, method and inquiry to come to our decisions. This is not necessarily a
conscious thing. The human need to solve problems can arise from curiosity or from necessity.
The process of inquiry is how we find answers and substantiate those answers.

In the fields of hard science, the process of inquiry is more direct and finite: Take a question; use
evidence to form an explanation; connect that explanation to existing knowledge; and
communicate that evidence-based explanation. Experimentation based on the scientific method
follows a similar course: Combine a scientific question with research to construct a hypothesis;
conduct experiments to test that hypothesis; evaluate the results to draw conclusions; and
communicate those conclusions.

Critical Thinking

Although inquiry and the scientific method are integral to science education and practice, every
decision we make is based on these processes. Natural human curiosity and necessity lead to
asking questions (What is the problem?), constructing a hypothesis (How do I solve it?), testing
it with evidence and evaluating the result (Did the solution work?), and making future decisions
based on that result.

This is problem-solving: using critical thinking and evidence to create solutions and make
decisions. Problem-solving and critical thinking are two of the most important skills students
learn in school. They are essential to making good decisions that lead to achievement and
success during and after school.

Yet, although they are nearly synonymous, scientific inquiry in schools is not always explicitly
tied to problem-solving and critical thinking. The process students learn when creating,
executing, evaluating and communicating the results of an experiment can be applied to any
challenge they face in school, from proving a point in a persuasive essay to developing a photo in
the darkroom. In this way, science is one of the most important subjects students study, because
it gives them the critical thinking skills they need in every subject.

The Importance of Science in Early Education

Governmental guidelines and tests often focus on middle and high school-level STEM (science,
technology, engineering and math) education. Yet, many educators believe science education
should begin much earlier. Not only does science education teach young learners problem-
solving skills that will help them throughout their schooling, it also engages them in science from
the start.

Kids usually form a basic opinion about the sciences shortly after beginning school. If this is a
negative opinion, it can be hard to engage those students in science as they grow older. Engaging
young students with exciting material

and experiences motivates them to learn and pursue the sciences throughout school.

Science is one of the most important subjects in school due to its relevance to students' lives and
the universally applicable problem-solving and critical thinking skills it uses and develops. These
are lifelong skills that allow students to generate ideas, weigh decisions intelligently and even
understand the evidence behind public policymaking. Teaching technological literacy, critical
thinking and problem-solving through science education gives students the skills and knowledge
they need to succeed in school and beyond.

Why is it Important to Study History?

Why is it Important to Study History? History is one of the most important academic pursuits of
any child’s education. Here, we outline the importance of learning history and reveal study tips
for pupils.
We all live in the present and we plan for the future – but how do we understand where we’re
going and what progress looks like? To know exactly where you’re going, you first need to
understand where you have come from. For that you need an appreciation of history.

History is one of the most respected and most valuable academic subjects your child will learn.
This guide takes a deep dive into the importance of learning history at school, plus a few tips for
studying it effectively.
Benefits of Studying History
Entire societies, and the individuals within them, benefit from gaining a deeper understanding of
history. Here are six benefits your child will enjoy if they study history in school.

1. Develop an Understanding of the World

Through history, we can learn how past societies, systems, ideologies, governments, cultures and
technologies were built, how they operated, and how they have changed. The rich history of the
world helps us to paint a detailed picture of where we stand today.
Developing your knowledge of history means developing your knowledge of all these different
aspects of life. Children can learn about the pillars upon which different civilizations were built,
including cultures and people different from their own.
All this knowledge makes them more rounded people who are better prepared to learn in all their
academic subjects.

2. Become a More Rounded Person

History is full of stories. Some are inspiring and uplifting; others are chaotic and immoral. Tap
into the vivid realm of history, and there are many vital lessons your child needs to learn. They
will study times of suffering and times of joy, and the lessons they learn here can then be applied
to their own life experience.
History also encourages a deeper understanding of difference. There are lessons, both good and
bad, to be learned from the way our ancestors have interacted with other people who have
different ways of living. In a modern world where inclusivity is embraced no matter your
background, an understanding of how past societies have integrated is key to humanity

improving in the future.

3. Understand Identity
Nations are made up of a collection of stories and legends. These stories shape the way we think
about our country and our standing within it. History is where we learn about how great
institutions are formed, and how they’ve contributed to where we are today.
For many of us, looking back at incredible fellow countrymen is a way of establishing our own
identity. Finding who we are and what mark we can make on the world is a huge part of
childhood. Allowing children to learn about the identity of their country is one way of facilitating
that.

4. Become Inspired
Those historical stories can also serve to inspire individuals to greatness. History remembers
brilliant people and their heroic acts that have changed the shape of nations. You get a huge
amount of motivation from learning about the inspirational events that make up where we are
today.
It only takes one great story from the pages of history to light up children’s imagination and spur
them on to do great things.

5. Learn from Mistakes

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana’s quote is
one of academia’s most cited and paraphrased lines, and one that explains perfectly why
everyone should study history. The past is filled with warning signs. We must be able to reflect
on the events that built up to them, learn from mistakes made and resist and question if we see
similar patterns emerging.
If your child studies history, they will be able to identify when society is going down perilous
routes and contribute towards getting it back on track.

6. Develop Transferrable Skills

History is a respected academic pursuit that challenges our intellect. Students must analyse
information that may not have one clear interpretation before offering a balanced conclusion.
Critical thought is at the heart of every challenging intellectual pursuit.
The ability to question and evaluate information is one that applies to workplaces in many
industries, and Nord Anglia Education strive to provide the necessary transferrable skills to all
our students. History is one of the best subjects for stimulating and developing this ability.

The Importance of Studying Arts

Previously, people believed that education in science, technology, and mathematics was the only
way to achieve success. Everyone wanted their children to become engineers and doctors. While
that is all well and good, we are living in the 21st century, and things are no longer the same.

Students have the autonomy to pursue degrees in arts, humanities, social sciences, or history.
These career paths also present whorthwhile opportunities and hold great importance in society.

In today’s world, there is a growing need for well-rounded knowledge fields rather than limiting
it to science and technology only.

Studying arts is all about creative thinking, broadening mindsets, and feeding the soul. Unlike
technical skills that can be acquired, soft skills are developed over time.

Unsurprisingly, employers and organizations are increasingly looking for individuals with
adequate soft skills, which are highly valued in the labor market today.

Thus, engaging with arts is essential to the human experience, allowing people to communicate
through artistic expressions.

So, let us help everyone understand the importance of studying arts.

1. Sharpens Intellectual Skills

People at times question ‘the value of art education’ and how it promotes learning amongst
students. Believe it or not, students develop skills like resilience and courage, growing their
mindsets while helping them see the world through a broader perspective.
Teachers and mentors are likely to set goals for students and evaluate performance by linking
results with the work done. The feedback works as an intrinsic motivator for students, which
elevates their extrinsic motivation for doing better.

Similarly, young children holding a paintbrush or using an instrument are likely to develop
motor skills, giving them strength and confidence. After all, every school includes art subjects in
their curriculum because they know it is a fantastic way to grow children’s creative minds.

2. Provides Wholesome Endeavors with Inclusion of Art in ‘Stem’

Now, education systems are working on stem vs steam; the inclusion of the ‘A’ component
indicates arts. Educationalists have identified the importance of creative skills, which can only be
polished through art education.
Art covers a broad category of subjects – you can learn music, psychology, humanities, anything
you are passionate about. Even researches disclosed how learning art in the form of music or
theatre enhances verbal memory, pronunciation, communication, and executive functions.

Opening doors to arts education is drawing students to more complex and wholesome endeavors,
because art combines all subjects. For instance, if a student is studying music and learns to play
an instrument, the student must at least have a basic scientific understanding of how sound waves
are created.

3. Supports Exploding Opportunities for Designers & Artists

Some people have a perception that art education does not lead to great job opportunities. Well,
that is not completely true for many people in artistic fields.

In the 21st century, everything is about digitalization. Almost every business is trying their luck
with online platforms to promote their services. People are actively using the internet to watch
videos, socialize, enjoy great website designs, and seek information. This has become possible
with the help of professionals in art fields, including multimedia artists, web designers, graphic
designers, and illustrators.

Similarly, in the coming years, the demand for artists is likely to increase significantly because
of more innovations in mobile and digital solutions. Therefore, studying art is an essential way to
keep up with growing opportunities in today’s modern world.

4. Improves Performance in Other Subjects

Education systems are moving towards the concept of ‘steam’ – science, technology,
engineering, arts, mathematics. These might be different subjects, but art enjoys a component of
every subject.

Drawing a painting on canvas requires measurements, proportionate thinking, and number

measurement, fostering mathematics thinking.
Similarly, if someone is learning dance forms, they work with dimensional patterns and spatial
relationships. So, don’t you think it is vital to study art? There is a need for creative brains with
ideas and thinking capacities to progress in the technological world.

Art classes develop a unique set of skills – persistence, observing, and making connections
between schoolwork and the outside world. Hence, bolstering academic performance.

5. Promotes Creativity

Undoubtfully, art can inspire deeper meaning, allowing students to think. It teaches some
remarkable life lessons by allowing students to imagine, aspire, and dream. It encourages
students to think out of the box and come up with innovative ideas.

Students get a chance to utilize their skills efficiently and establish themselves as competent
individuals. There is nothing more powerful than having a clear perspective on life. After all,
people with a potent mindset are likely to climb the stairs of success.

6. Builds Enhanced Teamwork & Leadership

Art education is preparing students for professional lives. They learn how it is like to be an active
member of the community and work with others to achieve the same goals.
By working together, they understand the different and diverse mindsets of their team members.
It builds acceptance by breaking judgmental barriers because students work with people from
different backgrounds.

Students also get a chance to offer and receive criticism on their work, helping them get better.
Alongside this, students are likely to develop leadership skills since they have to make decisions,
develop strategies, and plan things.

At the same time, by using these skills, they create a strong sense of identity and confidence in
their ability to change the world around them. Therefore, it would be right to say that ‘steam’
education systems are building leaders, not followers.

7. Art Makes You Happy

Art programs begin with observation of the real world. Where one creates a visual response to
the surroundings, notices things around, and starts questioning. This allows students to view
things from a vastly different perspective. Moreover, observing or creating any form of art
reduces stress, your body releases endorphins, which helps you enjoy a sense of fulfillment.

An artist knows the enticing feeling of smearing a pencil and paint on a piece of paper. They
enjoy communicating with colors and shapes, enhancing their imagination.
You might not know how studying art makes you feel until you give it a shot. It turns people into
more positive and well-rounded human beings while promoting better self-understanding.

Wrap Up
With changing perspectives, people recognize the importance of arts education. A finance degree
is valuable, but it fails to build empathy and soft skills. In the upcoming technological era, there
is a need for well-rounded education – ‘steam’ for producing dynamic and robust workforce.

Art education makes students more proficient by equipping them with adequate knowledge and
skills. If you are still skeptical about it, look above to see why studying art is vital.

Why is it Important to Learn a Foreign

Language?
The advantages of learning foreign languages are mushrooming as the world becomes
increasingly globalized and bilingualism is now perhaps the most useful real world skill to ever
exist, rather than just being a nifty party trick. If you’re thinking about making the effort to learn
a foreign language rather than expecting the world to accommodate your monolingualism, you
are a rare breed indeed. Blossoming into the impressive polyglot you aspire to be is 100%
feasible with the right approach and mindset.

Foreign language study is all about learning how to truly communicate and connect with others
—an incredibly important life skill that can only be cultivated by interacting with people. When
you master a foreign language, you can exercise your new superhuman power of being able to
understand what someone is saying, recall the proper vocab and grammar, put that vocab and
grammar into the proper context, and reply back—all on the spot and in a timely manner. You’ve
connected. And that is what it’s all about.

Why?
So, why is it important to learn a foreign language? Basically, the advantages of learning foreign
languages have the ability to set you up for success in nearly every aspect of your life (NBD).
Check out these seven reasons to study a foreign language:

1. Learning a foreign language is sexy

With its warmth and voluptuous sounds, hearing someone speaking a foreign language is like the
sound of gold coming to embrace you. Speaking a foreign language is incredibly sexy and it can
make you more attractive, interesting, and gives you an air of intelligence. A lot of people find a
certain language or accent to be really sexy—think Penélope Cruz’s Spanish or Monica
Bellucci’s Italian—you get the picture.

Learn a foreign language and you might just have that certain someone hypnotized and drawn to
your exotic prowess. Some of the more romantic languages like, Spanish, the language of
undying love containing rhythm that can make any person swoon, or suave French that is soft as
silk and feels as warm as a lover’s stroke, and Italian that massages your ears into ecstasy. But
really, the rich textures of almost any foreign language can be incredibly sexy.
2. Travel becomes cheaper and easier when you learn a foreign language
It’s 10 p.m. You just got off a 14-hour flight and all you want to do is fall face-first into your
pillow. If you are solely armed with a smattering of navigational terms in the local language,
finding your place to crash could turn into a painfully slow process. Without the right lingo, you
are limited to expensive or slower options. So you save yourself some time, money, and grief
when you learn a foreign language. Just as a few key phrases will make transportation that much
faster and cheaper, and the same is true for choosing a place to stay. This means lower rates and
a better (even more authentic) experience.
Oh, and the food. When you learn a foreign language, you don’t need to be Anthony Bourdain to
find the best local grub. You can ask around for yourself. This valuable intel will usually lead
you to far tastier and cheaper fare than any tourism board or guidebook ever could.

3. Learning a foreign language opens up a world of job opportunities

It’s no secret that learning a foreign language can improve your employment prospects. More
companies than ever are doing business in several—often dozens of—countries around the
world, but they can’t do it without hiring people who have a grasp on at least one foreign
language. Even in small, local companies, chances are that the ability to speak a second language
will set you apart from other applicants. And in an increasingly competitive job market, why not
give yourself every possible edge?
But, it’s not just about padding your resume. With globalization in full swing, there’s a good
chance you’ll be working with people whose first language isn’t English. Maybe it’s a
development team in India, or a manufacturing plant in China, or an alternative energy supplier
in Germany. Being able to communicate in other languages makes you much more valuable to an
employer and having that competitive edge on your resume is without a doubt an eye-catcher.

4. Foreign language study grows your brain

Studies have demonstrated the cognitive benefits of learning another language, no matter how
old you are. These studies have shown that bilinguals tend to have bigger brains, better
memories, are more creative, better problem solvers, etc. Not only do these advantages make it
easier to learn yet more languages, they also make it easier to learn, well, anything. The ability to
quickly switch between tasks is especially important in today’s busy multitasking world.
Bilinguals can switch between tasks much faster than their monolingual counterparts and can
handle many more tasks at once.

5. Form meaningful friendships when you study a foreign language

Meeting new and interesting people and developing lifelong friendships are certainly objectives
well worth aspiring for, and learning another language is a

sure way to expedite that process. Language helps express our feelings, desires, and connect with
other humans around us and forms meaningful relationships. Speaking a foreign language not
only opens up a massive pool of potential friends, but it also acts as an instant common
denominator when you meet native speakers. Plus, speaking in a foreign tongue can be like
speaking in secret code with your new besties. This approach is not exactly a foolproof Enigma
machine, but it can make discussing the sordid details of Friday night’s debauchery a little less
embarrassing.
6. Studying a foreign language makes you more open-minded
Foreign language study is simply part of a very basic liberal education. To educate is to lead out
—to lead out of confinement and narrowness and darkness. Learning a foreign language and
getting soaked into an entirely new culture and worldview is the surest way to become an open-
minded, understanding, tolerant individual, and that is absolutely priceless. Once you are aware
of the fact that we are all cultural beings, products of our own environments, and that you
recognize the cultural base for your own attitudes and behavior, you are ready to consider others
in a more favorable light. Seeing the world from a different perspective, and understanding
where you and others come from, is a fantastic, eye-opening experience.

7. Foreign language study helps you better understand your own language and culture
Learning a foreign language can actually pull a sort of reverse psychology on you and provide
you with a better understanding of your own native tongue and culture. This is one of the most
unexpected advantages of learning a foreign language. You will become much more conscious of
not only cultural customs, but of the grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation patterns of your
first language. This likely explains the improvements in listening, reading, and writing skills that
foreign language impart to former monolinguals.

41% of Americans say it’s ‘going to take a

miracle’ to be ready for retirement
Retirement is looking less and less like a given, at least in the United States.

Overall, 59% of Americans said they accept that they will have to keep working longer, while
36% now believe that they will never have enough money to be able to retire, according to the
latest data from the Natixis Global Retirement Index.

Even more — roughly 41% — said their ability to be financially secure in retirement is “going to
take a miracle,” the report found.

The Covid pandemic has taken a heavy toll on Americans’ feelings about their own retirement
security.

Among the top concerns is how significant increases in government spending to get the economy
back on track will lead to decreases in Social Security benefits.

Already, the Treasury Department said the Social Security trust fund most Americans rely on for
their retirement will run out of money sooner than expected.

The outlook, aggravated by the pandemic, also threatens to shrink retirement payments and
increase health-care costs for older Americans.
At the same time, the pandemic set retirement savers back, especially younger workers.
About 13% of Generation Y decreased their retirement plan contributions and 11% withdrew
money from their retirement accounts to make ends meet, the Natixis report found.

Among Generation X, 15% reduced their retirement plan contributions and 9% took a
withdrawal.

Low interest rates and higher inflation pose additional problems for long-term financial security,
according to Natixis, which polled 750 individual investors.

“People are really aware of the critical risks they are facing, and they’ve all been exacerbated by
the pandemic,” said Dave Goodsell, executive director

at Natixis’ Center for Investor Insight. The U.S. is losing ground

Natixis’ annual ranking compares countries based on the finances, material well-being, health
and quality of life they offer in retirement.

This year, the U.S. fell one spot to number 17 out of 44 countries.

Compared to 2020, the U.S. scored lower in three of the four categories, including health, quality
of life and finances, mostly due to a shortened life expectancy, lower ratings on overall
happiness and the environment as well as higher levels of government debt.

These countries top the U.S.

Iceland had the highest ranking overall for the third year in a row. Switzerland, Norway, Ireland,
Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia all slipped slightly in retirement readiness but still
maintained top spots, while Germany, Denmark and Canada rounded out the top 10.

With more retirees around the world responsible for their own financial security, the countries
that ranked the best struck a balance with low levels of income inequality, available health care
and strong social programs, according to Goodsell.

Natixis’ index includes advanced economies in the International Monetary Fund, members of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the BRIC countries (Brazil,
Russia, India and China).

Countries are given a score in each category and the combined scores determine a final overall
ranking for the 44 nations included.

Telecommuting will likely continue long after

the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic is, among other things, a massive experiment in telecommuting. Up to
half of American workers are currently working from home, more than double the fraction who
worked from home (at least occasionally) in 2017-18.

Of course, some jobs simply can’t be done at home. But the outbreak is accelerating the trend
toward telecommuting, possibly for the long term. Until now, telecommuting has been slower to
take hold than many predicted when remote work technology first emerged. This inertia probably
reflects sticky work cultures as well as a lack of interest from employers in investing in the
technology and management practices necessary to operate a tele-workforce.

But the pandemic is forcing these investments in industries where telework is possible, with
more people learning how to use remote technology. As a result, we may see a more permanent
shift toward telecommuting. As the economist Susan Athey recently toldthe Washington Post,
“People will change their habits, and some of these habits will stick. There’s a lot of things
where people are just slowly shifting, and this will accelerate that.”

There are pros and cons to more telecommuting. On the plus side, workers tend to prefer
working from home, it reduces emissions and office costs, and it helps people (especially
women) balance work and family roles. It may even make us more productive. The downsides:
managing a telecommuting staff can be difficult, professional isolation can have negative effects
on well-being and career development, and the effects on productivity over the long run and in a
scaled-up system are uncertain.

TELEWORK IS USUALLY RARE, NOW A NECESSITY

Just under one-third of all workers over the age of 15 say they can work from home, according to
Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates from the 2017-18 American Time Use Survey. Many of
those who worked from home did not have an official work-from-home arrangement but were
instead taking work home with them (such as at night or over the weekend). Only 20% said they
were occasionally paid to work from home, and just 12% worked from home at least one full day
per month.
Those who can telecommute tend to be higher-paid professionals. Just under half of working
Americans in the top 25% of the earnings distribution did any paid work from home in 2017 and
2018, compared to 4% in the bottom quartile. About a third of people in the top quartile worked
from home at least once a month; the equivalent number for the bottom quartile was too small a
sample to meet BLS’s reporting standards.

Telecommuting has skyrocketed this month as many workers across the country have been
compelled to stay home, though disparities remain. The following chart, reproduced from a
report by our colleagues Richard Reeves and Jonathan Rothwell, shows that higher-income
workers are much more likely to be working from home during the pandemic and much less
likely to be unable to work at all than lower-income workers.
Overall, these numbers suggest that about half of employed adults are currently working from
home, though a recent paper estimates that only a third of jobs can be done entirely from home.
Either way, this is a massive shift. Between 2005 and 2015, the fraction of workers who
regularly worked from home increased by only about 2 to 3 percentage points, according to Mas
and Pallais (2020). Even at that growth rate, telecommuting has been the fastest-growing method
of commuting over the last several years. If our new telecommuting culture sticks, the pandemic
will have accelerated this trend dramatically. Already, nearly one in five chief financial officers
surveyed last week said they planned to keep at least 20% of their workforce working remotely
to cut costs.

Thanks to a few recent experimental studies, we now have good evidence that job applicants
place high value on the option to work from home. Mas and Pallais (2017) gave jobseekers at a
U.S. call center the choice of either a standard on-site job or a randomly selected alternative,
such as flexible scheduling or the ability to work from home. Among all possible employee-
friendly alternatives, working from home was the most valued: the average applicant was willing
to take an 8% hourly wage cut in order to work from home. Similarly, He et al. (2019) found that
jobseekers in China were more likely to apply for, and willing to accept lower pay, for positions
that offered remote work.

TELEWORK IN A DISASTER
This isn’t the first time a crisis has required a shift toward telecommuting,

though it is at an unprecedented scale. In the U.S., interest in telework spiked following the
events of 9/11 and the anthrax attacks that soon followed, which forced several key government
offices to close. In a 2004 committee hearing on The Heightened Need for Telework
Opportunities in the Post-9/11 World, Congressman Tom Davis stated, “[W]e now realize that
telework needs to be an essential component of any continuity of operations plan. Something we
once considered advantageous and beneficial has evolved into a cornerstone of emergency
preparedness.” The federal government became a leader in telework under the Obama
administration with the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010, which required federal agencies to
develop a telework plan and encourage employees to use it; however, many federal agencies
have rolled back their remote work policies in the last few years.

Many workplaces in Christchurch, New Zealand transitioned to telework after worksites closed
during a series of earthquakes between 2010 and 2012. In a case study of a government agency
that transitioned entirely to home-based telework, staff saw many benefits from telework, such as
greater motivation to return to work and better work-family balance. As in the COVID-19
outbreak, access to childcare and schools was limited during the disaster, leaving many doing
double duty as parents and workers.

A new study measures the actual impact of

robots on jobs. It’s significant.
Machines replacing humans in the workplace has been a perpetual concern since the Industrial
Revolution, and an increasing topic of discussion with the rise of automation in the last few
decades. But so far hype has outweighed information about how automation — particularly
robots, which do not need humans to operate — actually affects employment and wages.

The researchers found that for every robot added per 1,000 workers in the U.S., wages decline by
0.42% and the employment-to-population ratio goes down by 0.2 percentage points — to date,
this means the loss of about 400,000 jobs. The impact is more sizable within the areas where
robots are deployed: adding one more robot in a commuting zone (geographic areas used for
economic analysis) reduces employment by six workers in that area.

Industries are adopting robots to various degrees, and effects vary in different parts of the
country and among different groups — the automotive industry has adopted robots more than
other sectors, and workers who are lower and middle income, perform manual labor, and live in
the Rust Belt and Texas are among those most likely to have their work affected by robots.

“It’s obviously a very important issue given all of the anxiety and excitement about robots,”
Acemoglu said. “Our evidence shows that robots increase productivity. They are very important
for continued growth and for firms, but at the same time they destroy jobs and they reduce labor
demand. Those effects of robots also need to be taken into account.”

“That doesn't mean we should be opposed to robots, but it does imply that a more holistic
understanding of what their effects are needs to be part of the discussion ... automation
technologies generally don't bring shared prosperity by themselves,” he said. “They need to be
combined with other technological changes that create jobs.”
Industrial robots are automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose machines that can
do a variety of things like welding, painting, and packaging. They are fully autonomous and
don’t need humans to operate them. Industrial robots grew fourfold in the U.S. between 1993 and
2007, Acemoglu and Restrepo write, to a rate of one robot per thousand workers. Europe is
slightly ahead of the U.S. in industrial robot adoption; the rate there grew to 1.6 robots per
thousand workers during that time span.

Improvements in technology adversely affect wages and employment through the displacement
effect, in which robots or other automation complete tasks formerly done by workers.
Technology also has more positive productivity effects by making tasks easier to complete or
creating new jobs and tasks for workers. The researchers said automation technologies always
create both displacement and productivity effects, but robots create a stronger displacement
effect.

Between 1990 and 2007, the increase in robots (about one per thousand workers) reduced the
average employment-to-population ratio in a zone by 0.39 percentage points, and average wages
by 0.77%, compared to commuting zones with no exposure to robots, they found. This implies
that adding one robot to an area reduces employment in that area by about six workers.

But what happens in one geographic area affects the economy as a whole, and robots in one area
can create positive spillovers. These benefits for the rest of the economy include reducing the
prices of goods and creating shared capital income gains. Including this spillover, one robot per
thousand workers has slightly less of an impact on the population as a whole, leading to an
overall 0.2 percentage point reduction in the employment-to-population ratio, and reducing
wages by 0.42%. Thus, adding one robot reduces employment nationwide by 3.3 workers.

In a separate study of robot adoption in France, Acemoglu and his co-authors found that French
manufacturing firms that added robots became more productive and profitable, but that increases
in robot use led to a decline in employment industrywide.

Disproportionate impacts

The impact of robots varies among different industries, geographic areas, and population groups.
Unsurprisingly, the effect of robots is concentrated in manufacturing. The automotive industry
has adopted robots more than any other industry, the researchers write, employing 38% of
existing robots with adoption of up to 7.5 robots per thousand workers.

The electronics industry employs 15% of robots, while plastics and chemicals employ 10%.
Employees in these industries saw the most negative effects, and researchers also estimate
negative effects for workers in construction and retail, as well as personal services. While the
automotive industry adopted robots at a quicker pace and to a greater degree than other sectors,
that industry did not drive the study’s results. The impact of robots was consistent when that
industry was taken out of the equation, the researchers

write.
The automotive industry employs 38% of existing industrial robots.

Robots are most likely to affect routine manual occupations and lower and middle class workers,
and particularly blue-collar workers, including machinists, assemblers, material handlers, and
welders, Acemoglu and Restrepo write. Both men and women are affected by adoption of robots,
though men slightly more. For men, impacts are seen most in manufacturing jobs. For women,
the impacts were seen most in non-manufacturing jobs. Robots negatively affect workers at all
education levels, though workers without college degrees were impacted far more than those
with a college degree or more. The researchers also found robot adoption does not have a
positive effect on workers with master’s or advanced degrees, which could indicate that unlike
other technology, industrial robots are not directly complementing high-skill workers.

Some parts of the United States saw relatively small adoption of robots, while in other states,
including Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Texas, and Virginia, robots have been adopted more
along the order of two to five robots per thousand workers. In some parts of Texas, that number
goes up to five to 10 per thousand workers, the researchers found. Detroit was the commuting
zone with the highest exposure to robots.

Overall, robots have a mixed effect: replacing jobs that relatively high-wage manufacturing
employees used to perform, while also making firms more efficient and more productive,
Acemoglu said. Some areas are most affected by the mixed impact of robots. “In the U.S.,
especially in the industrial heartland, we find that the displacement effect is large,” he said.
“When those jobs disappear, those workers go and take other jobs from lower wage workers. It
has a negative effect, and demand goes down for some of the retail jobs and other service jobs.”

Acemoglu and Restrepo emphasize that looking at the future effect of robots includes a great
deal of uncertainty, and it is possible the impact on employment and wages could change when
robots become more widespread. Industries adopting more robots over the last few decades could
have experienced other factors, like declining demand or international competition, and
commuting zones could be affected by other negative shocks.

But the researchers said their paper is the first step in exploring the implications of automation,
which will become increasingly widespread. There are relatively few robots in the U.S. economy
today and the economic impacts could be just beginning.

Robotic technology is expected to keep expanding, with an aggressive scenario predicting that
robots will quadruple worldwide by 2025. This would mean 5.25 more robots per thousand
workers in the U.S., and by the researchers’ estimate, a 1 percentage point lower employment-to-
population ratio, and 2% lower wage growth between 2015 and 2025. In a more conservative
scenario, the stock of robots could increase slightly less than threefold, leading to a 0.6
percentage point decline in the employment-to-population ratio and 1% lower wage growth.

When Considering A New Job, Think About

More than Salary
While the COVID-19 global pandemic resulted in many lost jobs and increased unemployment,
statistics show the market is quickly bouncing back, which means that many professionals now
find themselves on the job hunt. Even many of those who are currently employed find
themselves seeking new or better opportunities.

With the financial stress that many individuals have seen in recent months, salary is becoming an
even greater factor when considering taking on a new role. It’s certainly understandable,
especially in today’s environment, that financial compensation plays a large role when making
career decisions. But, is that all you should consider when looking for a new job?

For long-term career enjoyment and success, it’s important to also look beyond the job
description, title and base salary. Accepting a role after only considering these items may leave
you disengaged and disheartened in your career. And while it may seem obvious that there’s
more to work than money, it can be hard to weigh—or even identify—the other factors in order
to see the bigger picture.

Here, I’ve outlined four additional factors (aside from salary) that can be game-changers if
you’re making decisions about a new role.

Opportunity for Career Progression

Career progression is typically defined as the idea of climbing the ladder. And, while that may be
your interest, this kind of advancement isn’t necessarily the desire of every working professional.

Define career progression in terms of your professional desire. Is it being promoted? Is it simply
finding new challenges? Is it gaining access to new learning opportunities?

Your idea of career progression doesn’t have to conform to the textbook definition. Instead, it
must be whatever is best for you and for the good of your career! Consider the factors that can
help you make the most of your own career in the ways that are most meaningful to you.

Next, express your goals and your plan. The company may not be able to

hand you your dream job today, but what about tomorrow? What about a year from now?
Does the new role you’re considering offer you opportunities in the ways you’d like to progress?

Company Reputation and Employer Brand

Do you want to work for a company that shows appreciation to team members, knows the names
of your family members or prioritizes the individual success of the employees that drive their
business? What’s important to you when it comes to a company’s reputation and its employer
brand?

It’s important to do your research on the company’s reputation within the community and within
its own team. Read reviews, study the website and consider the comments of those who have
first-hand experience with the company.
Do their testimonials line up with the kind of company you want to work for?

The detailed job description can explain a lot about the role, but there is more to be learned. Dig
deeper, read comments and ask the tough questions—to yourself and to the hiring manager.

Meaningful Work and Work-Life Balance

Are you proud of your work (or the work you’d be doing) and the impact that it has on others
inside and outside of the organization? What things do you value apart from your career?
Consider why you do what you do and what’s most important to you and think through what
ideal work-life balance looks like.

Do you want to work for a company that provides you with the flexibility to attend your kids’
ball games? Do you want to work for a company that allows you to step away when needed or to
shut the work down at the end of the day without taking it home with you? Do you want to work
for a company that values your home life in addition to your work life?

It’s great to be committed to hard work, but it’s also important to define your expectations about
work-life balance and to ensure your future employer can meet them before accepting a new role.

Working Culture

A company’s culture is the set of shared values, attitudes, goals and practices that characterize an
organization. Working culture will be developed whether a company does so intentionally or
unintentionally.

Is the company that you are considering working for treating you and their staff as you would
like to be treated? Can you support the company’s mission and initiatives? Do you agree with the
values they profess? Do they act out those same values?

It can be hard to glimpse the true culture of a company as someone on the outside of it, but it’s
important to try.

Measuring Success and Considering Factors Besides Salary

How do you measure success in your career? Does your definition of success include more than
money? If so, it’s important to consider those factors when looking for and taking on a new job.

The decision of taking on a new position can be one of the biggest decisions we make in our
professional lives and should have many factors to consider first. It’s easy to see a step up in title
or an increase in pay as the flashing light we need in guiding us into our next career move.
However, it’s important to consider more, depending on what’s most important to you.

Even more importantly, remember that it’s also okay to stay exactly where you are if it’s what’s
best for you, even if that means passing on what others may consider the impassable offer.
Survey Shows UK Job Satisfaction and
Commitment on the Decline
Fewer than two-thirds of employees (64%) in the UK are satisfied with their jobs, according to
the preliminary findings of a new survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting covering over
1,100 workers. This figure represents a reduction of 10% since the survey was last conducted,
three years ago. Furthermore, fewer than 6 in 10 employees (59%) feel a strong sense of
commitment to their organization – a 5% decline since 2002.

Dr. Patrick Gilbert, Head of Organisational Research and Effectiveness at Mercer, commented,
“The employment market has become more buoyant in the last two years, so more employees are
feeling restless and dissatisfied in their jobs. With more opportunities available, people often
think the grass is greener elsewhere. When employment opportunities are limited, employees
tend to have lower expectations and feel more satisfied with their jobs.”

Mercer also found that just 60% of employees are proud to work for their organization, and only
65% believe they have a long-term future with their current employer. “If employees respect
senior management and feel their organization is performing well, they’re more likely to feel
proud and committed,” said Dr. Gilbert. “Senior managers can help build long-term commitment
by communicating a clear vision of the company’s future and by defining career paths for their
staff. This approach can have a profound impact on organizational performance, as committed
employees deliver superior service, leading to improved customer satisfaction and a long-term
source of competitive advantage.”

Just half of the survey respondents thought managers understood the problems facing employees
in their jobs. “Organizations that encourage two-way communication are more likely to
appreciate the problems facing employees. Staff loyalty will increase if employers demonstrate
empathy and support for their employees,” commented Dr. Gilbert.

The survey also found that fewer than half the respondents (46%) felt encouraged to come up
with new and better ways of doing things. “The culture in many organizations is for management
to give orders rather than gather ideas, so employees often feel unable to suggest improvements
to work processes. Organizations that fail to listen to employee suggestions could be missing a
trick,” said Dr. Gilbert. “Employees are closest to operational issues and customer concerns and
can provide timely information

on how to improve business performance.”

THE PRICE OF CHILD LABOR

152 million children worldwide are victims of child labor; 88 million are boys and 64 million are
girls.
Girls may be more present in less visible and therefore under-reported forms of child labor such
as domestic service in private households, and girls are much more likely than boys to shoulder
responsibility for household chores, a form of work not considered in child labor estimates

Girls who leave school early do so disproportionately to undertake responsibility for chores
within their own homes, while boys are more likely to leave school prematurely in order to join
the labor force.

48 percent of all victims of child labor are aged 5-11 years.

Almost half of child labor victims (73 million) work in hazardous child labor; more than one-
quarter of all hazardous child labor is done by children less than 12 years old (19 million).

Almost half of child workers are in Africa (72.1 million); 41 percent (62.1 million) are in Asia
and the Pacific.

71 percent of child labor takes place in agriculture, which includes fishing, forestry, livestock
herding and aquaculture.

19 percent of child labor victims live in low income countries; 2 million victims live in high-
income countries.

There is a strong correlation between child labor and situations of conflict and disaster. The
incidence of child labor in countries affected by armed conflict is 77 percent higher than the
global average; the incidence of hazardous work is 50 percent higher.

Forced labor is thought to generate around $150 billion a year in illegal profits.

More than two-thirds of all children in child labor (69.1 percent) work as contributing family
laborers on family farms and in family enterprises, not in an employment relationship with a
third-party employer.

Children forced by their household circumstances or other factors to leave

school prior to their fifteenth birthday are less likely to ever find jobs and those who do find jobs
take much longer to do so.

Former child laborers are much more likely to have only primary education or less.

Young persons who worked as children (up to the age of 15) are more likely to be in low-paying
jobs.

Child labour exploitation referrals surge 63%, figures show

The number of children feared to be victims of labour exploitation in the UK has risen by more
than 60 per cent in the past year, an analysis of government statistics has revealed.
There were 1,575 referrals for labour exploitation in 2016, among whom 1,107 were adults and a
record 468 were children – marking a significant 63 per cent increase.

Overall referrals of potential victims of labour exploitation to the Government's National

Referral Mechanism (NRM) – the official framework for identifying victims of human
trafficking – increased by 33 per cent from 2015 to 2016, according to analysis of National
Crime Agency data.

The figures, compiled by Kroll, the global leader in risk mitigation and response solutions, come
after The Independent revealed that hundreds of people identified as victims under the NRM are
being “abandoned” by the authorities as soon as they are identified, placing them at risk of
falling straight back into the hands of traffickers.

Support is provided during the NRM’s assessment process, which includes giving those fleeing
exploitation a place in a “safe house”, but victims are required to leave the housing just two
weeks after a final decision is made.

Charities warned that this often sees vulnerable people who have been trafficked for sex or
labour exploitation fall into destitution, alcoholism and exploitation because of a lack of
government-funded care.

Alarmingly, while numbers of potential victims of trafficking increased, positive conclusive

decisions — which enable victims to access support — decreased to the lowest point in NRM
history to 635, compared with 1,028 the previous year.

Kevin Braine, Head of Kroll’s Compliance Practice in EMEA, said there was a lack of
awareness about the scale of labour exploitation taking place in the

UK.

“There is sometimes a false assumption that modern slavery only occurs in certain countries or
certain types of industry but the increase in the number of referrals of labour exploitation victims
indicate that modern slavery is very much an issue for UK employers," Mr Braine said.

"Any commercial activity involved in the production of low-margin, low-skill, labour-intensive

goods or services is potentially at risk of modern slavery offences."
Vietnam was the country of origin for the highest number of potential labour exploitation victims
in the UK referred in 2016, with a total of 307 individuals, according to the figures, followed by
Albania, with 194 potential victims and Poland with 140.

It is estimated there are between 10,000 and 13,000 victims of modern slavery in the UK, but
Kroll warned that these numbers may be scraping the surface of the true picture of modern
slavery in companies operating in the UK.
The Importance of Preserving and Promoting
Historic Buildings
An important part of what gives a city character and a sense of community is its history. One
way of acknowledging this history is by preserving historic buildings and structures. They may
be an example of a particular style of architecture, or represent a significant era, or a milestone in
the city’s history. These historic buildings are worth preserving for a number of reasons.

Preserving History Through Buildings

Old buildings are witnesses to the aesthetic and cultural history of a city, helping to give people a
sense of place and connection to the past. Historic buildings often represent something famous or
important to people who live in a city or those visiting.

Recognizing the importance of old buildings to the public and to the country’s heritage,
Congress enacted the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966. This act works to save historic
buildings, explaining, “preservation of this irreplaceable heritage is in the public interest so that
its vital legacy of cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational, economic, and energy benefits
will be maintained and enriched for future generations of Americans.”

Economic Benefits Of Historic Preservation

Older buildings especially those built prior to World War II are often made of higher quality
materials. Replacing these buildings with similar rare hardwoods such as heart pine would be
impractical and unaffordable. Newer buildings also tend to have a life expectancy of only 30-40
years, whereas many older buildings were made to last. It can make economic sense to retain
historic buildings and Improve them to meet modern codes and requirements.

Rehabilitating old buildings to their original appearance not only adds character to the area, but
can also help attract investment, as well as tourists if the structures are historically significant.
For example, a historic but abandoned industrial building can be turned into small business
space, or a mixed-use development – giving new life to a building and even a whole
neighborhood.

Aesthetic Importance of Older Buildings

Older buildings often are made with unique, valuable materials such as the heart pine, marble, or
old brick. They may have detailing and features that you can’t find anymore like decorative
facades,unusual glasswork, or copper lining. Many people feel that because of these, older
buildings have their own identity and distinctive character, making them more interesting than
modern buildings. An added benefit to retaining and maintaining old buildings old methods of
workmanship are also supported.

Environmental Considerations
The importance of recycling has become more and more understood on a household level, but
preserving old buildings is recycling on a larger scale. Repairing and reusing existing buildings
uses energy and material resources more efficiently and reduces waste. New materials don’t need
to be created, nor older demolished materials thrown away. Plus energy for rebuilding is
conserved. Also, tearing down structures releases toxins and pollutants in the environment.

Historic Preservation in Norwalk

Norwalk combines the character of a historic New England community on the coast of Long
Island Sound with a thriving city in the county’s largest metropolitan area. One of the priorities
outlined in Norwalk’s 10-year Citywide Plan is enhancing and preserving the city’s historic
resources. Historic areas such as South Norwalk have seen investment and growth, while
preserving its many historic structures and character.

The City’s Planning & Zoning Commissions have recently enacted several regulations to
encourage the preservation of historic structures. Two areas of the City where this has been
realized is in South Norwalk (SSDD Regulations) and the Wall Street area (CBD Regulations).
For example, if the historic structures will be preserved, the Commission can reduce the amount
of required parking, decrease building setbacks or increase building height or size for recognized
historic structures.

10 Easy Things You Can Do To Save

Endangered Species
1. Learn about endangered species in your area. Teach your friends and family about the
wonderful wildlife, birds, fish and plants that live near you. The first step to protecting
endangered species is learning about how interesting and important they are. Our natural world
provides us with many indispensable services including clean air and water, food and medicinal
sources, commercial, aesthetic and recreational benefits.

2. Visit a national wildlife refuge, park or other open space. These protected lands provide
habitat to many native wildlife, birds, fish and plants. Scientists tell us the best way to protect
endangered species is to protect the places where they live. Get involved by volunteering at your
local nature center or wildlife refuge. Go wildlife or bird watching in nearby parks. Wildlife
related recreation creates millions of jobs and supports local businesses.

3. Make your home wildlife friendly. Secure garbage in shelters or cans with locking lids, feed
pets indoors and lock pet doors at night to avoid attracting wild animals into your home. Reduce
your use of water in your home and garden so that animals that live in or near water can have a
better chance of survival. Disinfect bird baths often to avoid disease transmission. Place decals
on windows to deter bird collisions. Millions of birds die every year because of collisions with
windows. You can help reduce the number of collisions simply by placing decals on the
windows in your home and office.
4. Native plants provide food and shelter for native wildlife. Attracting native insects like bees
and butterflies can help pollinate your plants. The spread of non-native species has greatly
impacted native populations around the world. Invasive species compete with native species for
resources and habitat. They can even prey on native species directly, forcing native species
towards extinction.

5. Herbicides and pesticides may keep yards looking nice but they are in fact hazardous
pollutants that affect wildlife at many levels. Many herbicides and pesticides take a long time to
degrade and build up in the soils or throughout the food chain. Predators such as hawks, owls
and coyotes can be harmed if they eat poisoned animals. Some groups of animals such as
amphibians are particularly vulnerable to these chemical pollutants and suffer greatly as a result
of the high levels of herbicides and pesticides in their habitat.

6. Slow down when driving. Many animals live in developed areas and this means they must
navigate a landscape full of human hazards. One of the biggest obstacles to wildlife living in
developed areas is roads. Roads divide habitat and present a constant hazard to any animal
attempting to cross from one side to the other. So when you’re out and about, slow down and
keep an eye out for wildlife.

7. Recycle and buy sustainable products. Buy recycled paper, sustainable products like bamboo
and Forest Stewardship Council wood products to protect forest species. Never buy furniture
made from wood from rainforests. Recycle your cell phones, because a mineral used in cell
phones and other electronics is mined in gorilla habitat. Minimize your use of palm oil because
forests where tigers live are being cut down to plant palm plantations.

8. Never purchase products made from threatened or endangered species. Overseas trips can be
exciting and fun, and everyone wants a souvenir. But sometimes the souvenirs are made from
species nearing extinction. Avoid supporting the market in illegal wildlife including: tortoise-
shell, ivory, coral. Also, be careful of products including fur from tigers, polar bears, sea otters
and other endangered wildlife, crocodile skin, live monkeys or apes, most live birds including
parrots, macaws, cockatoos and finches, some live snakes, turtles and lizards, some orchids, cacti
and cycads, medicinal products made from rhinos, tiger or Asiatic black bear.

9. Harassing wildlife is cruel and illegal. Shooting, trapping, or forcing a threatened or

endangered animal into captivity is also illegal and can lead to their extinction. Don’t participate
in this activity, and report it as soon as you see it to your local state or federal wildlife
enforcement office.

Protect wildlife habitat. Perhaps the greatest threat that faces many species is the widespread
destruction of habitat. Scientists tell us the best way to protect endangered species is to protect
the special places where they live. Wildlife must have places to find food, shelter and raise their
young. Logging, oil and gas drilling, over-grazing and development all result habitat destruction.
Endangered species habitat should be protected and these impacts minimized.

By protecting habitat, entire communities of animals and plants can be protected together. Parks,
wildlife refuges, and other open space should be protected near your community. Open space
also provides us with great places to visit and enjoy. Support wildlife habitat and open space
protection in your community. When you are buying a house, consider your impact on wildlife
habitat.

The Role of Zoos and Aquariums in

Conservation and Education
The world’s wildlife has come under unprecedented pressure and conservation of animals and
habitats has become a critical priority. Many zoos and aquariums are leaders in the protection of
threatened and endangered species, and contribute to vital conservation programs around the
globe.

Scientists have assessed that the earth is currently experiencing the worst extinction crisis since
the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.[1] It’s estimated that as many as 30 to 50 percent of all
species could go extinct by the middle of this century due to threats including habitat loss, land
clearing for agriculture, the global illegal wildlife trade and animals killed for bush meat.[2]

Progressive zoos and aquariums around the world are united in their commitment to
conservation, education, science and engaging the visiting public with wildlife. In Australasia,
the Zoo and Aquarium Association (ZAA) coordinates long-term regional conservation breeding
programs for threatened species that preserve their genetic diversity as wild populations dwindle.

These accredited zoos and aquariums in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Papua New
Guinea educate and engage over 20 million visitors each year in the wonders of the world’s
wildlife and inspire people to take action to address key threats.

The highly trained professionals at ZAA-accredited zoos and aquariums provide care for more
than 100,000 animals, from tiny marine shrimps to Asian Elephants. Travelers visiting ZAA-
accredited zoos can be assured that they uphold excellent animal welfare standards and practices,
which include the following:

Accreditation for positive animal welfare

All members of ZAA must be accredited for positive animal welfare and meet very thorough
standards of practice set by the Association. These are assessed regularly and in-person by a
special accreditation team. In addition to promoting ongoing health, wellbeing and contentment
of the animals, this program also fosters the continuous enhancement of welfare based on
ongoing assessments of the animals, including their circumstances and state

of life.

