FROM THE OECD INSIGHTS BLOG We’re all going to die Imagine this scene between doctor and patient. The doctor: “I’ve got good news and bad news”. “Gimme the good news, doc”. “I’ve found you a bed in a hospital”. “Great! What’s the bad news?” “It’s in the Hospital for Incurables”. They were up-front if not exactly upbeat about these things in the old days, but could incurable diseases come back? The question is asked every time a new virus like the latest strain of coronavirus appears. Read more Why biodiversity matters In 1845, Belgian farmers discovered, too late, that a load of seed potatoes they had bought from America was contaminated with Phytophthora infestans, a Mexican fungus that had recently spread northwards. The blight caused by P. infestans rapidly spread from Belgium all over the continent, triggering the European potato famine. In Ireland, 1 million people out of a population of 8 million died of starvation and its side-effects, and another million emigrated. Social, economic and political reasons help explain why the country was so badly affected, but the main cause was that a third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food. The Irish famine is a stark lesson in what happens when monoculture goes wrong, and why the resilience biodiversity brings is important to agriculture. Read more What did you learn in school today? It’s probably safe to say that, in absolute terms, more children are now in school than at any other time in human history. Not just that, it’s also likely that a greater proportion of children – both boys and girls – are in school than ever before. But here’s a question: What are all those children actually learning in school? Regrettably, in many developing countries the answer looks to be not much or, at least, not enough. Read more Africa: Making the most of its natural resources Africa has made tremendous progress over the last 13 years, going from “hopeless” to “aspiring”, in the words of The Economist. Certainly, Africa’s pace of growth has been impressive, averaging 5.1% of GDP per year – much faster than most OECD countries. Some have dismissed this simply as reflecting only the recent boom in natural resource prices. This viewpoint misses the real story on two counts. Read more OECD Forum 2013: jobs, equality trust The OECD Forum starting today will bring together around 2000 people in over 20 sessions, but the main question will be how to make sure the economy is a firm foundation on which to build our societies’ goals. As OECD data on rising inequality show, the benefits of growth do not automatically trickle down to generate more equal societies. The most immediate challenge is to ensure that growth benefits everyone – women, men, children, the elderly – providing not just income, but access to the goods and services such as housing, health care or education vital to personal well-being and development. That means we need to adopt a new, inclusive approach that looks at the social as well as the economic aspects of growth. Read more Roads to recovery It wasn’t long after the financial crisis struck before people began talking about the road to recovery. Many years on, it turns out that there is no such road. Instead, there are roads – several of them – all leading OECD countries back, some more quickly than others, to modest growth. Among the major OECD economies, the fastest recovery seems to be happening in the United States, according to the latest edition of the OECD Economic Outlook, released today. Read
Posted on: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 18:56:57 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015