Interactive animal experiences

Animals that participate in visitor interactions at ZAA-accredited zoos and aquariums are
individually assessed for their comfort and confidence to take part in those activities. Many have
originally been brought to the zoo’s veterinary hospitals after being injured or abandoned and
even though they have been nursed back to health, they still would not survive if released back in
the wild. At zoos and aquariums, they are able to fulfil important roles as ambassadors for their
species; teaching visitors about the unique and amazing qualities of wildlife, and also about
actions visitors can take to protect species in the wild.

Conservation action

ZAA-accredited zoos and aquariums manage programs that provide care for more than 56
species in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore – most of which are threatened in the wild. The
zoo-based populations of these species are managed regionally to ensure their genetic health and
overall wellbeing. Fifteen of the species are also part of multi-agency recovery programs, aiming
to restore them to protected habitats in nature.

These zoos and aquariums also contribute to the conservation of wildlife around the globe,
amounting to millions of dollars in field conservation and support for hundreds of projects.

Currently, one of the greatest threats to wildlife is illegal trade, which is wiping out endangered
species throughout the Asia Pacific region. Over the past three years, ZAA members have
provided critical and ongoing support to TRAFFIC – the agency charged with monitoring the
illegal wildlife trade and taking action with policing agencies. In the past five years alone, ZAA
members have also offered homes to more than 400 animals confiscated from the illegal trade
that were unable to be re-released to the wild.

Education and action for wildlife

Many people never have the opportunity to encounter and engage with wildlife. A recently
published article tracking the results of longitudinal visitor research from the Brookfield Zoo in
Chicago found that “there is a building foundation of science about people and animal
interactions demonstrating that coming face-to-face with a live animal, being able to touch, smell
or watch a live animal creates an emotional or visceral response that can be measured: A more
powerful response than created from movies, the classroom or videos.”[3]

As centers for conservation, ZAA-accredited zoos and aquariums provide the public with
essential connections to the natural world, including thousands of environmental education
classes for visiting students annually. Additionally, they provide educational opportunities for
their combined more than 20 million visitors each year by creating connections with wildlife,
raising critical awareness about conservation needs, and encouraging them to take positive pro-
wildlife lifestyle decisions.

A recent visitor survey[4] from ZAA-accredited zoos found:

92% of visitors learned about animals and their environment
90% of visitors learned that zoos play a vital role in conservation
86% of visitors learned about the way human behavior impacts animals and their environment
93% of visitors learned about the threats faced by animals in the wild
89% of visitors plan to make a conscious effort to do things to help conserve the environment

Visitors to these zoos and aquariums have unique opportunities to learn about wildlife in many
ways, as well as increase their empathy and support for wildlife conservation. By placing a
spotlight on the pressures that many species are now facing in the wild, zoos and aquariums also
offer visitors practical solutions to help them make simple changes to their personal behavior –
such as buying sustainable seafood or rejecting ivory products – which directly support the wild
cousins of the animals they have discovered during their visit.

11 Biggest Environmental Problems Of 2021

The climate crisis is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, and we are not ready for it. While the
crisis has many factors that play a role in its exacerbation, there are some that warrant more
attention than others. Here are some of the biggest environmental problems of our lifetime.

Poor Governance
According to economists like Nicholas Stern, the climate crisis is a result of multiple market
failures.
Economists and environmentalists have urged policymakers for years to increase the price of
activities that emit greenhouse gases (one of our biggest environmental problems), the lack of
which constitutes the largest market failure, for example through carbon taxes, which will
stimulate innovations in low-carbon technologies.

To cut emissions quickly and effectively enough, governments must not only massively increase
funding for green innovation to bring down the costs of low-carbon energy sources, but they also
need to adopt a range of other policies that address each of the other market failures.

A national carbon tax is currently implemented in 25 countries around the world, including
various countries in the EU, Canada, Singapore, Japan, Ukraine and Argentina. However,
according to the 2019 OECD Tax Energy Use report, current tax structures are not adequately
aligned with the pollution profile of energy sources. For example, the OECD suggests that
carbon taxes are not harsh enough on coal production, although it has proved to be effective for
the electricity industry. A carbon tax has been effectively implemented in Sweden; the carbon
tax is USD $127 per tonne and has reduced emissions by 25% since 1995, while its economy has
expanded 75% in the same time period.

Further, organisations such as the United Nations are not fit to deal with the climate crisis: it was
assembled to prevent another world war and is not fit for purpose. Anyway, members of the UN
are not mandated to comply with any suggestions or recommendations made by the organisation.
For example, the Paris Agreement, an agreement within the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change, says that countries need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
significantly so that global temperature rise is below 2 degrees Celsius by 2100, and ideally
under 1.5 degrees. But signing on to it is voluntary, and there are no real repercussions for non-
compliance.
Further, the issue of equity remains a contentious issue whereby developing countries are
allowed to emit more in order to develop to the point where they can develop technologies to
emit less, and it allows some countries, such as China, to exploit this.

Food Waste
A third of the food intended for human consumption- around 1.3 billion tons- is wasted or lost.
This is enough to feed 3 billion people. Food waste and loss accounts for 4.4 gigatons of
greenhouse gas emissions annually; if it was a country, food waste would be the third highest
emitter of greenhouse gases, behind China and the US.
Food waste and loss occurs at different stages in developing and developed countries; in
developing countries, 40% of food waste occurs at the post-harvest and processing levels, while
in developed countries, 40% of food waste occurs at the retail and consumer levels.
At the retail level, a shocking amount of food is wasted because of aesthetic reasons; in fact, in
the US, more than 50% of all produce thrown away in the US is done so because it is deemed to
be “too ugly” to be sold to consumers- this amounts to about 60 million tons of fruits and
vegetables. This leads to food insecurity, another one of the biggest environmental problems on
the list.

Biodiversity Loss
The past 50 years have seen a rapid growth of human consumption, population, global trade and
urbanisation, resulting in humanity using more of the Earth’s resources than it can replenish
naturally.
A recent WWF report found that the population sizes of mammals, fish, birds, reptiles and
amphibians have experienced a decline of an average of 68% between 1970 and 2016. The report
attributes this biodiversity loss to a variety of factors, but mainly land-use change, particularly
the conversion of habitats, like forests, grasslands and mangroves, into agricultural systems.
Animals such as pangolins, sharks and seahorses are significantly affected by the illegal wildlife
trade, and pangolins are critically endangered because of it.

More broadly, a recent analysis has found that the sixth mass extinction of wildlife on Earth is
accelerating. More than 500 species of land animals are on the brink of extinction and are likely
to be lost within 20 years; the same number were lost over the whole of the last century. The
scientists say that without the human destruction of nature, this rate of loss would have taken
thousands of years.

Plastic Pollution
In 1950, the world produced more than 2 million tons of plastic per year. By

2015, this annual production swelled to 419 million tons and exacerbating plastic waste in the
environment.
A report by science journal, Nature, determined that currently, roughly 11 million tons of plastic
make its way into the oceans every year, harming wildlife habitats and the animals that live in
them. The research found that if no action is taken, the plastic crisis will grow to 29 million
metric tons per year by 2040. If we include microplastics into this, the cumulative amount of
plastic in the ocean could reach 600 million tons by 2040.
Shockingly, National Geographic found that 91% of all plastic that has ever been made is not
recycled, representing not only one of the biggest environmental problems of our lifetime, but
another massive market failure. Considering that plastic takes 400 years to decompose, it will be
many generations until it ceases to exist. There’s no telling what the irreversible effects of plastic
pollution will have on the environment in the long run.

Deforestation
Every minute, forests the size of 20 football fields are cut down. By the year 2030, the planet
might have only 10% of its forests; if deforestation isn’t stopped, they could all be gone in less
than 100 years.
Agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation, another one of the biggest environmental
problems appearing on this list. Land is cleared to raise livestock or to plant other crops that are
sold, such as sugar cane and palm oil. Besides for carbon sequestration, forests help to prevent
soil erosion, because the tree roots bind the soil and prevent it from washing away, which also
prevents landslides.
The three countries experiencing the highest levels of deforestation are Brazil, the Democratic
Republic of Congo and Indonesia, however Indonesia is tackling deforestation, now seeing the
lowest rates since the beginning of the century.

Air Pollution
Research from the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that an estimated 4.2 to 7 million
people die from air pollution worldwide every year and that nine out of 10 people breathe air that
contains high levels of pollutants. In Africa, 258 000 people died as a result of outdoor air
pollution in 2017, up from 164 000 in 1990, according to UNICEF. Causes of air pollution
mostly comes from industrial sources and motor vehicles, as well as emissions from burning
biomass and poor air quality due to dust storms.
In Europe, a recent report from the EU’s environment agency showed that air pollution
contributed to 400 000 annual deaths in the EU in 2012 (the last year for which data was
available).

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, attention has been put on the role that air pollution
gases has in transporting the virus molecules. Preliminary

studies have identified a positive correlation between COVID-19-related mortalities and air
pollution and there is also a plausible association of airborne particles assisting the viral spread.
This could have contributed to the high death toll in China, where air quality is notoriously poor,
although more definitive studies must be conducted before such a conclusion can be drawn.

Global Warming From Fossil Fuels

At time of publication, CO2 PPM (parts per million) is at 410 and the global temperature rise is
0.89 degrees Celsius.
Increased emissions of greenhouse gases have caused temperatures to rise, which are causing
catastrophic events all over the world- just this year has seen Australia experience one of the
most devastating bushfire seasons ever recorded, locusts swarming across parts of Africa, the
Middle East and Asia, decimating crops, scientists warning that the planet has crossed a series of
tipping points that could have catastrophic consequences, microplastic being found in Antarctic
ice for the first time, a heatwave in Antarctica that saw temperatures rise above 20 degrees for
the first time, warnings of advancing permafrost melt in Arctic regions, the Greenland ice sheet
melting at an unprecedented rate, news of the accelerating sixth mass extinction, increasing
deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, warnings of air pollution exacerbating the spread of
COVID-19, China experiencing its worst floods in decades, methane levels rising to their highest
on record, Canada’s last intact ice shelfcollapsing, a national park in the US recording the
highest temperature ever recorded on Earth, 13% of deaths in the EU being linked to various
forms of pollution, a report saying that population sizes of wildlife have experienced an average
decline of 68% since 1970 and record-breaking wildfires in California that have blocked out the
sun– and these are just a fraction of the events.
he climate crisis is causing tropical storms and other weather events such as hurricanes, heat
waves and flooding to be more intense and frequent than seen before. However, a study has
found that even if all greenhouse gas emissions were halted in 2020, global warming would only
be halted by around 2033. It is absolutely imperative that we reduce greenhouse gas emissions;
thankfully, this year is set to see the highest uptake of renewable energy projects around the
world.

Melting Ice Caps and Sea Level Rise

The climate crisis is warming the Arctic more than twice as fast as anywhere else on the planet.
Seas are now rising an average of 3.2 mm per year globally, and are predicted to climb to a total
of 0.2 to 2m by 2100. In the Arctic, the Greenland Ice Sheet poses the greatest risk for sea levels
because melting land ice is the main cause of rising sea levels.

Representing arguably the biggest of the environmental problems, this is made all the more
concerning considering that last year’s summer triggered the loss of 60 billion tons of ice from
Greenland, enough to raise global sea levels by 2.2mm in just two months. According to satellite
data, the Greenland ice sheet lost a record amount of ice in 2019: an average of a million tons per
minute throughout the year, one of the biggest environmental problems that has cascading
effects.

If the entire Greenland ice sheet melts, sea level would rise by six metres. Meanwhile, the
Antarctic continent contributes about 1 millimeter per year to sea level rise, which is a third of
the annual global increase.
Additionally, the last fully intact ice shelf in Canada in the Arctic recently collapsed, having lost
about 80 sq km, or 40%, of its area over a two-day period in late July, according to the Canadian
Ice Service.
The sea level rise will have a devastating impact on those living in coastal regions: according to
research and advocacy group Climate Central, sea level rise this century could flood coastal
areas that are now home to 340 million to 480 million people, forcing them to migrate to safer
areas and contributing to overpopulation and strain of resources in the areas they migrate to.
Take Shanghai’s megalopolis for example, which is built around the low-lying Yangtze river
delta. As the fourth most populous city in the world, the flood risk in the area is high due to its
geographical position. Any flooding caused by a higher rainfall can potentially be catastrophic in
relation to evacuation, water management and property damage.
Ocean Acidification
Global temperature rise has not only affected the surface, but it is the main cause of ocean
acidification. Our oceans absorb about 30% of carbon dioxide that is released into the Earth’s
atmosphere. As higher concentrations of carbon emissions are released thanks to human
activities such as burning fossil fuels as well as effects of global climate change such as
increased rates of wildfires, so do the amount of carbon dioxide that is absorbed back into the
sea.
The smallest change in the pH scale can have a significant impact on the acidity of the ocean.
Ocean acidification can have a ripple effect across marine ecosystems and species, its food webs,
and provoked changes in habitat quality. Once pH levels reach too low, marine organisms such
as oysters, their shells and skeleton could even start to dissolve. However, one of the biggest
ocean acidification effects can be seen with coral bleaching and subsequent coral reef loss. This
is a phenomenon that occurs when rising ocean temperatures disrupt the symbiotic relationship
between the reefs and algae that lives within it, driving away the algae and causing coral reefs to
lose their natural vibrant colours. Some scientists have estimated coral reefs are at risk of being
completely wiped by 2050. Higher acidity in the ocean would obstruct coral reef systems’ ability
to rebuild their

exoskeletons and recover from these coral bleaching events.

Some studies have also found that ocean acidification can be linked as one of the effects of
plastic pollution in the ocean. The accumulating bacteria and microorganisms derived from
plastic garbage dumped in the ocean to damage marine ecosystems and contribute towards coral
bleaching.

Agriculture
Studies have shown that the global food system is responsible for up to one third of all human-
caused greenhouse gas emissions, of which 30% comes from livestock and fisheries. Crop
production releases greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide through the use of fertilisers.
60% of the world’s agricultural area is dedicated to cattle ranching, although it only makes up
24% of global meat consumption.
Agriculture not only covers a vast amount of land, but it also consumes a vast amount of
freshwater, another one of the biggest environmental problems on this list. While arable lands
and grazing pastures cover one-third of Earth’s land surfaces, they consume three-quarters of the
world’s limited freshwater resources.
Scientists and environmentalists have continuously warned that we need to rethink our current
food system; switching to a more plant-based diet would dramatically reduce the carbon
footprint of the conventional agriculture industry.

Food and Water Insecurity

Rising temperatures and unsustainable farming practices has resulted in the increasing threat of
water and food insecurity.
Globally, more than 68 billion tonnes of top-soil is eroded every year at a rate 100 times faster
than it can naturally be replenished. Laden with biocides and fertiliser, the soil ends up in
waterways where it contaminates drinking water and protected areas downstream.
Furthermore, exposed and lifeless soil is more vulnerable to wind and water erosion due to lack
of root and mycelium systems that hold it together. A key contributor to soil erosion is over-
tilling: although it increases productivity in the short-term by mixing in surface nutrients (e.g.
fertiliser), tilling is physically destructive to the soil’s structure and in the long-term leads tosoil
compaction, loss of fertility and surface crust formation that worsens topsoil erosion.

With the global population expected to reach 9 billion people by mid-century, the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) projects that global food demand may
increase by 70% by 2050. Around the world, more than 820 million people do not get enough to
eat.

The UN secretary-general António Guterres says, “Unless immediate action is taken, it is

increasingly clear that there is an impending global food security

emergency that could have long term impacts on hundreds of millions of adults and children.”
He urged for countries to rethink their food systems and encouraged more sustainable farming
practices.
In terms of water security, only 3% of the world’s water is fresh water, and two-thirds of that is
tucked away in frozen glaciers or otherwise unavailable for our use.

As a result, some 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to water, and a total of 2.7 billion find
water scarce for at least one month of the year. By 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population
may face water shortages.
While these are some of the biggest environmental problems plaguing our planet, there are many
more that have not been mentioned, including overfishing, urban sprawl, toxic superfund sites
and land use changes. While there are many facets that need to be considered in formulating a
response to the crisis, they must be coordinated, practical and far-reaching enough to make
enough of a difference.

10 ways you can protect the environment

Unfortunately, humans have not been very good stewards of the Earth over the years. To protect
the environment and preserve the planet for our children and future generations, we all need to
take proactive steps toward cleaner living habits.

Most of the damage to our environment stems from consumption: what we consume, how much
we consume and how often.
Whether it’s gas, food, clothing, cars, furniture, water, toys, electronics, knick-knacks or other
goods, we are all consumers. The key is not to stop consuming, but to start being mindful of our
consumption habits and how each purchase or action affects the ecosystem.

The good news is that it’s often not too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient to become more
environmentally friendly. It can even be a fun challenge to implement among your family or
coworkers. And though small changes at the individual level may seem trivial, just think how
much cleaner the planet would be if everyone adopted even a few of the following behavior
modifications.

So here are 10 ways you can start to protect the environment today:

1. Consume less.
Curbing consumption can have a huge impact on the environment. The three "R's"—reduce,
reuse and recycle— get a lot of attention, but the planet could benefit from some focus on the
most important and most underrepresented "R": refuse.
When you refuse, you say "no," which is not always easy. Freebies at events, cheap goods on
clearance, the hot new children's toys or the latest gadgets that promise to make your life better
—none of these are essential. And they almost always end up either in the trash or forgotten in
the back of a closet. Next time you’re tempted to purchase or accept a non-essential item, think
about whether it would truly improve your life. If not, it's ok to just say, "No, thanks!"
Bonus: Refusing to allow unneeded items into your life can save you money and reduce the
amount of clutter in your home.

2. Compost.
Another “R” that doesn’t get much attention but has important environmental implications is
“rot.” As in, let your food and yard waste rot naturally in the soil instead of sending it to the
landfill. In other words: compost.
Composting your food scraps and yard waste offers double rewards: it keeps

an incredible amount of trash out of the waste stream, and it produces free, rich soil to use in
your garden. Some cities now pick up organic waste alongside regular trash and recycling pick
up. If your area doesn’t offer this service, no worries— you can set up a low-maintenance
compost pile in your backyard.

3. Choose reusable over single-use.

Think about how many people you see each day drinking beverages from disposable cups or
disposable bottles, sipping from disposable straws, carrying disposable grocery bags, eating from
disposable plates or containers and using disposable utensils. All that single-use plastic has to go
somewhere, and it’s had a devastating effect on our soil, oceans and marine life.
All of the above items (and more) have more environmentally responsible counterparts. Switch
to reusable items and make a commitment to use them as often as possible. You’ll have less trash
piling up at your curb, and you’ll be helping to protect the environment in a major way.

4. Upcycle more.
Get creative with your useless or unwanted items by upcycling—basically, turning trash into
treasure. Creating something new such as artwork, toys or jewelry is both satisfying and one of
the best ways to protect the environment. Not only does it keep items out of the trash, it can
prevent having to purchase new items, which require lots of resources to produce. Children love
making things; so instead of heading to the craft store, check out your recycle bin first and let
their imaginations soar!
5. Recycle properly.
If you can’t refuse it...and you can’t rot it...and you can’t reduce it...and you can’t upcycle or
reuse it...then it’s time to turn to the final “R”—recycling. Educate yourself on what can and
cannot be recycled in your bins at home. Throwing the wrong items in the recycle bin can result
in an entire load being rejected, which means ... back to the landfill.
You can also easily find out how to recycle special items such as electronics, batteries and
appliances. Check with your local municipality for drop-off sites, and make an effort to get your
items to the proper disposal sites.

6. Shop secondhand.
Did you know it takes over 700 gallons of water to grow enough cotton to make just one plain t-
shirt?
Instead of heading to the mall to buy new clothes, consider looking first in a thrift store or
vintage shop, or trading clothes with friends. You can breathe new life into your wardrobe
without wasting the precious resources needed to produce new clothing.
Shopping secondhand also applies for many other categories of consumer

goods: children’s games and toys, shoes, appliances, furniture, cars and more.

7. Buy local.
While we’re on the topic of shopping, it’s important to think about the path your stuff takes just
to get to you. All that packaging, combined with the fuel needed for delivery, really takes a toll
on the environment. Instead, check out your local farmers market for fresh, package-free food;
try eating at a farm-to-table restaurant; and buy from local artists, clothing makers, and retailers
before you click for that two-day shipping.
8. Use fewer chemicals.
Want to protect the environment? Use fewer harmful chemicals and you’ll be on the right track.
It’s hard to be sure about the long-term negative effects chemicals can have, both on our bodies
and on the planet, so it’s best to avoid them if possible. Opt for chemical-free lawn and garden
care; all-natural beauty and hygiene items; natural household cleaners; and organic food. The
Earth will thank you!

9. Walk, bike or carpool.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a typical passenger vehicle
emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.1 Any amount of that we can cut back on
will help. For short trips, try walking or biking—you’ll also get a healthy dose of exercise in,
without setting foot in a gym. If travelling on foot or two wheels isn’t feasible, try carpooling
with a friend, neighbor or coworker to a mutual destination. And if all else fails and you need to
drive your car, line up errands in the most efficient route to save time and miles driven.

10. Use less water.

Conserving water at home is one of the easiest ways to protect the environment. Think of all the
times you consume water, both inside and outside your home; then, make adjustments as you
can. For example:
Turn off the tap while you brush your teeth.
Fix leaky faucets.
Make your water use more efficient by aerating faucets, using sprinklers that reduce runoff and
installing low-flow toilets and efficient shower heads. Collect and use rainwater for watering
plants.
Shorten your shower by a few minutes—or skip it altogether if you don't really need one that
day.
Only run your dishwasher or washing machine when it's full
These are just the basics—you can get really creative when it comes to conserving water.

Responsibility for the Environment: Individuals

or the Government?
The new Fishlinger Center for Public Policy Research at the College of Mount Saint Vincent
seeks to foster meaningful dialog on key public policy issues through independent, objective
public opinion research. This initial survey focuses on social issues in the United States.

This is the seventh and final report from the survey; the earlier reports concentrated on human
trafficking, the lack of affordable health care, root causes of poverty, domestic violence, the lack
of educational opportunities and drug addiction.

In his environmental encyclical last June, Pope Francis called on people of all religions to take
swift action. Most Americans consider the environment an important problem that is getting little
focus, including a majority of Catholics. Yet there are strong partisan differences in the public’s
views. Two-thirds of Democrats and independents say the environment is the responsibility of
the government, while 57 percent of Republicans say it is the concern of individuals.

The poll was conducted online May 14 to 26, 2015 with 1,253 adults. Field work was conducted
by IPSOS Public Affairs. Blacks, Hispanics and Asians were sampled at a higher rate than their
proportion of the population for reasons of analysis.

Importance of the Issue

Nearly two-thirds, 63 percent, of the public regard environmental concerns as extremely or very
important. Another 58 percent say that in the United States, environmental problems are
extremely or very serious. More than half, 52 percent, consider problems with the environment
to be widespread.

However, while 78 percent of Democrats say environment concerns are important, only 46
percent of Republicans have the same opinion. Similarly, 67 percent of Democrats say the
environment is a serious problem; only 41 percent of Republicans agree. And in another measure
of the magnitude of environmental problems in the United States, 66 percent of Democrats say
these issues are extremely or very widespread, compared with only 36 percent of Republicans.

Who is Responsible for the Environment?

Most Americans say that environmental concerns are more the purview of the government rather
than the responsibility of individuals.
However, there are strong partisan differences on this question as well. Two-thirds of Democrats
and independents say the environment is the responsibility of the government, while a majority,
57 percent, of Republicans consider it an obligation of individuals. Similarly, liberals are more
inclined to say the government should be dealing with environmental concerns, while most
conservatives feel that the private sector should be handling problems with the environment.

CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF CLIMATE

CHANGE
Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, cloud forests are dying, and wildlife is scrambling to
keep pace. It has become clear that humans have caused most of the past century's warming by
releasing heat-trapping gases as we power our modern lives. Called greenhouse gases, their
levels are higher now than at any time in the last 800,000 years.

We often call the result global warming, but it is causing a set of changes to the Earth's climate,
or long-term weather patterns, that varies from place to place. While many people think of global
warming and climate change as synonyms, scientists use “climate change” when describing the
complex shifts now affecting our planet’s weather and climate systems—in part because some
areas actually get cooler in the short term.

Climate change encompasses not only rising average temperatures but also extreme weather
events, shifting wildlife populations and habitats, rising seas, and a range of other impacts. All of
those changes are emerging as humans continue to add heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the
atmosphere, changing the rhythms of climate that all living things have come to rely on.

What will we do—what can we do—to slow this human-caused warming? How will we cope
with the changes we've already set into motion? While we struggle to figure it all out, the fate of
the Earth as we know it—coasts, forests, farms, and snow-capped mountains—hangs in the
balance.

Understanding the greenhouse effect

The "greenhouse effect" is the warming that happens when certain gases in Earth's atmosphere
trap heat. These gases let in light but keep heat from escaping, like the glass walls of a
greenhouse, hence the name.

Sunlight shines onto the Earth's surface, where the energy is absorbed and then radiate back into
the atmosphere as heat. In the atmosphere, greenhouse gas molecules trap some of the heat, and
the rest escapes into space. The more greenhouse gases concentrate in the atmosphere, the more
heat gets locked up in the molecules.

Scientists have known about the greenhouse effect since 1824, when Joseph Fourier calculated
that the Earth would be much colder if it had no

atmosphere. This natural greenhouse effect is what keeps the Earth's climate livable. Without it,
the Earth's surface would be an average of about 60 degrees Fahrenheit (33 degrees Celsius)
cooler.
In 1895, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius discovered that humans could enhance the
greenhouse effect by making carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. He kicked off 100 years of
climate research that has given us a sophisticated understanding of global warming.

Levels of greenhouse gases have gone up and down over the Earth's history, but they had been
fairly constant for the past few thousand years. Global average temperatures had also stayed
fairly constant over that time—until the past 150 years. Through the burning of fossil fuels and
other activities that have emitted large amounts of greenhouse gases, particularly over the past
few decades, humans are now enhancing the greenhouse effect and warming Earth significantly,
and in ways that promise many effects, scientists warn.

Aren't temperature changes natural?

Human activity isn't the only factor that affects Earth's climate. Volcanic eruptions and variations
in solar radiation from sunspots, solar wind, and the Earth's position relative to the sun also play
a role. So do large-scale weather patterns such as El Niño.

But climate models that scientists use to monitor Earth’s temperatures take those factors into
account. Changes in solar radiation levels as well as minute particles suspended in the
atmosphere from volcanic eruptions, for example, have contributed only about two percent to the
recent warming effect. The balance comes from greenhouse gases and other human-caused
factors, such as land use change.

The short timescale of this recent warming is singular as well. Volcanic eruptions, for example,
emit particles that temporarily cool the Earth's surface. But their effect lasts just a few years.
Events like El Niño also work on fairly short and predictable cycles. On the other hand, the types
of global temperature fluctuations that have contributed to ice ages occur on a cycle of hundreds
of thousands of years.
For thousands of years now, emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere have been
balanced out by greenhouse gases that are naturally absorbed. As a result, greenhouse gas
concentrations and temperatures have been fairly stable, which has allowed human civilization to
flourish within a consistent climate.

Now, humans have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by more than a
third since the Industrial Revolution. Changes that

have historically taken thousands of years are now happening over the course of decades.

Why does this matter?

The rapid rise in greenhouse gases is a problem because it’s changing the climate faster than
some living things can adapt to. Also, a new and more unpredictable climate poses unique
challenges to all life.

Historically, Earth's climate has regularly shifted between temperatures like those we see today
and temperatures cold enough to cover much of North America and Europe with ice. The
difference between average global temperatures today and during those ice ages is only about 9
degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius), and the swings have tended to happen slowly, over
hundreds of thousands of years.

But with concentrations of greenhouse gases rising, Earth's remaining ice sheets such as
Greenland and Antarctica are starting to melt too. That extra water could raise sea levels
significantly, and quickly. By 2050, sea levels are predicted to rise between one and 2.3 feet as
glaciers melt.

As the mercury rises, the climate can change in unexpected ways. In addition to sea levels rising,
weather can become more extreme. This means more intense major storms, more rain followed
by longer and drier droughts—a challenge for growing crops—changes in the ranges in which
plants and animals can live, and loss of water supplies that have historically come from glaciers.

DEFORESTATION
As the world seeks to slow the pace of climate change, preserve wildlife, and support billions of
people, trees inevitably hold a major part of the answer. Yet the mass destruction of trees—
deforestation—continues, sacrificing the long-term benefits of standing trees for short-term gain.

Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but they are disappearing at an
alarming rate. Between 1990 and 2016, the world lost 502,000 square miles (1.3 million square
kilometers) of forest, according to the World Bank—an area larger than South Africa. Since
humans started cutting down forests, 46 percent of trees have been felled, according to a 2015
study in the journal Nature. About 17 percent of the Amazonian rainforest has been destroyed
over the past 50 years, and losses recently have been on the rise.
We need trees for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that they absorb not only the carbon
dioxide that we exhale, but also the heat-trapping greenhouse gases that human activities emit.
As those gases enter the atmosphere, global warming increases, a trend scientists now prefer to
call climate change. Tropical tree cover alone can provide 23 percent of the climate mitigation
needed over the next decade to meet goals set in the Paris Agreement in 2015, according to one
estimate.

Causes of deforestation
Farming, grazing of livestock, mining, and drilling combined account for more than half of all
deforestation. Forestry practices, wildfires and, in small part, urbanization account for the rest. In
Malaysia and Indonesia, forests are cut down to make way for producing palm oil, which can be
found in everything from shampoo to saltines. In the Amazon, cattle ranching and farms—
particularly soy plantations—are key culprits.

Logging operations, which provide the world’s wood and paper products, also fell countless trees
each year. Loggers, some of them acting illegally, also build roads to access more and more
remote forests—which leads to further deforestation. Forests are also cut as a result of growing
urban sprawl as land is developed for homes.

Not all deforestation is intentional. Some is caused by a combination of human and natural
factors like wildfires and overgrazing, which may prevent the growth of young trees.

Why it matters and what can be done?

Deforestation affects the people and animals where trees are cut, as well as the wider world.
Some 250 million people living in forest and savannah

areas depend on them for subsistence and income—many of them among the world’s rural poor.
Eighty percent of Earth’s land animals and plants live in forests, and deforestation threatens
species including the orangutan, Sumatran tiger, and many species of birds. Removing trees
deprives the forest of portions of its canopy, which blocks the sun’s rays during the day and
retains heat at night. That disruption leads to more extreme temperature swings that can be
harmful to plants and animals.

Yet the effects of deforestation reach much farther. The South American rainforest, for example,
influences regional and perhaps even global water cycles, and it's key to the water supply in
Brazilian cities and neighboring countries. The Amazon actually helps furnish water to some of
the soy farmers and beef ranchers who are clearing the forest. The loss of clean water and
biodiversity from all forests could have many other effects we can’t foresee, touching even your
morning cup of coffee.

In terms of climate change, cutting trees both adds carbon dioxide to the air and removes the
ability to absorb existing carbon dioxide. If tropical deforestation were a country, according to
the World Resources Institute, it would rank third in carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions,
behind China and the U.S.
The numbers are grim, but many conservationists see reasons for hope. A movement is under
way to preserve existing forest ecosystems and restore lost tree cover. Organizations and activists
are working to fight illegal mining and logging—National Geographic Explorer Topher White,
for example, has come up with a way to use recycled cell phones to monitor for chainsaws. In
Tanzania, the residents of Kokota have planted more than 2 million trees on their small island
over a decade, aiming to repair previous damage. And in Brazil, conservationists are rallying in
the face of ominous signals that the government may roll back forest protections.

Pollution Facts & Types of Pollution

Pollution is the process of making land, water, air or other parts of the environment dirty and not
safe or suitable to use. This can be done through the introduction of a contaminant into a natural
environment, but the contaminant doesn't need to be tangible. Things as simple as light, sound
and temperature can be considered pollutants when introduced artificially into an environment.

Toxic pollution affects more than 200 million people worldwide, according to Pure Earth, a non-
profit environmental organization. In some of the world's worst polluted places, babies are born
with birth defects, children have lost 30 to 40 IQ points, and life expectancy may be as low as 45
years because of cancers and other diseases. Read on to find out more about specific types of
pollution.

Land pollution
Land can become polluted by household garbage and by industrial waste. In 2014, Americans
produced about 258 million tons of solid waste, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency. A little over half of the waste — 136 million tons— was gathered in landfills. Only
about 34% was recycled or composted.

Organic material was the largest component of the garbage generated, the EPA said. Paper and
paperboard accounted for more than 26%; food was 15% and yard trimmings were 13%. Plastics
comprised about 13% of the solid waste, while rubber, leather and textiles made up 9.5% and
metals 9%. Wood contributed to 6.2% of the garbage; glass was 4.4% and other miscellaneous
materials made up about 3%.

Commercial or industrial waste is a significant portion of solid waste. According to the

University of Utah, industries use 4 million pounds of materials in order to provide the average
American family with needed products for one year. Much of it is classified as non-hazardous,
such as construction material (wood, concrete, bricks, glass, etc.) and medical waste (bandages,
surgical gloves, surgical instruments, discarded needles, etc.). Hazardous waste is any liquid,
solid or sludge waste that contain properties that are dangerous of potentially harmful to human
health or the environment. Industries generate hazardous waste from mining, petroleum refining,
pesticide manufacturing and other chemical production. Households generate hazardous waste as
well, including paints and solvents, motor oil, fluorescent lights, aerosol cans and ammunition.

Water pollution
Water pollution happens when chemicals or dangerous foreign substances are introduced to
water, including chemicals, sewage, pesticides and fertilizers from agricultural runoff, or metals
like lead or mercury. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 44% of
assessed stream miles, 64% of lakes and 30% of bay and estuarine areas are not clean enough for
fishing and swimming. The EPA also states that the United State's most common contaminants
are bacteria, mercury, phosphorus and nitrogen. These come from the most common sources of
contaminates, that include agricultural runoff, air deposition, water diversions and channelization
of streams.

Water pollution isn't just a problem for the United States. According to United Nations, 783
million people do not have access to clean water and around 2.5 billion do not have access to
adequate sanitation. Adequate sanitation helps to keep sewage and other contaminants from
entering the water supply. According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA), 80% of pollution in marine environment comes from the land through sources like
runoff. Water pollution can also severely affect marine life. For example, sewage causes
pathogens to grow, while organic and inorganic compounds in water can change the composition
of the precious resource. According to the EPA, low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water are
also considered a pollutant. Dissolved is caused by the decomposition of organic materials, such
as sewage introduced into the water.

Warming water can also be harmful. The artificial warming of water is called thermal pollution.
It can happen when a factory or power plant that is using water to cool its operations ends up
discharging hot water. This makes the water hold less oxygen, which can kill fish and wildlife.
The sudden change of temperature in the body of water can also kill fish. According to the
University of Georgia, it is estimated that around half of the water withdrawn from water
systems in the United States each year is used for cooling electric power plants.

"In nearly all cases, 90% of this water is returned to its source, where it can raise the water
temperature in an area immediately surrounding the water discharge pipe. Depending on water
flow, the water temperature quickly returns to ambient temperatures that do not harm fish." Donn
Dears, former president of TSAugust, a not for profit corporation organization focused on energy
issues, told Live Science.

Nutrient pollution, also called eutrophication, is another type of water pollution. It is when
nutrients, such as nitrogen, are added into bodies of water. The nutrient works like fertilizer and
makes algae grow at excessive rates, according to NOAA. The algae blocks light from other
plants. The plants die and their decomposition leads to less oxygen in the water. Less oxygen in
the water kills aquatic animals.

Air pollution
The air we breathe has a very exact chemical composition; 99% of it is made up of nitrogen,
oxygen, water vapor and inert gases. Air pollution occurs when things that aren't normally there
are added to the air. A common type of air pollution happens when people release particles into
the air from burning fuels. This pollution looks like soot, containing millions of tiny particles,
floating in the air.
Another common type of air pollution is dangerous gases, such as sulfur dioxide, carbon
monoxide, nitrogen oxides and chemical vapors. These can take part in further chemical
reactions once they are in the atmosphere, creating acid rain and smog. Other sources of air
pollution can come from within buildings, such as secondhand smoke.

Finally, air pollution can take the form of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide or sulfur
dioxide, which are warming the planet through the greenhouse effect. According to the EPA, the
greenhouse effect is when gases absorb the infrared radiation that is released from the Earth,
preventing the heat from escaping. This is a natural process that keeps our atmosphere warm. If
too many gases are introduced into the atmosphere, though, more heat is trapped and this can
make the planet artificially warm, according to Columbia University.

Air pollution kills more than 2 million people each year, according to a study published in the
journal of Environmental Research Letters. The effects of air pollution on human health can vary
widely depending on the pollutant, according to Hugh Sealy, professor and director of the
environmental and occupational health track at the Department of Public Health and Preventive
Medicine, St. George's University, St. George's, Grenada. If the pollutant is highly toxic, the
effects on health can be widespread and severe. For example, the release of methyl isocyanate
gas at Union Carbide plant in Bhopal in 1984 killed over 2,000 people, and over 200,000
suffered respiratory problems. An irritant (e.g. particulates less than 10 micrometers) may cause
respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular disease and increases in asthma. "The very young, the old
and those with vulnerable immune systems are most at risk from air pollution. The air pollutant
may be carcinogenic (e.g. some volatile organic compounds) or biologically active (e.g. some
viruses) or radioactive (e.g. radon). Other air pollutants like carbon dioxide have an indirect
impact on human health through climate change," Sealy told Live Science.

Noise pollution

Even though humans can't see or smell noise pollution, it still affects the environment. Noise
pollution happens when the sound coming from planes,

industry or other sources reaches harmful levels. Research has shown that there are direct links
between noise and health, including stress-related illnesses, high blood pressure, speech
interference, hearing loss. For example, a study bythe WHO Noise Environmental Burden on
Disease working group found that noise pollution may contribute to hundreds of thousands of
deaths per year by increasing the rates of coronary heart disease. Under the Clean Air Act, the
EPA can regulate machine and plane noise.

Underwater noise pollution coming from ships has been shown to upset whales' navigation
systems and kill other species that depend on the natural underwater world. Noise also makes
wild species communicate louder, which can shorten their lifespan.

Light pollution
Most people can't imagine living without the modern convenience of electric lights. For the
natural world, though, lights have changed the way that days and nights work. Some
consequences of light pollution are:
Some birds sing at unnatural hours in the presence of artificial light.
Scientists have determined that long artificial days can affect migration schedules, as they allow
for longer feeding times.
Streetlights can confuse newly hatched sea turtles that rely on starlight reflecting off the waves to
guide them from the beach to the ocean. They often head in the wrong direction.
Light pollution, called sky glow, also makes it difficult for astronomers, both professional and
amateur, to properly see the stars.
Plant's flowering and developmental patterns can be entirely disrupted by artificial light.
According to a study by the American Geophysical Union, light pollution could also be making
smog worse by destroying nitrate radicals that helps the dispersion of smog.
Turning on so many lights may not be necessary. Research published by International Journal of
Science and Research estimates that over-illumination wastes about 2 million barrels of oil per
day and lighting is responsible for one-fourth of all energy consumption worldwide.

Other pollution facts:

Americans generate 30 billion foam cups, 220 million tires, and 1.8 billion disposable diapers
every year, according to the Green Schools Alliance. According to the WHO, ambient air
pollution contributes to 6.7% of all deaths worldwide.
The Mississippi River drains the lands of nearly 40% of the continental United Sates. It also
carries an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of nitrogen pollution into the Gulf of Mexico each
year, resulting in a dead zone each summer about the size of New Jersey.
Pollution in China can change weather patterns in the United States. It takes

just five days for the jet stream to carry heavy air pollution from China to the United States,
where it stops clouds from producing rain and snow.
About 7 million premature deaths annually linked to air pollution, according to WHO. That is
one in eight deaths worldwide.

6 Dysfunctional Family Roles and Their

Characteristics
Families are always seeking homeostasis or balance. When one or more family members are
struggling to self-regulate in appropriate ways, regardless of the reason, other family members
may unconsciously step into these dysfunctional family roles as an attempt to rebalance the
family and to avoid self-reflecting on their own painful or stressful experiences and emotions.
Know that no family is perfect, and there is always room to work towards healthier family
dynamics.

Dysfunctional Family Roles

Dysfunctional family roles can be flexible, meaning that one person may predominantly
encapsulate one role but can easily fill another if a shift happens and another role is vacant. Even
if parents are well meaning, it is incredibly difficult not to perpetuate the experiences they went
through within their family of origin and transfer those same unhealthy patterns and roles to their
marital or nuclear family.
The Scapegoat
Within a dysfunctional family, the scapegoat is cast aside and blamed for problems that may very
well have nothing to do with them. Children who are scapegoated are often very aware of their
role in the family and may feel rejected, unlovable, and isolated. In families with a parent or
parents with narcissistic traits, the child who is the scapegoat and the golden child are often
pitted against each other. This is known as splitting; it is yet another way to distract from the
family's primary issues. Examples of the scapegoat role: A child who is often sick, seen as weak,
or has a chronic condition
A defiant child who has been conditioned to understand that negative attention is better than no
attention from their parent(s) or caregiver
May get into trouble in school, both academically and socially
May experience more and/or harsher abuse compared to other siblings or family members
In therapy, the scapegoat is typically the only one within the family who is able to be honest
about the issues within the family that the other family members are denying or are unable to see.
They may also be labeled as the identified patient and be sent to individual therapy, despite the
core issue being family centered versus individually focused. Those in this role often experience
difficulty connecting with others on a genuine level and may self-sabotage.

The Caretaker

The caretaker, otherwise known as the enabler or martyr, attempts to keep everyone within the
family happy, even if it means denying the real issues at hand. Both children and adults can play
this role, which ultimately denies the experience of dealing with the central issue, as the
caretaker continues to pick up the pieces in order to prevent a meltdown, breakdown, or rock
bottom experience. While this keeps the family "balanced" in an unhealthy way, it actually
prevents the family from healing and moving forward in a healthy manner. Examples of the
caretaker:

A parentified child stepping in when one or both parents are unable to due to addiction, mental
health disorders, and/or chronic health conditions
An adult acting in a co-dependent manner and attempting to manage the family's problem right
away without allowing anyone else to deal with the negative consequences, even when at fault

Children who grow up in the caretaker role may be unconsciously drawn to partners who have
issues with addiction, chronic conditions, and mental health disorders. They may struggle with
self-esteem, anxiety, and depression as they continue to take on the issues of those around them.
Keep in mind that the caretaker acts out of anxiety that the family will fall apart and they will
subsequently be unsafe, alone, unlovable, rejected, etc. By acting to keep the family together,
they are denying the family, as well as themselves, the experience of dealing with these core
issues.

The Hero
The hero appears to be a high functioning, well-balanced individual who the family can point to
as a solid example that backs up the family's facade of doing well. The hero allows the family to
continue perpetuating the notion that everything is fine, despite there being some serious issues
going on within individuals, as well as the entire family system. The hero:
As a child may be parentified and take on the role of spouse when one of their parents is
physically or emotionally unavailable
May feel immense pressure to carry the family's appearance of success and achievement
May insert themselves to help resolve familial issues
As an adult, the hero may be drawn to relationships where their partner is emotionally
unavailable. They may also throw themselves into work and experience difficulty with real
intimacy.

The Mascot
In the family, the mascot uses humor and goofiness to distract from serious issues. They may feel
immense pressure to step in when situations become tense and volatile. When they diffuse the
situation successfully, this reinforces the pressure on them to continue to distract the family from
their issues. The mascot:
Interrupts volatile situations with humor

Acts from a place of anxiety and trauma

May experience bouts of depression
As an adult, the mascot may feel drawn to intense and dysfunctional partnerships where they are
able to step into their role to help diffuse conflict. They often continue their codependent role
and are typically known to bend over backwards for others.

The Addict or IP
The addict, also known as the identified patient, represents the culmination of the family's issues.
As the addiction intensifies, new family conflict arises that focuses mostly on the person with the
addiction. This serves as a distraction from the family's other core issues. The identified patient,
in therapy, becomes the family's new focus. Family members may rally to get help for this one
individual and may not feel as if they have anything to do with their addiction, despite it
developing within the dysfunctional familial environment. The identified patient or addict:
May feel resistant to seeking treatment as their addiction protects the family and themselves from
dealing with deeper, core issues and may also bring a family together that was once more
disconnected
May feel frustrated or angry that they are the only ones who "need" help within the family
Those who identify mostly with the addict family role, may find themselves continuing to
relapse if previous issues haven't been resolved, or wanting to use in times of distress, especially
if they are in an unhealthy romantic relationship that feels triggering.

The Lost Child

The lost child attempts to blend into the background as much as possible to keep themselves safe
and to avoid rocking the (sinking) boat. They may feel ignored, neglected, and scared to draw
attention to themselves, especially in abusive households. Parents may use them, like the hero
role, to exemplify how great the family is doing, since they aren't causing any trouble. The lost
child:
May be described as a loner
May have difficulty developing social skills and self-esteem
As an adult, the lost child may struggle with friendships and romantic relationships. They may
prefer to be alone, as this can feel tied to their emotional and/or physical safety. In a therapy
session, the lost child is often quiet, doesn't speak up unless asked to, and may feel scared or
nervous to share their observations.

What Is Golden Child Syndrome?

The golden child syndrome is often seen within families who have a parent or parents with
narcissistic personality disorder. The parent or caregiver with

narcissistic traits often favors the golden child, who represents all that the parent loves within
themselves. Because those with NPD have an incredibly unstable view of themselves, their
relationship with the golden child can often be volatile with the transfer of parent to child love on
a conditional (versus unconditional) level. Despite being the "favorite", the golden child:

Has difficulty differentiating and becoming their own self

May participate in the abuse of others within the household in order to protect themselves from
their parent(s)
May experience abuse by the parent framed as "love"
May disobey as a child or adult in an attempt to individuate from their parent(s)

The Happiness Penalty for Breadwinning Moms

More women are family breadwinners today. New data from the American Community Survey
suggest that among married, heterosexual couples in the U.S., a quarter of wives, or about 15
million, are the primary breadwinners in their family. In 1960, the share was only 6%. Moreover,
in 22% of married households with young children under age 18, mothers are the primary
breadwinners.

Women’s progress in the workplace and their economic contributions to their households should
be applauded, yet female breadwinners seem to face a “happiness penalty” compared to women
who earn less than their husbands.

When it comes to family-life satisfaction, women who earn more than their husbands report
lower satisfaction than their peers who have a lower income than their spouses, according to a
new Institute for Family Studies/Wheatley Institution survey of U.S. adults ages 18 to 50. Just
over half of women who out-earn their husbands (56%) say they are very satisfied with their
family life, compared with nearly 70% of women who are not the primary breadwinner in the
house. In contrast, the survey suggests that life satisfaction does not differ significantly among
married men, whether they are the primary breadwinner or not.1
On other measures, including marital satisfaction and whether the couple feels close and engaged
in the relationship, female breadwinners also score lower than their peers who earn less than their
husbands. And again, these differences are not observed among married men.

The culprit here may be traditional gender norms. The idea that men should take the lead in
breadwinning and women in caring for children and the home still affects men and women today,
and a violation of this norm could make some couples uncomfortable with their arrangement. A
good example is that when wives earn more than their husbands, both spouses misreport their
actual income in surveys. Women under-report their income and men overreport it. The norm
that men should be the lead breadwinner still has a strong hold on our society.

However, this theory does not explain why only women appear to be affected by this departure
from traditional gender norms. Perhaps women are more likely to hold traditional gender norms
than men and therefore are more uncomfortable about their new role as breadwinners?

In fact, married women are no more likely than men to hold traditional views of gender norms.
In the IFS/Wheatley survey, about 48% of married men agree that “it is usually better for
everyone involved if the father takes the lead in working outside the home and the mother takes
the lead in caring for the home and family,” while only 43% of married women agree with this
statement.

To understand this puzzle, we need to look beyond earnings and look more into the day-to-day
family life of couples.
A recent study suggests that how couples divide their household tasks is linked to their
relationship satisfaction. And an earlier Pew Research survey found that “sharing household
chores” is ranked as one of the top three factors associated with a successful marriage. In the
public’s eyes, it is even more important than “adequate income” when it comes to a successful
marriage.

So how are typical household tasks divided when a wife earns more money than her husband? As
it turns out, when the wife is the primary breadwinner, a plurality of women (41%) still take a
lead role in housework. However, when the husband is the primary breadwinner, only 14% do
more housework than their wives.

Meanwhile, just 17% of female breadwinners say their husbands do more housework, and 41%
say they share household chores equally (results not shown in the figure). In contrast, more than
a third of male breadwinners (37%) say their wives do more housework and 48% say these tasks
are shared equally.

When it comes to childcare responsibilities, married mothers who are the primary breadwinner in
the house are also much more likely than fathers in the same role to take a lead in the childcare
responsibilities (37% vs. 7%). So, when wives are the primary breadwinners, they are still much
more likely to assume a disproportionate share of housework and childcare. This is an

example of the classic “second shift” that sociologist Arlie Hochschild pointed to in her book. It
is easy to see why these overworked breadwinner wives and mothers may not be as happy as
others.
Of course, in general, married fathers devote about as much overall time to work and family as
married mothers. That’s because, while fathers as a group today still spend significantly less time
on housework and childcare than mothers, they also spend more time overall in paid work, which
balances out the total workload that fathers and mothers have.

Since many factors can relate to how people feel about their family life, I explored bivariate and
multivariate regression models to test whether the association between breadwinning, household
division of labor, and family life satisfaction for married women (and mothers) is significant
after controlling for other relevant factors. These factors include the family’s financial situation,
beliefs about traditional gender roles, and church/religious service attendance.2 I also ran the
multivariate models separately for married women in general and those with children under age
18 at home (see Appendix table at the end of this brief).

At the bivariate level, breadwinner wives are less satisfied with their family lives than wives who
are not the primary breadwinners. Nevertheless, after controlling for other factors, the negative
association between the breadwinner role and family life satisfaction is no longer significant for
married women overall but is still significant among married mothers. Breadwinner moms are
55% less likely to be very satisfied with their family life than mothers who are not the primary
breadwinner, even after controlling for the household division of labor, family financial status,
gender ideology, and an array of other background variables.

On the other hand, the connection between the division of housework and family life satisfaction
is significant for both married women and married mothers. Doing more housework than their
spouse is linked to a lower level of life satisfaction for all married women after controlling for
relevant factors. But for mothers, doing more childcare than their spouses is not significantly
linked to family life satisfaction.

In sum, findings from the multivariate analyses indicate that that the link between breadwinning
and family life satisfaction is more pronounced among married women with children at home.
This could reflect the fact that caring for children requires a lot more time and effort on top of
regular housework tasks. And when a mother is also the family’s primary breadwinner, the
unbalanced workload can take a toll on her family life satisfaction. At a time when more women
are family breadwinners, perhaps it is time for husbands

to step up and take on more responsibilities on the home front. The Demographics of
Breadwinning Women

Although there has been a lot of buzz around young women making more economic gains
relative to young men, Millennial women are NOT the group who are most likely to out-earn
their husbands. Close to 3-in-10 married women in their mid-50s to mid-60s (28%) make more
money than their spouses, compared with 22% of younger married women (under age 35) and
25% of married women ages 35 to 54, according to estimates based on the Census data.

Women of different racial and ethnic backgrounds also differ in their chances of being the
primary breadwinner in the household. More than one-third of married black women (35%) out-
earn their husbands. The share among white or Asian women is 10 percentage points lower, and
the share among Hispanic women is the lowest (20%).

Finally, women’s educational achievement is positively linked to their chances of being the
primary breadwinner. Among married women who have at least a bachelors’ degree, 32% earn
more money than their husbands. In contrast, only 16% of married women with less than a high
school education have a higher income than their husbands.

Another noteworthy characteristic of female breadwinning has to do with their family financial
status. According to my analysis of the Census data, the median total family income of married
women who out-earn their husbands was close to $90,000 in 2017, slightly higher than the
median family income for married couples with a male breadwinner (about $88,000).
Couples are more likely to both work for pay in households where the wife is

the primary breadwinner. This is probably why female-breadwinner households have a higher
total income than male-breadwinner households. According to 2017 American Community
survey data, the share of dual-earner couples was 55% among married couples where the wife is
the primary breadwinner and 45% among couples where the husband is the primary
breadwinner.3

Apparently, the slight income boost among female-breadwinner households is not enough to
compensate these women’s lower levels of family life satisfaction. This echoes the previous Pew
Research survey finding that sharing household chores trumps money when it comes to a
successful marriage.

Recent Changes in Family Structure

Family structures of some kind are found in every society. Pairing off into formal or informal
marital relationships originated in hunter-gatherer groups to forge networks of cooperation
beyond the immediate family. Intermarriage between groups, tribes, or clans was often political
or strategic and resulted in reciprocal obligations between the two groups represented by the
marital partners. Even so, marital dissolution was not a serious problem as the obligations resting
on marital longevity were not particularly high.

One Parent Households

One recent trend illustrating the changing nature of families is the rise in prevalence of single-
parent families. While somewhat more common prior to the twentieth century due to the more
frequent deaths of spouses, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the nuclear family
became the societal norm in most Western nations. But what was the prevailing norm for much
of the twentieth century is no longer the actual norm, nor is it perceived as such.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the change in the economic structure of the United States –-the inability
to support a nuclear family on a single wage–-had significant ramifications on family life.
Women and men began delaying the age of first marriage in order to invest in their earning
power before marriage by spending more time in school. The increased levels of education
among women, with women now earn more than 50% of bachelor’s degrees, positioned women
to survive economically without the support of a husband. By 1997, 40% of births to unmarried
American women were intentional and, despite a still prominent gender gap in pay, women were
able to survive as single mothers.

Cohabitation
Cohabitation is an intimate relationship that includes a common living place and which exists
without the benefit of legal, cultural, or religious sanction. It can be seen as an alternative form
of marriage, in that, in practice, it is similar to marriage, but it does not receive the same formal
recognition by religions, governments, or cultures. The cohabiting population, although inclusive
of all ages, is mainly made up of those between the ages of 25 and 34. In 2005, the U.S. Census
Bureau reported 4.85 million cohabiting couples, up more than 1,000% from 1960, when there
were 439,000 such couples. More than half of couples in the United States lived together, at least
briefly, before walking down the aisle.

Same- Sex Unions

While homosexuality has existed for thousands of years among human beings, formal marriages
between homosexual partners is a relatively recent phenomenon. As of 2009, only two states in
the United States recognized marriages between same-sex partners, Massachusetts and Iowa,
where same-sex marriage was formally allowed as of May 17, 2004 and April 2009,
respectively. Three additional states allow same-sex civil unions, New Jersey, Connecticut, and
Vermont. Between May 2004 and December 2006, 7,341 same-sex couples married in
Massachusetts. Assuming the percentage of homosexuals in Massachusetts is similar to that of
the rest of the nation, the above number indicates that 16.7% of homosexuals in Massachusetts
married during that time. Massachusetts is also the state with the lowest divorce rate.

Same sex couples, while becoming increasingly more common, still only account for about 1
percent of American households, according to 2010 Census data. About 0.5 percent of American
households were same-sex couples in 2000, so this number has doubled, and it is expected to
continuing increasing by the next Census data.

Childfree Couples
Voluntary childlessness in women is defined as women of childbearing age who are fertile and
do not intend to have children, women who have chosen sterilization, or women past
childbearing age who were fertile but chose not to have children. Individuals can also be
“temporarily childless” or do not currently have children but want children in the future. The
availability of reliable contraception along with support provided in old age by systems other
than traditional familial ones has made childlessness an option for some people in developed
countries. In most societies and for most of human history, choosing to be childfree was both
difficult and undesirable. To accomplish the goal of remaining childfree, some individuals
undergo medical sterilization or relinquish their children for adoption.

Marriage Rates in the United States

Marriage laws have changed over the course of United States history, including the removal of
bans on interracial marriage. In the twenty-first century, laws have been passed enabling same-
sex marriages in several states. According to the United States Census Bureau, 2,077,000
marriages occurred in the United States in 2009. The median age for the first marriage of an
American has increased in recent years; the median age in the early 1970s was 21 for women and
23 for men, and rose to 26 for women and 28 for men by 2009. As of 2006, 55.7% of Americans
age 18 and over were married. According to the 2008-2010 American Community Survey 3-
Year Estimates, males over the age of 15 have married at a rate of 51.5%. Females over the

age of 15 have married at a rate of 47.7%. The separation rate is 1.8% for males and 0.1% for
females.

Marriage Trends
African Americans have married the least of all of the major ethnic groups in the U.S., with a
29.9% marriage rate, but have the highest separation rate which is 4.5%. This results in a high
percentage of single mother households among African Americans compared with other ethnic
groups (White, African American, Native Americans, Asian, Hispanic). This can lead a child to
become closer to his/her mother, the only caregiver. Yet one parent households are also more
susceptible to economic difficulties. Native Americans have the second lowest marriage rate at
37.9%. Hispanics have a 45.1% marriage rate, with a 3.5% separation rate.
In the United States, the two ethnic groups with the highest marriage rates included Asians with
58.5%, and Whites with 52.9%. Asians have the lowest rate of divorce among the main groups
with 1.8%. Whites, African Americans, and Native Americans have the highest rates of being
widowed, ranging from 5%-6.5%. They also have the highest rates of divorce among the three,
ranging from 11%-13%, with Native Americans having the highest divorce rate.

Elderly Care in the United States

The form of elderly care provided varies greatly among countries and is changing rapidly.
According to the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, the older population—persons
65 years or older—numbered 39.6 million in 2009. They represented 12.9% of the U.S.
population, or about one in every eight Americans. By 2030, there will be about 72.1 million
older persons, more than twice their number in 2000. In the United States, most of the large
multi-facility providers are publicly owned and managed as for-profit businesses. Given the
choice, most elders would prefer to continue to live in their own homes. Unfortunately, the
majority of elderly people gradually lose functioning ability and require either additional
assistance in the home or a move to an eldercare facility. The adult children of these elders often
face a difficult challenge in helping their parents make the right choices.

One relatively new service in the United States that can help keep the elderly in their homes
longer is respite care. This type of care allows caregivers the opportunity to go on vacation or a
business trip and know that their elder has good quality temporary care. Without this help, the
elder might have to move permanently to an outside facility. Another unique type of care
cropping in U.S. hospitals is called acute care of elder units, or ACE units, which provide “a
homelike setting” within a medical center specifically for the elderly.

Childless Couples

Voluntary childlessness in women is defined as women of childbearing age who are fertile and
do not intend to have children, women who have chosen sterilization, or women past
childbearing age who were fertile but chose not to have children. Individuals can also be
“temporarily childless” but want children in the future. The availability of reliable contraception
along with support provided in old age by systems other than traditional familial ones has made
childlessness an option for some people in developed countries. In most societies and for most of
human history, choosing to be childfree was both difficult and undesirable. To accomplish the
goal of remaining childfree, some individuals undergo medical sterilization or relinquish their
children for adoption.

Factors Involved in Voluntary Childlessness

First, while younger women are more likely to be childless, older women are more likely to state
that they intend to remain childless in the future. Thus age plays a significant role in the decision.
Further, according to 2004 U.S. Census Bureau data, the proportion of childless women 15 to 44
years old was 44.6%, up from 35% in 1976. The higher a woman’s income, the less likely she is
to have children: Nearly half of women with annual incomes over $100,000 are childless. Third,
being unmarried is one of the strongest predictors of childlessness.

Research also suggests that married individuals who were concerned about the stability of their
marriages were more likely to remain childless. Most studies on this subject find that higher
income predicted childlessness. However, some women report that the lack of financial resources
was a reason why they decided to remain childless. Childless women in the developed world
often express the view that women ultimately have to make a choice between motherhood and
having a career. Lastly, the chance of being childless was far greater for never married women
(35 to 44 yrs old), 82.5% vs. ever-married (12.9%). Chance of childlessness (age 35 to 44) by
education level: graduate or professional degree (27.6%) vs non high school graduate (13.5%),
high school graduate (14.3%), some college but no degree (24.7%), associate degree (11.4%),
and bachelor’s degree (18.2%). The higher the level of education, the more likely a woman is to
remain childless.

Social Attitudes to Remaining Childless

Most societies place a high value on parenthood in adult life, so that people who remain childless
intentionally are sometimes stereotyped as being “individualistic” people who avoid social
responsibility and are less prepared to commit themselves to helping others. With the advent of
environmentalism and concerns for stewardship, those choosing to not have children are also
sometimes recognized as helping reduce our impact, such as members of the voluntary human
extinction movement. Some childless individuals are sometimes applauded on moral grounds,
such as members of philosophical

or religious groups, like the shakers.

Voluntary Human Extinction Movement: With the advent of environmentalism and concerns for
stewardship, those choosing to not have children are also sometimes recognized as helping
reduce our impact, such as members of the voluntary human extinction movement.

Some opponents of the childfree choice consider such a choice to be “selfish.” The rationale of
this position is the assertion that raising children is a very important activity. Proponents of child
freedom posit that choosing not to have children is no more or less selfish than choosing to have
children. In fact, choosing to have children may be the more selfish choice, especially when poor
parenting risks creating many long-term problems for both the children themselves and society at
large.

Change in Household Size

Household models include the single family and blended family home, shared housing, and
group homes for people with special needs.
Household models in Anglophone culture include the single family and varieties of blended
families, shared housing, and group homes for people with support needs. Other models of living
situations that may meet definitions of a household include boarding houses, a house in multiple
occupations in Great Britain, and a single room occupancy in the United States.
Shared Houses
A shared house is a household in which a group of often-unrelated people reside together. The
term generally applies to people living together in rental properties rather than in properties in
which any resident is an owner-occupier. A shared house is formed when a group of people
move into a rental property; typically, one or more of these people has applied to rent the
property through a real estate agent, been accepted, and signed a lease. People who live together
in a shared house are called 聽 roommates. In both developed and developing countries, shared
housing is an increasingly popular household model. This is due to a variety of economic and
social changes, such as the declining affordability of home ownership, as well as delayed
marriage and decreasing marriage rates.

Group Homes
A group home is a private residence designed to serve children or adults with chronic disabilities.
Group homes typically have a maximum of six residents and a trained, on-site caregiver
available 24 hours a day. Residents of group homes usually have either a chronic mental disorder
or a physical disability that prevents them from living independently. They need regular
assistance in

order to complete daily tasks, such as taking medication or bathing. Other residents may be
developmentally disabled, recovering from alcohol or drug addiction, or abused, troubled, or
neglected youths. Some residents have behavioral problems that are potentially dangerous to
themselves or others and require constant supervision. Since the 1970s, group homes have
assumed the role of earlier institutions such as asylums, poorhouses, and orphanages.

Boarding Houses
In a boarding house, lodgers rent one or more rooms for a period ranging from one night to
weeks, months, or even years. Common areas of the house are maintained and services like
laundry and cleaning may be provided. Boarding houses usually offer 聽 bed and board, or at
least some meals as well as accommodation. Formerly, boarders would typically share washing,
breakfast, and dining facilities; in recent years, individual rooms have tended to have their own
washing and toilet facilities.

Single Room Occupancy

A single room occupancy is a single room dwelling or multiple-tenant building that houses one
or two people in individual rooms. As the value of urban land has increased, many of these
properties have been renovated and made available at higher prices. This has played a role in the
displacement of lower-income people who once lived in these properties; it has also been cited as
a reason for the visible rise in homelessness across America since the early 1980s.

A Generation Gap?
Age is one big reason for the natural gap between generations. However, the major issue arrives
due to the mental gap in terms of thinking pattern & current trends. Children believe that they are
grown-ups and it is high time for them to be independent. This helps them to gain more self-
esteem.
On the whole, both parents and their children do not see things from the standpoints of each
other. Thus, misunderstanding is a great cause for the formation of the generation gap. They talk
about some issues that can cause tension between teenagers and parents: homework, sibling
fights, boundaries and trust. Some teenagers feel their parents need to show more trust and give
them more independence, but they also know that parents are mostly just concerned for their
safety.

Technical ability is also important. How technology affects the generation gap is impacted by
how well older people can learn and use new technology. This tends to be written by Millennials
for the younger generation, so many older people can become left behind when things move too
fast.

The ages between parents and their children are often large enough that they experienced their
most impressionable years during a different culture than each other. Adolescence is often the
time when people are most influenced by the society around them and as our world keeps
developing and changing, things rarely stay the same, causing generation gaps between parents
and their children.

Here are a few causes of the generation gap between parents and child:

Lack Of Understanding
Different generations sometimes seem to speak a different language. Due to the changes in
society from when parents were growing up, to how it is in the time of their children, even their
way of thinking and what they deem to be normal tends to be different.

Mistakes Are Rarely Tolerated

Parents often do not tolerate mistakes and tend to tell their children off. Children need to make
mistakes to learn and grow in life, but if they only get punished for it, it widens the gap and
creates a lack of proper communication.

Children Are Expected To Be Replicas Parents often have dreams for their kids, and a lot of the
time tends to force them in that direction without taking into consideration what their child
wants.

Too Many Comparisons

Comparing children to each other or even to how you were as a child is another reason the gap
becomes wide. This often causes them to lose confidence in themselves and can destroy any
enthusiasm they may have previously had.

5. Not Enough Interaction

Due to the responsibilities of being an adult and the stress that comes from work life, parents
often find themselves too tired to spend enough time with their kids every day. This causes a lack
of communication and interaction that widens the generation gap. How to Bridge The Generation
Gap Between Parents And Their Children.

Here are a few tips to help bridge the generation gap between parents and their children:
1. Keep An Open Mind
The way that kids think is different from how parents do. Parents often feel like because they
have already been the age their child is currently, that they understand how their child thinks.
The truth is, the world and way of life were different then than it is now and their mind-set will
be very different and can also be shocking for some parents. This is why keeping an open mind
and not assuming that they must be just like you were at their age is very important. You must
also understand that there are some things that are acceptable in society and therefore acceptable
to your child that may not have been acceptable when you were the same age. It is especially in
those areas where parents need to try and keep an open mind so they can better understand their
children.

2. Communicate
Making the time to communicate with your kids every day is very important. The simple act of
talking about each other’s day at the end of the day can help you get to know each other and
make it easier to speak freely around the other. Children need to know they can approach their
parents with anything, something that can ultimately give parents peace of mind since they do
not need to worry about their children hiding things that are important.

3. Listen
Parents need to allow their kids time to talk without interruption and listen to what they have to
say. Learning your child’s thoughts and opinions makes

them feel like what they want or feel matters to you, which in turn makes them feel much closer
to you than before. Having a parent who listens as well instead of only talks and lectures will
give your child more encouragement to listen to you in return.

4. Understand
With listening comes understanding and this means that you have to learn to put yourself in your
child’s shoes and trying to understand how they feel and what they want from what they tell you.
If you are able to understand where your child is coming from, you will be able to close that
generation gap to some extent.

5. Unconditional Love
Love has a way of crossing boundaries and bringing people together if acted upon. So show your
children how much you love them. This unconditional love and support that they get from you is
very encouraging and makes children more inclined to show that same love and understanding
back.

6. Compromise
People can disagree on things, no matter how close to each other they are. Parents and children
are no different; however, rather than forcing them into your way of thinking or forcing them to
do what you want them to do when they don’t want to, learn to compromise when possible.
There are times when you need to put your foot down with your children, but coming to a
compromise instead of dictating their every move will make them closer to you and make that
generation gap a little smaller.
This article on the generation gap between parents and child is just what you need if you have
been struggling to have a better relationship with your child. Remember that it is important to
understand that they have their own thoughts and opinions and being patient and loving will help
to close the generation gap that causes distance between parents and child.

8 Ways to Discipline Your Child Without

Spanking
Time-Out
Hitting kids for misbehavior (especially aggression) sends a mixed message. Your child will
wonder why it's OK for you to hit them, but not OK for them to hit their sibling. Placing a child
in time-out can be a much better alternative.1 When done correctly, time-out teaches kids how to
calm themselves down, which is a useful life skill.
But in order for a time-out to be effective, kids need to have plenty of positive time-in with their
parents. Then, when they're removed from a situation, they will begin to learn to self-regulate,
appropriately express their emotions, and make different choices in the future.

Losing Privileges
The goal is not to punish your child into submission, but to help them learn to make better
choices for the future. This takes practice, however. If they make a poor choice, teach them the
consequence is a loss of a privilege. The loss should be related to the behavior.
Make it clear when the privileges can be earned back. Usually, 24 hours is long enough to teach
your child to learn from their mistake. So you might say, "You've lost TV for the rest of the day,
but you can earn it back tomorrow by picking up your toys the first time I ask."

Ignoring Mild Misbehavior

Selective ignoring can actually be more effective than spanking.1 This doesn’t mean you should
look the other way if your child is doing something dangerous or inappropriate. But you can
ignore attention-seeking behavior. When your child tries to get attention by whining or
complaining, don’t give it to them. Look the other way, pretend you can't hear them and don't
respond. Then, when they ask nicely or behave, return your attention to them. Over time, they
will learn that polite behavior is the best way to get their needs met.

Teaching New Skills

One of the main problems with spanking is that it doesn’t teach your child how to behave better.
Spanking your child because they threw a temper tantrum won't teach them how to calm down
the next time they are upset. Kids benefit from learning how to problem-solve, manage their
emotions and compromise. When parents teach these skills, it can greatly reduce behavior
problems. Use discipline that is aimed at teaching, not punishing.

Logical Consequences
Logical consequences are a great way to help kids who are struggling with specific behavior
problems. Logical consequences are specifically tied to the misbehavior.
For example, if your child doesn’t eat their dinner, don’t let them have a bedtime snack. Or if
they refuse to pick up their trucks, don’t allow them to play with them for the rest of the day.
Linking the consequence directly to the behavior problem helps kids see that their choices have
direct consequences.

Natural Consequences
Natural consequences allow children to learn from their own mistakes. For example, if your child
says they are not going to wear a jacket, let them go outside and get cold—as long as it's safe to
do so. Use natural consequences when you think your child will learn from their own mistake.
Monitor the situation to ensure that your child won't experience any real danger.

Rewards for Good Behavior

Instead of spanking a child for misbehavior, reward him for good behavior. For example, if your
child fights with their siblings often, set up a reward system to motivate them to get along better.
Providing an incentive to behave can turn around misbehavior fast. Rewards help kids to focus
on what they need to do to earn privileges, rather than emphasize the bad behavior they're
supposed to avoid.

Praise for Good Behavior

Prevent behavior problems by catching your child being good.1 For example, when they are
playing nicely with their siblings, point it out. Say, “You are doing such a good job sharing and
taking turns today.”
When there are several children in the room, give the most attention and praise to the children
who are following the rules and behaving well. Then, when the other child begins to behave,
give them praise and attention as well.

Role Models and Children

A role model is a person who serves as an example by influencing others. For many children, the
most important role models are their parents and caregivers. Children look up to a variety of role
models to help shape how they behave in school, relationships, or when making difficult
decisions. Children also look up to other relatives, teachers, coaches, and peers. Children may try
to copy the behavior and appearance of celebrities, such as athletes and entertainers, and
characters from books, TV, movies, or video games. Some parents may want to help their
children choose positive role models. Here are some helpful suggestions for discussing role
models with your child and for serving as a positive role model yourself:

Have your child identify what qualities he admires in his role model

Give examples of people in your community who you feel have positive qualities and are a good
influence on others

Talk about people you look up to for guidance and inspiration

Negative role models, however, may also influence children. Sometimes widely admired public
figures can make poor personal choices. Young children may assume that the behaviors of
negative role models are typical, safe, and acceptable. Parents and caregivers can intervene by
emphasizing that role models who embrace inappropriate behavior, violence, racism, sexism, and
drug and alcohol abuse are not acceptable.

Some suggestions to help you talk to your child about role models who have made mistakes are:

Remind your child that all people have both good and bad qualities and that anyone can make a
mistake. Explain that it is important to apologize and to learn from our mistakes

Ask your child what he thinks of the role model's behavior

Ask what he would have done differently in the situation

Give examples of more positive and healthy ways to handle the situation

If you have concerns that your child is being negatively influenced by his role model, work with
your child to identify more appropriate role models.

Encourage your child to become involved in activities that reflect your values,

such as religious programs, athletics, after school programs, clubs, or volunteering

Remind your child that he or she does not have to do everything that the role model does. Your
child can copy what he or she likes but still be him or herself.

Nine Steps to More Effective Parenting

1. Boosting Your Child's Self-Esteem
Kids start developing their sense of self as babies when they see themselves through their
parents' eyes. Your tone of voice, your body language, and your every expression are absorbed
by your kids. Your words and actions as a parent affect their developing self-esteem more than
anything else.
Praising accomplishments, however small, will make them feel proud; letting kids do things
independently will make them feel capable and strong. By contrast, belittling comments or
comparing a child unfavorably with another will make kids feel worthless.
Avoid making loaded statements or using words as weapons. Comments like "What a stupid
thing to do!" or "You act more like a baby than your little brother!" cause damage just as
physical blows do.
Choose your words carefully and be compassionate. Let your kids know that everyone makes
mistakes and that you still love them, even when you don't love their behavior.

2. Catch Kids Being Good

Have you ever stopped to think about how many times you react negatively to your kids in a
given day? You may find yourself criticizing far more often than complimenting. How would
you feel about a boss who treated you with that much negative guidance, even if it was well
intentioned?
The more effective approach is to catch kids doing something right: "You made your bed without
being asked — that's terrific!" or "I was watching you play with your sister and you were very
patient." These statements will do more to encourage good behavior over the long run than
repeated scoldings. Make a point of finding something to praise every day. Be generous with
rewards — your love, hugs, and compliments can work wonders and are often reward enough.
Soon you will find you are "growing" more of the behavior you would like to see.

3. Set Limits and Be Consistent With Your Discipline

Discipline is necessary in every household. The goal of discipline is to help kids choose
acceptable behaviors and learn self-control. They may test the limits you establish for them, but
they need those limits to grow into responsible adults.
Establishing house rules helps kids understand your expectations and develop self-control. Some
rules might include: no TV until homework is done, and no hitting, name-calling, or hurtful
teasing allowed.
You might want to have a system in place: one warning, followed by consequences such as a
"time out" or loss of privileges. A common mistake parents make is failure to follow through
with the consequences. You can't

discipline kids for talking back one day and ignore it the next. Being consistent teaches what you
expect.

4. Make Time for Your Kids

It's often difficult for parents and kids to get together for a family meal, let alone spend quality
time together. But there is probably nothing kids would like more. Get up 10 minutes earlier in
the morning so you can eat breakfast with your child or leave the dishes in the sink and take a
walk after dinner. Kids who aren't getting the attention they want from their parents often act out
or misbehave because they're sure to be noticed that way.
Many parents find it rewarding to schedule together time with their kids. Create a "special night"
each week to be together and let your kids help decide how to spend the time. Look for other
ways to connect — put a note or something special in your kid's lunchbox.
Adolescents seem to need less undivided attention from their parents than younger kids. Because
there are fewer windows of opportunity for parents and teens to get together, parents should do
their best to be available when their teen does express a desire to talk or participate in family
activities. Attending concerts, games, and other events with your teen communicates caring and
lets you get to know more about your child and his or her friends in important ways.
Don't feel guilty if you're a working parent. It is the many little things you do — making
popcorn, playing cards, window shopping — that kids will remember.

5. Be a Good Role Model

Young kids learn a lot about how to act by watching their parents. The younger they are, the
more cues they take from you. Before you lash out or blow your top in front of your child, think
about this: Is that how you want your child to behave when angry? Be aware that you're
constantly being watched by your kids. Studies have shown that children who hit usually have a
role model for aggression at home.
Model the traits you wish to see in your kids: respect, friendliness, honesty, kindness, tolerance.
Exhibit unselfish behavior. Do things for other people without expecting a reward. Express
thanks and offer compliments. Above all, treat your kids the way you expect other people to treat
you.

6. Make Communication a Priority

You can't expect kids to do everything simply because you, as a parent, "say so." They want and
deserve explanations as much as adults do. If we don't take time to explain, kids will begin to
wonder about our values and motives and whether they have any basis. Parents who reason with
their kids allow them to understand and learn in a nonjudgmental way.
Make your expectations clear. If there is a problem, describe it, express your feelings, and invite
your child to work on a solution with you. Be sure to

include consequences. Make suggestions and offer choices. Be open to your child's suggestions
as well. Negotiate. Kids who participate in decisions are more motivated to carry them out.

7. Be Flexible and Willing to Adjust Your Parenting Style

If you often feel "let down" by your child's behavior, perhaps you have unrealistic expectations.
Parents who think in "shoulds" (for example, "My kid should be potty-trained by now") might
find it helpful to read up on the matter or to talk to other parents or child development specialists.
Kids' environments have an effect on their behavior, so you might be able to change that
behavior by changing the environment. If you find yourself constantly saying "no" to your 2-
year-old, look for ways to alter your surroundings so that fewer things are off-limits. This will
cause less frustration for both of you.
As your child changes, you'll gradually have to change your parenting style. Chances are, what
works with your child now won't work as well in a year or two.
Teens tend to look less to their parents and more to their peers for role models. But continue to
provide guidance, encouragement, and appropriate discipline while allowing your teen to earn
more independence. And seize every available moment to make a connection!

8. Show That Your Love Is Unconditional

As a parent, you're responsible for correcting and guiding your kids. But how you express your
corrective guidance makes all the difference in how a child receives it.
When you have to confront your child, avoid blaming, criticizing, or fault-finding, which
undermine self-esteem and can lead to resentment. Instead, strive to nurture and encourage, even
when disciplining your kids. Make sure they know that although you want and expect better next
time, your love is there no matter what.

9. Know Your Own Needs and Limitations as a Parent

Face it — you are an imperfect parent. You have strengths and weaknesses as a family leader.
Recognize your abilities — "I am loving and dedicated." Vow to work on your weaknesses — "I
need to be more consistent with discipline." Try to have realistic expectations for yourself, your
spouse, and your kids. You don't have to have all the answers — be forgiving of yourself. And
try to make parenting a manageable job. Focus on the areas that need the most attention rather
than trying to address everything all at once. Admit it when you're burned out. Take time out
from parenting to do things that will make you happy as a person (or as a couple).
Focusing on your needs does not make you selfish. It simply means you care about your own
well-being, which is another important value to model for your

children.

ONS - National Diet and Nutrition Survey

Types and quantities of food consumed
The information collected on the types and quantities of food that were consumed by the
respondents was taken from the seven-day weighed intake dietary records. This section provides
consumption figures, based on the mean amounts consumed during the seven-day recording
period, differentiating between sex and age, for 26 food categories.
Some of the differences between men and women included that men were more likely to have
consumed meat and meat products; men consumed 2.7 portions and women consumed 2.9
portions of fruit and vegetables per day and 21% of men and 15% of women consumed no fruit
over the seven-day period. Differences that occurred between age groups included that the
youngest group of adults were more likely to consume savoury snacks and soft drinks and the
oldest age group were more likely to have consumed fish and fish dishes.

The survey also took account of household benefits, and it was found that adults in benefit
households were less likely to consume a number of foods including fruit and alcoholic drinks.
They also consumed fewer portions of fruit and vegetables. Men in benefit households consumed
2.1 portions and women 1.9 portions, compared to those in non-benefit households that ate 2.8
and 3.1 portions respectively.

In 2007 the FSA carried out a survey called The Low Income Diet and Nutrition Survey
(LIDNS) to investigate eating habits, nourishment and nutrition-related health of people on low
income. For more up to date information on nutritional status and dietary habits in low income
and benefit households, this report can be consulted. (See the link above).

Energy and nutrient intakes

Nutrient and energy intakes were also calculated from the data collected from the seven-day
weighed intake records. They are differentiated by age group, sex and for energy and selected
nutrients the percentage of the total intake derived from different food types is shown.

The mean total daily energy intakes for all age groups and for each sex were below
recommendations, with an average of 2313kcal for men and 1632kcal for women. However, the
mean percentage of food energy derived from

saturated fatty acids was above the recommendations for each sex and age group, 13.4% on
average for all men and 13.2% on average for all women (it is recommended that individuals’
saturated fatty acid intake should not exceed 11%). The mean percentage of food energy derived
from non-milk extrinsic sugars also exceeded recommendations in each sex and age group
except for the oldest group of women. 60% of men and 44% of women exceeded the
recommendations for alcohol consumption (which was based on 3-4 units for men and 2-3 units
for women) on at least one day of the recorded period. There was evidence of low intakes of
vitamin A, riboflavin, magnesium and potassium in men and women, particularly in the youngest
age groups. Over 40% of the two youngest groups of women had low intakes of iron. Mean
intakes of salt exceeded the 6g per day recommendation in all sex and age groups, (men 11.0g
and women 8.1g).

Adults living in benefit households had lower average intakes of energy and some nutrients,
particularly vitamins and minerals in comparison to adults in non-benefit households. A higher
proportion of women in benefit households had lower intakes of vitamin A, riboflavin, folate and
all minerals in comparison to non-benefit households. (See the LIDNS survey for more recent
information).

Nutritional status, blood pressure and physical activity

Nutritional status is described in this report, by physical measurements (anthropometric) and
from results of the blood sample analyses. Blood pressure measurements were also taken and
respondent took a seven-day record of physical activity.
25% of men and 20% of women were obese, and a further 42% and 32% respectively were
overweight according to BMI measurements. 1% of men and 3% of women were classified as
underweight.

22% of men and 13% of women were recorded to have high blood pressure, the proportions of
which increased with age.

Only 36% of men and 26% of women met the DH recommendations for physical activity, which
is ‘five-a-week,’ which equates to 30 minutes or more of activities of at least moderate intensity
on five or more days.

Among the results of the blood sample analyses, the results included: 48% of men and women,
overall, had blood levels of total cholesterol above the optimal level; 14% of men and 15% of
women had low vitamin D status, rising to 24% of men and 28% of women in the youngest age
group and 8% of women and 3% of men were anaemic.
Comparison with the 1986/87 Adults Survey

The information collected from the NDNS for adults aged 19-64 was compared to the data from
the Dietary and Nutritional Survey of British Adults carried out in 1986/87. This was the most
recent survey, of a similar nature, that had been carried out prior to the NDNS.

Respondents in the present survey were more likely to have consumed breakfast cereals, savoury
snacks, soft drinks (low calorie) and alcoholic drinks, in comparison to the 1986/87 Survey
whose respondents were more likely to have consumed biscuits, buns, cakes, meat and meat
products and fish and fish products.

Men in the present survey had lower average energy intakes than men in the 1986/87 Survey,
however, both men and women derived more of their energy from protein and carbohydrate and
less from fat and fatty acids than those in the 1986/87 Survey. Men and women in the NDNS had
higher intakes of folate, vitamin C, calcium, potassium than those in the 1986/97 Survey, who
recorded higher intakes of vitamin A, copper and zinc.

A higher proportion of both men and women were classified as overweight or obese in the
present survey; 66% and 53% respectively, in comparison to 45% of men and 36% of women in
the 1986/87 Survey.

Your Diet, Your Health

We've all heard the old saying “you are what you eat.” And it's still true. If you stick to a healthy
diet full of vitamins and minerals, your body reflects it. You feel healthy, energized, and just all-
around great. However, people who limit their diet to junk foods will undoubtedly suffer the
consequences of not giving their bodies what they need to thrive. The result is not only fatigue
and low energy, but poor health as well. Understanding this clear connection between your
health and your diet may spur you to make better dietary choices.

Your Diet and Your Health: What Your Body Needs

"Food is essential. People take it for granted, but we need nutrients," says Anne Wolf, RD, a
researcher at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Wolf cites as one example the old
days when sailors crossed the ocean for months without proper nutrition. As a result, they ended
up with scurvy because of a lack of vitamin C from citrus fruits. Vitamin C and other vitamins
and minerals are necessary to keep all the different parts of the body healthy and functioning —
otherwise, we get sick.

Every little thing that you do happens because of the nutrients that you give your body. Says
Wolf, "Food gives us the fuel to think and the energy to move our muscles. The micronutrients,
the vitamins, the minerals are there so that our bodies can function. You need food not just to
sustain health, but to feel better."
And the only way the body will get the many nutrients needed to stay healthy and function is by
eating a wide variety of healthy foods.

Your Diet and Your Health: The Guidelines

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's food pyramid and the daily food recommendations were
established after extensive research and continue to be updated as more is learned about the role
of nutrition in good health. Their goal is to make sure that people understand all the different
nutrients their bodies need to stay healthy.
Food went from being a necessity to simply function to being the key to enabling the body to be
at its functional best, says Wolf. Research shows that the right nutrition optimizes health and that
getting enough of certain vitamins and minerals can also lower disease risk.

Your Diet and Your Health: Poor Diet, Poor Health

Many foods have a huge impact on heart health. Research has long shown that fruits and
vegetables and a diet rich in whole grains and low in saturated fats can help protect the body
from heart disease and high blood pressure, while a diet high in saturated and trans fats without
enough fruits and vegetables can actually cause those diseases.

Even small diet deficiencies can have an enormously negative impact on your

health. The most common health problem due to a lack of nutrients in the United States is iron
deficiency, says Wolf. Menstruating women and girls need plenty of iron in their diets to replace
what they lose each month during their periods. Iron is also an essential nutrient for infants,
children, and growing teens.

THE IMPORTANCE OF NUTRITION

EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS
The diet of young children has received increasing media scrutiny over the last few years, and
with recent studies highlighting the correlation between nutrition and academic performance, its
more important than ever to ensure our children are eating well at school

With a growing childhood obesity rate, the diet of young children has received increasing media
scrutiny over the last few years. We all know that proper nutrition is vital to child health, yet at a
societal level, the UK continually struggles to escape the paradox that a huge number of British
schoolchildren are ‘overfed and undernourished’.

The consequences of poor eating patterns and sedentary lifestyles have been well researched and
publicised, but potential impacts extend beyond an increased risk of chronic health problems in
adult life.

Newer clinical studies have strengthened the scientific evidence-base which shows the
correlation between nutritional factors and academic performance. These indicate that the
nutrient density of school meals has an impact on pupils’ cognitive function, concentration and
energy, as well as their metabolic health and waistlines.

Eating behaviour and habits are formed from a young age, and (alongside parents and carers),
school settings across the Early Years and Preparatory stages offer an environment that can help
positively shape how children think about food and eating. Behavioural science has evidenced
that children’s ‘choice architecture’ can be swayed by what is most visible and accessible; small
tweaks in the school environment and lunchtime offering can have significant effects on their
dietary selections and their behaviour.

Sinclair House School works closely with school caterers Naked Nosh to develop an innovative
menu that is broad and balanced, but also incorporates child-friendly classics. The children
always have a range of fruit and vegetables at mealtimes, wholegrains replace refined white
carbohydrates and the meat is carefully sourced directly from a supplier.

The weekly menu concentrates on child-friendly meals that encourage pupils to try more plant-
based protein (such as beans and pulses) as well as omega-3 rich fish. In the Sinclair House
School dining room, food education

goes beyond what we eat, to incorporate how we eat as well. Eating is a social occasion, but
children are also encouraged to develop good manners, and to eat slowly and mindfully.

Although nutrition education and health promotion are often incorporated into aspects of the
curriculum (eg Science and PSHE), many schools are now exploring new ways of encouraging
children to engage not just with what nutritional quality means, but also to grasp the intricacies
food system itself and the whole process of ‘farm to fork’.

Sinclair House School Grow-Make-Eat club is run by First Hand Experiences in the rooftop
garden (adjacent to the school kitchen space), which is equipped with wallside planters, a
polytunnel and a compost box to enable children to cultivate fruit, vegetables and herbs.

The interactive and holistic approach in this forum means that children are involved in the whole
journey from growing, to cooking and eating; this is critical to engaging younger pupils and
making the whole process of learning exploratory and fun. In September, Sinclair House School
also introduced Food Technology into the Upper Years’ curriculum and this helps to equip
children with practical cooking techniques, supported by additional theory in food science,
hygiene, packaging and safety, as well as nutrition.

Working alongside parents and families, schools have the ability to impact future public health
by fostering the knowledge and skills to help pupils relate to food and cooking in positive and
healthy ways. Educational environments provide a setting for important early experiences which
help to develop children’s enjoyment of food, their understanding of the social contexts within
which eating takes place, and their ability to make informed, healthy choices as they grow into
young adults.
What Can Hunter-Gatherers Teach Us about
Staying Healthy?
Duke Global Health Institute professor Herman Pontzer doesn’t have a problem with the paleo
diet—some people thrive on it, he acknowledges—but he’s quick to point out that it’s a
misnomer. Touted as a return to our nutritional roots, this popular diet promotes the consumption
of lean meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds and discourages people from eating
carbohydrates. But Pontzer, an evolutionary anthropologist who studies modern-day hunter-
gatherers, says traditional diets vary widely, and the vast majority of them include a high
percentage of carbohydrates.

Despite their carb loading, though, hunter-gatherers are among the healthiest people on Earth.
Pontzer, whose research focuses on energy expenditure, has spent much of his career trying to
figure out the mechanisms behind their good health, including food intake and physical activity.
He believes we have a lot to learn from hunter-gatherers about what constitutes a healthy
lifestyle.

Similar to our Paleolithic ancestors, today’s hunter-gatherers source their food entirely from the
earth and wild animals, and they’re physically active for most of each day. For instance, the
Hadza, a hunter-gatherer group in northeast Tanzania that Pontzer has studied for the past ten
years, spend their days walking eight to 12 kilometers, climbing trees and digging for root
vegetables. Their diet consists of various meats, vegetables and fruits, as well as a significant
amount of honey. In fact, they get 15 to 20 percent of their calories from honey, a simple
carbohydrate.

The Hadza tend to maintain the same healthy weight, body mass index and walking speed
throughout their entire adult lives. They commonly live into their 60s or 70s, and sometimes 80s,
with very little to no cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure or diabetes—conditions that
are rapidly growing in prevalence in nearly every corner of the world.

It’s a given that people who eat reasonable portions of healthy, wholesome foods and exercise
regularly, like the Hadza, generally enjoy better health than those who overeat, consume
processed foods and lead a sedentary lifestyle. But one of Pontzer’s central research questions
was whether hunter-gatherers burn more calories than their inactive counterparts in industrialized
societies.

What he and his colleagues found was so surprising that they initially thought

they’d made a mistake: despite their extraordinarily active lifestyle, the Hadza expend the same
amount of energy as their Western counterparts.

Upon further study, Pontzer and his team learned that the same was true for the Tsimane, a group
of forager-farmers in Bolivia, and the Shuar, a group of forager-horticulturalists in Ecuador, as
well as other animal species.
“Your body finds different ways to spend the calories when you’re less active,” says Pontzer, an
associate professor of evolutionary anthropology. “Exercise is really important because it
changes the way your body spends calories, not because it changes how many overall calories
you spend.” As we increase our physical activity, he says, our bodies work to keep total energy
expenditure at a set point. For example, the calories we burn while exercising can help decrease
the amount of energy our body expends on inflammation.

That means that while exercise provides a host of health benefits, such as lowering the risk of
cardiovascular diseases and relieving stress, weight loss isn’t one of them—contrary to popular
belief.

“Exercise is one of the least effective tools for weight loss,” says Pontzer. “We have to start
thinking about diet and exercise as two different tools for two different jobs. Focus on your diet
to control your weight. Focus on exercise to do everything else: heart health, cancer reduction,
healthy aging.”

Any diet can work as long as you’re able to maintain a healthy weight on it, Pontzer says. He and
his team examined the diets of 260 traditional populations, and they found that the distribution of
plant-based versus animal-based food consumption was all over the map.

“There’s no such thing as the ultimate healthy diet,” he says, but he points to a few common
elements across hunter-gatherer diets that could serve us all well, such as a high-fiber diet. The
Hadza, for example, typically take in approximately 100 grams of fiber per day, about five times
more than an American adult usually gets. Fiber contributes to strong microbiome health, helps
us avoid blood sugar spikes and makes us feel full on fewer calories. Hunter-gatherers also
consume nearly a third less calories per bite on average than people in industrialized societies.

A natural diet and high levels of physical activity clearly contribute to the enviable health of
hunter-gatherers and other populations living in subsistence economies, but Pontzer thinks
something else is also at play: a lifestyle that fosters positive mental health. “They don’t worry
about their careers or ending up poor, and they spend their days outdoors with friends and family
they’ve known their whole lives,” he says. “Those factors are

generally associated with feeling happy, and happiness plays a major role in overall health. I
think their mental health would be a great new angle to explore; I’d like to know how it all works
together.”

For his next project, though, Pontzer will head to northern Kenya to learn how the Daasanach, a
pastoralist group, stay healthy, and how their diet and exercise habits are changing as they
transition into more of a village setting. He’ll also continue his work with the Hadza in Tanzania
and other groups in South America. “I think we’ve really only hit the tip of this research,” he
says. “Hunter-gatherers and people in other subsistence economies around the world have so
many lessons to teach us about what to eat, how to move and how to avoid disease.”

Should We Tax Junk Foods To Curb Obesity?

A new study out today proposes a strategy for fighting obesity that may seem unrealistic in the
current era of business-friendly government policies: a national excise tax on junk food
manufacturers. But it’s not such a crazy idea, say researchers from New York University and
Tufts University. In fact, a handful of other countries have tried it, and early evidence suggests it
does have a positive impact on public health.

The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, is a review of every scientific
paper published on U.S. and international food taxes through May of last year. After analyzing
the data, the researchers concluded that an excise tax on junk food manufacturers would be
legally viable and relatively easy to administer.

And even though such a tax wouldn’t hit consumers directly, as a sales tax would, it could have
an indirect effect on eating choices—and by extension, obesity—says lead author Jennifer
Pomeranz, assistant professor of public health policy and management at NYU’s College of
Global Public Health. “The reason to use excise taxes is the expectation that [manufacturers] will
pass on the increased costs by raising prices,” Pomeranz says. “Consumers end up either
avoiding the product or replacing it with something different. Or the manufacturers have the
option to reformulate and come up with products that will not be taxed.”

While there is widespread disagreement about what the role of government should be in the fight
against widening waistlines, virtually everyone agrees obesity is a serious problem. More than
one out of every three adults are obese, according to the National Institutes of Health. About one
in six people under the age of 19 have obesity. Being overweight or obese raises the risk of
several disorders, including type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and joint disease.

Local governments have tried a variety of strategies in recent years to curb rising rates of
obesity. Berkeley, CA, imposes taxes on soda distributors, for example. Similar laws were
passed in 2016 in San Francisco, Oakland and Albany, CA, as well as in Boulder, CO.

Whether or not those taxes will actually make a dent in obesity is a matter of fierce debate,
however. A study out of Cornell University in 2016 found that

prices on sugary drinks in Berkeley didn’t increase as much as expected after that city’s tax went
into effect, and many stores in the city didn’t pass along the cost of the taxes to consumers. That
raised questions about whether local taxes will make any difference at all in the fight against
obesity.

Pomeranz and her co-authors believe a national excise tax would be more effective, partly
because it might incentivize food manufacturers to change the ingredients in their products. They
suggest that for the purposes of such a tax, junk food should be defined according to a
combination of product category (such as candy, salty snacks and so forth) and nutrients (namely
sugar). Such a tax would be even better if it were graduated, they say, meaning it would go up as
the nutritional value of the food goes down.

One country that has already seen a positive impact on public health from a junk food excise tax
is Hungary. Manufacturers of junk foods in that country pay a “value added tax” of 27% on top
of the 25% tax that’s imposed on most foods. Hungary’s law levies the junk food tax based
largely on sugar and salt content.

Four years after Hungary’s tax was introduced, more than 59% of consumers had lowered their
consumption of the offending junk food products, according to a study conducted by the
country’s National Institute of Pharmacy and Nutrition and the World Health Organization
(WHO). Overweight or obese adults were twice as likely to change their eating habits than were
people of normal weight, the researchers found. When consumers were polled, they reported that
they were opting for less expensive products—but that the taxes also made them more mindful of
the health risks of junk food.

“Hungary has been touted by the World Health Organization as one of the most effective taxes
they’ve seen because it has reduced consumption of [junk food] products,” Pomeranz says. “The
educational component also reduced consumption. It wasn’t just about the price increase.”

Implementing a national tax on junk food in the U.S. wouldn’t be all that difficult, the NYU and
Tufts researchers argue. There is already a model in place: an excise tax on alcohol
manufacturers that’s based largely on ingredient levels. For wine, the tax increases according to
the amount of alcohol in the drink.

Pomeranz is well aware that the idea of taxing junk food probably won’t gain much traction now,
especially considering that President Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress just passed
a major tax cut for businesses. Still, she hopes the research will spark ideas for new ways to
tackle the obesity

problem in the future.

“Politics shifts all the time. The hope is that at some point a more public-health-friendly
administration will come in and continue to support evidence-based policies,” Pomeranz says.
“As public health advocates and researchers, we believe the fight must continue.”

FOOD & TRANSPORTATION

Do you know how far your food has traveled to reach your dinner table? These days we're able to
head down to the supermarket and purchase a vast array of foods from all over the world, no
longer restricted by local environmental factors and/or the seasonality of a product: you can get
flowers from Africa, fruit from Europe, snacks from Asia and spices from South America. Today
retailers can source food from wherever it is cheapest around the globe at the touch of a
computer key.

These luxuries come at many unseen costs, thanks to the carbon emissions as a result of the
production and use chemicals, the raising of livestock, the highly mechanised means of
production, and the transportation, processing, packaging and retailing of food products.
But to meet this demand, our food is transported further than ever before, often by air. That
makes it a major contributor to greenhouse emissions and climate change. It also means a heavy
dependence on a resource that is not only finite but also highly politically-charged: oil. So our
food supply is more vulnerable than before.

In many cases, Western society routinely purchases food that was grown more than 1000 miles
away and transported to the local grocery store. While food prices in the store are relatively
inexpensive, the environmental cost of transporting your food is often very high. Trucks, trains,
and boats, all of which consume fossil fuels, are the primary methods for transporting large
quantities of food around the world. Additionally, the transportation of these goods causes an
increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Many people are becoming aware of the impact that food
mileage has on the environment and are choosing alternative food purchase options to reduce the
distance that their food must travel to reach their plates.

Food miles
The concept of food miles, the distance food travels before being consumed, dates back to a 1994
report called “The Food Miles Report: The dangers of long-distance food transport”.

The term 'food miles' refers to the total geographic distance food is transported between their
cultivation, processing and to the consumer at the point of sale. Put simply, it's way of measuring
how far your food had to travel to get to your plate.

In general, the contribution of food transportation relative to the total greenhouse gas emissions
of a given food product represents a small percentage of the carbon footprint for many foods.
Fresh foods transported by air freight can have significant distribution-related carbon impacts,
but on average, distribution of finished foods (from farm or factory to retail stores) contributes
less than 4%, on average, of the greenhouse gas emissions of foods consumed in the U.S.

Another challenge with relying on “food miles” as an indicator of greenhouse gas emissions or
other environmental impacts is that often, the mode of transport (air, road, rail, and water) is a
much more important determinant than the distance traveled. The graphic below shows the
relative impacts of food transportation options:

Of course, such values are dependent on how efficiently the vehicle is loaded and will be
different for products where packing into a vehicle or freight container is volume- rather than
weight-limited. Other environmental impacts that are relevant to transport such as acidification
potential (causing acid rain) or particulate emissions (affecting the respiratory system) associated
with the burning of fuel are typically proportional to energy use and greenhouse gases.

The True Cost of Food Miles

It is estimated that the meals in the United States travel about 2400 kilometers to get from farm
to plate. Why is this cause for concern? There are many reasons:
This long-distance, large-scale transportation of food consumes large quantities of fossil fuels. It
is estimated that we currently put almost 10 kcal of fossil fuel energy into our food system for
every 1 kcal of energy we get as food.

Transporting food over long distances also generates great quantities of carbon dioxide
emissions. Some forms of transport are more polluting than others. Airfreight generates 50 times
more CO2 than sea shipping. But sea shipping is slow, and in our increasing demand for fresh
food, food is increasingly being shipped by faster—and more polluting—means.

In order to transport food long distances, much of it is picked while still unripe and then gassed
to “ripen” it after transport, or it is highly processed in factories using preservatives, irradiation,
and other means to keep it stable for transport and sale. Scientists are experimenting with genetic
modification to produce longer-lasting, less perishable produce.

By emitting nitrous oxides and particulates, transportation causes air pollution. Air pollutions is
considered to be the most dangerous environmental threat caused by transportation. Highway
vehicles, marine engines, trains and planes are the main causes of pollution which affects air
quality causing damage to human health. All these toxic air pollutant are closely related with the
cause of cancer, cardiovascular (heart arteries, capillaries and veins), respiratory and
neurological diseases.

SOLUTIONS

Legislation
Under pressure from industry lobbying the national government has not introduced a carbon tax
on CO2 producers. That measure alone would begin to reduce food miles. Road user charging
would make the food processing industry think very carefully about their transport needs. The
national government has set a target of a reduction of food miles in Britain by 20 per cent by
2012. The recent Defra report estimates costs of food miles at £9 billion each year, half of which
is down to road congestion.

Local and Seasonally

By choosing locally grown produce, you can drastically cut the food miles that you consume.
Additionally, buying produce that is in season increases the chances that it is grown closer to
home. To reduce the food mile impact even further, consider starting your own garden in your
backyard. By growing your own produce, you can cut the food miles from more than 1000 miles
down to a couple yards. Also, you will have more control over the chemicals and pesticides that
are on your food and can eat healthier overall.

If growing your own fruits and vegetables is not an option, consider supporting the local farmers
in your area instead. You can often purchase fresh fruits and vegetables from farmers’ markets
and roadside stands. In addition to reducing your food mileage by purchasing locally grown
produce, you will often notice a significant increase in the quality of the fruits and vegetables
purchased locally.

Reducing your food mileage consumption, even by a little bit, can have a large impact on the
environment. If everyone chose to purchase locally grown food instead of imported food, there
would be a significant drop in greenhouse gasses emitted and overall oil consumption due to
food transportation. Even a small change can help the environment.

Think About Transport Methods

It is not just the distance that a foodstuff travels that impacts upon its food

miles; it is also the method of transportation. As a general rule, you should try to limit your
consumption of foods that have been transported by air the most, as these are typically moved in
this way as they perish quickly and have to get from producer to market as soon as possible.
Long truck journeys are also significant additions to food miles as they use a lot of resources to
move comparatively little product. Sea travel is arguably the most efficient and ‘green’ form of
food transportation, as a lot of goods can be transported in one go, making for smaller carbon
expenditure. However, this is a guideline only, as the transportation methods may be offset by
the energy costs of the product’s production.

Harmful Effects of Chemical Fertilizers

Chemical fertilizers have aided farmers in increasing crop production since the 1930's. While
chemical fertilizers have their place increasing plant nutrients in adverse weather conditions or
during times when plants need additional nutrients, there are also several harmful effects of
chemical fertilizers. Some of the harm chemical fertilizers may cause include waterway
pollution, chemical burn to crops, increased air pollution, acidification of the soil and mineral
depletion of the soil.

Waterway Pollution
The use of chemical fertilizers on crops can have adverse effects on waterways caused by
chemical run off of the excess fertilizer. The over-abundance of nutrients in the water reduces the
amount of oxygen. The existing organisms living in the water use up the oxygen that is left. The
result is oxygen depletion causing the fish to die.

Chemical Burn
Chemical fertilizers are high in nutrient content such as nitrogen. Over-application of chemical
fertilizer to plants may cause the leaves to turn yellow or brown, damaging the plant and
reducing crop yield. This condition is known as chemical leaf scorch. Leaf scorch can cause the
leaves of the plant to wither and may cause the plant to die.

Increased Air Pollution

Excess nitrogen used in crop fertilization can contribute to the release of greenhouse gases such
as carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. This effect is caused by using a greater
amount of chemical fertilizer than the plants can readily absorb. According to the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Lab,
excess greenhouse gases trapped in the atmosphere may be contributing to the increase of land
and ocean surface temperatures.

Soil Acidification
The over-use of chemical fertilizers can lead to soil acidification because of a decrease in organic
matter in the soil. Nitrogen applied to fields in large amounts over time damages topsoil,
resulting in reduced crop yields. Sandy soils are much more prone to soil acidification than are
clay soils. Clay soils have an ability to buffer the effects of excess chemical fertilization.

Mineral Depletion
There is an increasing concern that continuous use of chemical fertilizers on

soil depletes the soil of essential nutrients. As a result, the food produced in these soils have less
vitamin and mineral content. According to data produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture
Nutrient Data Laboratory, foods grown in soils that were chemically fertilized were found to
have less magnesium, potassium and calcium content.

Countries Most Dependent On Others For Food

Food security was, and still is, a major issue, for both wealthy and poverty-ridden countries all
over the world. This should come as no surprise with the ever present inflation of food demand
that stems in large from a continually rising global population. According to the United Nations
Food and Agricultural Organization, in 2011 food prices rose for eight straight months, which
made the already unpredictable situation in global food markets worse than ever. Such increases
may have been beneficial for some countries, especially those who were the top exporters. For
the rest of the world, however, such a phenomenon meant real trouble, such as economic crises,
major social unrest, and even the decline of certain governments' powers.

1 In 6 People In The Word Rely On Imports To Feed Them Today

Continued population and/or income increase have pushed the United States, China, Germany,
Japan and the United Kingdom up the list of the Countries Who Import the Most Food.
According to the Standard International Trade Classification, or SITC, food are the commodities
that fall under sections 0, 1 and 4 as well as division 22. Section 0 is comprised of food and live
animals, section 1 of beverages and tobacco and section 4 of vegetable and animal fats and oils.
Division 22, on the other hand, includes oil kernels, oil nuts and oil seeds.

The United States, being one of the world’s largest economies, imports a total of $133 billion
USD worth of food and food products, followed by China at $105.26 billion USD, Germany at
$98.90 billion USD, Japan at $68.86 billion USD, the United Kingdom at $66.54 billion USD,
the Netherlands at $64.38 billion USD, France at $62.29 billion USD, Italy at $51.34 billion
USD, Belgium at $40.87 billion USD, and the Russian Federation at $38.60 billion USD.
However, importing a high amount of food does not necessarily mean that a country is food
insecure. In fact, many of the world's largest food importing countries also happen to be among
the world's wealthiest. It is important to note that majority of the countries importing the most
food in the world have the potential to become completely food sufficient if they choose to do so.
In theses cases, where food insecurity is not of concern, food is imported to create more variety
for the consumer, not to prevent starvation within the population. Importing a large amount of
food does not mean that a country is

food insecure.

Which Countries In The World Are Food Insecure?

When food is imported out of a necessity for sustenance, countries become dependent on outside
sources as a way of feeding their populations. This is when food insecurity occurs. Currently,
there are at least 34 countries who are unable to produce their own food due to water and land
limitations, which represents a large portion of the global population who must rely on imported
food in order to avoid starvation.

Are Countries Becoming More Food Insecure?

By year 2050, more than half of the world’s population is expected to rely in food sourced from
other countries. A comprehensive study conducted by Marianela Fader of Potsdam Institute for
Climate Impact Research shows that population pressures will push many nations to make
maximizing their domestic food production capacity a top priority. This conclusion was made
after the research team computed the growing capability of each and every country to do so, and
differentiated their respective production capacities with their current and future food
requirements. The team’s model made use of soil categories, climate information, and patterns of
land utilization for each country, which were then translated into yields for numerous kinds of
crops. By using the information on hand regarding the respective populations and water and food
intakes of each nation, the team was able to closely evaluate what percentage of its food
requirement each country could produce on their own in the future.

Significant issues with food security will continue to trouble the world in coming years if the
aforementioned study plays out to be an accurate projection. One way to combat such concern is
for each country, rich or poor, to focus its resources on improving their agricultural productivity,
which can play an important role in alleviating food shortages. Another possible solution is diet
modifications geared towards the consumption of crops that are already produced locally,
although further studies will have to be conducted to determine the viability of this option.

Language and Globalization

“Globalization” is a social process “characterized by the existence of global economic, political,
cultural, linguistic and environmental interconnections and flows that make the many of the
currently existing borders and boundaries irrelevant”. Steger’s book Globalization: A Very Short
Introduction (publ. date: 2003) Oxford University Press. Globalization is not as recent a
phenomenon as economists have generally led us to believe, although it has undoubtedly
operated in faster and more complex ways since the late 1980s

Globalization is readily increasing in today’s world. This increase in globalization has many
effects on language, both positive and negative. These effects on language in turn affect the
culture of the language in many ways.

However, with globalization allowing languages and their cultures to spread and dominate on a
global scale, it also leads to the extinction of other languages and cultures.

Language contributes to the formation of culture, such as through vocabulary, greetings or

humor. Language is in a sense the substance of culture. Languages serve as important symbols of
group belonging, enabling different groups of people to know what ethnic groups they belong to,
and what common heritages they share. Without a language, people would lose their cultural
identity.

Languages are the essential medium in which the ability to communicate across culture develops.
Knowledge of one or several languages enables us to perceive new horizons, to think globally,
and to increase our understanding of ourselves and of our neighbors. Languages are, then, the
very lifeline of globalization: without language, there would be no globalization; and vice versa,
without globalization, there would be no world languages.

“Cross-cultural contact, therefore, is often viewed as a potential source of unmanageable, or at

least undesirable, culture change and of language shift, given that power differentials are to be
expected between ethnic groups in interaction” (Fishman, 1989).

Today there are about 6,500 different natural languages. Eleven of them account for the speech
of more than half the world’s population. Those eleven are Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Hindi,
French, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian, German, Japanese, Arabic, and English. According to
Garrick Bailey and James People in their book Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural

Anthropology, estimates for extinct languages range from 4,000 to 9,000 since the 15th century.
Other estimates for the future predict that only 10 percent of the present languages will continue
into the 22nd century.

The global language system is very much interconnected, linked by multilingual persons who
hold the various linguistic groups together. The hierarchical pattern of these connections closely
corresponds to other dimensions of the world system, such as the global economy and the
worldwide constellation of states.

English is distinguished from the other languages by having very significant numbers of non-
native speakers, I think it’s going to be the one most affected by globalization.
At the opposite end of the scale there are languages teetering on the brink of extinction. More
than half the world’s languages have fewer than 5,000 speakers, and there are many hundreds
that have as few as a dozen. Languages are disappearing all the time — it’s estimated that a
language becomes extinct roughly every two weeks.
We can say that almost everywhere language is used as an identity to be part of the “world
system” now, and the thing about any system that integrates people is that it benefits its
architects. Imported cultures are going to push out indigenous ones.

It’s clear that globalization is making English especially important not just in universities, but in
areas such as computing, diplomacy, medicine, shipping, and entertainment. No language is
currently being learned by more people — there may soon be 2 billion actively doing so — and
the desire to learn it reflects a desire to be plugged into a kind of “world brain.”

To many people, then, the spread of English seems a positive thing, symbolizing employment,
education, modernity, and technology. But to plenty of others it seems ominous. They hold it
responsible for grinding down or homogenizing their identities and interests. It tends to equalize
values and desires, without doing the same for opportunities.

So far, so unsurprising, you might say; but globalization may well have a kind of revenge effect.
There’s a distinct chance, I think, that it will actually undermine the position of the very native
speaker who, by virtue of having a mastery of this obviously valuable language, thinks he or she
is in a strong position.

Why? Because one of the intriguing consequences of globalization is that English’s center of
gravity is moving. Its future is going to be defined not in America or Britain, but by the new
economies of places like Bangalore,

Chongqing or Bratislava.
“The great difficulty is thus considering the unity of the many and the multiplicity of the unity.
Those who see the diversity of cultures tend to overlook the unity of mankind; those who see the
unity of mankind tend to dismiss the diversity of cultures”. Edgar Morin, L’identité humaine.

This endangerment of languages can have a drastic effect on the cultures that loses there identity.
Effects on language loss on cultures might include: dismay at the realization that the native
language is lost; anti-social behavior as minority will desperately try to preserve their language;
loss of self-esteem. Therefore, it is important for cultures to preserve their language. Despite the
increase in globalization, this is possible in many ways, such as language classes, promoting the
native language in homes, schools, art, promoting though a strong national identity.

The most problematic issue is how to make these two seemingly contradictory facts compatible:
continuity of the linguistic diversity created by humanity through its Diaspora all over the world,
and the need for intercommunication between these groups of linguistically-diverse individuals
in the new – ‘glocal’ – era of positive re-unification of the species

Actions and representations and discourses on language diversity (cultural identity), integration
and intercommunication are therefore primordial, promoting the search for new principles and
ways of looking at situations of language contact.

This change in paradigm does seem urgent because it is clearly coherent with the main problems
of modern societies. Now that we are getting to know ourselves better genetically too and that
we are sure that human are a unique species and that the genome of other species is not so
different, perhaps we can enter another planetary era with more solidarity between the diverse
cultural groups and the other species with which we share the biosphere. Biologically and
linguistically, as Edward O. Wilson says, “soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide
what we wish to become” !!!

The effects of globalization on the hospitality

industry
The term globalization refers to a trend towards a more integrated global economic system. It is a
continuous process in business that crosses into the economic, political, legal, technological, and
cultural spheres.

Focusing on the hospitality industry in particular, the impacts of globalization have had far
reaching consequences, which have been both positive and negative.

Exposure to different cultures

The globalization of trade and the economy has had a direct impact on the price of travel. A
larger pool of competition has led to more competitive pricing, and given rise to the low-cost
carrier model within aviation.
The low-cost carrier model provides a no frills service for a reduced cost, meaning that more
people can now fly around the world for a reasonable price. This has made it easier for travellers
to experience new cultures, and has made it increasingly important for professionals in
hospitality to understand, and cater to, different people.

Advancement of technology
If they want to attract the most tourists, hospitality organizations must work hard to keep up with
advancing technology. It is important for hotels, tourist attractions, and restaurants to continually
improve their products and services – with the most progressive gaining an edge over the
competition.
Even something like a hotel room key has been revolutionized through technological
advancement, with its next stage of evolution looking to transform it into data utilized on a
guests’ cell phone.

Developing countries lose out

Globalization has created easier and more affordable ways to travel. This means that tourists can
now choose from a wide range of destinations, leaving behind developing countries that may not
have the infrastructure or technology needed to welcome a large amount of visitors.
To increase the levels of tourism it attracts, a country must have the money necessary to compete
with more luxurious and tourist-friendly destinations.

Seasonal employment
For varying reasons, some countries, cities, and towns experience extreme highs and lows of
tourist activity. This could be because of weather, price, or
events specific to a certain time of year.
During these peak seasons, there are a lot of jobs available for locals in the hospitality industry,
but as soon as it is over the jobs disappear. This leaves people with no income for a large part of
the year, and creates unemployment and poverty issues for places that rely heavily on tourism.

Globalization has created a tourist boom in world cities—but masses of tourists create new
challenges.

Never before have so many people traveled so far, and for such a light-hearted reason: to see
something different from what they see at home. Already by 2005, half a billion people annually
were traveling to foreign countries, and that number has more than doubled since. Hyper-
globalization has produced hundreds of millions of new tourists and created new challenges for
their destinations. While much of this change is positive in economic terms, the ongoing invasion
of global cities by people who stay for a few days or a few weeks can fundamentally transform
the character of places whose unique charms are what attracted tourists in the first place.

The growth of the global middle-class has driven world travel. China, a leading example, has
amassed trillions of dollars in new wealth, and the new affluent class that enjoys this money
wants to spend some of it abroad. Chinese families and students are not the only new global
tourists, though. The expansion of the middle class in formerly Third World countries has helped
increase tourism numbers from Brazil, Mexico, India, Chile, and South Korea, as New York’s
own arrival figures show, in addition to the Japanese, American, and European tourists still eager
to see the world.

Tourists go everywhere, but they concentrate in the same historic cities: London, Paris, Berlin,
Amsterdam, and New York, among others. This week, Paris announced that tourism during the
first half of the year had reached a record high of 17.1 million people, 700,000 more than last
year. London had 22.7 million overseas visitors last year. New York boasted 13.1 million—an
all-time high, despite concerns early last year that people would stay away in protest or fear of
President Trump.

It’s a cliché to groan about the latest influx of tourists, but the large numbers of people traipsing
through the West’s historic central cities do create a new people-management problem. Central-
city sidewalks designed decades or centuries ago can’t handle today’s foot traffic, particularly
when people don’t walk like the local commuters and residents of decades ago did. Today’s
pedestrians walk slowly, several abreast, stop frequently to take photos or look at maps on their
ever-available phones, and wheel bulky luggage behind them, ensuring that fast walkers can’t
pass. Tourists to a large extent have become the central cities. In the two decades that I’ve been
going to Europe at least once a year, visitors have morphed from relatively modest groups of
people who could mingle less obtrusively with the locals on their way to work or at their daily
tasks to large convoys of people who define the daytime population, particularly in the
summertime, on subway cars, in parks, and on key avenues and streets.

The radical change in the makeup of pedestrian traffic has changed the
streets themselves. Paris’s rue Cler is a traditional market street, with a butchery, a fromagerie, a
bakery, an appetizing shop (for duck pâté and the like), a fish store, and a flower shop. Nearly
two decades ago, travel-guide impresario Rick Steves made the rue Cler famous with his advice
to his hundreds of thousands of readers and viewers to take a tour down “a small lane in a great
city” and “decide if you want to call this slice of Paris home for a few days.” But foreign visitors
haven’t just enjoyed the rue Cler; they’ve remade it. The butcher shop now offers sandwiches to
go, to take in a little cash from the people ooh-lah-lahing over the raw meat behind the counter.
The obscure pâté store now offers a small outdoor-seating area, to diversify its customer base
away from elderly French women on their daily shopping walk.

With tourists now defining the streets, it’s harder, too, to try to act like a local. One must be
determined and stubborn to practice one’s French in France. Today, anyone in Western Europe
under 50 grew up taking English lessons and was absorbed in American culture from infancy.
It’s second nature for a younger French person to slip into English after hearing a tentative slip
from an intermediate speaker in the wrong accent. Older people, too, have surrendered to the
force of the world’s global language. A block away from the rue Cler, bakery workers well into
their sixties sell pastries to American and Chinese visitors, fully in English. This change is a loss
as well as a gain. One is never forced even to try to speak another person’s language, and nobody
carries a foreign-language dictionary today, just as no one carries a wrinkly map. Indeed, the
British papers report that young Britons aren’t bothering to learn European languages anymore,
and it’s easy to see why.

While these changes may be cultural curiosities, twenty-first-century tourism is causing deeper
tensions. Airbnb, the global firm that allows people to rent out spare bedrooms or whole
apartments to strangers, positions itself as a company that helps people from different cultures
connect with one another. But it has seen a global backlash over the past half-decade, with new
restrictions popping up from Amsterdam to Tokyo to New York. Accommodation in or near
historic cities, whether for residents or visitors, is a finite resource. Though cities can and should
build more incremental housing, constructing hundreds of thousands of new cookie-cutter
housing units in or near key attractions overnight would make them no longer key attractions. In
dense areas of New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, and other cities, tens of thousands of
apartments have been emptied of permanent residents, of all income classes, to make way for
transient tourists.

In the past half-decade, city officials, after much prodding by their voters, have tried to deal with
this problem constructively, creating and enforcing new regulations on short-term stays. Some
frustrated locals, though, are less

high-minded; in Barcelona, guerrilla protesters are unfurling banners counseling British partiers
to jump off balconies for sport. Indeed, more than half-a-dozen British tourists have died in
Spanish balcony falls this year, some fatally injured by playing a deadly game of attempting to
jump from one perch to another. Now, some hotels and apartment complexes are enclosing their
balconies to keep their drunken foreign wards alive—and in the process making Europe a little
less European.
Spanish residents and officials, in addition to having to deal with the traumatic aftermath of these
senseless deaths, have to contend with people cavorting drunk, on drugs, and topless in the
streets on a daily basis. “People cannot rest,” Barceloneta Neighbors’ Association vice president
Manel Martinez told the U.K. Telegraph. “Many residents are leaving the barrio . . . because they
cannot go on living like this.” City officials have said that they’ll curtail group-tourist visits to a
local fruit, vegetable, and flower market “to prevent the area from being overcome by them.”

Yet across Europe, and in New York, tourists, the people who serve them, and the people who
provide the “local color”—such as regular French people sitting at a cafe in France thoughtfully
speaking French for the incidental enrichment of Americans at a neighboring table—are
interdependent. In a post-industrial world where the real work is increasingly done by robots—or
by low-wage migrants who cross borders for economic opportunity—tourism has become our
collective export-import industry, whether one is a waiter, a consumer, or a besieged global-city
resident, feeling as much a part of the scenery as the Eiffel Tower or Times Square.

The effects of globalization on culture in Africa

in the eyes of an African woman
Economic growth without social and cultural justice cannot be our idea of development. It is
imperative that development is measured in terms of the quality of human life, which can be
reflected in, for example, better education, health and life expectancy for every single member of
society. This is only possible if men and women are equally empowered, in theory and in
practice. And the North has a crucial role to play in this process. Anything that falls short of
restoring peoples' dignity, sense of identity, continuity and security should never be accepted.
Africa needs to learn to respect the dissenting voice of its own people.

Culture is dynamic...
Each culture has its own personality. The fact that we are all human does not mean that we are
all the same. To ignore this would be destroying God's own beautiful rainbow made from the
many colours of cultural diversity. Culture is learned. This is the most common attribute. The
European beckons while holding his hand with the fingers uppermost, while the African does so
with the fingers pointing down. Each has learned his/her way. Such learning does not take place
through natural inheritance. It is not genetically transmitted. Rather, it takes place by a process of
absorption from the social environment or through deliberate instruction. No culture is possible
without a language. It is bound up with language. This is an important prerequisite and therefore
to kill a language is to kill a culture.

Culture is never static. It is dynamic. Every moment we are being transformed, always growing -
like the cells in our bodies. It changes exactly the same way as human beings change. We cannot
romanticise our culture. Our grandfathers did not walk on the same top soil as we do and our
children will have different soil. I would never dare tell my mother where to place the flower pot
in the living room. Today my daughter can easily change the position of the flower pot in our
living room even without consulting me. This transformation is so gradual and not sudden or
abrupt. Culture is a continuous process of change but in spite of the change, culture continues
giving a community a sense of identity, dignity, continuity, security and binds society together.

The effect globalization has had on culture is immense and diverse. It has affected people's
cultural behaviours in different ways. People have had to change their living ways. The loud
echoing advertisement rhythms of the

famous Coca-Cola drinks can be heard across boundaries in towns, cities and townships and
even in remote rural areas where drinking water is a problem to get. Globalization in Africa
involves one fundamental project: that of opening up the economies of all countries freely and
widely to the global market and its forces.

The demands of globalization

To this end, it is demanded that, whatever the nature of their economies, their level of
development, and whatever their location in the global economy, all countries must pursue a
common set of economic policies. In particular, they must permit the free and indiscriminate
operation of transnational corporations in their economies: open their economies freely and
indiscriminately to imports and concentrate on exporting what they are supposed to be good at;
reduce the role of governments in the economy to that of supporting the market and private
enterprise; and leave the determination of prices of goods, currencies, labour, as well as the
allocation of resources to the operation of the market. Seen in this way, globalisztion is primarily
not an impersonal process driven by laws and factors of development - such as technology -
operating outside human control and agency. Rather it is a conscious programme of
reconstructing international economic and political relations in line with a particular set of
interests (the profit motivations of the businesses, especially the transnational corporations of the
advanced industrial countries) and vision (the dogma of the primacy of the free market and of
private enterprise in all processes of human development).

For Africa, all the central planks of the process of globalization have been implemented over the
past decade-and-a-half as structural adjustment programmes. Countries have deregulated foreign
investment, liberalised their imports, removed currency controls, emasculated the direct
economic role of the state, and so on. The results have been to further undermine the internal,
national productive capacity, social security and democratic integrity of these countries. So that
is basically how globalization has impacted on Africa.

In Africa, women have mostly been involved in farming, in employment as civil servants, and in
industry. They have also been involved in small-scale entrepreneurships. No doubt, these sectors
have been severely affected by the introduction of trade liberalization. Women on this continent
contribute the most critical factor in agricultural production and agriculture. Yet liberalization
has failed to ensure the availability of credit, agricultural inputs such as fertilisers and
insecticides at affordable prices. The marketing of their produce has been thrown in the hands of
businessmen whose sole objective is profit maximisation. The result - food security in Africa is
highly threatened. Women constitute 60% percent of the communal farmers in Zimbabwe. In
rural areas
the impact has been so serious that rural urban migration has increased to unfortunate
proportions. This in turn has led to the increase of squatters in urban areas and crime which
affects mostly women and children.

In Zimbabwe, some women have resorted to cross-border trade. This has had its own social and
cultural repercussions. Children in this case are left out of parental care and the number of rape
cases on young children has become an alarming cause of concern. In Zimbabwe alone, there is
an average of four reported cases of rape every day. In other cases there have been reports of
married women getting involved in extra-marital affairs once they cross the border while the
spouses they have left behind indulge in the same, complicating and worsening the AIDS
pandemic situation. Children no longer sit around the fireplace in the evening to listen to stories
that promote the values of respect, integrity, peace, love and unity, even in the rural areas where
this sort of environment would fit best. People - men, women and children - are all engrossed
and embroiled in the struggle for survival - the struggle to get a bowl of mealie-meal to fill the
tummy at least for the day.

In the township where I stay, children as young as six years can be seen selling oranges,
tomatoes and other basic foodstuffs as late as 8.00 pm. During my grandmothers' generation,
most African communities had a strong policy on food security. If you walk through my village,
you will find a silos in each family compound. Today, most of these are empty - people have
been forced into a situation where they are living from hand to mouth. Even the middle-class
working elite have run into a habit of borrowing their salaries/wages even before they receive
them. There is so much to spend on!

But the amazing issue is that of ignorance. Even the rich and well-to-do have no clue about the
system that has invaded the African continent. Or even if they are aware, they have either chosen
to overlook the overall implication or have decided that they are also benefactors of the system.
The sale of a shirt made outside Zimbabwe is more certain than a locally manufactured one.
"Import" is the in term. Ladies who wear perfume from Paris and shoes from Italy tend to receive
more respect than those wearing a locally manufactured brand. Children in rich families are too
busy involved in video games, international schools that offer English and other "international"
languages, television and movies whose content is 90% from outside the country.

Song and dance has become characterised with themes of AIDS, orphans, suffering, drought and
war. These have been neutralised with the western beats of Michael Jackson et al. The youth
prefer the western beats to the local artists and hair styles, shoes and clothing keep to the trends
on the western fashion scene.

Those who are slow are left behind and everyone seems to be in such a big rush not to remain
behind. Women's economic activities have therefore been highly affected by globalization. In
Malawi, whereas before rice was produced in Malawi and sold in most Southern African
countries, rice is now brought in from Asia and sold at much cheaper prices than the locally
produced one. The production of the local one is therefore forced to stop. Women are very
concerned about the impact of economic structural adjustment programmes on their human
rights. It is not just a question of economics, it is the whole issue of human dignity. Dignity is
inherent in the fact of being a human being. With this, we have also witnessed tremendous
changes in the global economy and in the political climate that contextualises it. The current
neoliberal model has resulted in the introduction of policies aimed at eliminating all obstacles to
the "free" exercise of economic activity across boundaries including trade liberalisation, the
deregulation of production, the labour market and the market of goods and services and the
implementation of regional and international agreements.

Before the advancement of free economic activity on the national, regional and global levels,
most of the African economies were heavily regulated by the state. Under this system, they
introduced such import and export restrictive business practices as import and export licencing,
increased import duties, taxes or levies on import transactions, allocation of foreign exchange to
essential goods, import and export quotas and other prohibitions. This forced the creation of local
and locally manufactured goods produced from local materials. Self-reliance was encouraged.
However, this has now been replaced by donor-driven deregulation, economic liberalisation and
privatisation of the national economic activities. The argument has been that this new policy will
bring about faster export and economic growth, which will enable developing countries to repay
the mounting external debt burden accumulated since the independence of these countries.

Inequity

It is unfortunate that the "globalization theory" assumes that all players, men and women, rich
and poor, will be affected equally. Furthermore, it also assumes that international trade
opportunities open up equally to small scale firms, infant industries and the giant transnational
corporations and cartels.

However the seven years of globalization indicate otherwise because international trade is also to
do with people's livelihoods and their most basic social and economic rights. For millions of
Africa's poorest people, trade is part of daily life, and a crucial determinant of welfare. When a
people's social and economic rights and patterns are affected, their culture is overall affected too.
Trade which is built on the unacceptable levels of social inequities to vulnerable communities
and groups, or causes global ecological or

environmental damage and disregards our obligations to future generations is not conducive to
sustainable development.

Established and large companies such as TNCs came in and brought in their finished goods at
much cheaper prices than those of our own manufacturers, thus forcing many local industries to
close down. In Zimbabwe, the clothing sector was hardest hit with the closure of the local Cone
Textiles, which retrenched hundreds of workers. These workers were family breadwinners with
children in schools and houses to pay rent for. Because of the tight labour market, most of them
are frustrated and disillusioned with no work and money. The importation and cheap selling of
second-hand clothes from Europe has forced many women out of their businesses. In Kenya, the
women who were involved in the manufacturing of the famous "kiondos" (sisal bags) were
negatively affected when the sisal bags were produced en masse in Japan and sold in East Africa
and the surrounding countries at low prices.
In Mali, foreign investors were able to take over the major revenue enterprises such as tobacco
and textile industries, not to mention the only national airline. In Cameroon, banks, agricultural
ventures and the national airlines were taken over by foreign investors. The African market has
become the dumping ground for all kinds of goods from developed countries and from the East,
all in the name of free trade. In Zambia, the spirits, motor and textile industries are almost dead.
In Tanzania the leather and textile industries have almost collapsed.

Massive unemployment is a common phenomenon in Africa. In Zambia for example,

retrenchments and liquidations have led a staggering number of over 200,000 people out of
employment over a period of five years since 1992. Zimbabwe, Botswana, Malawi, Kenya,
Uganda, Tanzania and other African countries are not different. This has had a direct impact on
Africa's cultural traits.

In many countries, it has always been the responsibility of the man to go out and fend and
provide for his family. This has changed. Men and women both leave home in search of the
available labour. In fact, in cases where there are massive retrenchments, you now find men at
home while the woman goes to work. This has hence affected the household responsibilities,
where you find change of roles when a man has to wash and look after the children. In cases
where the man goes to work, the woman is forced to become involved in supplementary
activities such as sewing, selling vegetables and knitting to complement her husband's salary. In
these countries, women have suffered disproportionately from the impact of globalization. There
are very many men who have been retrenched too, but when you look at the statistics you can see
the difference. A company in Lesotho, for instance, was required to lay off 50% of its work
force, and it ended laying off all the women workers. Under

ESAP, states are required to reduce public spending. The immediately affected areas are health
and education. In most of our African societies, it is the responsibility of the women to take care
of the health not only of themselves, but also of the children in the home.

Many girls have dropped out of school because their families cannot afford to pay all the school
fees. Zimbabwe has not yet seen the extent to which this can go, but people from Ghana or
Uganda who have lived under SAPs for many years and whose countries have been quoted by
the World Bank as "success stories" will tell you of the majority of a whole generation who have
not gone to school - the majority of whom are women. In Africa, there is a limit to your capacity
to enjoy your rights if you have not gone to school. It means that you may not get a job and
therefore your economic rights (which are basic human rights) are affected. The first challenge
facing women today is education. Education must empower women with knowledge of their
rights and how to seek redress should such rights be violated.

In conclusion, the North must revise its conception of development. Economic growth without
social and cultural justice cannot be our idea of development. It is imperative that development is
measured in terms of the quality of human life, which can be reflected in, for example, better
education, health and life expectancy for every single member of society. This is only possible if
men and women are equally empowered, in theory and in practice. And the North has a crucial
role to play in this process. Anything that falls short of restoring peoples' dignity, sense of
identity, continuity and security should never be accepted. Africa needs to learn to respect the
dissenting voice of its own people. And at the same time, the North needs to take heed to the
saying of the African people "Shonyala okhumanya inzu yowasio tawe".

The Impact of Globalization on the World’s

Poor
The process of globalization provides a golden opportunity for mankind to contribute to a major
reduction of poverty world-wide. While the potential for povertyreduction is great, the extent of
it will depend on many factors including, in particular, the pattern of growth followed by the
developed and developing countries and the overall global policy framework. A question that is
often raised is whether the actual distribution of gains is fair and whether the poor benefit less
than proportionately from globalization—and could under some circumstances actually be hurt
by it. The risks and costs brought about by globalization can be significant for fragile developing
economies and the world’s poor. The downside of globalization is most vividly epitomized at
times of periodical global financial and economic crises. The costs of the repeated crises
associated with economic and financial globalization appear to have been borne overwhelmingly
by the developing world, and often disproportionately so by the poor who are the most
vulnerable. On the other hand, benefits from globalization in booming times are not necessarily
shared widely and equally in the global community.

The fear that the poor have in some instances been by-passed or actually hurt by globalization
was highlighted by recent studies which point towards limited—if not a lack of—convergence
among participating national economies and across regions as globalization has proceeded. The
observed trend towards greater inequality in the world income distribution between countries and
regions (when the latter are not weighed by population size) and within many developing
countries has a close bearing on conditions affecting the world’s poor, as inequality acts as a
filter between growth and poverty. In particular, inequality may affect growth and thereby
poverty alleviation in the future.

The most recent estimate suggests the share of the population of the developing countries living
below US$1 per day declined from 40% in 1981 to 21% in 2001. However, this progress on
poverty reduction was mainly achieved by the substantial reduction of the poor in China (400
million fewer people were poor in China in 2001, compared to the estimate in 1981). Further, it
is reported that the absolute number of the poor has fallen only in Asia and risen elsewhere and
the total number of people living under US$2 per day actually increased worldwide. In
particular, poverty has increased significantly in Africa in terms of poverty incidence as well as
depth of poverty.

Though any trend in poverty and income inequality observed so far cannot be exclusively or
even mainly attributed to the ‘globalization’ effect, as such, without rigorous analyses, these
various estimates, even the most optimistic ones, can not dismiss the concerns raised that the
globalization process may have had at least some adverse effects on poverty and income
distribution. These concerns have generated a passionate debate worldwide as well as a powerful
anti-globalization movement.
The globalization-poverty relationship is complex and heterogeneous, involving multifaceted
channels. It is highly probable that globalization-poverty relationships may be non-linear in
many aspects, involving several threshold effects. It may be futile to attempt to establish
theoretically, on an a priori basis, the effects of globalization on poverty as universally
observable conditions. Indeed, each sub-set of links embedded in the globalization (openness)-
growth-income distribution-poverty nexus can be contentious and controversial. Besides the
‘growth’ effects of globalization on poverty (i.e. the effects of globalization on poverty filtered
directly through economic growth), the globalization/ integration process operating through
various other channels is known to create winners and losers, affecting both vertical and
horizontal inequalities. These channels include changes in relative factor and good prices, factor
movements, the nature of technological change and diffusion, the impact of globalization on
volatility and vulnerability, the world-wide flow of information, and global disinflation.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS
The observed ‘between-country’ income divergence trend tends to bring into question the
validity of the income convergence thesis. Indeed, a mere adoption of open trade and investment
regimes does not guarantee developing countries’ entry into the convergence club. Many poor
countries, which have opened their economies since 1980s, have fallen behind not just relatively
but absolutely in terms of both income levels and structural development. Whether global market
forces establish a virtuous circle or vicious circle will depend on the initial conditions at the time
of exposure and the effective design and implementation of policies at the national and
international level to manage the integration process.

A strategic position towards globalisation cannot be equated with a simple fine-tuning of the
pace and sequence of liberalization measures. Clearly, it is a question concerning the pattern or
forms of integration. In particular, national development policies should be strategically designed
in the light of the potentially skewed nature of the on-going process of globalization discussed
above.

Given the observed trends towards greater inequality in per capita income

levels between countries and within many countries, developing countries have to take strategic
steps to protect themselves in order to derive benefits from the dynamic forces of globalization,
with a long-term vision for upgrading their comparative advantages towards high-value added
activities. Governments of developing countries to succeed in this endeavour should consciously
engage in building institutional capacities for integration, including a capable nation-state that is
ready to take on the enormous challenges posed by globalization.

This calls for effective complementary policies and safety nets to be in place at both national and
global levels. Policymakers need to design and implement an active development strategy not
only to benefit from, but also to help counteract the negative effects of the immutable forces of
globalization. It is not enough for governments to assume an active role in liberalizing trade and
capital movements and de-regulating their economies, while passively waiting for the fruits of
the ‘Washington consensus’ and the market forces of globalization to pull them on a fast
development track. Instead, governments need to pursue both active liberalization and active
domestic development policies. Those who argue that we need more equitable forms and
processes of globalization to start with need to confront the fact that any contemplated changes
in the nature of the present forces of globalization require a much better grasp of the concept of
‘pro-poor globalization’ than we presently hold. It is only through rigorous and well focussed
studies that many of the questions raised above relative to the impact of globalization on poverty
can be apprehended and, hopefully, answered within a specific context.

Prevention is better than cure

There's nothing new about the concept of prevention being better than cure. Focusing on what
matters to individuals to promote better health and well-being and stopping them from becoming
ill.

Promotion of healthy lifestyles and the prevention of ill health is a fundamental principle behind
public health and improving the public's health. The phrase 'prevention is better than cure' is
often attributed to the Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus in around 1500. It is now a
fundamental principle of modern health care and inherent within health and social care strategies
across the UK (See: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales).

Prevention is about tackling the upstream causes of ill health, this in itself is not controversial.
The challenge is how it is paid for. See: King's Fund - Prevention is better than cure, except
when it comes to paying for it. The results are not easily measured, because it is not easy to see
where illness has not occurred.

The UK has a rich history of focusing on prevention, from Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccine in
1796 to John Snow using data analytics to determine the cause of the cholera outbreak in 1854.

While there has been huge progress across many public health trends, life expectancy in the UK
has stalled and in some parts of the UK, has even decreased. There are worrying trends in health
inequalities, with an unprecedented reversal in life expectancy for some groups and stark
inequalities between healthy life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas.
Increasing rates of alcohol and drugs-related deaths and hospitalisations, STIs, and obesity and a
shift in the pattern of ill health towards multiple health conditions are also indicative of the need
for action.

Nursing is essentially about providing quality evidence-based care and support to individuals and
populations to improve health and well-being throughout life. In the past, public health has been
seen as a niche specialty far removed from the typical image of nursing and only practiced by
those with very specific qualifications.

Nursing and midwifery staff are now increasingly recognised as instrumental in improving and
supporting the public’s health at an individual, community and population level. All nursing and
midwifery staff are well placed to do this and need to embrace the contribution they can make to
prevention. The ongoing challenge is having enough staff with the skills and time to make this

essential contribution.
The RCN have been campaigning for many years for a greater focus on prevention with adequate
funding. This is particularly pertinent in England, following the transfer of funding for public
health to local authorities in 2013 and thereafter significant year on year cuts to local authority
budgets and to the public health grant.

The RCN welcomed the announcement in the recent 2019 spending review of a real terms
increase to the public health grant, which we see as a step in the right direction. However,
indications are that the increase will likely fall short of the amount needed to offset the years of
cuts and is not based on an assessment of population need. Improving public health and
preventing ill health is about more than health services; and requires action to address the wider
determinants of health, for example, education, transport and employment, which need to be
addressed alongside health services in a more systematic way and with cross-government action
and investment.

The RCN’s commitment is for a properly funded cross-government prevention strategy with a
nursing workforce who are able to deliver this. We are calling for a long term sustainable
investment in public health and prevention, which is based on assessment of population need and
an understanding of health inequalities. The RCN has key alliances with a number of
organisations to support lobbying on public health. For example we are members of the Alcohol
Health Alliance who have recently called for £1 billion spent in tax to alcohol industry to be
spent on funding 40,000 nurse vacancies. Also the Obesity Health Alliance and as such we have
helped strengthen the case for stronger legislation on unhealthy foods.

Health-care aid for developing countries boosts

life expectancy, study finds
Foreign aid for health care is directly linked to an increase in life expectancy and a decrease in
child mortality in developing countries, according to a new study by Stanford University School
of Medicine researchers.

The researchers examined both public and private health-aid programs between 1974 and 2010
in 140 countries and found that, contrary to common perceptions about the waste and
ineffectiveness of aid, these health-aid grants led to significant health improvements with lasting
effects over time.

Countries receiving more health aid witnessed a more rapid rise in life expectancy and saw
measurably larger declines in mortality among children under the age of 5 than countries that
received less health aid, said Eran Bendavid, MD, an assistant professor in the Division of
General Medical Disciplines and lead author of the study. If these trends continue, he said, an
increase in health aid of just 4 percent, or $1 billion, could have major implications for child
mortality.
“If health aid continues to be as effective as it has been, we estimate there will be 364,800 fewer
deaths in children under 5,” he said. “We are talking about $1 billion, which is a relatively small
commitment for developed countries.”

Does it work?

Bendavid noted that there is much debate around foreign aid. Critics question whether it’s used
effectively and reaches its intended recipients. They often argue that it discourages local
development and displaces domestic resources that might otherwise be devoted to health. So the
researchers devised a statistical tool to address the basic unanswered question: Do investments in
health really lead to health improvements?

Bendavid said there are many reasons to suspect the answer would be no, though the findings
proved just the contrary, with health-related aid leading to direct, beneficial outcomes.

“I think for many people, that will be surprising,” he said. “But for me, it fits with other evidence
of the incredible success of public health promotion in developing countries.” In a previous
study, for instance, he found that hundreds of thousands of lives were saved through the U.S.
President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, in which the U.S. government

invested billions of dollars in antiretroviral treatment and other AIDS-related prevention and
treatment initiatives.

In the latest study, the two investigators used data from the Creditor Reporting System of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the world’s most extensive source of
information on foreign aid. While aid programs for health grew during the 36-year study period,
the largest period of growth occurred between 2000 and 2010, they found.

Stepped-up investments
It was during this decade that many governments and private groups stepped up their investments
in health, including PEPFAR; the World Bank; the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and
Malaria; the Gates Foundation; and the GAVI Alliance, among others, he said.

As a result, while health aid in 1990 accounted for 4 percent of total foreign aid, it now amounts
to 15 percent of all aid, he said. And it’s become an important part of health budgets in recipient
countries, accounting for 25-30 percent of all health-care spending in low-income countries,
Bendavid said.

The researchers found that these funds were used effectively, largely because of the targeting of
aid to disease priorities where improved technologies — such as new vaccines, insecticide-
treated bed nets for malarial prevention and antiretroviral drugs for HIV — could make a real
difference.

They observed the greatest health impacts between 2000 and 2010, when donor investments
were at their peak. During the decade, under-5 child mortality declined from a mean of 109.2 to
72.4 deaths per 1,000, or 36.8 fewer deaths among those children in the countries that received
the most health aid, the researchers found (a 34 percent reduction). In the countries receiving the
least, under-5 mortality fell from 31.6 to 23.2 deaths per 1,000, or 8.4 fewer deaths per 1,000 live
births (a 26 percent reduction), the researchers reported.

Life expectancy increases

During that period, life-expectancy figures also grew faster in countries with a greater infusion of
health aid, Bendavid said. Life expectancy rose from 57.5 to 62.3 — an increase of 4.8 years —
among the countries receiving the most aid. Among the countries receiving the least health aid,
life expectancy increased by 2.7 years, from 69.8 to 72.5 years.

Bendavid said previous experience has shown that, on average, life expectancy has increased by
nearly one year every four years in developed countries. But health-aid programs literally cut in
half the time it took to reach

this goal in developing countries. “In that same four-year span, they increased life expectancy by
two years, rather than one year,” he said.

He said the results are not surprising if one considers some of the new health technologies made
available to developing nations as a result of foreign aid. Childhood vaccines, including those for
diphtheria, tetanus, polio and measles, have all but wiped out what used to be among the top
killers of young children in the developing world. Health aid directed to providing insecticide-
treated malarial bed nets also has been credited in recent studies with reducing malarial deaths
among young children, he noted.

Among both adults and children, aid that has expanded the availability of antiretroviral drugs in
the developing world has had a major impact on reducing deaths and improving overall life
expectancies, he said. For instance, in a study published in 2012, Bendavid and colleagues found
that PEPFAR’s health aid resulted in more than 740,000 lives saved between 2004 and 2008 in
nine countries.

The researchers also found that the benefits of aid have a lasting effect: The telltale signs of aid’s
relationship to reducing under-5 mortality were detectable for three years following the
distribution of aid. The correlation between health aid and longer life expectancy overall was
detectable for five years after the aid was distributed.

With aid commitments flattening amid the economic downturn, Bendavid said donors will have
to be that much smarter in how they invest future dollars, focusing on the most cost-effective
interventions and technologies.

“To date, there has been little consideration of how to use development aid in the most cost-
effective manner,” he said. “That will have to change now that the funding level has reached a
plateau.”

Obesity and overweight

Facts about overweight and obesity
Some recent WHO global estimates follow.
In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults aged 18 years and older were overweight. Of these over 650
million adults were obese.
In 2016, 39% of adults aged 18 years and over (39% of men and 40% of women) were
overweight.
Overall, about 13% of the world’s adult population (11% of men and 15% of women) were
obese in 2016.
The worldwide prevalence of obesity nearly tripled between 1975 and 2016. In 2019, an
estimated 38.2 million children under the age of 5 years were overweight or obese. Once
considered a high-income country problem, overweight and obesity are now on the rise in low-
and middle-income countries, particularly in urban settings. In Africa, the number of overweight
children under 5 has increased by nearly 24% percent since 2000. Almost half of the children
under 5 who were overweight or obese in 2019 lived in Asia. Over 340 million children and
adolescents aged 5-19 were overweight or obese in 2016.
The prevalence of overweight and obesity among children and adolescents aged 5-19 has risen
dramatically from just 4% in 1975 to just over 18% in 2016. The rise has occurred similarly
among both boys and girls: in 2016 18% of girls and 19% of boys were overweight.
While just under 1% of children and adolescents aged 5-19 were obese in 1975, more 124
million children and adolescents (6% of girls and 8% of boys) were obese in 2016.
Overweight and obesity are linked to more deaths worldwide than underweight. Globally there
are more people who are obese than underweight – this occurs in every region except parts of
sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

What causes obesity and overweight?

The fundamental cause of obesity and overweight is an energy imbalance between calories
consumed and calories expended. Globally, there has been: an increased intake of energy-dense
foods that are high in fat and sugars; and an increase in physical inactivity due to the increasingly
sedentary nature of many forms of work, changing modes of transportation, and increasing
urbanization.
Changes in dietary and physical activity patterns are often the result of environmental and
societal changes associated with development and lack of supportive policies in sectors such as
health, agriculture, transport, urban planning, environment, food processing, distribution,
marketing, and education.

Facing a double burden of malnutrition

Many low- and middle-income countries are now facing a "double burden" of malnutrition.

While these countries continue to deal with the problems of infectious diseases and
undernutrition, they are also experiencing a rapid upsurge in noncommunicable disease risk
factors such as obesity and overweight, particularly in urban settings.

It is not uncommon to find undernutrition and obesity co-existing within the same country, the
same community and the same household.
Children in low- and middle-income countries are more vulnerable to inadequate pre-natal,
infant, and young child nutrition. At the same time, these children are exposed to high-fat, high-
sugar, high-salt, energy-dense, and micronutrient-poor foods, which tend to be lower in cost but
also lower in nutrient quality. These dietary patterns, in conjunction with lower levels of physical
activity, result in sharp increases in childhood obesity while undernutrition issues remain
unsolved.

How can overweight and obesity be reduced?

Overweight and obesity, as well as their related noncommunicable diseases, are largely
preventable. Supportive environments and communities are fundamental in shaping people’s
choices, by making the choice of healthier foods and regular physical activity the easiest choice
(the choice that is the most accessible, available and affordable), and therefore preventing
overweight and obesity.
At the individual level, people can: limit energy intake from total fats and sugars; increase
consumption of fruit and vegetables, as well as legumes, whole grains and nuts; and engage in
regular physical activity (60 minutes a day for children and 150 minutes spread through the week
for adults). Individual responsibility can only have its full effect where people have access to a
healthy lifestyle. Therefore, at the societal level it is important to support individuals in
following the recommendations above, through sustained implementation of evidence based and
population based policies that make regular physical activity and healthier dietary choices
available, affordable and easily accessible to everyone, particularly to the poorest individuals. An
example of such a policy is a tax on sugar sweetened beverages.
The food industry can play a significant role in promoting healthy diets by: reducing the fat,
sugar and salt content of processed foods;
ensuring that healthy and nutritious choices are available and affordable to all consumers;
restricting marketing of foods high in sugars, salt and fats, especially those foods aimed at
children and teenagers; and

ensuring the availability of healthy food choices and supporting regular physical activity practice
in the workplace.

Exercise: 7 benefits of regular physical activity

You know exercise is good for you, but do you know how good? From boosting your mood to
improving your sex life, find out how exercise can improve your life.
Want to feel better, have more energy and even add years to your life? Just exercise.

The health benefits of regular exercise and physical activity are hard to ignore. Everyone benefits
from exercise, regardless of age, sex or physical ability. Need more convincing to get moving?
Check out these seven ways exercise can lead to a happier, healthier you.

1. Exercise controls weight

Exercise can help prevent excess weight gain or help maintain weight loss. When you engage in
physical activity, you burn calories. The more intense the activity, the more calories you burn.
Regular trips to the gym are great, but don't worry if you can't find a large chunk of time to
exercise every day. Any amount of activity is better than none at all. To reap the benefits of
exercise, just get more active throughout your day — take the stairs instead of the elevator or rev
up your household chores. Consistency is key.

2. Exercise combats health conditions and diseases

Worried about heart disease? Hoping to prevent high blood pressure? No matter what your
current weight is, being active boosts high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, the "good"
cholesterol, and it decreases unhealthy triglycerides. This one-two punch keeps your blood
flowing smoothly, which decreases your risk of cardiovascular diseases.
Regular exercise helps prevent or manage many health problems and concerns, including:
Stroke
Metabolic syndrome
High blood pressure
Type 2 diabetes
Depression
Anxiety
Many types of cancer
Arthritis
Falls
It can also help improve cognitive function and helps lower the risk of death

from all causes.

3. Exercise improves mood

Need an emotional lift? Or need to blow off some steam after a stressful day? A gym session or
brisk walk can help. Physical activity stimulates various brain chemicals that may leave you
feeling happier, more relaxed and less anxious.
You may also feel better about your appearance and yourself when you exercise regularly, which
can boost your confidence and improve your self-esteem.

4. Exercise boosts energy

Winded by grocery shopping or household chores? Regular physical activity can improve your
muscle strength and boost your endurance.
Exercise delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues and helps your cardiovascular system
work more efficiently. And when your heart and lung health improve, you have more energy to
tackle daily chores.

5. Exercise promotes better sleep

Struggling to snooze? Regular physical activity can help you fall asleep faster, get better sleep
and deepen your sleep. Just don't exercise too close to bedtime, or you may be too energized to
go to sleep.

6. Exercise puts the spark back into your sex life

Do you feel too tired or too out of shape to enjoy physical intimacy? Regular physical activity
can improve energy levels and increase your confidence about your physical appearance, which
may boost your sex life.
But there's even more to it than that. Regular physical activity may enhance arousal for women.
And men who exercise regularly are less likely to have problems with erectile dysfunction than
are men who don't exercise.

7. Exercise can be fun ... and social!

Exercise and physical activity can be enjoyable. They give you a chance to unwind, enjoy the
outdoors or simply engage in activities that make you happy. Physical activity can also help you
connect with family or friends in a fun social setting.
So take a dance class, hit the hiking trails or join a soccer team. Find a physical activity you
enjoy, and just do it. Bored? Try something new, or do something with friends or family.

The bottom line on exercise

Exercise and physical activity are great ways to feel better, boost your health and have fun. For
most healthy adults, the Department of Health and Human

Services recommends:

At least 150 minutes a week of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes a week of vigorous
aerobic activity, or a combination of moderate and vigorous activity. The guidelines suggest that
you spread this exercise throughout the week. Examples include running, walking or swimming.
Even small amounts of physical activity are helpful, and accumulated activity throughout the day
adds up to provide health benefits.

Strength training exercises for all major muscle groups at least two times a week. Examples
include lifting free weights, using weight machines or doing body-weight training.

Spread your activities throughout the week. If you want to lose weight, meet specific fitness
goals or get even more benefits, you may need to ramp up your moderate aerobic activity to 300
minutes or more a week.

Remember to check with your doctor before starting a new exercise program, especially if you
have any concerns about your fitness, haven't exercised for a long time, have chronic health
problems, such as heart disease, diabetes or arthritis.

Dealing with Stress

We know that too much stress can be bad for you. It can affect both physical and mental health.
It is also extremely personal: different people find different situations stressful, and also find that
different ways of coping may be more or less helpful to them.
It is therefore helpful to be aware of a wide range of tools and techniques for

managing stress, and this page provides some tips that may be useful.
Recognising Stress
The first step to managing and dealing with stress is to recognise it.

1. Learn to recognise the signs that you are becoming stressed

There are a wide range of possible signs and symptoms that may be associated with stress. These
include headaches, stomach upsets and indigestion, and sleep problems. Many people also find
they become very emotional and have trouble regulating their emotions.
Unfortunately, most of these signs are fairly non-specific: that is, they may be associated with
many different illnesses and conditions. It can therefore be hard to identify when your symptoms
are the result of stress. You should always consult a doctor if these symptoms last any length of
time.
It is a good idea to learn to recognise the signs that you are becoming stressed, so that you can
take action early on.

2. Identify your personal ‘stress triggers’

We all have particular situations or people that make us more stressed. Some of these are easily
identifiable and may be avoidable. However, sometimes stress may build up over time, and result
from a pattern of incidents or events, rather than a single trigger.

3. Look after yourself physically

When you are physically fit and well, it is much easier to cope with stress. When you become
stressed, it is harder to motivate yourself to care about what you eat, or whether you exercise.
However, not doing so can also make you more stressed. Get into good habits while your stress
levels are fairly low, and you may find that they never go up again. These ‘good habits’ include:

Taking regular exercise

Stressful situations increase the level of stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol in your
body.

These are the “fight or flight” hormones that evolution has hard-wired into our brains and which
are designed to protect us from immediate bodily harm

when we are under threat. However, stress in the modern age is rarely remedied by a fight or
flight response. Physical exercise can be used as a surrogate to metabolise the excessive stress
hormones and restore your body and mind to a calmer, more relaxed state.

Try to incorporate some physical activity into your daily routine on a regular basis, either before
or after work, or at lunchtime. Regular physical activity will also improve the quality of your
sleep.

Eating a good and balanced diet

In general, you should try to eat a healthy, well-balanced and nutritious diet. Avoid stimulants
like caffeine and tobacco as much as possible, because they can make you feel irritable and on
edge, which is stressful in itself. Also try to avoid refined sugars, which are often found in
manufactured foods, because the way they are metabolised in the body can also make you feel
tired and irritable.
Getting enough sleep
A lack of sleep is a significant cause of stress, and sleep is also affected by stress. This therefore
creates a vicious cycle.
Try to get into a good sleep routine. For example, make sure that your bedroom is a tranquil
oasis with no reminders of the things that cause you stress. Avoid caffeine during the evening, as
well as excessive alcohol if you know that this leads to disturbed sleep. Stop doing any mentally
demanding work (and also avoid phones and other screens) several hours before going to bed so
that you give your brain time to calm down. Try taking a warm bath or reading a calming,
undemanding book for a few minutes to relax your body, tire your eyes and help you forget
about the things that worry you.
You should also aim to go to bed at roughly the same time each day so that your mind and body
get used to a predictable bedtime routine.

4. Manage your time

At times, we all feel overburdened by our 'To Do' list and this is a common cause of stress.
Accept that you cannot do everything at once and start to prioritise your tasks and set aside time
for each one.
Make a list of all the things that you need to do and list them in order of genuine priority. Note
what tasks you need to do personally and what can be delegated to others to do. Record which
tasks need to be done immediately, in the next week, in the next month, or when time allows.
By editing what might have started out as an overwhelming and unmanageable task list, you can
break it down into a series of smaller, more manageable tasks spread out over a longer time
frame, with some tasks removed from the list entirely through delegation or because they are
simply not important enough.

5. Learn to say ‘no’

A common cause of stress is having too much to do and too little time in which to do it.
However, even in this situation, many people will still agree to take on additional responsibility.
Learning to say “No” to additional or unimportant requests will help to reduce your level of
stress, and may also help you develop more self-confidence.
To learn to say “No”, you need to understand why you find it difficult. Many people find it hard
to say “No” because they want to help and are trying to be nice and to be liked. For others, it is a
fear of conflict, rejection or missed opportunities. Remember that these barriers to saying “No”
are all self-created.

6. Make time for fun and relaxation

It is important to include time for fun and relaxation in your schedule. These are important for
helping you to feel good generally, and that in turn reduces stress, and keeps you healthy.
Looking forward to doing things that you enjoy, and that give you pleasure, helps when you have
to cope with less pleasant aspects of life. What’s more, laughter has huge positive benefits for
both mental and physical health.
If you are working hard, and are conscientious, however, it can feel ‘wrong’ to take time out to
relax and have fun.
It is therefore important to remember that you and your health are important. You should not
ignore your physical or mental health in favour of more urgent activities.
If you consciously put relaxing or fun activities into your diary, and think of this as a way to
keep yourself healthy and able to work, you are likely to feel much more positive. This, in turn,
will mean that you feel less guilty, and therefore stressed, about doing it.

7. Develop techniques that will help you to feel in control of your life
There is plenty of research that suggests that the single factor that causes most stress is feeling
out of control.
One way that you can help yourself to avoid stress is to develop techniques to help you solve
problems and make decisions more easily.
For example, one problem-solving technique involves writing down the problem and coming up
with as many possible solutions as you can. Decide on the good and bad points of each one and
select the best solution. Write down each step that you need to take as part of the solution: what
will be done, how will it be done, when will it be done, who is involved and where will it take
place.

HOW STRONG ARE YOU? MENTAL AND

PHYSICAL ENDURANCE IN SPORT
“The mind’ll quit a lot sooner than the body will.” I had a coach a few years ago that would tell
us this as we struggled to finish our workouts. It was something that was meant to inspire, but
that we grew to hate. It was something that made us realize that there was no way we were going
to get out of our workout. But it made us realize that we are capable of more than we think,
making us better athletes in the end.

It’s been about three years since I’ve seen my dear coach, but his message stuck with me. I’ve
thought about it a lot. I’ve repeated his saying in my head as I struggled with workouts, research,
getting up in the morning, and sometimes finishing my meals (poor students have to take full
advantage). At any rate, I’ve thought a lot about what the psychology behind this saying could
mean for athletics.

In order to do this, though, we have to look at the physiology behind it. The saying implies that
the limit of what the body can do is more than what the mind believes it is capable of. In physical
terms, muscles work by providing energy to the different structures. Combine this energy with
electrical stimulation and the muscle will contract, causing movement. This means that we need
a certain amount of energy to get the muscle moving. Next, we look at what happens when we
build muscle. Essentially, the muscle gets slightly over-worked, gently damaging the muscle.
The natural response of the body is to overcompensate by filling the gaps with more muscle.
This means that, in order to build muscle and become a better athlete, pushing your body to a
slight overload is essential. In this, my coach was right. We have to push ourselves to something
that will make us tired and achy, but it will make us better in the long term.

On the mental side of this, we have to look at what motivates us to work out. For many
competitive athletes, the motivation is to get better and be better than the competition. There can
also be factors like the motivational climate built by coaches and teammates. A bit of
competition and other people depending on you will likely make you work harder to become
better. On top of all this, but still in the same vein of wanting to get better, we have to consider
that the person working out wants to be as good as possible – that means a high level of fitness,
optimal technique, and finding a degree of

sport-specific functional equivalence, all of which can also be related to the athletes belief in his
or her ability to do these things. We also have to understand that it can be a huge motivation to
look and feel good, and most people understand that hard work can get us there. This may fall
along the cost-benefit analysis spectrum [8] and definitely has to do with self-regulation.

These are how things work in a normal workout, but what about pushing yourself to the limit, as
it were? My coach would have us believe that the number of reps you can do is much higher than
you actually think, physiologically. But what does this limit mean? Is physical exhaustion a
physical incapability to complete the assigned task? That is, either the muscle does not have
enough energy to move, or the muscle has been damaged too much to be able to complete the
movement. The “Central Fatigue Hypothesis” contradicts common sense, claiming that muscular
exhaustion is a result of the central nervous system, and that muscles are able to work long after
the brain thinks it has reached exhaustion. This may still be due to a lack of glucose, bringing us
back to the amount of fuel in the body. Physically, though, the body should be able to do what
we ask of it, provided it has glucose. So what is keeping our bodies from the doing what we tell
it to do?

That’s where self-regulation comes in. According to the limited strength model of self-
regulation, humans are able to control their inner thoughts, emotions, feelings, and the physical
responses that follow. Two things that seem to have an effect are optimism and planning
behaviors. Being positive about and understanding the workout are extremely important in
making sure the physical and cognitive responses work to your advantage. If you think it will be
hard, you’ll expect pain, and you won’t work as hard. If you believe that you can finish the
workout and fully commit to getting better, you will complete the workout and ultimately be a
better athlete, as well as have optimum brain function on your side.

Obviously, there are downsides. In this author’s not so humble opinion, certain cult-like
followings that use these social support and motivational climate techniques to the extreme
(crossing fitness with religion, as it were) are detrimental. These followings have a high risk of
developing, among other things, rhabdomyolysis, a condition resulting from over-exertion –
beyond muscle-building discomfort – that can lead to drastic and severe consequences. This
points to the importance of a coach and athletes that understand what the workout actually
consists of and how to intelligently handle the resulting workload.

So, was my coach right? I think so. The mind will certainly quit sooner than the body if you
don’t think in the right way. I once dreaded hearing it, but now love the saying. With a positive
attitude, intelligent workouts, and a good

system of motivation and social support, the body can achieve things that the mind would never
consider possible. This is how elite athletes are made and how improvements can be made in
strength and endurance cleanly, ethically, and effectively. Keep up the good work, coach.
Will the World Ever Speak One Language?
There are currently 195 countries in the world, which gives us roughly 6,500 spoken languages,
although around 2,000 of them have fewer than 1,000 speakers. Some languages are more
popular than others, with Chinese Mandarin being the most spoken followed by Spanish, then
English. This may be surprising to an English speaker as it’s the main language of business,
travel and international relations – something that traces back to the days of the British Empire.

The novelty of everyone being able to communicate in one language is alluring, but we face a
less diverse world without our multiple languages. It’s predicted that 90% of all languages will
die in the next 100 years, leaving us with a mere 600 languages.

Changing Language

Language is constantly evolving – even in our lifetimes we’ve already seen some giant changes
thanks to mobile phones and the internet. Internet slang has delivered us new words and phrases
such as LOL, TTYL and BRB. Internet memes are aplenty and include phrases which navigate
into popular culture before disappearing into obscurity again such as “Ermegherd” and
“Howbow dah?”.

Traditional languages die out at a much slower pace than these internet terms. Languages tend to
die out with the civilisations that use them, Rome fell and took Latin with it. Latin isn’t
technically an extinct language, it’s a dead language. This is where there are no native speakers
left in the world, but there are currently people alive who’ve learnt and speak the language still.

An extinct language is one where there are no original native speakers or any speakers of the
language at all. These languages are ones like Biblical Hebrew, Sanskrit, Old Norse and Ancient
Egyptian. These languages aren’t spoken and used to communicate in the modern world,
however, they may still be used by researchers and specialists studying them.

We are currently in a world of shifting languages, with the Aboriginal peoples of North and
South America abandoning their native languages. Allegedly, a language goes extinct once every
two weeks across the planet. We’ve already seen this in the UK with Cornish and Welsh
speakers turning to English, although some pockets of these languages are being preserved in
local communities.

Could one hybrid language evolve?

According to Judeo-Christian scripture there was a time long ago when everybody spoke the
same language. The tale of the Tower of Babel states that a communal language was spoken
before Babylonians decided to create a “mighty city” and a tower to heaven, to which God
reacted by confusing the languages of workers so they couldn’t understand each other. This act
was because God was angered that nothing planned was thinking of future generations.
This story may just be religious symbolism, but humans have studied the possibility of one single
mother tongue spoken by ancient humans. There is no evidence of it, but it’s been noted that
there are lots of similarities between the oldest languages – Greek, Latin and Sanskrit. This
suggests that all modern languages share a common source.

In 1887 L.L Zamenhof constructed a language called Esperanto. This language was created with
the intention to be used as a worldwide standard language, which was not only easy to learn, but
would help overcome the natural indifference of mankind. Currently, there are over two million
people who speak Esperanto, but sadly it isn’t recognised as the international auxiliary language
of the world yet, but there are still speakers hoping to achieve this.

Globalisation and dominant cultures

We live in a connected world, where you can easily travel from London to Sydney in 22 hours
and 30 minutes, whereas taking a boat in 1914 would take over 40 days. Globalisation is one of
the main reasons questions on having a universal international language arose originally. The
social process of creating global economic, political, cultural, linguistic and environmental
interconnections and flows means that country borders are becoming less relevant.

Globalisation is changing the way we communicate, allowing us to take our languages across the
world and teach them to others. It also unfortunately allows for languages to die or become
extinct where native speakers opt to use a different language. This is what we’re seeing
worldwide with the English language. Where English is used for business, travel, education and
more it’s seen as a “world language” by some. The allure of a world language taps into humans’
need to be connected, and their desire to be included in this world brain.

Some people aren’t pleased about English being used as the world language, as language is a
huge part of every country’s identity. Without their language they may lose part of their inherent
culture. In speaking English, you sign up to

a set of rules and cultural etiquettes abided by native speakers. Some see this English takeover as
homogenising their individual identities and interests, equalizing values and desires but doing the
opposite for opportunities.

Despite the threat of globalisation and extinction of languages there are a few new languages
creeping into the world as well. Fictional languages are surprisingly becoming more commonly
known amongst fan groups, with some speakers being fluent in these languages. We wrote a blog
about this “5 Fictional Languages that Became Real”.

It’s unlikely that we’ll see a world that speaks one language any time soon. Protecting each
individual countries’ cultures is a huge barrier, but an important one to ensure our world is as
beautifully diverse as it’s always been.

How Languages Die

The 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21) is in full gear and climate change is again on
everyone’s mind. It conjures up images of melting glaciers, rising sea levels, droughts, flooding,
threatened habitats, endangered species, and displaced people. We know it threatens biodiversity,
but what about linguistic diversity?

Humans are the only species on the planet whose communication system exhibits enormous
diversity. And linguistic diversity is crucial for understanding our capacity for language. An
increase in climate-change related natural disasters may affect linguistic diversity. A good
example is Vanuatu, an island state in the Pacific, with quite a dramatic recent rise in sea levels.

There are over 7,000 languages spoken in the world today. These languages exhibit enormous
diversity, from the number of distinctive sounds (there are languages with as few as 11 different
sounds and as many as 118) to the vast range of possible word orders, structures and concepts
that languages use to convey meaning. Every absolute that linguists have posited has been
challenged, and linguists are busy debating if there is anything at all that is common to all
languages in the world or anything at all that does not exist in the languages of the world. Sign
languages show us that languages do not even need to be spoken. This diversity is evidence of
the enormous flexibility and plasticity of the human brain and its capacity for communication.
Studying diverse languages gives us invaluable insights into human cognition. But language
diversity is at risk. Languages are dying every year. Often a language’s death is recorded when
the last known speaker dies, and about 35 percent of languages in the world are currently losing
speakers or are more seriously endangered. Most of these have never been recorded and so
would be lost forever. Linguists estimate that about 50 percent of the languages spoken today
will disappear in the next 100 years. Some even argue that up to 90 percent of today’s languages
will have disappeared by 2115.

Why languages die

There are many reasons why languages die. The reasons are often political, economic or cultural
in nature. Speakers of a minority language may, for example, decide that it is better for their
children’s future to teach them a language that is tied to economic success. For example, the vast
majority of second-generation immigrants to the United States do not speak their parents’
languages fluently. It is economically and culturally more beneficial to speak English.

Migration also plays a large role in language change and language death. When speakers of
Proto-Indo-European migrated to most of Europe and large parts of Asia between 6,000 and
8,000 years ago, they probably brought about massive language change and language death. In
Western Europe, Basque could possibly be the only modern language that survived the influx of
the Indo-Europeans.

In the coming centuries, we may experience an increase in climate-related migration. It is already

clear that climate change influences modern migration patterns. Climate-related disasters
displaced an estimated 20m people in 2008.

Losing languages to natural disasters

Some of the countries affected by the earthquake and tsunami that killed about 230,000 people in
2004 are also very linguistically diverse. India has 447 indigenous languages and a Greenberg
diversity index of 91.4 percent and Indonesia has 706 indigenous languages and a Greenberg
diversity index of 81.6 percent.
Researchers had just discovered the Dusner language, which had only a handful of remaining
speakers, when flooding in 2010 devastated the Papua region of Indonesia, where the Dusner
village is located. Luckily, some of the speakers had survived, and the language could be
documented.

Often, we do not know precisely what effect natural disasters have on the languages spoken in
affected areas. What we do know though is that environmental pressures increase mobility and
migration and that migration affects language change and death. A further increase in climate-
related disasters may further accelerate the disappearance of languages. This would be a tragic
loss not just for the people and cultures involved, but for cognitive science as well.

The Relationship between Language and

Culture Defined
The relationship between language and culture is a complex one. The two are intertwined. A
particular language usually points out to a specific group of people. When you interact with
another language, it means that you are also interacting with the culture that speaks the language.
You cannot understand one’s culture without accessing its language directly.

When you learn a new language, it not only involves learning its alphabet, the word arrangement
and the rules of grammar, but also learning about the specific society’s customs and behavior.
When learning or teaching a language, it is important that the culture where the language belongs
be referenced, because language is very much ingrained in the culture.

Paralanguage: The Relationship Between Language And Culture

Complex is one term that you can use to describe human communication since paralanguage is
used to transmit messages. Paralanguage is specific to a culture, therefore the communication
with other ethnic groups can lead to misunderstandings.
When you grow up in a specific society, it is inevitable to learn the glances, gestures and little
changes in voice or tone and other communication tools to emphasize or alter what you want to
do or say. These specific communication techniques of one culture are learned mostly by
imitating and observing people, initially from parents and immediate relatives and later from
friends and people outside the close family circle.
Body language, which is also known as kinesics, is the most obvious type of paralanguage.
These are the postures, expressions and gestures used as non-verbal language. However, it is
likewise possible to alter the meaning of various words by changing the character or tone of the
voice.

Homologous Relationship Between Language And Culture

The phrase, language is culture and culture is language is often mentioned when language and
culture are discussed. It’s because the two have a homologous although complex relationship.
Language and culture developed together and influenced each other as they evolved. Using this
context, Alfred L. Krober, a cultural anthropologist from the United States said that culture
started when speech was available, and from that beginning, the enrichment of either one led the
other to develop further.

If culture is a consequence of the interactions of humans, the acts of

communication are their cultural manifestations within a specific community. Ferruccio Rossi-
Landi, a philosopher from Italy whose work focused on philosophy, semiotics and linguistics
said that a speech community is made up of all the messages that were exchanged with one
another using a given language, which is understood by the entire society. Rossi-Landi further
added that young children learn their language and culture from the society they were born in. In
the process of learning, they develop their cognitive abilities as well.

According to Professor Michael Silverstein, who teaches psychology, linguistics and

anthropology at the University of Chicago, culture’s communicative pressure represents aspects
of reality as well as connects different contexts. It means that the use of symbols that represent
events, identities, feelings and beliefs is also the method of bringing these things into the current
context.

Influencing The Way People Think

The principle of linguistic relativity tells us that language directly influences the way people
view the world. Anthropologist-linguist Edward Sapir of the United States said that the language
habits of specific groups of people built the real world. He further added that no two languages
are similar in such a way that they would represent one society. The world for each society is
different. In analysis, this means that speaking a language means that the person is assuming a
culture. Knowing another culture, based on this principle, is knowing its particular language.
And we need communication to highlight interpretations and representations of that world. This
is why the relationship between language and culture is essential when learning any new
language.

Inter-Cultural Interactions
What is likely to happen if there is interaction between two cultures? In today’s scenario, inter-
cultural interactions are very common. Communication is necessary for any person who wants to
understand and get along with people whose background and beliefs are greatly dissimilar from
their own.

It is easy to use language to mark cultural identity. But we also use language to describe
processes and developments, like explain intentions of a specific speaker. Specific languages
refer to particular cultural groups.

Values, basic assumptions, behavioral conventions, beliefs and attitudes shared by an ethnic
group make up what we call culture. This set of attributes influences the behavior of the
individual members of the group and their interpretations of the meanings of the behavior
displayed by each member.

It is through language that we express the attributes of culture. We also use

language to point out unique objects in our cultures.

All this means that learning and teaching another language is essential for international
communication and cooperation. The knowledge of other languages facilitates knowledge of
other countries and the specific cultures of each one. Again, this is why the relationship between
language and culture is critically important.

Transmission Of Culture And Language

Language is learned, which means it can be culturally transmitted. Pre-school children take on
their first language from their exposure to random words they encounter in and out of their
homes. When they reach school age, they learn their first language or another language. If it is
the first language, the children are taught writing and reading, the correct ways to construct
sentences and how to use formal grammar. However, the child gained initial knowledge about
the essential structure and vocabulary of the first language before the child started school.

Conversely, culture is transmitted in a large part, by language, through teaching. Language is the
reason why humans have histories that animals do not have. In the study of animal behavior
through the course of history, alterations to their behavior were the result of the intervention of
humans through domestication and other types of interference.

The culture of humans on the other hand is as different as the world’s languages. They are likely
to change over time. In industrialized countries, the changes in the language are more rapid.

Language Shapes Culture

Oral instruction, and not imitation, is how we learn culture. There could be some imitation, if the
learner is still young. With language, we have a better way to understand methods of social
control, products, techniques and skills. Spoken language offers a vast quantity of usable
information for the community. This helps to quicken new skill acquisition and the techniques to
adapt to new environments or altered circumstances.
The advent of writing increased the process of culture dissemination. Diffusing information
became much easier thanks to the permanent state of writing. And thanks to the invention of
printing and increase in literacy, this process continues to evolve and speed up.

Modern techniques for fast communication transmission across the globe through broadcasting
and the presence of translation services around the world help make usable knowledge to be
accessible to people anywhere in the world. Thus, the world benefits from the fast transference,
availability and

exchange of social, political, technological and scientific knowledge.

Assimilation And Social Differentiation, And Language

Through time, variations appeared within a language. Transmission of a language is self-
perpetuating unless there is deliberate interference. However, it became important for humans to
improve their social hierarchies and social status to advance personally. It’s safe to say that many
people cultivate their dialect phonologically, grammatically, and lexically to fit into new
communities.
An example of this phenomenon is the insistence of immigrants from Europe to speak American
English when they decided to move to the United States. It is because they realized that speaking
American English is the sign of acceptance in their new home country. Unexpectedly, third
generation immigrants now want to get in touch with the language of their ancestors.

UK to ban junk food advertising online and

before 9pm on TV from 2023
Prohibition of adverts for products high in fat, salt and sugar could cost broadcasters more than
200m annually in revenue.

The government is poised to announce a ban on junk food advertising online and before 9pm on
TV from 2023, as Boris Johnson looks to deliver on his pledge to tackle the UK’s growing
obesity crisis.

The new measures, which will be some of the toughest marketing restrictions in the world, will
heavily impact the more than £600m spent by brands on all food advertising online and on TV
annually.

The 9pm pre-watershed ban on advertising TV products deemed to be high in fat, salt and sugar
(HFSS) could cost TV broadcasters such as ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky more than
£200m a year in revenue.

The online ad ban would affect all paid-for forms of digital marketing, from ads on Facebook to
paid-search results on Google, text message promotions, and paid activity on sites such as
Instagram and Twitter. It is estimated that more than £400m is spent on advertising food
products online in the UK annually.

The tough rules, which are expected to be announced as soon as Thursday, follow Johnson
changing his view on personal health decisions after his hospitalisation with coronavirus last
year. The prime minister is said to blame his own health issues for contributing to his illness.
Overweight people are at greater risk of severe illness or death from Covid.

Research has found that one in three children leaving primary school are overweight or obese, as
are almost two-thirds of adults in England. Last year, the government’s consultation on proposals
to implement a ban estimated that children under 16 were exposed to 15bn junk food ads online
in 2019, compared with 700m two years earlier.

However, the new restrictions include a significant number of “carve-outs” and exemptions
which mean that they will fall short of the total ban proposed last year, which the advertising and
broadcasting industry said was too indiscriminate and draconian”.

For example, brand-only advertising online and on TV will continue to be

allowed. This means a company often associated with poor dietary habits, such as McDonald’s,
will be able to advertise as long as no HFSS products appear. Brands will also be allowed to
continue to promote their products on their own websites and social media accounts.

The government is also to exempt a range of products from inclusion in the ban after the
definition of junk food products proposed last year would have meant that the advertising of
items including avocados, Marmite and cream would have been blocked.

These will include products not considered as traditional “junk food”, such as honey and jam, but
will also cover zero-sugar drinks and McDonald’s nuggets, which are not nutritionally deemed
an HFSS product.
Small and medium-sized companies – those with less than 250 employees – will continue to be
allowed to advertise junk food products.

In addition, the business-to-business market – companies that do not target consumers but are
part of the food industry supply chain – will still be allowed to advertise HFSS items.

Junk food advertising will still be allowed through audio media, such as podcasts and radio, and
there will be no new restrictions for the out-of-home sector, which includes billboards, poster
sites, on buses, and in locations such as railway stations and airports.

The list of products, and the ban itself, will be reviewed every few years.

Why Sweden Bans Advertising Targeted at

Children
In 1991, Sweden passed legislation banning advertising targeted at children under 12, including
all commercials promoting food or toys that are aired before, during or after children’s television
programming. The reasoning behind that ban is that kids cannot tell the difference between ads
and actual TV programs, a stance that is supported by numerous pieces of research, including a
2009 study from Yale University.

The move to ban advertising aimed at children came in the wake of deregulation in Sweden,
which saw the country go from having just two state-funded TV channels (SVT 1 and SVT 2) to
a growing number of commercial channels that showed ads and had a much more aggressive
stance on gaining viewership, and increasing profits. Sweden, having never had any commercial
broadcasting, moved quickly to protect children – and parents – from commercials that would
increase consumerism and also promote unhealthy food products and bad habits among kids.

The aforementioned Yale study found that children between the ages of seven and 11 who watch
cartoons were unable to differentiate between the actual program and the food commercials
shown in between segments – and that they ate more snacks and sugary food when watching
with ads, and demanded more things they saw in ads between episodes of their favourite
cartoons, compared to when they saw the cartoons with no ads.
Obviously, Sweden was doing the right thing in regards to protecting kids from an overdose of
adverting, and in 2001, when it held the EU presidency, Sweden even pushed for the ban to be
implemented across the European Union, albeit unsuccessfully. The legislation remains widely
popular in Sweden, but for better or worse, the advent of satellite TV channels that are broadcast
from other countries, such as the UK, where no such ban exists, has weakened the impact.

Concerns about the ethical issues surrounding the advertising of unhealthy foods in particular
have increased, with many studies finding a direct link between obesity in children and their
exposure to marketing of highly unhealthy food, particularly when favourite cartoon characters
or film heroes are used to promote the ‘food’.

Studies also show an increase in parent–child conflicts and increased

materialistic values among children who are exposed to advertising targeted at them while they
watch TV.
So while much of the rest of the world revels in advertising and actually spends time discussing
their favourite ads, kids in Sweden are somewhat protected from this, giving them a better shot at
not fighting with their parents over that must-have toy, and avoiding food that is really just a
collection of chemicals.

Are Newspapers Dead or Adapting in the Age of Digital News?

Are newspapers dying? That’s the raging debate these days. Many say the demise of the daily
paper is just a matter of time—and not much time at that. The future of journalism is in the
digital world of websites and apps—not newsprint—they say.

But wait. Another group of folks insist that newspapers have been with us for hundreds of
years, and although all news may someday be found online, papers have plenty of life in them
yet.
So who’s right? Here are the arguments so you can decide.

Newspapers Are Dead

Newspaper circulation is dropping, display and classified ad revenue are drying up, and the
industry has experienced an unprecedented wave of layoffs in recent years. A third of the large
newsrooms across the country had layoffs between 2017 and April 2018 alone. Big metro papers
such as the Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer have gone under, and even
bigger newspaper companies such as the Tribune Company have been in bankruptcy.
Gloomy business considerations aside, the dead-newspaper people say the internet is just a better
place to get news. “On the web, newspapers are live, and they can supplement their coverage
with audio, video, and the invaluable resources of their vast archives,” said Jeffrey I. Cole,
director of USC's s Digital Future Center. “For the first time in 60 years, newspapers are back in
the breaking news business, except now their delivery method is electronic and not paper.”

Papers Aren't Dead—Not Yet, Anyway

Yes, newspapers are facing tough times, and yes, the internet can offer many things that papers
can’t. But pundits and prognosticators have been predicting the death of newspapers for decades.
Radio, TV, and now the internet were all supposed to kill them off, but they’re still here.
Contrary to expectations, many newspapers remain profitable, although they no longer have the
20 percent profit margins they did in the late 1990s. Rick

Edmonds, a media business analyst for the Poynter Institute, says the widespread newspaper
industry layoffs of the last decade should make papers more viable. “At the end of the day, these
companies are operating more leanly now,” Edmonds said. “The business will be smaller and
there may be more reductions, but there should enough profit there to make a viable business for
some years to come.”

Years after the digital pundits started predicting the demise of print, newspapers still take
significant revenue from print advertising, but it declined from $60 billion to about $16.5 billion
between 2010 and 2017.
And those who claim that the future of news is online and only online ignore one critical point:
Online ad revenue alone just isn’t enough to support most news companies. Google and
Facebook dominate when it comes to online ad revenue. So online news sites will need an as-yet
undiscovered business model to survive.

What is the Depletion of Natural Resources?

The depletion of natural resources occurs when resources are consumed at a faster rate than that
of replacement. Natural resources are those resources that are in existence without human actions
and they can either be renewable or non-renewable. And when it gets down to the discussion of
natural resource depletion, it a terminology used in reference to water usage, farming, fossil fuel
consumption, fishing, and mining. And above all, natural resource depletion is defined on the
premise that the value of a resource is measured in terms of its availability in nature.

A resource that is rare on earth due to depletion has a higher value than a natural resource which
is in abundance. Due to the increasing global population, the levels of natural resource
degradation is also increasing. Consequently, the world’s eco-footprint is estimated to be one and
a half times the ability of the earth to sustainably provide each individual with enough resources
that meet their consumption levels. Herein is a detailed explanation of the causes, effects, and
solutions of natural resource depletion.

Causes of Depletion of Natural Resources

1. Overpopulation
The total global population is more than seven billion people. Still, there is a consistent increase
in the overall earth populace and this has been a critical factor in accelerating the depletion of
natural resources. An increase in the populace expands the need for resources and conditions
necessary to sustain it.

In addition, it contributes to increased ecological contamination. Research further indicates that

developing countries are using more and more resources to industrialize and support their ever-
increasing population. Hence, the depletion of natural resources will continue as long as the
world population increases.

2. Poor Farming Practices

Humans are causing a lot of stress to land resources due to the over-reliance on food production
for daily nutritional requirements. Poor irrigation practices, for example, is a key contributing
factor to salinization and alkalization of the soil that sustains plant growth. Poor soil
management practices and the use of heavy machinery and farming equipment also destroy the
soil structure

making it unsuitable for plant growth.

Some farming practices such as excessive use of pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides equally
kill important soil micro-organisms that are essential in replenishing nutrients in the soil.

3. Logging
The World Bank reported that the net loss of global forest between 1990 and 2016 was 1.3
million square kilometers. On the same note, tropical deforestation is estimated to occur at a rate
of one percent annually, especially in Latin America regions. People are clearing forests
primarily for agricultural reasons due to the increase in the population pressure.
Humans are also cutting down trees to make space for residential complexes and multiplexes.
Through deforestation, the planet not only loses tress but also thousands of animals and great
plant biodiversity due to the destruction of their natural habitats. Moreover, increased logging
activities lead to soil erosion that degrades natural soil minerals.

4. Overconsumption of Natural Resources

The 1760 industrial revolution saw large-scale mineral and oil exploration and the practice has
been gradually growing, leading to more and more natural oil and mineral depletion. And
together with the advancements in technology, development, and research in the contemporary
era; exploitation of minerals has become easier and humans are digging deeper to access
different ore. The increased exploitation of different minerals has led to some of them entering
into a production decline.
For example, minerals such as Gasoline, Copper, and Zinc production are estimated to decline in
the next 20 years. Plus, oil mining continues to rise due to the upsurge in the number of engines
that use petroleum thereby magnifying its depletion. The peak oil theory supports this fact by
putting forward that it will come a time when the globe will experience uncertainties on
alternative means of fuels owing to the over-harvesting of petroleum.

5. Pollution
An increase in population and modern anthropogenic activities is a major contributor to the
disposal of pollutants into the natural environment and as such, the value of natural environments
is gradually exposed to degradation. The soil, air, lakes, and seas are being contaminated with
sewage, radioactive, materials, and toxic chemicals among other pollutants.
Uncontrolled release of carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, sulfur oxide, and carbon dioxide, for
example, have resulted in the degradation of the ozone layer and global warming –
environmental changes with their resultant depletive impacts on different natural habitats.
Millions of different animal and plant species have thus lost their natural habitats and are on the
verge of extinction.

6. Industrial and Technological Development

The present-day world is incessantly becoming industrialized as more and more countries make
major technological breakthroughs. But as technological advancements continue, there is
similarly a considerable growth in industries that release toxins and chemical by-products which
are eventually deposited in lakes, soils, and lands. As a result, the by-products and toxic
materials alter natural habits such as aquatic systems and wildlife. Examples of the impacts
include acidic lakes, dead zones, and the death of wildlife as well as aquatic life. Industrial and
technological advancements have also driven the demand for virgin materials for research,
development, and production. More resources are hence being used to satisfy the industrial
demands, increasing the rate of natural resource depletion.

Effects of Depletion of Natural Resources

1. Water shortages
Poor farming practices, deforestation, and pollution are major causes of water resource depletion
due to contamination, wastage, and the destruction of natural water catchment areas. As of today,
approximately one billion people lack access to clean water because of the effects of
deforestation and contamination of water sources and groundwater. Water shortage further
contributes to famine and food insecurity.

2. Oil depletion
Oil is a non-renewable resource that accounts for approximately 40 percent of the total energy
used globally. Research by EIA’s International Energy Outlook had shown that due to the high
rate of oil exploitation, the amount of oil remaining would last for only 25 years.
Oil is an essential commodity in manufacturing, planting, mining, and transportation among
many activities, and its depletion would be devastating. The adverse effects of oil depletion
include the fall of the business, the high cost of living in developing countries, and uncertainty in
the transport sector.

3. Loss of forest cover

Approximately 18 million acres of forest cover are destroyed annually. This means that half of
the world’s natural forest cover has already been cleared. Furthermore, studies indicate an
increase in deforestation in the past three decades has resulted in a 12% to 17% rise in
greenhouse gases globally. Other devastating effects of deforestation include soil erosion, an
increase in the greenhouse gases leading to global warming, loss of biodiversity, increased
flooding, and drought.

4. Depletion of minerals

There has been an increase in the exploitation of minerals such as phosphorus, gasoline, copper,
and zinc among others to sustain the seven billion people on earth. Studies by Global Phosphorus
Research Institute, for example, shows that the earth could run out of phosphorus – an essential
element for plant growth, in the next 50 to 100 years.
Studies by the United States Geological Survey also indicate that there is an increase in non-
renewable resources consumption of natural minerals and construction materials such as copper,
sand, gravel, and stone.

5. Extinction of Species
Due to the changes in the living conditions of animals as a result of resource overexploitation
and habitat degradation, some species may go extinct. Forested regions are known to be a habitat
for thousands of animals but deforestation is progressively destroying forest habitats. Practices
such as overfishing and pollution have similarly led to a drastic reduction in the number of
marine species such as the tuna fish.

Solutions of Depletion of Natural Resources

1. Controlling Deforestation
Programs aimed at checking against deforestation such as REDD (Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation) created by the World Bank, the New York Declaration on
Forests, and the United Nations are initiatives that could help reduce the depletion of natural
resources.
The initiatives may also act as incentives for encouraging the general public to conserve forests
as these are the habitat and protectors of some of the world’s unique plant/animal species and
water sources respectively. Sustainability programs that aim to educate people about the
importance of conserving natural resources should also be enacted as a way of focusing on the
long-term risks associated with environmental degradation.

2. Reducing oil, mineral, and material consumption

Oil-rich countries together with the World Bank, state, and consumables’ regulatory bodies
should join hands towards a common international objective of discussing how oil and mineral
consumption, as well as exploitation, can be reduced. Manufactures can, for instance, be trained
on lean manufacturing (recycling, re-use, and reducing wastage) while consumers sensitized on
how to adopt re-use, reducing wastage, and recycling techniques.

3. More exploration and use of renewable sources of energy

Renewables such as solar and wind power can be explored more and utilized to reduce the
dependency on fossil fuel, which is a major cause of environmental pollution, climate change,
global warming, and destruction of

natural habitats.

4. Protecting wetlands and coastal ecosystems

Wetlands are regions saturated with groundwater that serve a significant role in sustaining
vegetation cover. The coastal and wetland ecosystems are thus vital in sustaining the food chain
as they replenish water sources and avail minerals and nutrients for primary producers (green and
flowering plants), essential for maintaining plant and animal biodiversity. Also when coastal
ecosystems are protected, they aid in controlling marine overfishing and protect coral reefs.
5. Sensitization and awareness creation
People need to be educated on how their daily practices put a strain on the scarce natural
resources and their individual contributions to the depletion of natural resources. The main
purpose of creating awareness would be to encourage people to preserve and restore the natural
environment by getting involved in conservation efforts.

The Importance of Alternative Fuels: What is

Their Impact?
Alternative fuels are important if we’d like to have a future.
Many people aren’t aware of what exactly alternative fuels are because they’re so used to
thinking about gasoline as fuel. The truth is that conventional fuels are harming the environment
and draining thousands of dollars from people every year.
We’ve built the modern world around vehicles so we practically need them if we’d like to
continue living our lives. However, that doesn’t mean we have to keep buying gasoline. There
are several alternative fuels that are much safer and affordable.
Continue reading to learn more about the importance of alternative fuels.

Conventional Fuels Are Limited

One of the main reasons why people are turning away from conventional fuels like oil and
petroleum is that they’ll eventually run out. Conventional fuels usually consist of those that
aren’t renewable, so many people are concerned about the future. A world crisis will occur the
day that the demand for these fuels is higher than the supply.
Many people believe that the sources of these fuels are associated with a plethora of problems.
For example, the oil fields in the Middle East are often under heavy scrutiny because they’ve
created somewhat of a monopoly. Coming out with new methods prevents people from having to
rely on the Middle East.

Pollution and Global Warming

The use of conventional fuels has a negative impact on the environment because they have
harmful exhaust emissions. Things like carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide all
reduce the quality of air, making it difficult to survive in.
As people continue using these fuels, the chemicals start causing the temperature in the earth’s
atmosphere to rise (global warming). Global warming is something that many people speculate
about, but there’s evidence that suggests it exists. For example, Greenland’s ice melt is
accelerating.

What Is an Alternative Fuel?

Alternative fuel is something that’s used in place of gasoline to power vehicles. Planes, boats,
and cars all use gasoline to operate, but many companies are introducing vehicles that can
operate on things like electricity and air.

Because conventional fuels are so harmful, the development of alternative fuels is important if
we’d like to continue making use of our vehicles. Although vehicles that use alternative fuels are
somewhat expensive compared to traditional vehicles, they’ll soon become affordable as we
come up with better ways to develop them.

The Convenience of Alternative Fuels

Not only are conventional fuels harmful to the environment, but they’re also a hassle to use.
Consider how many gas stations are set up around the world. Gas has to be transported to each of
these then people have to drive to the gas station to fill up.
Alternative fuels are allowing people to power their vehicles without having to drive somewhere.
Vehicles that are powered from electricity can be charged at home. Tesla has even set up stations
around the world that people can visit to charge their Teslas for anyone that would like to do
long-distance traveling.

Solar Energy
Solar energy is one of the best alternatives to gasoline because it comes directly from the sun.
The thing about solar energy is that we currently don’t have the technology to allow a car to run
off of it. However, it can be used to give electric vehicles a little more power when they’re
traveling.
People typically equip their vehicles with solar panels when they’re competing in electric vehicle
races. As technology develops, we’ll soon see vehicles that can run solely on solar energy.

Air-Engine
An air-engine is a type of engine that doesn’t use any emissions. Instead, it used compressed air
as its main source of energy. These pistons can be used in a piston engine that allows a vehicle to
run solely on compressed air. Air-engines use both warm and cold air to operate. The warm air is
used to expand air within the storage tank and the cold air is used for air conditioning. Air-
engines use an injection system to allow air to enter.

Electric
Battery electric vehicles are vehicles that have been used for several years. These vehicles run on
nothing but electricity that comes from batteries. Over the years, several companies have been
developing battery electric vehicles, but it wasn’t until recently that they became mainstream.
With companies like Tesla offering nothing but electric vehicles, other companies are taking note
and releasing electric vehicles. Electric vehicles don’t use emissions and they don’t require much
maintenance as a standard car does.
There are also hybrid vehicles that make use of both electricity and conventional fuels. These are
designed to allow drivers to choose what type

of fuel they’d like to use. Whenever a hybrid vehicle runs out of fuel, it will switch to electric as
its main source of energy.
The electric that’s drawn from the batteries is used to power everything from the engine to the
lights. Most electric vehicles can go as far as 200 miles, but the range varies depending on what
car you get.

Consider Getting a Vehicle That Uses Alternative Fuels

It’s no myth that conventional fuels harm the environment, but many people look past that and
continue using them. We’re witnessing the world change both environmentally and
economically, and conventional fuels are one of the main reasons for that.
If you’re someone that cares about the environment or would like to save on gas costs, you
should buy a vehicle that uses alternative fuels. You can get something like a Tesla for around
$35k and you won’t ever have to worry about paying for gas.
The UK is racing towards a winter energy crisis

Gas prices are spiking and the energy markets are coming under increasing pressure. The
combination may lead to a bleak winter.

Winter is coming – and it looks like it’s going to be a rocky one. The price of natural gas in the
UK has increased more than 420 per cent year on year. In mainland Europe, prices are tracking a
similarly sharp trajectory. And a perfect combination of other factors – including environmental
conditions and unpredictable accidents – is putting the industry under further strain.

These price fluctuations have a knock-on effect: the price of electricity – often generated from
gas – is spiking, while household suppliers are hitting the wall as catastrophically high wholesale
prices make their businesses uneconomical. Seven UK supply firms have gone out of business so
far this year. Bills for end users are forecast to rise 20 per cent, according to Citigroup.

It all makes for grim reading – particularly as gas remains a key source in powering our homes
and business. But we should get used to it. According to some experts, it’s just the first flashing
warning light on the dashboard of a car heading headlong into a prolonged, painful crash.

Almost everything that could go wrong with the energy markets is currently going wrong – and
there are few easy fixes. First, take the climate crisis: our fixation on low-cost fossil fuels has
engendered a situation that makes us more susceptible to supply shocks as we try and wean
ourselves off the thing that helped cause the problem in the first place. “We always had these
geopolitical risks,” says Adi Imsirovic, a senior research fellow at the Oxford

Institute for Energy Studies, and a former oil trader with 30 years’ experience. “Now we have
climate change risks that are essentially a premium on the prices.”

We’ve seen that most starkly in the US Gulf of Mexico, where Hurricane Ida has shut down
more than 40 per cent of oil and gas production in the area for more than two weeks, severely
limiting energy supplies. (More than 90 per cent of production was shut ahead of the hurricane’s
arrival as a safety precaution.) And the Gulf’s worries aren’t over yet: another storm that could
transform into a hurricane is being tracked as it bears down on the area, potentially prolonging
the pain. The shutdown is significant – more than half of the United States’s total natural gas
processing plant capacity is based on the Gulf’s shores, and nearly half of its petroleum
processing capabilities. Fifteen per cent of US oil production comes from the rigs off land.

“In the short run, we have all these extreme weather events like in the US Gulf that impacts
supply of energy,” says Imsirovic, who adds that around a quarter of the world’s daily oil
production has been lost due to the Gulf of Mexico shutting down. At the same time as the
shutdowns, Europe is dealing with too little wind. Wind power, which supplied a quarter of UK
electricity generation in 2020, has been unusually low this summer.
We’re also facing issues with energy supplies as the economy bounces back to some semblance
of normality as we live with Covid-19 – but the energy market isn’t keeping up. “We are going
back to a world where we have usual demand,” says Thierry Bros, professor at Sciences Po, a
university in Paris. “Pre-Covid demand for gas and electricity and gas in terms of capacity has
now grown, and you have a tightening of the market.” Whereas last year there was spare gas
supply capacity worldwide of around 140 billion cubic metres (bcm) in the global system, Bros
now says there is only 35bcm – almost all of it owned by Russian energy giant Gazprom, who
can be reticent to share. (Vladimir Putin said last week that “smart alecs” in the European energy
sector seeking market prices meant they had shied away from expending their supply there in the
past.) “If you look at this over a percentage of total demand, we moved from spare capacity north
of 3.5 per cent to something that is just around one per cent,” says Bros. “This is tightening the
market.”

A lack of investment when supplies were plentiful is now coming back to bite those tasked with
supplying fuel to end-users. Almost $100 billion (£72bn) less was spent on energy infrastructure
in 2020 compared to a year before, according to the International Energy Agency. Spending on
fuel production also dropped $160bn in the same period, the Agency says. Increased spending in
renewable investment at the same time did not match the declines in fossil fuels. “The natural
decline rate is kicking in,” says Bros.

Then there is plain bad luck. On September 15, the IFA-1 electricity cable, which supplies 2,000
megawatts of power to the UK from France, suffered a fire that is likely to knock out its supply
for the next month. Gas prices shot up to record levels as a result. It was an eerie echo of a
nightmare scenario forecast by National Grid earlier this year that modelled the impact of losing
such an interconnector, which would make the gap between market supply and demand as
narrow as it has been in years. “Prices are spiking again,” says Roy Manuell, an analyst at ICIS,
which tracks the energy market. And Manuell expects prices to remain high throughout the
winter as gas storage levels remain low, the wind doesn’t blow, and nuclear reactors go offline.

However, Manuell doesn’t foresee the issues being as significant in the long term. “The extreme
prices we see recently are quite anomalous because of the record low winds and gas prices,” he
says. But gas prices overall will increase unless renewable rollout increases, he reckons. “In
terms of preventative measures, investment in renewable technologies is important, and the UK
has done a good job of integrating them into the system, but not to the extent to which it can
mitigate what we’ve seen over the past few weeks,” Manuell says. “What’s been overlooked is
investment in storage technologies able to capture storage generation and use them over a long
period of time to enable the replacement of gas, coal and nuclear power plants.”

“I don't think it's a new normal,” says Emma Pinchbeck, CEO of Energy UK, the energy
industry’s trade body. “It's anything other than that, in that the international gas market is
exceptionally volatile, and the prices are record-breaking.” Rather, it’s an unusual confluence of
different events driven by unusual weather and unusual demand patterns for energy – the result
of yo-yoing economies trying to return to an even level post-pandemic. “There's only so much
you can do in a market that is this wild.”
Pinchbeck says part of the problem is a gap in UK government policy to ease the transition from
fossil fuels to renewables. “There’s a tendency for the government to say the power sector is
done, the sector has been decarbonised, the renewables transition is going at pace and all of that
good stuff,” she says. “But there is loads of policy we need to ensure that transition happens
smoothly and we don’t get any gaps.”

Manuell worries that the focus on hitting renewables targets has come at the extent of long-term
investment in storage technologies that mean the country is less susceptible to supply
fluctuations. Even in gas, long seen as the bridge between fossil fuels and renewables, the UK is
no longer able to store large volumes of energy to deploy when prices spike and supply dries up.
The UK’s

largest offshore gas storage facility, Rough, closed in 2017. It hasn’t been replaced. “The lack of
storage is making us a lot more susceptible to the price spikes,” says Imsirovic. “We’re literally
at the end of the pipe coming from Russia. Both physically and politically. Europe will take what
they need and we’re right at the end of it. We rely a lot more on spot markets than relying on
storage.”

And we’re reliant on gas more generally than we thought. “All we’ve seen over the last few
weeks is how reliant we are on these gas and coal-powered technologies,” says Manuell. What
that means for the future splits those watching events play out. “The jury is out whether this is a
one-off or we’re going to see more of this,” says Imsirovic.

Pinchbeck, the voice of the UK energy industry, is confident that while supplies will be tight for
the coming winter, National Grid – which forecasts future supply and demand – believes we’ll
still have enough energy to cover our needs, even if prices will have to rise to ensure things keep
going. Others are more sceptical. “UK consumers are seeing extreme volatility in terms of
prices,” says Bros. “You’re outside Europe so you may have blackouts with a higher probability
than us.”

The Psychology of Personality Formation

Personality is something that people tend to think a lot about. When we meet new people,
whether through work, school, or social events, it is often their personality on which we
immediately focus. Whether they are nice, helpful, outgoing, or shy are just a few of the things
that we assess as we evaluate the people around us.

What Is Personality Development?

It is our personality that makes us who we are, but how exactly do our personalities form?
Personality development has been a major topic of interest for some of the most prominent
thinkers in psychology. Since the inception of psychology as a separate science, researchers have
proposed a variety of ideas to explain how and why personality develops.
Personality development refers to how the organized patterns of behavior that make up each
person's unique personality emerge over time. Many factors go into influencing personality,
including genetics, environment, parenting, and societal variables. Perhaps most importantly, it is
the ongoing interaction of all of these influences that continue to shape personality over time.

Key Theories
Our personalities make us unique, but how does personality develop? How exactly do we
become who we are today? What factors play the most important role in the formation of
personality? Can personality ever change?

To answer this question, many prominent theorists developed theories to describe various steps
and stages that occur on the road of personality development. The following theories focus on
various aspects of personality development, including cognitive, social, and moral development.

Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development

In addition to being one of the best-known thinkers in the area of personality development,
Sigmund Freud remains one of the most controversial. In his well-known stage theory of
psychosexual development, Freud suggested that personality develops in stages that are related
to specific erogenous zones. Failure to complete these stages, he suggested, would lead to
personality problems in adulthood.

Freud’s Structural Model of Personality

Freud not only theorized about how personality developed over the course of childhood, but he
also developed a framework for how overall personality is structured. According to Freud, the
basic driving force of personality and

behavior is known as the libido. This libidinal energy fuels the three components that make up
personality: the id, the ego, and the superego.

The id is the aspect of personality present at birth. It is the most primal part of the personality
and drives people to fulfill their most basic needs and urges.

The ego is the aspect of personality charged with controlling the urges of the id and forcing it to
behave in realistic ways.

The superego is the final aspect of personality to develop and contains all of the ideals, morals,
and values imbued by our parents and culture. This part of personality attempts to make the ego
behave according to these ideals. The ego must then moderate between the primal needs of the
id, the idealistic standards of the superego and reality.

Freud's concept of the id, ego, and superego has gained prominence in popular culture, despite a
lack of support and considerable skepticism from many researchers. According to Freud, it is the
three elements of personality that work together to create complex human behaviors.

What Are the Id, Ego, and Superego?

Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development

Erik Erikson’s eight-stage theory of human development is one of the best-known theories in
psychology. While the theory builds on Freud’s stages of psychosexual development, Erikson
chose to focus on how social relationships impact personality development. The theory also
extends beyond childhood to look at development across the entire lifespan.

At each stage of psychosocial development, people face a crisis in which a task must be
mastered. Those who successfully complete each stage emerge with a sense of mastery and well-
being. Those who do not resolve the crisis at each stage may struggle with those skills for the
remainder of their lives.

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development remains one of the most frequently cited in
psychology, despite being subject to considerable criticism. While many aspects of his theory
have not stood the test of time, the central idea remains important today: children think
differently than adults.

According to Piaget, children progress through a series of four stages that are marked by
distinctive changes in how they think. How children think about themselves, others, and the
world around them plays an important role in the formation of personality.

Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development

Lawrence Kohlberg developed a theory of personality development that focused on the growth
of moral thought. Building on a two-stage process proposed by Piaget, Kohlberg expanded the
theory to include six different stages.

The theory has been criticized for a number of different reasons. One primary criticism is that it
does not accommodate different genders and cultures equally, Kohlberg’s theory remains
important in our understanding of how personality develops.

A Word From Very well

Personality involves not only inborn traits but also the development of cognitive and behavioral
patterns that influence how people think and act. Temperament is a key part of the personality
that is determined by inherited traits.

Character is an aspect of personality influenced by experience that continues to grow and change
throughout life. While personality continues to evolve over time and respond to the influences
and experiences of life, much of personality is determined by inborn traits and early childhood
experiences.

Nature vs. nurture: Which causes crime?

A combination of both biological and social factors combined mold people into who they are and
determines the mindset of one that chooses to engage in criminal behavior
The age old question of why crime exists is one that will never cease. While there are many
theories that attempt to address and explain this phenomenon, two specific concepts stand out
above the rest. They involve the belief that the social environment is the main reason why
individuals commit crime, and, secondly, crime occurs and is fostered by biological traits that
eventually lead to criminal behavior.

While both theories make outstanding arguments on why their concept is the best, the fact
remains that a combination of both biological and social factors combined mold people into who
they are and determines the mindset of one that chooses to engage in criminal behavior.

SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT
In order to truly understand how an environment can shape a mindset that has the potential to
lead to deviant behavior, we must first identify what a social environment is. “Human social
environments encompass the immediate physical surroundings, social relationships, and cultural
milicus within which defined groups of people function and interact” (Barnett & Casper, 2001).
An easierOne definition is molding behavior based on a set of morals, values and beliefs that are
instilled in individuals during early childhood. These morals, values and beliefs form a system
that facilitates decision making throughout the course of an individuals’ life.

Several criminal theorists have attempted to research and define the commonality between one’s
social environment and how it ties into the commission of crime. “Recent studies show that
during the last 5 years, 60 percent of the entire world’s city residents have, directly or indirectly,
been a victim to violence, crime and felony. Thus, the increasing crime rate, violent or non-
violent, is a serious threat for all the urban societies of the world” (Salehi, 2012). This proves
that society has contributed to fostering a social environment that breeds criminal behavior. But
there are other variables that need to be considered when attempting to identify what leads a
person towards a lifestyle of deviant behavior.

SOCIAL INFLUENCES
One’s upbringing and social learning environment directly contribute to an individual’s specific
criminogenic needs. Such needs are traits that lead to criminal behavior. In other words, our
experiences growing up as a child have

the capability to shape our view of the world, and have a direct impact on one’s ability to make
rational decisions. What may appear to be a rational decision to one individual could be
considered completely irrational by another.

One of the best examples of a criminogenic need that ties into the social learning environment
would be criminal peers. Such peers are those individuals that tend to coerce or indirectly effect
the decision making of another. “It is reasonable to suppose that adolescents can be influenced
by peers who are not actually present during a delinquent event (including occasions when an
offender acts alone) ( (Warr, 2002). Oftentimes, a young adult will elect to participate in
delinquent behavior simply to “fit in” with their peers. If that involves engaging in criminal
activity, then so be it.

However, there is a possibility that if such an individual had been raised in a positive
environment, there is a chance that the individual may elect to refrain from deviant behavior due
to said environment. Unfortunately, there is also research that indicates the opposite as well.
Those that have been raised under not so fortunate circumstances often exhibit criminal behavior
later in life; however, statistically they have a lower probability to do so.

OTHER FACTORS
Other factors that can be directly linked to the social environment would include child abuse,
domestic violence and exposure to emotional harm. “Research into the impact of childhood
abuse and neglect on violent behavior of adults who became serial killers concluded that adults
who had been physically, sexually, and emotionally abused as children were three times more
likely than were non-abused adults to act violently as adults” (Silva, Leong, & Ferrari, 2004).

A lack of positive developmental traits is directly connected with behavior as children drift from
adolescence on to adulthood. "When individuals with conduct disorder reach adulthood,
symptoms of aggression, property destruction, deceitfulness, and rule violation, including
violence against co-workers, partners, and children, may be exhibited in the workplace and the
home, such that antisocial personality disorder may be considered" (American Psychiatric
Association, 2013).

Criminogenic traits can and do contribute to a life of poor decisions, however, they don’t
necessarily all exist based on one’s individual social environment. Biological factors are often
the starting point for understanding criminal behavior.

BIOLOGICAL FACTORS
“Many genes may affect brain functioning in ways that either increase or

reduce the chances of individuals learning various complex behavior patterns” (Cullen, Agnew,
& Wilcox, 2014). Many often question whether it is possible to determine a link between
genetics and criminal behavior. There have been multiple research studies that have all come to
the same conclusion. The simple answer is yes, genetics does play a role. Adrian Rane, a well-
known bio-psychologist, once stated that “despite strong resistance in many quarters, there is
now little scientific doubt that genes play a significant role in antisocial behavior.” At the
moment of conception, genetics begin to play a factor in the development of traits that have the
potential to lead an individual down the path of illegal behavior.

“Some genes are expressed or turned on (or not) because of physical, social, and cultural factors
in the environment; and some genes—for example, those that influence difficult temperament,
impulsivity, novelty seeking, and lack of empathy—predispose people to be exposed to
environmental risks.” (Kaiser & Rasminsky, 2010) Once born, children learn from their parents
and their environment. An example of this would include a child that has been raised in a home
where aggression and violence is common. That child has a much higher probability to be
impulsive, and may have difficulty expressing emotions in what would be considered a positive
manner.

Addiction is also an excellent example of a genetic or biological trait that is passed on through
generations and has been identified as hereditary. While it is possible for a child to be born with
an addiction to illegal substances, many times, an individual is exposed to such a substance later
in life and finds them self easily addicted. It is possible that they carried a gene that would
predispose them to an addictive personality, and once exposed to a situation, they were easily led
to criminal thinking and potentially deviant behavior. Genetic traits can also have a direct effect
on their relationships as they enter adulthood.

Biological factors also play a role in early childhood development and can result in mental health
related problems. If someone is predisposed to enjoying solidarity, and is raised in an
environment that lacks positive reinforcement of social skills, the end result can be devastating.
Silva, Leong, and Ferrari (2004) identified a link between serial homicidal behavior and ASD,
also known as Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

This disorder can be identified as “Any person, talented or handicapped, whose social skills have
been severely deficient since very early childhood, who started to talk late or whose
communicative use of language is inadequate, and who perseverates and lacks cognitive and
behavioral flexibility meets the diagnostic criteria for an autistic-spectrum disorder” (Rapin,
2002). This is just one explanation for why serial killings and mass

murders occur.

CONCLUSION
While crime occurs for many reasons, researchers over the past several hundred years have made
attempts to gain answers to identify the root cause of the criminal mindset. Some research leads
us to believe social learning theory and environmental factors are the only contributing reasons
for why an individual elects to exhibit criminal behavior.

On the other hand, just as many research projects have taken an even deeper look and claim that
while social skills and the environment do play a major role, the fact remains that the
environment is a doorway to unlocking genetic traits that are instilled in people from conception.
While the social landscape is vital in raising a child with proper morals, values and a positive
belief system, it is not the only contributing factor in the causation of criminal activity within an
individual.

It is a combination of both biological factors in addition to our social environment that molds
each of us into who are today.

E-Books vs. Print Books: What's the

Difference?
In the last several years, e-books have become a mainstay of the publishing industry. However,
the demise of printed books as a result of the introduction of e-books has not materialized as
predicted.
According to the Association of American Publishers, e-book sales in the U.S. declined slightly
to $983 million in 2019 from a year earlier. The lower growth rate followed several years of
double-digit declines in e-book sales. Hardcover and paperback books still rule the market, with
approximately $3 billion and 2.5 billion in sales in 2019, respectively.
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic was a boon to print publishing. Sales rose 8.2% year over year to
a total of 751 million copies, according to Printing Impressions, a publishing industry journal.
More leisure time and a need to educate children at home were cited as reasons for the book-
buying spree. While e-booksare helping the publishing industry, they can be a bit daunting for
readers. If you are used to going to a local bookstore, browsing the aisles, and perhaps reading
the first chapter before purchasing, you still can with e-books, albeit with a little adjustment.

Print Books
Print books have the feel of a book that many readers love. You can hold it, turn the pages, and
feel the paper.
People who love to read spend a lifetime acquiring books. They may find it wrenching to
abandon their shelves of books for a single slab of plastic. Readers may also compare the quality
of illustrations between the two formats and find the print versions superior. The New Annotated
Sherlock Holmes can be bought in either hardcover or Kindle versions but readers may find the
Kindle version lacking due to the shrunken size of the illustrations and the relative clumsiness of
toggling between story text and annotations.
Some readers also experience some eye strain using an electronic device instead of a printed
book.

E-Books

Books on paper are difficult to carry around, especially hardcovers. If you're an avid reader and
you're going on a trip, or if you're just stepping out to a coffee shop, an e-reader or iPad is a far
lighter burden than a book or a stack of them.

The price gap is closing. An e-book might be priced about the same as the paperback edition but
less than the hardcover.

There's also the satisfaction of having an entire library at your fingertips, not to mention an
infinite supply just a click away, ready to download instantly.

In addition, e-book buyers have the advantage that the internet gives consumers of any products:
No space constraints. Just about everything ever published is available, all the time.

There are some drawbacks. You must recharge an e-reader or any other electronic device. Some
screens are not easily readable in sunlight. And, if you are one of the millions who spend the
entire workday in front of a computer, reading your favorite author on a computer screen in the
evening may not appeal.

The Shrinking Price Difference

E-books aren't much less expensive than their paper counterparts, at least when it comes to new
books from major publishers. Amazon, the dominant online bookseller, was forced by the major
book publishers to increase their e-book prices, raising prices by an average of $5 per e-book
over time.
Publishers have to price in a significant amount of overhead, including office space, utilities,
benefits, and salaries for employees. Other costs include the printing, editing, marketing, and
distribution process. Only some of the costs, particularly those related to printing and
distribution, disappear with e-book editions.

The trouble is, many readers assume that e-books should be free, or at least much cheaper than
their print counterparts. Some publishers respond that printing a book accounts for only about
10% of its cost. By eliminating this step, the cost of a book would only drop about $2.70,
bringing the average price of a book down from about $27 to $24.30.5

The Initial Cost of E-Books

You don't have to buy an e-reader to read e-books. You can just use your laptop, an Apple iPad
or other tablet device, or even a phone app.

That said, Amazon's e-readers are currently priced at around $89.99 to $279.99, with the upper
end containing the full features of a tablet. The Barnes & Noble Nook comes in a couple of
versions starting at $119.99.

Kobo readers, currently priced at about $133 to $168, are particularly

designed for readers who borrow e-books from libraries. The Onyx Boox Note, at under $500, is
a full tablet built for students who need to wade through textbooks and documents.

Why is Reading so Important for Children?

Reading allows us to be transported from our own world to another. Between the pages of a
book, we can become immersed in the lives of fictional characters and learn about a culture
entirely different from our own. We can also learn new words and phrases, experience a range of
emotions, and acquire skills and knowledge.

Because of the learning potential, the effects of reading on child development are vast and
multiple studies have highlighted its benefits. As such, teachers and parents are in a great
position to ensure reading is a key part of children’s daily routine. We’ll give you some more
information as to why this is so important and provide some tips that you can use both in and out
of the classroom.

What Are the Benefits of Reading for Children?

The importance of reading for children cannot be underestimated. Reading for pleasure can
benefit a child’s education, social and cognitive development, their wellbeing, and their mental
health.

What are the Effects of Reading on Child Development?

Numerous pieces of research conducted and commissioned by BookTrust have discovered the
profound benefits of reading for a child’s development. One study details the effects of reading
on later literacy skills, facilitating social interaction between adults and children, and
encouraging children to engage with the world around them. It also states how reading can be a
‘stable source of information’ throughout a child’s life. This stability allows them to access text
in a constant fashion and can be especially beneficial for children growing up in challenging
circumstances.

There are multiple other benefits that reading can have on a child’s development, including:
Assisted cognitive development. Cognitive development refers to how we perceive and think
about our world in reference to our intelligence, reasoning, language development, and
information processing. By reading to children, you provide them with a deep understanding
about their world and fill their brains with background knowledge. They then use this acquired
background knowledge to make sense of what they see, hear, and read, which aids their cognitive
development.

Developing empathy. When we read a book, we put ourselves in the story in front of us. This
allows us to develop empathy as we experience the lives of other characters and can identify with
how they are feeling. Children can then use this understanding to empathise in the real world
with other people. Additionally, children will gain a greater understanding of emotions, which
can help them understand their own emotions and those of others. This helps dramatically with
their social development.

Gaining deeper understanding. A book can take us anywhere: to another city, to a different
country, or even to an alternative world. By reading a book, a child learns about people, places,
and events that they couldn’t learn otherwise. This gives children a deeper understanding of the
world around them and cultures that are different from their own.

Building stronger relationships. If a parent reads with a child on a regular basis, then they will
undoubtedly develop a stronger relationship with them. Reading provides parents with an
opportunity to have a regular and shared event that both parent and child can look forward to.
Furthermore, it provides children with feelings of attention, love, and reassurance which is key
for nurturing and wellbeing.

What is the Importance of Stories in Child Education?

Reading with children can help to create a love of reading for life. Multiple studies have found a
correlation between reading for pleasure and higher academic achievement in every subject, not
just English.

The benefits of reading with children on their education is wide-ranging: Improved literary skills.
Reading with aloud with young children, even if they can’t fully understand what you are saying,
gives them the skills they need for when they begin to read by themselves. It shows children that
reading is something achieved by focusing from left to right and that turning pages is essential
for continuing. Reading to children in even the earliest months of their lives can help with
language acquisition and stimulating the part of the brain that processes language.
More extensive vocabulary. Hearing words spoken aloud can expose children to a range of new
vocabulary and phrases that they may not have heard otherwise. By reading to a child daily,
they’ll learn new words every single day.

Greater concentration. Regular and consistent reading can help to improve a child’s
concentration abilities. Furthermore, it will help a child learn to sit still and listen for long
periods of time, which will benefit them in their schooling.

Higher levels of creativity and imagination. Reading a book relies on us using our imagination
for picturing characters, visualising their settings and environment, and guessing what’s coming
next. We must use our imagination if we are to learn about other people, places, events, and
times. In turn, this developed imagination leads to greater creativity as children use the ideas in
their heads to inform their work.

Finally, the more that a child is read to, and the more that they read themselves, the better they
will become at it. Practice really does make perfect and, the more a child reads, the better their
overall academic achievement and social skills, like empathy, will be.

How do libraries support teaching and learning?

A library is fundamentally an organized set of resources, which include human services as well
as the entire spectrum of media (e.g., text, video, hypermedia). Libraries have physical
components such as space, equipment, and storage media; intellectual components such as
collection policies that determine what materials will be included and organizational schemes
that determine how the collection is accessed; and people who manage the physical and
intellectual components and interact with users to solve information problems.

Libraries serve at least three roles in learning. First, they serve a practical role in sharing
expensive resources. Physical resources such as books and periodicals, films and videos,
software and electronic databases, and specialized tools such as projectors, graphics equipment
and cameras are shared by a community of users. Human resources--librarians (also called media
specialists or information specialists) support instructional programs by responding to the
requests of teachers and students (responsive service) and by initiating activities for teachers and
students (proactive services). Responsive services include maintaining reserve materials,
answering reference questions, providing bibliographic instruction, developing media packages,
recommending books or films, and teaching users how to use materials. Proactive services
include selective dissemination of information to faculty and students, initiating thematic events,
collaborating with instructors to plan instruction, and introducing new instructional methods and
tools. In these ways, libraries serve to allow instructors and students to share expensive materials
and expertise.

Second, libraries serve a cultural role in preserving and organizing artifacts and ideas. Great
works of literature, art, and science must be preserved and made accessible to future learners.
Although libraries have traditionally been viewed as facilities for printed artifacts, primary and
secondary school libraries often also serve as museums and laboratories. Libraries preserve
objects through careful storage procedures, policies of borrowing and use, and repair and
maintenance as needed. In addition to preservation, libraries ensure access to materials through
indexes, catalogs, and other finding aids that allow learners to locate items appropriate to their
needs.

Third, libraries serve social and intellectual roles in bringing together people and ideas. This is
distinct from the practical role of sharing resources in that

libraries provide a physical place for teachers and learners to meet outside the structure of the
classroom, thus allowing people with different perspectives to interact in a knowledge space that
is both larger and more general than that shared by any single discipline or affinity group.
Browsing a catalog in a library provides a global view for people engaged in specialized study
and offers opportunities for serendipitous insights or alternative views. In many respects,
libraries serve as centers of interdisciplinarity--places shared by learners from all disciplines.
Digital libraries extend such interdisciplinarity by making diverse information resources
available beyond the physical space shared by groups of learners. One of the greatest benefits of
digital libraries is bringing together people with formal, informal, and professional learning
missions.

Formal learning is systematic and guided by instruction. Formal learning takes place in courses
offered at schools of various kinds and in training courses or programs on the job. The important
roles that libraries serve in formal learning are illustrated by their physical prominence on
university campuses and the number of courses that make direct use of library services and
materials. Most of the information resources in schools are tied directly to the instructional
mission. Students or teachers who wish to find information outside this mission have in the past
had to travel to other libraries. By making the broad range of information resources discussed
below available to students and teachers in schools, digital libraries open new learning
opportunities for global rather than strictly local communities.

Much learning in life is informal--opportunistic and strictly under the control of the learner.
Learners take advantage of other people, mass media, and the immediate environment during
informal learning. The public library system that developed in the U.S. in the late nineteenth
century has been called the "free university", since public libraries were created to provide free
access to the world's knowledge. Public libraries provide classic nonfiction books, a wide range
of periodicals, reference sources, and audio and video tapes so that patrons can learn about topics
of their own choosing at their own pace and style. Just as computing technology and world-wide
telecommunications networks are beginning to change what is possible in formal classrooms,
they are changing how individuals pursue personal learning missions.

Professional learning refers to the on going learning adults engage in to do their work and to
improve their work-related knowledge and skills. In fact, for many professionals, learning is the
central aspect of their work. Like informal learning, it is mainly self-directed, but unlike formal
or informal learning, it is focused on a specific field closely linked to job performance, aims to
be comprehensive, and is acquired and applied longitudinally. Since professional learning affects
job performance, corporations and government agencies
support libraries (often called information centers) with information resources specific to the
goals of the organization. The main information resources for professional learning, however, are
personal collections of books, reports, and files; subscriptions to journals; and the human
networks of colleagues nurtured through professional meetings and various communications.
Many of the data sets and computational tools of digital libraries were originally developed to
enhance professional learning.

The information resources--both physical and human--that support these types of learning are
customized for specific missions and have traditionally been physically separated, although
common technologies such as printing, photography, and computing are found across all
settings. This situation, is depicted in Figure 1.

Digital libraries combine technology and information resources to allow remote access, breaking
down the physical barriers between resources. Although these resources will remain specialized
to meet the needs of specific communities of learners, digital libraries will allow teachers and
students to take advantage of wider ranges of materials and communicate with people outside the
formal learning environment. This will allow more integration of the different types of learning,
as depicted in Figure 2.
Although not all students or teachers in formal learning settings will use information resources
beyond their circumscribed curriculum and not all professionals will want to interact even
occasionally with novices, digital libraries will allow learners of all types to share resources, time
and energy, and expertise to their mutual benefits. The following sections illustrate some of the
types of information resources that are defining digital libraries.

Reading books vs. watching TV — is one really

better for us?
I know people who say they don’t watch television, and I always nod and agree. Reading is an
intellectual endeavor, even if it's a comic book, and television is lowbrow entertainment geared
toward the lowest common denominator, right? Only idiots enjoy the idiot box, right?

Idiots like me. I’m going to Scotland this year, and three different people told me I must watch
“Outlander” before I go. I don’t have STARZ, so I ordered old-fashioned DVDs from Netflix.
“Outlander” is like “Game of Thrones” for fans of romance novels: a little magick (with a “k”), a
lot of sex, some tasteful 18th-century violence and handsome men in kilts. I watched the first
four hourlong episodes back to back.

When I stood up from the couch I felt sick, and it wasn’t just the cookies, popcorn and peanut
butter crackers I’d scarfed down without noticing. My brain was fuzzy, but worse, I felt furtive
and ashamed. I looked outside surprised to see the sun had set. My house was dark around me
except for the blue glow of the TV screen. I had spent half a day on the couch. Research for
Scotland? Not exactly.

A few days later I had a library book due: The National Book Award winner “The Friend,” by
Sigrid Nunez, about a woman mourning the death of her best friend who then inherits his
enormous Great Dane. It was wonderful and I loved it, but I needed to finish it, so I read the last
half straight through. I was immersed in Nunez’s New York City, worrying about the grieving
dog and the narrator’s pending eviction because of it, as well as her career and her future. I
finished the book with tears in my eyes and stood up feeling, well, great.

I had wasted another four hours on my couch. I hadn’t eaten as much junk food because I needed
my hands free — and not sticky — so I could turn pages and return the book to the library
relatively clean, but I hadn’t moved and once again it was dark outside.

Why did I feel so much better and guilt-free? I would have proudly told someone I spent the
entire day reading, but when my sister called and asked if I’d watched “Outlander” yet, I hedged,
too embarrassed to admit I was sucked into the vortex of the MacKenzie/Fraser clans.

Full disclosure: My husband produces television shows, but I think of myself as a TV snob. We
don’t have one in the bedroom. My children never had their

own TVs. I limited their viewing.

I told my kids TV would rot their brains, and there are plenty of studies to back that up. In 2013,
Hikaru Takeuchi, at Tohoku University in Japan, found that the more TV a child watched, the
lower her verbal reasoning and the higher her levels of arousal and aggression. The child’s
frontal lobe actually thickened.

But recently another investigation by criminologists Joseph Schwartz, of the University of

Nebraska at Omaha, and Kevin Beaver, of Florida State University, concluded that genetics has
the greatest effect on how children react to TV. A kid with aggressive tendencies might prefer
watching television to being with other children. Same with a child with a tendency for
depression.

And in 2015, a study at the University of Maryland found that kids who watched “Sesame
Street” as preschoolers were better prepared to learn when they entered kindergarten. Of course,
that study didn’t look at what happened if a child binge-watched four straight hours of Bert and
Ernie and Big Bird.

All the research says reading a book is good for you. Better even than listening to an audiobook
or reading one on an e-reader. It reduces stress, promotes comprehension and imagination,
alleviates depression, helps you sleep and may contribute to preventing Alzheimer’s.

Reading is active; watching TV is passive. The act of physically turning a page creates a
momentary pause for understanding to sink in. Our brains have to work to translate the black
squiggles on the page into words and then interpret the meaning and intent of those words. When
a character is described as tall with brown hair, a reader creates her own picture. TV takes all that
imagination away.

And yet sometimes it’s great to just sit on the couch and surrender. Let someone else do the
work. Since my kids have left home, I watch more TV, and I look forward to it.
TV is egalitarian. Even if we aren’t all watching the same three networks anymore, we are all
connected via video. Who didn’t catch at least some of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings or Bishop
Curry’s homily at the Markle-Windsor royal wedding? At work or a party, it’s easier to share the
latest plot twist in “The Americans” than to talk about how you’re finally getting around to
reading “Middlemarch.” It’s more fun to discuss the baked-Alaska controversy on “The Great
British Bake Off” than whether “Less” by Andrew Sean Greer deserved the Pulitzer Prize.

Many people tell me they just don’t read anymore, and that breaks my heart, but there’s a lot of
good TV now, Golden Age-type TV. I’d like to say the answer to TV versus books must be, as
Aristotle said, “Moderation in all things,” though he never had a television or a computer and
had to read his papyrus scrolls by candlelight.

I believe too much television is bad for you. I know I feel better if I binge-read, but it won’t stop
me from watching too. I’m willing to risk thickening my frontal cortex. Therefore my resolution:
When I watch, just as when I read, I’m going to banish feeling furtive and guilty. And take an
extra walk.

OVERPOPULATION: CAUSE AND EFFECT

Conversations about overpopulation can quickly become controversial because they beg the
question: Who exactly is the cause of the problem and what, if anything, should be done about
it? Many population experts worry discussions around overpopulation will be abused by small-
minded people to suggest some are the “right people” to be on the planet (like themselves), and
some people are “the wrong people” (usually people in poverty, people of color, foreigners, and
so on—you get the drift). But there are no “right” or “wrong” people on the planet, and
discussing the problems of global overpopulation can never be an excuse, or in any way provide
a platform, for having that type of conversation.

Each human being has a legitimate claim on a sufficient and fair amount of Earth’s resources.
But with a population approaching 8 billion, even if everyone adopted a relatively low material
standard of living like the one currently found in Papua New Guinea, it would still push Earth to
its ecological breaking point. Unfortunately, the “average person” on Earth consumes at a rate
over 50% above a sustainable level. Incredibly, the average person in the United States uses
almost five times more than the sustainable yield of the planet.

When we use the term “overpopulation,” we specifically mean a situation in which the Earth
cannot regenerate the resources used by the world’s population each year. Experts say this has
been the case every year since 1970, with each successive year becoming more and more
damaging. To help temper this wildly unsustainable situation, we need to understand what’s
contributing to overpopulation and overconsumption and how these trends are affecting
everything from climate change to sociopolitical unrest.

THE CAUSES OF OVERPOPULATION

Today the Earth is home to more than 7.8 billion people. By 2100 the population is on track to
hit 10.8 billion, according to the United Nations — and that’s assuming steady fertility declines
in many countries. Interestingly, if extra progress is made in women’s reproductive self-
determination, and fertility falls more than the United Nations assumes is likely, the population
in 2100 might be a relatively smaller 7.3 billion.
For now, the world’s population is still increasing in huge annual increments (about 80 million
per year), and our supply of vital non-renewable resources are being exhausted. Many factors
contribute to these unsustainable trends,

including falling mortality rates, underutilized contraception, and a lack of education for girls.

FALLING MORTALITY RATE

The primary (and perhaps most obvious) cause of population growth is an imbalance between
births and deaths. The infant mortality rate has decreased globally, with 4.1 million infant deaths
in 2017 compared to 8.8 million in 1990, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
This is welcome public health news, of course.
At the same time, lifespans are increasing around the world. Those of us who are alive today will
likely live much longer than most of our ancestors. Global average life expectancy has more than
doubled since 1900, thanks to advancements in medicine, technology, and general hygiene.
Falling mortality rates are certainly nothing to complain about either, but widespread longevity
does contribute to the mathematics of increasing population numbers.

UNDERUTILIZED CONTRACEPTION
The global fertility rate has fallen steadily over the years, down from an average of 5 children per
woman in 1950 to 2.4 children per woman today, according to the UN Population Division.
Along with that promising trend, contraceptive use has slowly but steadily increased globally,
rising from 54% in 1990 to 57.4% in 2015. Yet, on the whole, contraceptive use is still
underutilized. For example, according to the WHO, an estimated 214 million women in
developing countries who want to avoid pregnancy are not using modern contraceptives.

These women aren’t using contraceptives for a variety of reasons, including social norms or
religious beliefs that discourage birth control, misconceptions about adverse side effects, and a
lack of agency for women to make decisions around sex and family planning. An estimated 44%
of pregnancies were unintended worldwide between 2010-2014. Getting more women the access
and agency to utilize family planning methods could go a long way in flattening the population
curve.

LACK OF FEMALE EDUCATION

Although female access to education has increased over the years, the gender gap remains.
Roughly 130 million girls worldwide are out of school currently, and an estimated 15 million
girls of primary school age will never learn to read and write, compared with 10 million boys.

Increasing and encouraging education among women and girls can have a number of positive
ripple effects, including delayed childbearing, healthier children, and an increase in workforce
participation. Plenty of evidence suggests a negative correlation between female education and

fertility rates.
If increased female education can delay or decrease fertility and provide girls with opportunities
beyond an early marriage, it could also help to mitigate current population trends.

THE EFFECTS OF OVERPOPULATION

It is only logical that an increase in the world’s population will cause additional strains on
resources. More people means an increased demand for food, water, housing, energy, healthcare,
transportation, and more. And all that consumption contributes to ecological degradation,
increased conflicts, and a higher risk of large-scale disasters like pandemics.

ECOLOGICAL DEGRADATION
An increase in population will inevitably create pressures leading to more deforestation,
decreased biodiversity, and spikes in pollution and emissions, which will exacerbate climate
change. Ultimately, unless we take action to help minimize further population growth heading
into the remainder of this century, many scientists believe the additional stress on the planet will
lead to ecological disruption and collapse so severe it threatens the viability of life on Earth as
we know it.

Each spike in the global population has a measurable impact on the planet’s health. According to
estimates in a study by Wynes and Nicholas (2017), a family having one fewer child could
reduce emissions by 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent per year in developed countries.

INCREASED CONFLICTS
The scarcity brought about by environmental disruption and overpopulation has the potential to
trigger an increase in violence and political unrest. We’re already seeing wars fought over water,
land, and energy resources in the Middle East and other regions, and the turmoil is likely to
increase as the global population grows even larger.

HIGHER RISK OF DISASTERS AND PANDEMICS

Many of the recent novel pathogens that have devastated humans around the world, including
COVID-19, Zika virus, Ebola, and West Nile virus, originated in animals or insects before
passing to humans. Part of the reason the world is entering “a period of increased outbreak
activity” is because humans are destroying wildlife habitats and coming into contact with wild
animals on a more regular basis. Now that we’re in the midst of a pandemic, it has become clear
how difficult it is to social distance in a world occupied by nearly 8 billion people.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

When addressing overpopulation, it’s crucial to take an approach of providing empowerment
while mobilizing against anybody advocating for the use of coercion or violence to solve our
problems. The combined efforts of spreading knowledge about family planning, increasing
agency among women, and debunking widely held myths about contraception will measurably
change the trajectory of the world’s population.
As we carry out our work at Population Media Center (PMC), we see first-hand that spreading
awareness about family planning methods and the ecological and economic benefits of having
smaller families can change reproductive behavior. For example, listeners of our Burundian radio
show Agashi (“Hey! Look Again!”) were 1.7 times more likely than non-listeners to confirm that
they were willing to negotiate condom use with a sexual partner and 1.8 times more likely than
non-listeners to say that they generally approve of family planning for limiting the number of
children.

Tackling poverty, now and in the future

Ending poverty requires action from every part of society. And as a business we have a key role
to play, from protecting lives in a crisis to using our size and scale to encourage systemic change.

Poverty is one of the biggest and most complex problems our world currently faces. People
living in poverty lack access to resources such as food, education, finance, sanitation and
medical care. In short, their basic human needs simply aren’t being met.

Fighting poverty is therefore an enormous challenge. And in 2020 it has been exacerbated by the
coronavirus pandemic.

In its latest report, The World Bank says the pandemic, and the global recession that is set to
follow, will push an additional 150 million people into extreme poverty by 2021.
Where people are suffering, we know we can play an important role by using our scale for good.

Taking action on the major emergencies the world faces is one way we do this. For example,
donations and emergency programmes were a key part of our initial response to the Covid-19.
We put measures in place to protect lives and livelihoods by launching the Hygiene & Behaviour
Change Coalition (HBCC): a public–private partnership between Unilever and the UK’s Foreign,
Commonwealth and Development Office (FCOD) to curb the spread of Covid-19, with leading
academics from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) also in the core
team.

The partnership aims to reach up to 1 billion people by investing £100 million in hygiene
programmes, awareness campaigns and delivering products to those in the developing world.

But Covid-19’s impact on the economic landscape has only just begun. And just as there is no
business case for enduring poverty, there is no quick fix to achieving its end.
Collaborating with others to achieve lasting change.

Many argue that to really make an impact, a more inclusive form of capitalism is needed. We
agree. It has long been clear that the current capitalist model needs repair.

Globalisation and capitalism are good for a business like ours, but

globalisation and capitalism at the expense of people (and the planet) are not.

We believe that it is simply not possible to achieve long-term business success in a world which
contains poverty, hunger and climate change. It’s why, in 2015, we publicly backed the UN’s
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to address these global issues.
Since then we have worked to harness our reach and scale as a business and take collective
action with governments, NGOs, investors, consumers, suppliers and regulators to create
systemic change.

Creating opportunities across our value chain to enhance livelihoods

Though poverty is commonly measured by levels of income, addressing it also requires tackling
social exclusion because of gender, long-term unemployment, low income, poor skills or
education.

Creating opportunities for women

A study by the McKinsey Global Institute shows that closing gender gaps in labour-force
participation has the potential to add 12–25% to global GDP by 2025. In other words, when more
women work, economies grow.

A total of 25% of the world’s population are women living in rural areas. And through projects
such as our Shakti entrepreneurship programme in India, we offer women an opportunity to earn
an income selling Unilever products door to door.

As of September 2019, 118,000 women were actively taking part in our Shakti distribution
network in the country. And the programme has been extended to reach more than 100,000
women in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Guatemala, Myanmar and Colombia too.

Advancing financial inclusion for micro-businesses

Building new systems that widen access to finance for groups such as micro-entrepreneurs also
helps to break down the barriers that can keep people in poverty.

In partnership with Mastercard in Kenya, and with funding from the CEO Partnership for
Economic Inclusion, we created project Jaza Duka, which literally translates as ‘fill your
shelves’.

The project enabled 12,000 small retailers to digitise their stocktaking, giving them better control
over their inventories. This not only ensured they had a steadier stream of income but also that
they could build the credentials needed for banks to give them access to short-term loans that
will help their businesses grow.

Supporting smallholders to weather market shocks and fluctuations

Tackling poverty also means helping others build financial resilience, such as ensuring that the
smallholder farmers providing ingredients for our brands can be resilient to bad weather or a bad
harvest.

One of the many projects we run with our farmer communities is project DiRev. This saw us
work with 448 smallholder cocoa farmers in southern Côte d’Ivoire to establish a maize crop
alongside their main cocoa fields. And it proved useful from the start. When drought threatened
the cocoa harvest, farmers had more than one crop to sell.
Using our brand purpose to provide hope and opportunity
Our supply chain is not the only part of our business we leverage to make a difference.
Our 28 sustainable living brands are responsible for 75% of our overall growth. Each one
supports a positive change for people and the planet. This includes providing people with access
to basic hygiene needs.

In the US, 30% of profits from our brand Right To Shower is used to give people experiencing
homelessness access to a shower every day.

For almost a decade, Domestos has worked in partnership with UNICEF to tackle sanitation
issues and helped over 28 million people gain improved access to a toilet.

And Lifebuoy’s Help a Child Reach 5 campaign and its lifesaving handwashing message have
reached hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Our boldest action is still collective action

It’s crucial that we don’t lose sight of the issues that fuel inequality, and we must continue to
collaborate with others to change the systems that contribute to extreme poverty.

As the world readies itself to face a global recession, we will continue to focus on what we can
do to transform global food systems, empower smallholder farmer livelihoods, advance diversity
and inclusion, solve chronic malnutrition and promote economic inclusion.

All of this calls for a fundamental change to how we do business, and we will collaborate with
others to change how the current capitalist model works to help end poverty.

Homelessness this Christmas

This Christmas, more than 200,000 families and individuals in England alone will be
experiencing the worst forms of homelessness. Many people already living with financial
pressures made worse by the coronavirus pandemic have been pushed over the brink into
homelessness and are finding themselves sleeping on the streets, hunkered down in sheds and
garages, stuck in unsuitable accommodation or sofa surfing.

Each year, we support thousands of people who are homeless.

The average age of death for people experiencing homelessness is 45 for men and 43 for women.

Homelessness is devastating, dangerous and isolating.

People sleeping on the street are almost 17 times more likely to have been victims of violence.
More than one in three people sleeping rough have been deliberately hit or kicked or experienced
some other form of violence whilst homeless.
Homeless people are over nine times more likely to take their own life than the general
population.

What causes homelessness?

People become homeless for lots of different reasons. There are social causes of homelessness,
such as a lack of affordable housing, poverty and unemployment; and life events which push
people into homelessness.

People are forced into homelessness when they leave prison, care or the army with no home to
go to. Many women experiencing homelessness have escaped a violent or abusive relationship.

Many people become homeless because they can no longer afford the rent.

And for many, life events like a relationship breaking down, losing a job, mental or physical
health problems, or substance misuse put people under considerable strain. Being homeless can,
in turn, make many of these problems even harder to resolve. However, in nearly all cases
homelessness is preventable and in every case it can be ended.

How many people are homeless?

There is no national figure for how many people are homeless across the UK. This is because
homelessness is recorded differently in each nation, and

because many homeless people do not show up in official statistics at all.

Crisis carries out an annual study in response to concerns that many people experiencing
homelessness are not being accurately recorded in official statistics. Known as core
homelessness, it includes rough sleeping, people living in sheds, garages and other
unconventional buildings, sofa surfing, hostels and unsuitable temporary accommodation such as
B&Bs.

On any given night, tens of thousands of families and individuals are experiencing the worst
forms of homelessness across Great Britain, this includes over 200,000 households in England
alone. For the last five years’ core homelessness has been rising year on year in England,
reaching a peak just before the pandemic when the numbers of homeless households jumped
from 207,600 in 2018 to over 219,000 at the end of 2019.

Types of homelessness

Rough sleeping
Rough sleeping is the most visible and dangerous form of homelessness, and when most people
think of a homeless person they tend to think of someone sleeping rough on the streets. The
longer someone experiences rough sleeping the more likely they are to face challenges around
trauma, mental health and drug misuse.

Statutory homelessness
Local authorities have a duty to secure a home for some groups of people. This is often referred
to as the main homelessness duty. Every year, tens of thousands of people apply to their local
authority for homelessness assistance.

To be legally defined as homeless you must either lack a secure place in which you are entitled
to live or not reasonably be able to stay. However, in order to receive assistance under the main
homelessness duty, there are further strict criteria that you have to meet. Local authorities may
initially provide temporary accommodation to households who might meet these criteria, mainly
families with children.

Hidden homelessness
Many people who are not entitled to help with housing, or who don’t even approach their
councils for help, aren’t counted in the official statistics. This is why Crisis carries out its annual
study on core homelessness.

Many stay in hostels, squats or B&Bs, in overcrowded accommodation or ‘concealed' housing,

such as the floors or sofas of friends and family.

At risk of homelessness
Some people are more at risk of being pushed into homelessness than others. People in low paid
jobs, living in poverty and poor quality or insecure housing are more likely to experience
homelessness.

6 proven policies for reducing crime and

violence without gun control
On a night of the Republican convention focused on "making America safe again," one question,
strangely, went unanswered: How exactly could policymakers make America safer? Although
Americans are in fact safer than they were decades ago, this seems like a pretty crucial question
to answer given the first day of the convention's theme.

I previously reached out to criminologists and researchers across the country about this issue. My
question: What nonpartisan policies can America use to reduce crime and gun violence without
going after the guns themselves? I started with the assumption that gun control laws would not
happen, since that issue is too politically fraught — and it's certainly not something Republicans
seem likely to support.

After all, although there's strong evidence that America's uniquely high levels of gun ownership
cause the US to have more violence than other developed countries, guns aren't the only cause of
violence and crime — there are other factors, from cultural issues to socioeconomic variables to
even smaller issues like alcohol consumption, that drive these problems.

What follows are six of the promising ideas I heard to reduce crime and gun violence in
particular. This is by no means a comprehensive list — there are great websites solely dedicated
to that kind of catalog. But these policy ideas give some perspective on how many options are
left to local, state, and federal lawmakers as long as they don't want to do anything about guns —
or maybe even if they do.

1) Stricter alcohol policies

Alcohol has been linked to violence. According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug
Dependence, alcohol is a factor in 40 percent of violent crimes. And a 2010 study found a strong
relationship between alcohol stores and gun assaults. These statistics and research are one of the
big reasons that possessing a gun while drunk is largely illegal.
"It's a disinhibition theory," Charles Branas, one of the 2010 study's authors, said. "So it's not so
much aggressiveness, but that decisions and judgment that would normally be held in check are
suddenly disinhibited under consumption of alcohol."

This doesn't mean America should ban alcohol — prohibition in the 1920s was a disaster. But
there are other policies that America could take up to limit alcohol-related problems:
A higher alcohol tax: A 2010 review of the research in the American Journal of

Public Health came out with strong findings: "Our results suggest that doubling the alcohol tax
would reduce alcohol-related mortality by an average of 35%, traffic crash deaths by 11%,
sexually transmitted disease by 6%, violence by 2%, and crime by 1.4%."

Reducing the number of alcohol outlets: A 2009 review published in the American Journal of
Preventive Medicine also found that limiting the number of alcohol outlets — through, for
example, stricter licensing — in an area can limit problematic drinking and its dangers. But it
also found that going too far can have negative results — by, for example, causing more car
crashes as people take long drives to outlets and possibly drink before returning home.

Revoking alcohol offenders' right to drink: South Dakota's 24/7 Sobriety program effectively
revokes people's right to drink if a court deems it necessary after an alcohol-related offense. The
program, specifically, monitors offenders through twice-a-day breathalyzer tests or a bracelet
that can track blood alcohol level, and jails them for one or two days for each failed test. Studies
from the RAND Corporation have linked the program to drops in mortality, DUI arrests, and
domestic violence arrests.

Notably, the NRA, the biggest gun rights group, already agrees alcohol and guns don't mix. Its
website says, "Never use alcohol or over-the-counter, prescription or other drugs before or while
shooting." The question, Branas said, is how to make that "operational" — and some of these
policies could move in that direction.

2) Hot-spot policing
Yes, police practices have run into increasing criticism over the past couple years — with the
advent of the Black Lives Matter movement and its protests against racial disparities in the
criminal justice system and police use of force. But police can, obviously, play a huge role in
reducing crime, especially by adopting evidence-based tactics like hot-spot policing.
The idea, explained to me by famed criminologist David Kennedy: In many cities, a very small
subset of places, down to the street and block level, drive most of the crime. So deploying police,
intelligently, in these specific areas can have a big impact on fighting crime and violence.
"It can be as simple as making sure your police presence is increased there, or it can be much
more complicated," Kennedy said. "You can get partnerships of police, residents, families,
parents, shop owners, building managers, and school officials." He added, "The more those
interventions involve partnerships, the more effective those interventions can be."
The research strongly backs up the practice: Not only does it reduce crime, but it does so without
displacing it to other areas and generally to positive reactions from locals. And as Kennedy said,
the research suggests that bringing in community partners and focusing on the community's
needs can boost the crime-fighting effects further.

3) Focused deterrence policing

One of the hot new phrases in criminal justice today is "community policing." But quite
honestly, nobody seems to have any idea what it means. Experts and law enforcement officials
will give all sorts of definitions and strategies for the practice.
But Kennedy did explain a strategy — "focused deterrence policing" — that sounds a lot like
what I would expect real community policing to look like, and it works.
Focused deterrence hones in on specific problems in a community, such as drug dealing,
generally violent behavior, gangs, or gun violence. It then focuses on the individuals and groups
who drive most of that activity, particularly those with criminal records and those involved in
gang activity. "The national annual homicide rate now is between 4 and 5 per 100,000," Kennedy
said. "If you're in one of these street networks, your homicide rate can easily be 3,000 per
100,000." He added, "Add in the nonfatal woundings, which can be multiples of the homicide
rate, and suddenly you're in unimaginable risk."
The strategy brings together law enforcement and community groups to clearly signal the major
legal and community consequences of violence, especially in relation to an individual's previous
criminal record. And to provide alternatives to violent or criminal lifestyles, the community
should also offer social services and other forms of help.
So if someone has a long history of drug or even violent crimes, police could let him know about
the legal consequences of violence — decades or life in prison — and the community could
voice, through personal interactions, how it would directly damage his family, friends, church,
school, and so on. And the groups should also offer help through, for example, accessible job and
education programs.
"The community itself needs to convey extremely strong and clear standards against the
violence," Kennedy said, describing it as a form of informal policing that comes from within
someone's community.
The idea is that a would-be shooter, now knowing the full consequences of his actions, will be
deterred from acting out in the future. And he'll have alternative options if he wants to pursue a
different kind of life.
The research shows this works. Focused deterrence is one of the changes in policing strategy
credited with what's known as the "Boston miracle," in which the city saw violent crime drop by
79 percent in the 1990s. And other research has found that it can work in many other places.
This policing strategy can involve retraining cops, getting them more involved in the community,
hiring more officers to carry it out effectively, and boosting spending on social services. That can
be very expensive — as such services and police departments already make up a sizable chunk of
many municipal and state budgets. But if local lawmakers and officials want to reduce crime,

these changes can go a long way.

Behavioral intervention programs
The University of Chicago Crime Lab has done a lot of great work into many different policy
proposals to fight crime. One of those ideas, Youth Guidance's Becoming A Man, is emblematic
of how specific these policies can get — it targets youth who are at risk of getting into violent
encounters, perhaps because of the neighborhood they live in or what school they go to. The
program then uses once-a-week interventions, based on cognitive behavioral principles, to teach
youth how to react in encounters that can turn violent.
"It helps kids understand and slow down the scripts that they use to get by," Harold Pollack, co-
director of the Crime Lab, said. "They have exercises that the kids do where they get to practice
self-regulation, skills, and slowing down and negotiating with other people — the kinds of things
that young boys growing up particularly in a tough environment haven't had enough of a chance
to practice."
It works: Randomized control trials by the Crime Lab found it reduced violent crime arrests by
30 to 50 percent during the time of the intervention.
One example of the exercises the program uses: One kid is told to get a golf ball from another
kid. Typically, they get in a physical fight within seconds, because they simply don't know any
better. But when they're walked through the situation, they learn to resolve it much more
peacefully.
"So many of the confrontations that kids get into are almost over nothing in one sense," Pollack
said. "But in another sense, kids are in a situation where they've learned over a period of time a
set of reactions that are pretty important for them so that everybody knows not to mess with
them."
The problem, Pollack said, is that many of these kids simply haven't learned the right behaviors
over time — and they've actually learned to resort to violence quite quickly. Pollack gave an
example:
For example, I'm walking down the hallway and somebody steps on my foot in school. If Harold
Pollack is doing that, walking around the University of Chicago, I figure that it's just another
colleague that was playing with his iPhone and stepped on my foot — and I ignore it and move
on.
If I'm a 17-year-old kid in Fenger High School, I can't afford to have people punk me. I got to get
home. And I got a nice jacket, and my mom has told me that if somebody comes and takes my
jacket, she can't get me another one. So when somebody does something like that, I might
respond in a way that to the middle-aged white professor seems really excessive, but in the life of
that kid is really human — there's an incentive to reacting really harshly.
Pollack emphasized that these kids are not in any way bad or evil. They have rational incentives
for behaving in the way they do: In the tough environments they grow up in, sometimes it is
important to fight.
But, Pollack explained, "What we want to tell them is, 'You may have to fight

as a last resort. But you got to have other things in the toolkit that you go to first. And many of
the situations where you might jump to escalate, you have more options, and the long-term
consequences for you if you can avoid that confrontation are much better than if you react
instinctively.'"
DO PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES DESERVE
THEIR INFLATED SALARIES?
In recent years, the biggest contracts in NBA and NFL history have been signed. For the 2019-
2020 season, 28 NBA players received contracts that exceed $27.5M for the year, including
Stephen Curry, the league’s highest earner, who gets more than $40M a year. In the NFL, the
Kansas City Chiefs recently signed a 10-year $503M contract extension with their quarterback,
Patrick Mahomes. These are just the latest example of how, in the current century, professional
athletes’ salaries have exploded to unprecedented levels, sparking a debate on whether they
deserve them.

Here are three reasons why professional athletes warrant such high salaries and three reasons
why they don’t:

3 Reasons Why Professional Athletes’ Salaries Are Fair

Athletes Sacrifice a Lot

Professional athletes sacrifice important aspects of their lives, especially their health and family.
For instance, during each season of any professional sport, there are away games that keep
players from their families. More significant, though, is that players put their bodies in danger
daily. Physical injury can leave professional athletes handicapped or disabled for the rest of their
lives; NFL players who experience multiple concussions can suffer from progressive
degenerative disease that causes dementia and depression. Additionally, while most teenagers or
college-age students spend their free time studying, working or hanging out, student athletes
aiming to qualify for the pros spend all of their free time training. Thus, professional athletes’
salaries are a fair compensation for the countless time and energy they put into training and the
huge health risks they take, especially considering that their careers typically end around the age
of 35.

Franchise Players Sell More Tickets

Professional sports is a money-earning business. Sports teams know that to stay profitable they
need to win, which is why they sign the best players available. Quality superstars, or “franchise
players,” are the face of the team, the on-court leaders. They make their teammates better,
thereby improving the whole team (think Tom Brady, Kevin Durant, and, of course, Michael
Jordan, etc.). This leads to more wins and, in turn, more viewers, more

merchandise sold and increased brand worth. Usually, a team has one franchise player, who
makes a huge salary, arguably more than his projected value, since he drives the team’s business
profitability forward.
The amount of money that team owners are willing to pay franchise players often comes at the
expense of the other players. However, with fans willing to pay more than 100% premiums on
tickets to see individual players, like LeBron James, franchise players have extra responsibility
to live up to their star power. They also have the celebrity effect, which draws more paying fans
in. Therefore, they deserve to earn more.
Athletes Don’t Get Paid As Much As We Think
While the highest paid athletes draw more attention, the truth is that most athletes are fairly paid.
Plus, we tend to forget that published professional athletes’ salaries are gross salaries. While
these may seem huge, so are the deductions from them. Aside from federal, state and city taxes
and pension, which everyone pays, players also need to pay agent fees, a $10,000 union due, and
a Jock Tax for each of their away games, among others. Sure, their net salaries may be higher
than ours, but they are still lower than we tend to think and much lower than what is published.

3 Reasons Why Professional Athletes Shouldn’t Be Paid So Much

It Threatens the Future of Sports

In 2019, the average annual income for a US household was $89,930. while the average income
of a professional athlete in the major leagues was between $2.6-$8.3 million. The rising gap
between the average American’s income and a professional athlete’s income might pose a
serious threat to sports. With ticket prices gradually rising, not to mention merchandise price
tags, sports fans might feel resentful toward funding overpaid athletes. If so, they’ll stop paying
to watch or support professional sports teams, leaving the industry in the lurch.

It Diminishes the True Meaning of Sports

The large amounts of money invested in professional sports in recent years has the potential to
drain the true meaning from sports. Given athletes’ large salaries, more youngsters want to
become professional athletes – but for the big money, not for the love of the game. This change
in purpose has a negative impact on athletes’ ambition to play. Take Albert Haynesworth of the
Washington Redskins. Once he signed a $100 million contract with a $44 million guarantee, he
had his worst season ever; it seemed like he simply lost interest in the game. Professional
athletes competing for money rather than for excellence will take the soul and magic out of
sports, ruining it in the long run – for athletes and for fans.

Such Salaries Contribute to Income Inequality within Sports

In recent years, corporate culture has creeped into some sports leagues. This trend holds a
significant effect on players’ salaries: It helps some athletes get oversized contracts (what do
Patrick Mahomes’ teammates think about his $503M contract?) while increasing income
inequality between the majority of athletes. Take Scottie Pippen, who, despite being a vital asset
that lifted both Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, played most of the 1990s under what is
considered one of the worst contracts in NBA history. In fact, pro athletes in minor league
baseball don’t even make minimum wage. This pay gap creates unnecessary tensions within
sport teams and is unfair to teammates who sacrifice just as much but for less money.

The Bottom Line: While it seems like there’s no way to stop such inflated salaries of
professional athletes, the repercussions could cause long-term damage to professional sports. Do
you think professional athletes are overpaid?

9 Unique Benefits of Outdoor Adult Fitness

Parks
A diverse outdoor recreation system contributes to community capital by providing a high
quality of life for residents. With increasing urbanization, communities are continuously seeking
new ways to provide outdoor spaces and activities to residents, and outdoor exercise is one ideal
option. Outdoor Adult Fitness Parks can be located by new and existing recreation centers,
allowing users to exercise while enjoying natural and designed landscapes in an open air
environment.

Well-defined and innovative Outdoor Adult Fitness Parks can serve a diverse range of users
while also contributing to overall community health. The 2010 CDC State Indicator Report on
Physical Activity shows 80% of US Census Blocks do not have workout options within a half
mile, yet Outdoor Adult Fitness Parks can be placed almost anywhere; therefore, going a long
way towards reducing this access barrier.

Make Exercise Fun

The addition of nature and fresh air helps make exercising fun and therefore more effective.
Combining outdoor exercise, natural light and sensory stimulation has a “salutogenic” effect:
reducing stress and encouraging healthy behaviors.

Are Eco-friendly
Equipment used in Outdoor Adult Fitness Parks requires no electricity, is low maintenance, and
uses very little human resources. A majority of the materials used in their construction, including
aluminum, steel, and sustainable plastics, are recyclable. The minimal impact on the natural
environment is attractive to the developer, the funder, and the end user, and many participants
may link positive environmental contribution with greater enjoyment of exercise.

Promote Friendships
People who use Outdoor Adult Fitness Parks often socialize while exercising, strengthening
community and interpersonal relationships. These relationships may then support increased use
as participants more readily interact with each other, offering encouragement, motivation, and
support.

Are Available to Everyone

Though there are numerous indoor fitness options, they can be costly and inconvenient. Outdoor
Adult Fitness Parks can remove these barriers, which

is especially attractive in lower income neighborhoods. In fact, residents of high-poverty

counties in the U.S. have obesity rates 145% greater than those in wealthy counties. By
increasing the number of Outdoor Adult Fitness Parks available, especially in underserved
communities, there is increased likelihood of creating positive change in overall fitness and
health.

Improve Health
Regular physical activity is essential to health and longevity. Many people report preferring
exercising outdoors, which may also have a greater effect on mental and physical well-being.
Outdoor exercise is also rated as being more restorative compared to indoors since natural
environments reduce emotional and physiological stress. Exercising outdoors provides all the
physical benefits of indoor exercise (blood flow, improved cardiovascular health, improved
strength, flexibility, endurance, etc.) and can also provide vital exposure to sunlight that
increases important levels of vitamin D, unlike indoor exercise.

Attract New Users to Outdoor Environments

Outdoor Adult Fitness Parks provide additional opportunities for adults to recreate and
participate in physical activity outdoors. People who exercise regularly may be attracted to these
new outdoor locations, and create a true fitness “destination” within a neighborhood. This may
also help attract more non-users to the new and popular destination.

Offer Revenue Opportunities

Trainers who wish to provide fitness classes in outdoor environments can rent the space,
augmenting local budgets, while providing organized classes with an alternate environment,
instead of the typical indoor gym setting.

Provide Training Opportunities

Outdoor Adult Fitness Parks are ideal locations for people with physically demanding jobs to
augment their training. Firefighters, police teams, and college athletes, among others can benefit
from the “real world” environment, and the ability to set up training exercises in adverse
weather.

Support Community Capital

Outdoor Adult Fitness Parks promote growth in a healthy community. These parks attract health
conscious people to a neighborhood and can often influence the behavior of non-exercisers,
expanding the benefits associated with regular exercise to a greater number of people.

15 Reasons We Need sports in school

curriculum
There is no doubt about the importance of regular physical activity in a person’s life that not only
helps them to stay healthy but also improves their emotional fitness. Including such activities
right from the childhood is a good idea as it helps them to make it a part of their routine with
ease. That is why having sports in school curriculum is considered a good thought.

A student should be physically and emotionally healthy and stay focused to perform well in their
academics. Including sports activities in the curriculum can help them to achieve this to a great
extent.

Making sports an indispensable element in school days comes with a lot of other benefits than
you think. Here we are discussing a few among the most important benefits of making sports a
part of the school curriculum.

Can stay healthy: Regular physical activity in the form of sports can help students to stay healthy
and avoid unwanted illness. One of the most important benefits is reduced risk of obesity which
is otherwise a common problem among today’s kids. Students can benefit from increased
cardiovascular fitness and increased bone density reduces the risk of osteoporosis. Also sports
activities reduce chronic muscular tension, strengthen lungs, reduce blood sugar levels and
regulate blood pressure. Students involved in sports grow up as more energetic individuals.

2. Maintain good fitness level: Being involved in sports activities help students to avoid
formation of excess fat deposits and thus stay fit and slim. The training activities for the sports
help them to develop a good posture which is an important factor of staying fit. Also they can
improve their hand-eye and foot-eye co-ordination and attain a better balance. The interest in
outdoor sports also avoids or minimizes their sedentary activities such as playing video games
and watching television.

3. Boost in self esteem: Several research studies have noted that playing sports can enhance a
child’s self-esteem and self-confidence. Even small gestures such as a handshake from the coach,
a pat on the back from their team mate, a high-five from an opponent or praise of words from
parents and friends can boost their self esteem as a student. They will learn to welcome
constructive criticism and work on their weakness till they see improvement or success.

4. Enhanced leadership skills: Sports activities not only demand the role of a team player but, a
leader at times. Knowing how to lead a team in the school days will boost up their leadership
quality which enables them to be good decision makers. Being a good leader not only demands
them to lead from front but also need to boost their team with a winning spirit. This also teaches
them to manage team emotions and improve team discipline.

5. Undergoes positive mentoring: Sports persons will have to undergo a lot of mentoring from
their coaches and support staff before they achieve success. This positive mentoring can be an
asset for them in all phases of life in one form or the other. They will learn how to manage
emotions well and perform better which helps them to develop a positive mindset early in their
childhood. Respecting authorities’ decisions and accept failures just like success is important in
certain spheres of life.

6. Improved emotional fitness: The physical stimulation through sports improves their feeling of
well being and creates happiness in them. Release of happiness hormones reduces mental
depression and helps them to stay emotionally fit and cheerful. If they can change the love for
the game and follow it as a passion, they can even form a career out of it. When they stay
focused and work towards achieving their dream, it is always a pleasure.

7. Be more social: Being a part of sports team helps them to interact well with people of all ages.
Making friends and respecting diversities with a more open mindset becomes easier. Mingling
sessions with coaches and senior students gives them broad exposure to the life happenings and
the ability to face everything with a smile. It gives them the courage and confidence to come
forward in all circumstances and never stay back for an opportunity.

8. Enhanced discipline: Being a sports person teaches them important qualities of discipline
which can act as a self boost in many aspects of life. Involving in any sports activity teaches
them mental, physical as well as tactical discipline. They learn it in the form of following rules,
practicing restraint or obeying the coach and respecting decisions. This enables students to
accomplish their full potential and realize their goals, which are critical factors in attaining
success.

9. Perform better in academics: Studies have shown a positive connection between sports
activities and improved memory and cognitive functions of the brain. This means that students
can perform better in academics if sports are made a part of their routine. Also a disciplined
student can plan their lessons smart and score well in tests. Being physically active helps them to
stay focused in their studies. Also the skills such as coordination, multitasking

and situational awareness enhances their academic skills.

10. Improved teamwork and cooperation: Sports competitions and matches needs a very good
coordination, teamwork and cooperation. These skills will help students when they grow up as
tomorrow’s individuals. In addition to participating in individuals sports, team sports improves
their role as a team player which helps them a lot when it comes to group projects both in
academics and future career. They will learn how to cooperate with others to win as a team
which enables them to respect others’ views.

11. Efficient time management: This is another important skill gained by a student who is part of
sports activities. Discipline on the clock is very important when it comes to any sport and this
skill is an asset for students for life time. Their passion for sports will help them to efficiently
divide the available time for games, practice as well as academics. Knowing how to manage the
available time can be a great factor in their success journey.

12. Develop a success mindset: Being a sports person enables students to grow up with a success
mindset which is really advantageous. In addition to strong focus and concentration
development, they learn when to take risks and not. They will develop internal skills for handling
pressure and will be dedicated to finding creative ways to improve. Critical thinking skills and
coping skills gained during the phase prepares them to smartly deal with adversities.

13. Better patience and perseverance: These are two important elements they gain during their
involvement with sports-Patience and perseverance. Athletes will easily learn how to keep
practicing until they see the results. The perseverance helps them to go through bad times and
become more resilient.

14. Improved sleep: Just like the improved health and fitness and every other factors, having a
peaceful sleep for at least 8 hours a days is important. Research studies have noted a positive link
between a better sleep and involvement in sports activities. Getting proper rest to the body just
like relaxing your mind can help students to focus better, avoid illness and stay healthy.

Develop good life long habits: School days are the time when students tend to develop bad habits
and start being in wrong relationships. However, keeping themselves busy with sports and
academics gives them lesser free time to reckon and walk the disruptive path. The love and
passion for sports would help students to develop good food habits and make exercise a part of
their routine to stay fit. The discipline they earn during their sports phase helps them to refrain
from any bad deeds which help them to grow up as

good social beings.

School authorities can plan healthy competitions among students to evaluate where they stand
and give away prizes for their achievements to keep them motivated. Let them taste success and
failures right from their childhood which enables them to be good individuals with sportsman
spirit.

When you say about including sports in school curriculum, it need not always be a supervised
and well guided one always. It is better to form a group of students who have passion in certain
sports skills and guide them to become good athletes.

However, not every student may like the pressure of being guided in their leisure activities. Let
them play sports with minimal guidance just to ensure that they are safe but give them the
freedom to form their own team, rules and just play for fun.

Seven in ten support equal coverage for

women’s sport, but not at the cost of men’s
coverage
With one of the themes of International Women’s Day 2020 being gender equal sports coverage,
we at YouGov asked the British public how they would feel about seeing as much women’s sport
as men’s.

In principle, the British public is overwhelmingly supportive of equal coverage. Almost seven in
ten Britons (69%) support equal media coverage of men’s and women’s sport, with just 15%
opposed. Women are slightly more supportive than men, at 72% to 66%. Close to one in five
men (18%) are opposed to equal coverage, compared to only 5% of women.

However, in practice, support for equal coverage is less clear cut. Only a quarter (26%) want to
see more women’s sport coverage even if it means less attention given to men’s sports. Around
the same proportion (24%) think an increase is only acceptable if it doesn’t affect the men’s
sports coverage.
Women are more likely to be willing to accept equality at the expense of men’s coverage (31%,
compared to 20% of men), while men are more willing to only back it if men’s coverage is
unaffected (29% vs 20% of women).
A further 23% think the current balance in men and women’s sports coverage is about right,
including 25% of men and 21% of women.
Even among those who said they supported equality in sport reporting, only 36% would
countenance it if it meant less men’s sport being broadcast. Three in ten (30%) only support an
increase if men’s coverage is unaffected, and another 21% believe that men’s and women’s sport
already receive equal coverage.

Interest in watching women’s sport is on the up, and it is rising fastest among men
Regardless of whether or not they support equal coverage, most Brits (72%) believe that
women’s sport is receiving more airtime than it has previously. At the same time, 53% think the
quality of such coverage has gotten better as well.

Interest in watching women’s sport is on the rise too. On top of the 20% of Britons who have
always been interested in watching women’s sport, a further 19% say they are now more
interested than they were a few years ago.

In fact, interest is growing most quickly among men – 24% say they are now more interested in
women’s sport, compared to 14% of women.

Nevertheless, most Britons (56%) say they remain uninterested in watching women’s sport – a
figure that is higher among women (61%) than men (50%).

What women’s sports are Britons watching?

Britons are most likely to tune into women’s athletics, with 45% saying they do so regularly or
during major tournaments. In fact, women’s athletics has viewing parity with men’s athletics,
which also stands at 45% (although it helps that they are generally shown at the same time).

Women’s tennis comes in second at 39% - also close to parity with men’s tennis on 43% - and
women’s football in third on 27%.
Of the 12 sports we asked about, women’s rugby lagged furthest behind its male counterpart,
with only 11% of Brits saying they ever watch the women’s game, compared to 42% who said
the same of the men’s game.
Women’s athletics, tennis, cycling and swimming are seen as being as good as the men’s games,
but women’s football, cricket and rugby have furthest still to go
One barrier to greater acceptance of women’s sport is the belief that it is not played to the same
skill levels as the various men’s versions.
Men’s football is the most watched sport in Britain, with 54% of Brits saying they tune in at least
occasionally. While the Women’s World Cup last year received widespread coverage and
interest in the game is growing, 66% of those who have watched both men’s and women’s
football still believe that the quality of the men’s game is better. Only 18% currently feel they’re
about the same.

The figures are more positive when it comes to athletics, however. The second-most watched
sport we asked about, almost three quarters (73%) of Brits believe that the quality of the male
and female events is about the same.

Viewers also see the men’s and women’s games being about equally good for swimming (73%),
cycling (61%) and tennis (52%).

Aside from football, the female versions of cricket and rugby also have furthest to go in terms of
quality, with 69% and 67% thinking the men’s games are better.

Netball is the only sport where viewers think the quality of the women’s tournament is better
(60%).

Major sports events: are they worth it?

It used to be that hosting any of the major sporting events, particularly the Olympic Games and
the FIFA World Cup, would carry significant prestige. It was an honour that would help to shape
the legacy of a country or city. It could be a powerful moment of national symbolism and
economic transformation.

Why then, over the last few years, have many advanced Western economies decided not to bid
for such major events, and in some cases, even withdrawn their proposals?
Hosting an internationally prominent sporting event invites the global spotlight, provides an
injection of tourism money, and a chance for a city or a country to rebuild or develop
infrastructure. However, it also brings an immense financial commitment and great risk.

Blame it on Rio

The 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil came at a huge cost. It reached US$15 billion including cost
overruns of at least 75% and was the most expensive in FIFA history. The cost of the 2016 Rio
Summer Olympic Games was estimated at US$4.58 billion while costs overran by about 50%.
Both mega-events were deemed poor investments. Brazil faced its worst recession in 25 years,
there were cuts in healthcare and education and police went unpaid for weeks at a time.

Those kinds of costs have become hard to justify. The past couple of years have seen
withdrawals from the bidding process by Boston, Budapest, Davos, Hamburg, Krakow, Munich,
Rome and Stockho lm. A lack of candidates meant the 2022 Winter Olympics was awarded to
Beijing – a city not renowned as a winter sports hub. Away from the Olympics, London made a
last minute decision to pull out of hosting the start of the 2017 Tour de France; less-fashionable
Düsseldorf stepped in.

Emerging economies like Brazil, as well as Russia and Qatar, who will host the FIFA World
Cups in 2018 and 2022 respectively, do not have the same simple economic rationale to
consider. For them, such sporting events are an investment in their global positions; the cost
overruns and apparent losses are in fact the price they are willing to pay for that product. The
Bryan Fogel doping documentary Icarus, launched recently on Netflix, levelled accusations of
just how far Russia was willing to go to acquire that prestige at the Sochi Winter Olympics.

Declining allure
The Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup are attracting fewer bids, failing to hit their previous
peaks, as illustrated in the chart below. You will notice a spike in bids for the 2022 Winter
Olympics, which goes against the general trend, but in fact, most candidates withdrew and left
Beijing and Almaty in Kazakhstan as the only candidates.

The number of applicant bids for the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup (1968-2028).

All four World Cups from 2010-2022 will be hosted by a developing nation. However, the next
three summer Olympics will take place in major cities in developed economies – Tokyo, Paris
and Los Angeles. So what has happened there? One explanation is that the International Olympic
Committee (IOC) has been handing out concessions. Most importantly, the IOC changed its
competitive process. It named the hosts for two consecutive Olympics to give bidders more
preparation time. It also allowed both Paris and Los Angeles to decide the exact timing, and
offered US$1.8 billion to the LA organising committee.

The IOC understood the declining appeal of hosting as it cajoled those two bidders into place.
That’s why it delivered the Olympics Agenda 2020, a plan intended to provide cost-saving
measures and reduce the complexity of the bidding process.

So, is it worthwhile hosting such major sporting events? Looking at the Olympic Games, a study
conducted by the University of Oxford found that in real terms the average cost overrun for all
Olympic Games is 156%. It shouldn’t be a huge surprise. Not many major projects have an
absolute, unchangeable deadline for completion. That can ramp up costs as the opening
ceremony approaches and money gets thrown at any remaining problems.
The Olympics cost overrun compared to other types of large-scale projects. Flyvbjerg et. al.
(2002); Ansar et. al. (2017); Budzier and Flyvbjerg (2011)
The same study established that the 2012 London Summer Olympics was the most costly
Olympics at US$15 billion. The 1976 Montreal Summer Games showed the highest cost overrun
at 720%. The table below demonstrates that the Olympic Games from 1968 to 2016 (summer and
winter) have all encountered significant cost overruns.
The cost overruns for the Olympics in real terms and calculated in local currencies. Flyvbjerg,
Stewart and Budzier (2016); * Projected final costs

Emerging powers
The decline in enthusiasm for hosting mega-events has several driving factors. Crucial among
them is the fragility of economies after the global financial crisis, and the growing inequality in
the distribution of wealth and income. That brings increased cynicism around major sporting
projects which need vast funding, and this is particularly true when there is no genuine guarantee
of substantial, discernible benefits for taxpayers.
It used to be that everyone was playing the same game; countries would compete for the
bragging rights and pay little attention to economic rationality or infrastructure legacy. But now,
the countries that can most easily justify the risk are those with the most to gain on the world
stage, rather than those with the deepest pockets. Russia and Qatar do not need to turn a profit,
but they do want a stronger voice in global affairs.
For developing economies, mega-event hosting is motivated by globalisation and soft power.
China and South Africa recently showed that it can be an exceptional opportunity to devise a
new brand identity to both their local citizenry and global audience. The updating of your global
image, however, can hit some obstacles. Both Russia and Qatar are hoping they will end up
projecting an image of modern and advancing nation-states, but for now they are still saddled
with the negative impression created by corruption and bribery accusations.

Are Extreme Sports Dangerous?

Do you love to play sports? For many kids, there’s nothing quite like the exercise and fun that
come from being part of a team. Maybe you play baseball, basketball, football, or soccer.
Perhaps you prefer softball or volleyball. No matter what sports you enjoy, there is fun to be had
on a field or a court near you.

Some athletes take things to the next level, though. Rather than playing traditional sports, they
strike out on their own. No, we’re not talking about bowling or jogging. We’re talking about
extreme sports!

What is an extreme sport? There’s no set definition. For the most part, though, extreme sports are
athletic activities involving one person that are dangerous in some way. Most extreme sports
give athletes a rush of adrenaline. This is what drives many of them to take part.

What types of activities do most people call extreme sports? It’s a long list! It includes
skateboarding, surfing, bungee jumping, snowboarding, whitewater kayaking, mountain
climbing, and ice climbing. Many would add BASE jumping, heli-skiing, BMX biking, bull
riding, and cliff diving to the list. Even mountain biking, cave diving, ski jumping, speed skiing,
and street luging are often called extreme sports.

Just thinking about many of those activities is enough to give most people goosebumps. That
feeling of fear and danger is what drives many extreme sports athletes. They seek to test
themselves in all sorts of death-defying ways. Many people also enjoy watching extreme sports.
Their popularity has soared in recent years.

You may have seen extreme sports on TV or social media. Some of the athletes receive large
sponsorships. Many companies want to link their brands with these thrill seekers. Some
sponsorships allow extreme sports athletes to compete professionally.

The best extreme sports athletes can have long and profitable careers. But even the smallest
mistakes in these sports can have major—even lethal—consequences. Between 2000 and 2011,
over four million injuries were caused by extreme sports.

Many of these injuries can be prevented. Unfortunately, the young people who are most likely to
engage in extreme sports sometimes lack good

judgment. The lure of Internet fame leads many to attempt things they’re not ready for.
Extreme sports can be very dangerous. Never engage in an activity you haven’t prepared for. If
you think you would like to try an extreme sport, get advice from friends and family members
first. You should also learn from experts in the sport. If you proceed, start small. Your safety is
always what’s most important.

How Using Social Media Affects Teenagers

Many parents worry about how exposure to technology might affect toddlers developmentally.
We know our preschoolers are picking up new social and cognitive skills at a stunning pace, and
we don’t want hours spent glued to an iPad to impede that. But adolescence is an equally
important period of rapid development, and too few of us are paying attention to how our
teenagers’ use of technology—much more intense and intimate than a 3-year-old playing with
dad’s iPhone—is affecting them. In fact, experts worry that the social media and text messages
that have become so integral to teenage life are promoting anxiety and lowering self-esteem.

Young people report that there might be good reason to worry. A survey conducted by the Royal
Society for Public Health asked 14-24 year olds in the UK how social media platforms impacted
their health and wellbeing. The survey results found that Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram all led to increased feelings of depression, anxiety, poor body image and loneliness.

Indirect communication
Teens are masters at keeping themselves occupied in the hours after school until way past
bedtime. When they’re not doing their homework (and when they are) they’re online and on their
phones, texting, sharing, trolling, scrolling, you name it. Of course before everyone had an
Instagram account teens kept themselves busy, too, but they were more likely to do their chatting
on the phone, or in person when hanging out at the mall. It may have looked like a lot of aimless
hanging around, but what they were doing was experimenting, trying out skills, and succeeding
and failing in tons of tiny real-time interactions that kids today are missing out on. For one thing,
modern teens are learning to do most of their communication while looking at a screen, not
another person.
“As a species we are very highly attuned to reading social cues,” says Catherine Steiner-Adair,
EdD, a clinical psychologist and author of The Big Disconnect. “There’s no question kids are
missing out on very critical social skills. In a way, texting and online communicating—it’s not
like it creates a nonverbal learning disability, but it puts everybody in a nonverbal disabled
context, where body language, facial expression, and even the smallest kinds of vocal reactions
are rendered invisible.”

Lowering the risks

Certainly speaking indirectly creates a barrier to clear communication, but

that’s not all. Learning how to make friends is a major part of growing up, and friendship
requires a certain amount of risk-taking. This is true for making a new friend, but it’s also true
for maintaining friendships. When there are problems that need to be faced—big ones or small
ones—it takes courage to be honest about your feelings and then hear what the other person has
to say. Learning to effectively cross these bridges is part of what makes friendship fun and
exciting, and also scary. “Part of healthy self-esteem is knowing how to say what you think and
feel even when you’re in disagreement with other people or it feels emotionally risky,” notes Dr.
Steiner-Adair.

But when friendship is conducted online and through texts, kids are doing this in a context
stripped of many of the most personal—and sometimes intimidating—aspects of communication.
It’s easier to keep your guard up when you’re texting, so less is at stake. You aren’t hearing or
seeing the effect that your words are having on the other person. Because the conversation isn’t
happening in real time, each party can take more time to consider a response. No wonder kids
say calling someone on the phone is “too intense”—it requires more direct communication, and
if you aren’t used to that it may well feel scary.

If kids aren’t getting enough practice relating to people and getting their needs met in person and
in real time, many of them will grow up to be adults who are anxious about our species’ primary
means of communication—talking. And of course social negotiations only get riskier as people
get older and begin navigating romantic relationships and employment.

Cyberbullying and the imposter syndrome

The other big danger that comes from kids communicating more indirectly is that it has gotten
easier to be cruel. “Kids text all sorts of things that you would never in a million years
contemplate saying to anyone’s face,” says Donna Wick, EdD, a clinical and developmental
psychologist. She notes that this seems to be especially true of girls, who typically don’t like to
disagree with each other in “real life.”

“You hope to teach them that they can disagree without jeopardizing the relationship, but what
social media is teaching them to do is disagree in ways that are more extreme and do jeopardize
the relationship. It’s exactly what you don’t want to have happen,” she says.

Dr. Steiner-Adair agrees that girls are particularly at risk. “Girls are socialized more to compare
themselves to other people, girls in particular, to develop their identities, so it makes them more
vulnerable to the downside of all this.” She warns that a lack of solid self-esteem is often to
blame. “We forget that

relational aggression comes from insecurity and feeling awful about yourself, and wanting to put
other people down so you feel better.”

Peer acceptance is a big thing for adolescents, and many of them care about their image as much
as a politician running for office, and to them it can feel as serious. Add to that the fact that kids
today are getting actual polling data on how much people like them or their appearance via
things like “likes.” It’s enough to turn anyone’s head. Who wouldn’t want to make herself look
cooler if she can? So kids can spend hours pruning their online identities, trying to project an
idealized image. Teenage girls sort through hundreds of photos, agonizing over which ones to
post online. Boys compete for attention by trying to out-gross one other, pushing the envelope as
much as they can in the already disinhibited atmosphere online. Kids gang up on each other.
Adolescents have always been doing this, but with the advent of social media they are faced with
more opportunities—and more traps—than ever before. When kids scroll through their feeds and
see how great everyone seems, it only adds to the pressure. We’re used to worrying about the
impractical ideals that photoshopped magazine models give to our kids, but what happens with
the kid next door is photoshopped, too? Even more confusing, what about when your own profile
doesn’t really represent the person that you feel like you are on the inside?

“Adolescence and the early twenties in particular are the years in which you are acutely aware of
the contrasts between who you appear to be and who you think you are,” says Dr. Wick. “It’s
similar to the ‘imposter syndrome’ in psychology. As you get older and acquire more mastery,
you begin to realize that you actually are good at some things, and then you feel that gap
hopefully narrow. But imagine having your deepest darkest fear be that you aren’t as good as
you look, and then imagine needing to look that good all the time! It’s exhausting.”

As Dr. Steiner-Adair explains, “Self-esteem comes from consolidating who you are.” The more
identities you have, and the more time you spend pretending to be someone you aren’t, the
harder it’s going to be to feel good about yourself.

Stalking (and being ignored)

Another big change that has come with new technology and especially smart phones is that we
are never really alone. Kids update their status, share what they’re watching, listening to, and
reading, and have apps that let their friends know their specific location on a map at all times.
Even if a person isn’t trying to keep his friends updated, he’s still never out of reach of a text
message. The result is that kids feel hyperconnected with each other. The conversation never
needs to stop, and it feels like there’s always something new

happening.

“Whatever we think of the ‘relationships’ maintained and in some cases initiated on social
media, kids never get a break from them,” notes Dr. Wick. “And that, in and of itself, can
produce anxiety. Everyone needs a respite from the demands of intimacy and connection; time
alone to regroup, replenish and just chill out. When you don’t have that, it’s easy to become
emotionally depleted, fertile ground for anxiety to breed.”

It’s also surprisingly easy to feel lonely in the middle of all that hyperconnection. For one thing,
kids now know with depressing certainty when they’re being ignored. We all have phones and
we all respond to things pretty quickly, so when you’re waiting for a response that doesn’t come,
the silence can be deafening. The silent treatment might be a strategic insult or just the
unfortunate side effect of an online adolescent relationship that starts out intensely but then fades
away.

“In the old days when a boy was going to break up with you, he had to have a conversation with
you. Or at least he had to call,” says Dr. Wick. “These days he might just disappear from your
screen, and you never get to have the ‘What did I do?’ conversation.” Kids are often left
imagining the worst about themselves.
But even when the conversation doesn’t end, being in a constant state of waiting can still
provoke anxiety. We can feel ourselves being put on the back burner, we put others back there,
and our very human need to communicate is effectively delegated there, too.

What should parents do?

Both experts interviewed for this article agreed that the best thing parents can do to minimize the
risks associated with technology is to curtail their own consumption first. It’s up to parents to set
a good example of what healthy computer usage looks like. Most of us check our phones or our
email too much, out of either real interest or nervous habit. Kids should be used to seeing our
faces, not our heads bent over a screen. Establish technology-free zones in the house and
technology-free hours when no one uses the phone, including mom and dad. “Don’t walk in the
door after work in the middle of a conversation,” Dr. Steiner-Adair advises. “Don’t walk in the
door after work, say ‘hi’ quickly, and then ‘just check your email.’ In the morning, get up a half
hour earlier than your kids and check your email then. Give them your full attention until they’re
out the door. And neither of you should be using phones in the car to or from school because
that’s an important time to talk.”

Not only does limiting the amount of time you spend plugged in to computers provide a healthy
counterpoint to the tech-obsessed world, it also

strengthens the parent-child bond and makes kids feel more secure. Kids need to know that you
are available to help them with their problems, talk about their day, or give them a reality check.

“It is the mini-moments of disconnection, when parents are too focused on their own devices and
screens, that dilute the parent-child relationship,” Dr. Steiner-Adair warns. And when kids start
turning to the Internet for help or to process whatever happened during the day, you might not
like what happens. “Tech can give your children more information that you can, and it doesn’t
have your values,” notes Dr. Steiner-Adair. “It won’t be sensitive to your child’s personality, and
it won’t answer his question in a developmentally appropriate way.”

In addition Dr. Wick advises delaying the age of first use as much as possible. “I use the same
advice here that I use when talking about kids and alcohol—try to get as far as you can without
anything at all.” If your child is on Facebook, Dr. Wick says that you should be your child’s
friend and monitor her page. But she advises against going through text messages unless there is
cause for concern. “If you have a reason to be worried then okay, but it better be a good reason. I
see parents who are just plain old spying on their kids. Parents should begin by trusting their
children. To not even give your kid the benefit of the doubt is incredibly damaging to the
relationship. You have to feel like your parents think you’re a good kid.”

Offline, the gold standard advice for helping kids build healthy self-esteem is to get them
involved in something that they’re interested in. It could be sports or music or taking apart
computers or volunteering—anything that sparks an interest and gives them confidence. When
kids learn to feel good about what they can do instead of how they look and what they own,
they’re happier and better prepared for success in real life. That most of these activities also
involve spending time interacting with peers face-to-face is just the icing on the cake.
How Safe Is Your Personal Information Online?
How many websites have you shared information with? Do you use the same passwords across
all your accounts? Is your home Wi-Fi password protected and unique? Ensuring you and your
family’s personally identifiable information is secure online is essential to ensure your family’s
safety and your financial health.

Living life in the digital age can often feel like a trade-off. Both in person and online businesses
often require our personal information in return for goods and services – or quite often a special
deal or upgrade! So where do we draw the line? How do we help our children manage this?

Be Careful Before You Share Your Details

At the risk of stating the obvious, protecting your privacy starts with protecting your personal
information. This includes your name, address, telephone number and date of birth. The more
you share it, the greater the chance it could end up in the wrong hands! Children and teens often
struggle to get this concept so weave this into conversation regularly.

Always Read the Privacy ‘Fineprint’

Take the time to read the privacy policies of the companies you are considering sharing your
details with. If your kids are considering downloading apps, encourage them to read the fine
print. Make sure you are all happy and whether the trade of personal information is worth it.

Set Up Your Privacy Settings & Check Them Regularly

Social media accounts will revert to a default setting unless you specify otherwise so invest some
time here. Default settings usually allow anyone to see your profiles and access your details, so
ensure your profile settings are as tight as possible. Also, work with your children to ensure their
privacy settings are sorted. Why not tailor their social media accounts so that only their friends
can view their photos, updates and information?

Passwords, Passwords!!!
Managing passwords is one of the key ways to manage your online privacy. Passwords need to
be a minimum of 8 characters with a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and
symbols. And remember you should ideally have a different password for every site! And just to
complicate life further, these need to be changed regularly. But if all that sounds too hard

(and it does!) get yourself a password manager. There is software available which helps create
and manage usernames and passwords across all your devices. Phew!

How’s Your Home Wi-Fi?

Your home Wi-Fi could be putting you at risk. If your Wi-Fi isn’t password protected, you are
effectively offering an open invitation to the neighbourhood! Many experts believe hackers can
capture passwords, email addresses and any other data being transmitted over your network if
your Wi-Fi isn’t secured. So if you haven’t already, add a password BUT do not use the default
one – they can be easily Googled and found online!
We all know life is a series of trade-offs. Many think you can’t have your cake and eat it too. We
all want to enjoy the best of the online world but remain safe at the same time. And while there
are no guarantees, if you make smart decisions and invest a little time securing your online
privacy, you’ll be well on your way to enjoying cake!

Disclosing personal information

Worried about young people disclosing personal information online? This resource provides
information on the key risks to disclosing personal information and when to disclose, as well as
info on avoiding scams. Read our tips on protecting personal information and check out our
social media classroom activities to help you teach students about making educated choices
when disclosing personal information online.

Online Risks
Today you can access almost anything on the internet, from entertainment, credit and financial
services to products from every corner of the world. While the internet affords a certain level of
anonymity, there are increasing ways in which your personal information can be at risk.

With awareness as your safety net, you can minimize the chance of an Internet mishap. Being on
guard online helps you protect your information, your computer, and your money. To be safer
and more secure online, make these practices part of your online routine.

Young people can be vulnerable, as they place a great deal of importance on developing an
online personality, and many sites ask for their personal information. While many are savvy
enough to set up strict privacy restrictions on their profiles and to avoid email scams, it is
worthwhile encouraging them to be proactive about the risks associated with providing personal
information online.

Help your students understand how to manage online risks using our 'online communities’
classroom activity.

Disclosing personal information

To an identity thief, personal information can provide instant access to financial accounts, credit
record, and other assets. If you think no one would be interested in your personal information,
think again. Anyone can be a victim of identity theft.
One way criminals or hackers get personal information online is by lying about who they are, to
convince people to share account numbers, passwords, and other information so they can
purchase things in your name.

This type of scam is called "phishing": criminals send email, text, or pop-up messages that
appear to come from your bank, a government agency, an online seller or another organization
with which you do business. The message asks you to click to a website or call a phone number
to update your
account information or claim a prize or benefit. It might suggest something bad will happen if
you don't respond quickly with your personal information. In reality, legitimate businesses
should never use email, pop-ups, or text messages to ask for your personal information.

Support students to understand when to disclose personal information using our 'boundary
setting on social media' classroom activity.

Avoiding phishing scams:

Don't reply to an email, text, or pop-up message that asks for personal or financial information,
and don't click on links in the message. If you want to go to a bank or business's website, type
the web addresses into your browser yourself.

Don't respond if you get a message - by email, text, pop-up or phone - that asks you to call a
phone number to update your account or give your personal information to access a refund. If
you need to reach an organization with which you do business, call the number on your financial
statement, or use a telephone directory.

Understanding how to respond to scams can be difficult for students. Help them learn to make
safe choices using our ‘things to stop doing online’ classroom activity.

Protecting personal information

Some identity thieves have stolen personal information from many people at once, by hacking
into large databases managed by businesses or government agencies. While you can't enjoy the
benefits of the Internet without sharing some personal information, you can take steps to share
only with organizations you know and trust. Don't give out your personal information unless you
first find out how it's going to be used and how it will be protected, and change your passwords
regularly to keep your information secure.
If you are shopping online, don't provide your personal or financial information through a
company's website until you have checked for indicators that the site is secure, like a lock icon
on the browser's status bar or a website URL that begins "https:" (the "s" stands for "secure").
Unfortunately, no indicator is foolproof; some scammers have forged security icons and some
hackers have managed to breach sites that took appropriate security precautions. Help students
learn about protecting their privacy online using our 'privacy on social media' classroom activity.

Traffic in the US is going to get worse — but

things are changing
The problem is clear: Traffic congestion will become significantly worse and more widespread
without big changes in how people and products get around.

A few ways to ease the nation's gridlock:

PUBLIC TRANSIT RENAISSANCE
Ridership on public buses, trains and subways has reached its highest level nationally since the
1950s, and transit boosters cite this as evidence that expanded service and routes is a good
investment.

The nation's driving capital, Los Angeles, is making a multibillion-dollar investment in building
or extending five rail lines. Transit advocates say that should be a model: If LA can do it, any
region can.

Skeptics point out that the record ridership still translates into just a fraction of all trips people
take. They also make a bang-for-the-buck argument, saying big-ticket transit projects just don't
make enough of a difference to justify their cost.

TOLLS ARE 'HOT'

Driving is expected to remain the primary means of travel for most Americans. But finding the
money to maintain aging highways, much less build more lanes, is increasingly difficult.

To help fund new construction, the Obama administration has proposed letting states toll federal
interstates. That's been prohibited since the interstate system was launched in 1956, except for a
few exceptions, including highways that already had tolls. Congress would have to approve the
change.

One way to make existing highways more efficient is "high occupancy toll" (or HOT) lanes. The
idea often involves converting carpool lanes that may be relatively car free into lanes that solo
drivers can pay to use. Carpoolers typically travel for free. Hundreds of miles of toll lanes
already are operating in or around Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Miami,
Washington, D.C., and other cities.

More tolls don't mean more tollbooths. In the future, there may be no option

to pay with cash. Transponders in cars will identify vehicles, and the owner's credit card or
account will be charged. Drivers already can take Interstate 95 from Maine to Virginia using one
transponder so that they never have to stop at a toll booth.

DUMB CARS, MEET SMART CARS

New vehicles will increasingly be "smart cars," equipped with wireless technology that lets them
share how fast they're going, their direction, whether they're braking and whether an accident just
happened ahead. These rolling networks could relay information to specially equipped traffic
signals and other "smart infrastructure," which in turn would be connected to traffic-management
centers.

General Motors said it will put this "vehicle-to-vehicle" technology in 2017 model-year
Cadillacs. Ford, Toyota and other automakers are working on the technology, but it could easily
take a decade or more after smart cars hit showrooms before they replace enough older vehicles
to realize their full benefits.

Eventually, smart cars and trucks will be able to form tight "platoons" of eight to 25 vehicles, all
electronically talking so they can closely follow each other without crashing.
The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute is setting up a mock city to test the
technology in artificially dangerous situations like a truck running a red light. Automakers are
already testing the technology on Detroit area highways and streets.

SELF-DRIVING CARS
The ultimate smart car won't even need a driver. "Self-driving" vehicles hold the potential to
provide new mobility for the aged and the disabled, and reduce the demand for parking because
they could be summoned by other users.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, these self-driving cars of the future are an increasingly common
sight. Nearly 80 prototypes have permission from the California Department of Motor Vehicles
to test their skills on public roads, although a person must sit behind the wheel in case the on-
board computers and sensors make a mistake.

Advocates say the cars will be able to drive more closely together, as well as avoid the accidents
that can snarl traffic for miles.

While some Silicon Valley companies want to see these cars proliferate in the next few years,
traditional automakers are taking an incremental approach by

adding features such as automatic braking or lane-keeping on newer models.

IN TECHNOLOGY WE TRUST
Traffic smartphone apps such as Waze suggest the most efficient route from A to B, adjusting
along the way based on real-time speed and traffic information from other users.

Dozens of transit agencies have apps that offer real-time travel information. Boston's public
schools have experimented with an app that tracks how soon the school bus will arrive so parents
who don't want their kids to wait in the cold too long can time drop-offs rather than opting for a
drive all the way to school.

If package-delivery drones like those proposed by Amazon ever get off the ground, they hold the
potential to decrease the number of truck trips on city and suburban streets.

5 Major Environmental Impacts of Transport

Development
Some of the major environmental impacts of transport development are:
The growth of speedy transportation is man’s greatest achievement in minimising distances but
at the same time it has also become a cause of environmental degradation. Concern over the
environmental consequences of transport development is long-standing. The environmental
implications of transport development have become very widely recognised with a plethora of
local, national and international, governmental and non-governmental organisations contributing
to the debate by producing their own policy prescriptions and agendas for action.
In considering the relationship between transport and the environment we are immediately
confronted with a potential paradox: on the one hand, modern industrial societies pursue
economic growth through the open exchange of people, raw materials, energy, goods and
services in an increasingly global marketplace, yet, on the other, the transport systems required
to allow such exchange may be exerting pressures on the environment that degrade the functional
integrity and quality of natural ecosystems to the extent that the prospect of maintaining or
achieving a high quality of life in many human societies is threatened. In short, we cannot live
without transport development, but neither may we be able to cope with its side-effects over the
long term.

The European Union’s Fifth Environmental Action Programme states that transport is “vital to
the distribution of goods and services, and to trade and to regional development”, but argues that
current trends towards increasing transport demand are likely to result in “greater inefficiency,
congestion, pollution, wastage of time and value, danger to life and general economic loss”
(Commission of the European Communities, 1992:6). This article examines some of the major
environmental impacts of transport development.

1. Energy Consumption in Transport and Environmental Pollution:

The energy consumption in transport sector is the main cause of pollution. There are significant
differences in fuel efficiencies between various modes of transport, for example, consumption of
energy in cars is more among urban transport modes. Although there has been a significant
improvement in the fuel efficiency in cars and other automobiles. It is estimated that in
developed countries like UK. The traffic increases up to 142 per cent predicted for the

year 2025, the energy consumption will continue to increase substantially, in spite of fuel
efficiency measures.

2. Air Pollution:
Transport is a major source of air pollution not only in developed but in developing countries
also. Ecologists believe that the rapid increase in the number of vehicles on our roads, which has
taken place without any real restriction, is fast devel 颅 oping into an environmental crisis.
Exhaust fumes are the major source of atmospheric pollution by the motor vehicle.
3. Noise Pollution:
Another side’ effect of transport systems is the noise pollution. It is estimated that some 135
million people in OECD countries suffer transport noise levels in excess of 65 db. Figure 7.2
shows the noise levels from different sources including transportation.
The sources of noise from road vehicles are many and varied, including break squeal, door slam,
loose loads, horns, over-amplified music systems, etc. Rail noise depends on the form of
propulsion, the nature and load, the speed of train and the type of track. The noise pollution
problems around airports are well known.

4. Land Consumption and Landscape Damage:

The provision of land-based transport requires the direct utili 颅 sation of land. Long strips of
land are consumed, and large areas effectively divided into smaller ones (severance). Previous
land uses, such as forestry, agriculture, housing and nature reserves, may be displaced, and zones
adjacent to the new development rendered unsuitable for wide range of activities.
The latter aspect is true of pipelines carrying volatile materials (such as pressurised gas), for
example, where a corridor of land along the route must be kept undeveloped for safety reason,
even if the pipeline itself causes no direct consumption of land. Ironically, severance may
seriously restrict the movement of people and animals between previously contiguous areas, with
consequences for the quality of community life and the functional integrity of ecosystems.

Airports are such large blocks of land that they create severance effects in their particular
location. Some severance effects, notably those of non-motorway type roads, are only partial,
though increasing traffic density and speed increases the danger of pedestrian crossings on the
same level. Traffic engineers have introduced more light-controlled crossings in recognition of
this problem.

The use of road tunnels or viaducts can reduce severance, especially in urban

areas, though the latter introduce significant visual impact, and both solutions are costly. Land
consumption is not just a direct consequence of transport development; it may also occur
indirectly as land is utilised for the extraction of the raw materials (principally aggregate)
required for construction. An average of 76,000 tonnes of aggregate is required per kilometre of
road lane, and approximately 90 million tonnes of aggregates are used in the UK every year in
the construction and repair of roads (Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, 1994).

Major impact of transport-related land loss and land use change may be a decline in the visual
amenity or aesthetic attraction of the landscape. Visual impact may be essentially linear in nature
for road, rail and inland waterway develop 颅 ments, or nodal in character as with the large
terminal installations of sea and airports. Information on the scale of transport related landscape
damage and loss of visual amenity is not widely available, partly due to the difficulties of
assessing existing landscape quality. Obviously, however, the impact of adverse landscape
change is likely to be much more significant in areas of high scenic value, such as national parks
and mountain passes, or where a flat topography allows visual intrusion over a wide area.

5. Ecological Degradation:
The degradation of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, as measured by indicators such as reduced
habitat/species diversity, primary productivity or the areal extent of ecologically valuable plant
and animal communities, provides one of the most emotive aspects of the tension between
transport development and environmental quality.
Severance is another direct consequence of land-based transport development. The physical
division of natural or semi-natural ecosystems may inhibit the movement of animal and plant
species across transport lines, and the associated reduction in size can threaten the viability
and/or biodiversity of the smaller remnants. Likewise, the death of individual animals through
collision with vehicles will be an all-too- familiar direct consequence of road transport for many
readers. A recent report by Scottish Natural Heritage (1994) included a study, which put the
annual road-kill loss of breeding amphibians in Scotland at 20-40 per cent, with an annual kill of
barn owls of at least 3,000 individuals.

The Impact of Urbanization

By 2050, 68% of the world population is projected to live in urban areas. Urbanization is
attractive to many rural citizens for the many opportunities it creates in bettering their quality of
life. However, many elements of urbanization can turn burdensome for a city and its citizens if it
is not planned for carefully. If a city is to accept urbanization and its rapid growth of population,
they will need to know what works, what doesn’t, and how to solve the negative effects of
urbanization quickly to survive.

What Is Urbanization?
As the world’s population is increasing, a rising number of people are moving from rural areas to
more urban settings. This global phenomenon is called urbanization — essentially increasing the
population of rural areas (an area with 2500 residents or fewer), and turning them into urban
areas (a central city, and surrounding areas, with a population exceeding 50,000 people). More
than half of the world’s population now lives in urban areas, and this shift in population is driven
by a variety of factors.

Causes of Urbanization
Economic, political, and social issues merge with circumstances of modernization to make
people want to migrate from rural to urban areas. Causes of urbanization include:
Industrial Growth: The explosion of industrialization and manufacturing enterprises within a
certain urban area gives rise to more employment opportunities — which is another factor of
urbanization.

Employment: Rural areas commonly are agricultural. Urbanization and industrial growth create
opportunities for jobs that pay more, are more diverse, and may be less physically demanding.

Social Factors: Many urban areas allow for better living standards, including superior
educational facilities, better access to healthcare, modern housing, and more recreational
activities.

Economic Problems: Many people may choose to migrate from a world area, as it is generally
not as economically stable or wealthy as a booming urban city.

Political Turmoil: War, civil unrest, and other sources of political disorder often are woes of
developing areas. This turbulence — and potential danger — can be enough to make anyone
want to move.

Modernization: New technology upgrades the infrastructure of urban areas. Better

communication, medical facilities, and various social amenities can attract those from rural
areas.

Urbanization is a complex process, as many of its driving factors play into and give rise to one
another. Once a rural city becomes urbanized, it may begin to thrive from several beneficial
features — most of which are what attracts more people to them.

Positive Effects of Urbanization

Especially for those coming from rural areas, urban areas can create an overall better quality of
life in several ways. When urban areas become bustling cities and towns, they become a society
of culture that can facilitate financial and educational growth.

Employment Opportunities
With industrialization comes the creation of jobs. Usually making a shift from an agricultural
economy, industrialization paves the way for modern industries and will need more people to
perform various jobs. Rural jobs such as farming and mining may be labor-intensive (that is, if
they have not been taken over by machines or automatic devices), while urban employment
opportunities — such as healthcare, business, and education — will need a considerable amount
of people with a variety of skills to fill many jobs.

Modernization
Modern technology provides for a better city infrastructure. With modernization, cities can adapt
to cultural needs and provide support systems for future development. Additionally,
modernization can make for a more sustainable city layout, with better housing/businesses,
market centers, and public transit systems. For example, in advanced cities, mobile technology
can assist large businesses in advanced mobility hubs for vehicles — significantly reducing the
amount of traffic in growing cities.

The very presence of the Internet and IoT technology can expand communication to nearly any
corner of the globe, and has the capability to efficiently run utilities and lighting for a whole city.
These are just a few illustrations of how technology and modernization can provide efficient
solutions to many facets of life, facilitating a better standard of living.

Access
Industrialization coupled with modernization brings an ample amount of access for a city and the
citizens within it. Accessibility to the Internet, better healthcare, education, recreational
activities, social services, and more all

improve livability. Additionally, modern cities have the potential to better plan their city for
sustainability and boost their economy.

Problems of Urbanization
In theory, urbanization is a brilliant concept. However, urbanized cities are running into major
problems as a result of a rapidly growing population. As it stands today, urbanization has several
major drawbacks.

Congestion
With so many people moving from rural areas, many urbanized cities are starting to see an
overcrowding issue. Major cities such as New York and Hong Kong are dealing with major
congestion problems. Overpopulation is contributing to extreme traffic, the depletion of
resources, pollution, and unemployment among many other issues.

Poverty
Many urban cities have seen a population explosion that can be hard to plan for. As a result,
employment opportunities may dry up quicker than expected — leading to unemployment.
Additionally, housing problems may arise with a very high population density and can lead to
poor housing conditions. These housing conditions are only exacerbated by unemployment
issues. Unemployment and poor housing (or, the unattainability of adequate housing) is creating
an influx of crime in urban cities as well.

Environmental Hazards
Water and sanitation issues are surfacing because of rapid population increases. With so many
people needing resources such as food, water, fuel, and waste management, the population of
urbanized cities are suffering from a lower quality of life due to environmental reasons such as
water scarcity, pollution, and sanitation. Additionally, this is leading to the spread of disease and
poor health in heavily populated areas.

Solutions To Urbanization
Urbanization is a double-edged sword. Experts are finding successfully reaping the benefits of
urbanization while minimizing its major drawbacks may lie in the reconsideration of several
aspects.

Education
It will fall upon the city government to prepare and plan for a rapidly growing population.
Planting trees, conserving energy and resources, and educating the public can make for a more
efficient city.

City Planning
Newly urbanized cities can take note from smart cities, and the technology

they use to power their city in response to urban activity. Future-ready technology can solve
many congestion issues facing urban populations by facilitating a more efficient transportation
ecosystem. To reduce traffic congestion and pollution further, cities will have to consider
technology that provides parking solutions to reduce the number of cars driving around on the
roads.

Cities can work with hospitals, businesses, and hotels (all traffic-heavy enterprises) to create an
efficient answer to parking and traffic issues. City planners also have to consider either
controlling their population growth or expanding their city – and how to economically prepare
and adapt for these changes.

Create Opportunities
To combat unemployment and crime, urbanized cities must create more job opportunities to
accommodate their citizens. It will be essential for urbanized cities to foster job growth and
creation by working with new technologies, creating new and innovative companies within its
city, and considering new global markets.

Recovery and renewal: Tackling long-term

unemployment
New projections in this research reveal that the number of long-term unemployed people across
England could reach 1.2 million, with significant local variations - a stark reminder of the direct
impact on our communities, and the need for targeted solutions.

The COVID pandemic has led to an unprecedented set of national measures to protect businesses
and workers. Despite these efforts, unemployment continues to rise, and with four million people
on furlough, no community will be untouched by the jobs crisis.

The projections cited in the Recovery and Renewal report show that local factors matter
including an areas’ economic conditions going into the crisis and the reliance on sectors
vulnerable to lockdown including retail and hospitality. The longer you are out of work, the
harder it is to find, compete for, and secure a job. We must do everything we can to avoid the
damaging impact long term unemployment can have on people’s prospects, household incomes,
health and wellbeing, and on our local communities and economies as we know them.

Dealing with rising unemployment and limiting the knock-on lasting effects on communities is a
big issue for leaders of our towns and cities, particularly as our economy loses more jobs than it
is creates. How quickly areas recover can be influenced by a combination of policy responses to
rising unemployment, businesses’ ability to stay afloat and recruit again, identifying and
investing in sectors that have the potential to create quality, new jobs in the short and longer
term, retraining people to find new jobs, including in new sectors, and having decent local
careers advice and guidance to help make transitions. Bringing all these policy solutions together
around place is critical, so no community is left behind.

As democratically elected leaders and place shapers, local government is the natural partner of
central government and is ideally placed to achieve this, alongside our stakeholder partners. Our
sector has shown extraordinary capability to lead our communities through the crisis and now we
want to do more to rebuild the future they deserve. There is much to be gained by national and
local government combining resources and expertise to deliver for people and businesses hard hit
by the crisis.

Our offer to the Government is that with adequate resourcing and powers, and an opportunity to
work in partnership at the earliest stage to shape new or re-design existing Plan for Jobs
initiatives, we will help land well-intended but often disconnected national schemes so they
become greater than the sum of their parts. The challenge ahead is one we cannot afford to get
wrong for our people or places.

UK unemployment falls amid record rise in job

vacancies
Unemployment fell in June as workers made redundant during the pandemic appeared to respond
to a record rise in vacancies to re-enter the labour market and secure a job.
According to official figures, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.7% in the three months to
June, down 0.2 percentage points on the previous quarter. Data for July showed the number of
job vacancies passed 1m for the first time on record, the Office for National Statistics said.

The proportion of the working population out of work is still higher than before the pandemic,
when unemployment was 3.9%, but the reopening of the economy and the rocketing demand for
workers in some industries has pushed up the number of people in work.

Separate figures for July from HMRC also pointed to a strong recovery in the labour market,
even as almost 2 million people remained on furlough, after the number of payrolled employees
increased by 182,000 to 28.9 million.

The figures beat the forecasts of City analysts, who expected the labour market to recover more
slowly as lockdown restrictions eased.

Wages jumped 7.4% without bonuses and 8.8% including bonuses to reinforce the message from
employers that where shortages exist, workers can expect to receive signing on fees and retention
bonuses.

Samuel Tombs, the chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the strong growth in
the number of jobs this year and the rise in wages were unlikely to alter the view of the Bank of
England, which has forecast that wages growth will lose momentum as the economy returns to
more normal levels of activity.

He said: “Most public sector workers likely will see modest increases in their pay again next
year, while job losses in the wake of the furlough scheme will help to keep a lid on private-sector
settlements.

“Accordingly, we continue to think that the labour market will lose its current momentum,
enabling the monetary policy committee to wait until the first half of 2023 to raise [interest
rates].”

Illustrating the mismatch between the demand for workers in industries from manufacturing to
hospitality and the lack of skilled staff, the number of vacancies soared in July to 1,034,000 from
the previous month while the three-month average to July increased by 290,000 to 953,000.

However, the data showed the number of hours worked remained almost 5% below pre-
pandemic levels, and analysis by the ONS of wages showed that in stripping out “the coronavirus
effect”, most wage rises were between 3.5% and 4.9%.

The number of employees also remained 201,000 below February 2020 levels, indicating that
many self-employed people who lost work in the previous 16 months were still unable to return
to the labour market.

The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, said: “Today’s figures show that our plan for jobs is working –
saving people’s jobs and getting people back into work. I know there could still be bumps in the
road but the data is promising – there are now more employees on payrolls than at any point
since March 2020, and the number of people on furlough is the lowest since the scheme
launched,.”

Children at risk of exploitation

Children at risk of exploitation includes information on child sexual exploitation, trafficking and
county lines.

Child sexual exploitation (CSE)

CSE is a form of child sexual abuse. It occurs where an individual or group takes advantage of
an imbalance of power to coerce, manipulate or deceive a child or young person under the age of
18 into sexual activity in exchange for something the victim needs or wants, and/or for the
financial advantage or increased status of the perpetrator or facilitator. The victim may have been
sexually exploited, even if the sexual activity appears consensual. Child sexual exploitation does
not always involve physical contact; it can also occur through the use of technology.

Child sexual exploitation (CSE) is a crime with devastating and long lasting consequences for its
victims and their families. The first response to children, and support for them to access help,
must be the best it can be from social workers, police, health practitioners and others who work
with children and their families.

In cases of suspected or actual child sexual exploitation, safeguarding procedures must be

implemented and a referral made to social care in order to safeguard them from further or future
harm. Further information is available from the Derby and Derbyshire Safeguarding Children
Partnership safeguarding procedures.

Child criminal exploitation (CCE)

Child criminal exploitation (CCE) is common in county lines and occurs where an individual or
group takes advantage of an imbalance of power to coerce, control, manipulate or deceive a child
or young person under the age of 18 into committing criminal activity (a) in exchange for
something the victim needs or wants, and/or (b) for the financial advantage or increased status of
the perpetrator or facilitator. The victim may have been criminally exploited even if the activity
appears consensual. CCE does not always involve physical contact; it can also occur through the
use of technology.

County lines
Information on a gang culture using children across county borders.
County lines is a term used to describe gangs and organised criminal networks involved in
exporting illegal drugs into one or more importing areas within the UK, using dedicated mobile
phone lines or other form of 'deal line'. They are likely to exploit children and vulnerable adults
to move and store the

drugs and money and they will often use coercion, intimidation, violence (including sexual
violence) and weapons. The criminal exploitation of children is, however, broader than just
county lines. It also includes, for example, children forced to work on cannabis farms or to
commit theft.

Criminal exploitation of children and vulnerable adults is a geographically widespread form of

harm that is a typical feature of county lines activity. It is a harm which relatively little is known
about or recognised by those best placed to spot its potential victims.

What it is: organised crime based on a model of drug supply, violence and intimidation.

Features:
gang and gang organisation; often Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) is a factor firearms, knives,
corrosives - a feature used in intimidation
crossing county borders to source and recruit vulnerable young people to start and sustain supply
chains
move and launder money from illicit means
targets the most vulnerable and disaffected youth; for example those missing or often out of
school or education

What schools can do:

raise awareness for staff and to be alert
consider staff training
identify potential children
use safeguarding processes to report
No one really knows how many young people across the country are being forced to take part.
Tragically, the young people exploited through 'county lines' can often be treated as criminals
themselves.

Child labour and exploitation

Challenge
A total of 152 million children – 64 million girls and 88 million boys – are estimated to be in
child labour globally, accounting for almost one in ten of all children worldwide. UNICEF
estimates 12 percent of the children aged 5-14 years in South Asia are involved in child labour,
well over 41 million children. The dynamic picture of child labour indicates a decline of about
one third since 2000, however, progress is far too slow. Children are used in some severe forms
of child labour such as bonded labour, child soldiers, and trafficking. South Asian child labourers
can be found in a variety of industries: the brick kilns, carpet weaving, garment making,
domestic service, agriculture, fisheries, and mining. Children are also at risk for various other
forms of exploitation including sexual exploitation that involves internet such as child sexual
abuse materials; online facilitation of offline child sexual exploitation; involving adults or other
children exposing children to pornography.

In South Asia, child labour and exploitation are the combined product of many factors, such as
poverty, social norms condoning them, lack of decent work opportunities for adults and
adolescents, migration and emergencies. These factors are not only a cause but also a
consequence of social inequities reinforced by discrimination. A UNICEF’s recent study points
out that inequality, which stems from gender, age, socio-economic status, caste/ethnicity,
influences the chance of children engaging in child labour, types of work they engage and
severity of exploitation. For example, child domestic workers are mostly girls who are often
hardly visible and face many hazards. Children from lower caste or marginalized ethnic groups
could be more targeted for child recruitment to armed groups in conflict situations. Migrant
children are also vulnerable to hidden and illicit labour and trafficking.

The continuing persistence of child labour and exploitation poses a threat to national economies
and has severe negative short and long-term consequences for children such as denial of
education and undermining physical and mental health.

Solution
Child labour and other forms of exploitation are preventable through integrated approaches that
strengthen child protection systems as well as simultaneously address poverty and inequity,
improve access to and quality of education and mobilize public support for respecting children’s
rights.

The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Children on the Sale

of Children and on the Involvement of children in armed conflict, the ILO conventions (No. 138,
146 and 182) and the Trafficking in Persons Protocol which supplements the Convention on
Transnational Crime provide a solid international legal framework for addressing child labour
and child exploitation. There is a global recognition of the need to end the use of children in
armed conflict by 2025 and of all forms of child labour by 2030 evidenced in the unanimous
adoption of the SDGs and specifically Target 8.7.

UNICEF works with government and for-profit agencies to put in place the necessary policy
framework to end child labour. It works with businesses to assess the supply chains, and to find
sustainable options to address business practices that lead to child labour. It works with families
to support the ending of labour that is a result of bonded or debt labour. UNICEF support
governments to integrate programmes that would end child labour, such as age assessment
procedures to prevent the recruitment of children into the police or armed forces. UNICEF
supports communities in changing their cultural acceptance of child labour, while ensuring
alternative income to families, access to nurseries, quality education and protective services.

Specific to armed conflict, UNICEF and partners also collect information on grave violations
committed against children including recruitment or use of children by armed forces or armed
groups. Information is collected through the system called Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism
(MRM) and shared with the UN Security Council to develop appropriate responses to children’s
needs. In the region, MRM is active in Afghanistan.

Ending child labour and exploitation requires working with partners. UNICEF works closely
with Alliance 8.7 that was formed to support the achievement of the target to eradicate forced
labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of
the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end
child labour in all its forms.

UNICEF works with governments in South Asia to support the implementation of Regional
Action Plan for the Prevention and Elimination of All Forms of Child Labour in South Asia
2016-2021. This action plan recognise the importance of all actors to be able to end this practice.

5 Reasons Space Exploration Is More Important

Than Ever
It’s a common retort when the expense of space exploration comes up: Aren’t there bigger
problems to solve here on Earth? The implication is that humanity has enough to worry about,
and maybe space is too expensive in light of all these issues. This oversimplification ignores the
nature of humanity, the drive that has made us the dominant species on Earth. If we want to stay
that way, space exploration is vital. Here are five reasons why we belong up there.

New Technologies and Research

Humans did not evolve to go into space, but we go there anyway. That has led to the
development of various technologies that feed back into the economy and improve our lives on
Earth. Without space programs, we wouldn’t have GPS, accurate weather prediction, solar cells,
or the ultraviolet filters in sunglasses and cameras. There’s also medical research happening in
space right now that could cure diseases and prolong human lives, and these experiments can’t
be done on Earth. Space exploration could save your life.

Asteroids Don’t Care About Us

Speaking of saving lives, space exploration could save all our lives. The solar system has calmed
down a lot since the early eons, but there are still an unknown number of big asteroids and
comets out there that could smack into the planet and really ruin your day. It’s happened several
times in the past, each one causing a mass extinction. It’s not a matter of if another large asteroid
hits Earth, but when. A robust space program is the only hope we have of deflecting such an
object. If we’re not working toward that goal, humanity already has an expiration date.

Colonization Is the Ultimate Backup

There are currently more than 7 billion humans, which is a lot. However, we’re all crammed
together on this one planet. If something happened to Earth, our species could be wiped out. For
example, the aforementioned asteroid impact. Colonizing other bodies in the solar system (or
building our own orbiting habitats) is a way to create a “backup” of humanity that will survive
no matter what happens to Earth. Maybe future humans will be Martians who will never set foot
on Earth. The technology to make that possible isn’t going to develop itself.

Space Mining Could Save the World

As we develop new technologies on Earth, the strain on our natural resources
continues to increase. The extraction of valuable minerals has led to a host of problems,
including environmental damage and human exploitation, but there’s a wealth of precious
materials in space. Startups like Planetary Resources want to mine asteroids instead of Earth,
which would mean an effectively unlimited supply of raw materials that are rare on Earth.

We Are Explorers
There are more practical reasons for space exploration, but one of the principal reasons we must
continue is that we’re explorers. That’s why humans number in the billions — from our earliest
upright steps, we’ve endeavored to learn more about the world around us, and this allowed us to
build civilization. Exploring space is an opportunity not only to discover new worlds and build
advanced technologies, but to work together toward a larger goal irrespective of nationality, race,
or gender. If we stop exploring, we stop being human.

Debate: For and against space exploration - is

space research a waste of time?
For: Investing in further scientific exploration of space is a waste of resources

The amount of money being spent on space research is in the billions and it has achieved
extraordinarily little except for a bit of improved technology which would probably have come
about anyway by other means. Whether or not global warming is real, and whether or not we are
facing imminent catastrophe on this planet, we are certainly facing serious issues here on Earth,
and they are getting worse as we simply watch them. These include the disappearance of the
rainforest, the pollution of the oceans, and increased desertification of an area about the size of
England every year. These are the general crises that are coming to the planet, quite apart from
the economic ones we’re so obsessed with at the moment.

I have for some time considered space research a gross waste of money, time and effort that
could be much better applied to the management of our own planet. I’m currently writing a book
about what remains of the Central American rainforest of the Petén and looking at ways of
protecting it. But the only way you can really protect rainforest, and I’ve been trying to do this
for 40 years, is to make it more valuable standing than cut. The Petén is interesting because this
is where the Maya were. Their civilisation collapsed in about 900AD because they over-
exploited their environment.

We know that all civilisations collapse after about 500 years, prior to which you have big cities,
people in the countryside servicing the cities. But inevitably the greed of development leads to
the extinction of a culture. This is exactly what is happening to us today. We’re experiencing
climate change, famine, drought, warfare and we’re investing money needed to solve these
problems in Space.

If the collapse of civilisations is a recurrent theme, then at we should be looking for ways of
managing the planet’s resources in order to make how we live sustainable. The way to do that is
not to go charging off into Space, wasting unbelievable quantities of money in pursuit of some
chimera that we might in one day come back with some valuable mineral. Science should be
devoting the sorts of sums of money that it is pumping into space to working out how to mange
the climate here on Earth.

There has been research going on for 65 years into climate management. We

know how to seed clouds and we know how to make it rain when we want it to rain. The Chinese
and the Russians are very switched on to this and they know how to do it. The Chinese used it to
prevent rain during the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, and it never
rains on the Victory Day Parade in Russia. So the technology for managing the weather is in
place and I think we should devote massive resources to developing that technology and taking it
from the military into the civilian world.

The big elephant in the room in all this is the issue of population. We all know it will rise to 10
billion or so in the next few decades. The only way to reduce population is prosperity, because
we prosperous countries do not breed so fast. The way to do that is to give people enough to eat.
The way to do that is to make it rain. We should reallocate the funds currently being spent on
Space research to the rather simple notion of making it rain where and when we want it.

Now there will be pro-space lobbyists who agree with every word of this, but will complain that
I want to take their money off them. But there isn’t enough money to go around. In terms of
expenditure on weather management since the Second World War there’s only been tens of
millions spent on research – as opposed to tens of billions on space research.

If you put the money that is wasted in space into the hands of climatologists you could have
lasting benefits for mankind. I don’t think space science is bad science, I just think it’s a waste of
time.

Against: Investing in further scientific exploration of space is a good use of resources that will
ultimately help to stimulate global economies

We’re living in a tremendously virtual age where many young people think that all of the
discoveries that they need to make will happen on their laptops and smartphones. For me, it’s
more important than ever to reintroduce a sense of physical exploration, to get out there into
strange, hostile and challenging environments. There is probably 99 per cent of deep oceans and
all of space to left explore, and it is only by putting humans into new physical locations that
we’ll be able to make genuine and crucial scientific discoveries. Human presence in science is
almost the definition of science. It’s a human endeavour to gather knowledge, not just a machine
endeavour to gather data. The robots we send into these environments don’t know what to look
for, and above all they don’t know how to be surprised by something like the strange glint of a
rock.

Some will say that we’re in the deepest economic crisis since the 1930s and we simply don’t
have spare pocket money for this. But, the first thing to
remember when looking at the recent announcement that Nasa is to put $1.6bn into a project to
get its astronauts up the International Space Station, is that this is actually not a very large sum of
money.
Besides, one of the most successful responses to the Great Depression of the 1930s was to pump
money into infrastructure and technology – it was called Roosevelt’s New Deal. It was
controversial at the time, but by the end of that decade, the USA was the most powerful nation
on Earth. What are governments for if they don’t invest? It’s much better to put taxpayers’
money into jobs and new technologies than simply bailing out banks.

The benefits of continuing to conduct off-world scientific exploration in the short term are
Earthly. They have to do with forging new and unprecedented diplomatic relationships between
countries, while getting engineers with different backgrounds and traditions to work together.

It also ensures the development of a good technology base, not only among companies, but
among young people who need something to inspire them through the educational system. These
people are more likely to be interested in building a space ship than something less glamorous.
Space science also keeps coming up with new challenges in terms of materials, communications
and so on. Solving these challenges feeds back into the terrestrial economy. People are under the
illusion that investing in rockets involves little more than sticking money into the pipe and then
setting fire to it. But that’s not at all the case. The money gets circulated here on the ground.
There has never been a space programme that hasn’t been a good economic stimulus.

What the current team of scientists is doing at the moment is developing a framework to teach us
how to maintain a long-term presence in space. It started with how to build structures in space,
and they’re now beginning to conduct scientific experiments up there. It has taken some time for
the science to feed back to us, but this is because constructing the Space Station itself has been
complicated.

The short cycle of governments means that it’s not always in their interest to look to the long
term. But when there are international alliances it’s harder for any given government to withdraw
from projects and ruin everything for everyone else. Nasa called in international allies to help to
justify it and in so doing put itself in a position where it didn’t want to disappoint any of those
allies by cancelling large chunks of the programme. It’s these alliances that are the key to
ensuring the long-term potential for space exploration.

And so the question of investment in space isn’t one of throwing good money after bad. In terms
of science, 99.999 per cent of all that we need to know is off-world. It’s inconceivable that we
don’t send more human beings out there to find out more about it.