Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Feb 11, 2013 (1)

choi

(1) The cover story:

Felix Gillette, Snapchat and the Right to Be Forgotten. The world's hottest photo-sharing app, which features self-destructing pictures, isn't just a better way to flirt. It's about taking control of your digital self.

My comment:
(a) In the cover: Erasable You. Why Snapchat might upend social media, undermine law enforcement, and make the Internet fun again.
(b) In the Table of Contents: Taking Control of Your Digital Self. Snapchat, a photo-sharing app created by two Stanford frat brothers, deletes pictures after a few seconds. It's not just a better way to flirt; it's a key to managing your your identity on the Web.
(c) There is no need to read the text.

choi

(2) Charles Kenny, The Reproductive Recession. With birthrates falling, te world is getting very old, very fast. Should we panic--or celebrate? (in the column Opening Remarks).
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... hat-the-world-needs

Quote:

"Americans just don’t make babies like they used to. The U.S. birthrate is the lowest in nearly a century, according to a study released last year by the Pew Research Center. It’s half the level of the Baby Boom years after World War II. American women, on average, are likely to have fewer than two children during their lifetime, which means not enough babies are being born to maintain the current population size. Even among new arrivals, the trend is declining: The birthrate among Mexican immigrants to the U.S. has plummeted 23 percent since 2007." paragraph 1

"For a start, it reflects growing gender equality: Surveys suggest women usually want to have fewer children than do men.

"The secret to wealth isn’t more young people, it’s more productive people. Economies can continue to grow—creating demand and supplying the resources necessary to care for the infirm—if they focus on increasing the productivity of those fit and keen to work.

"Rachel Margolis and Mikko Myrskylä, in research for the National Institutes of Health, even suggest fewer kids might make for a happier planet. Their analysis of worldwide survey data from 86 countries finds that childless people are considerably happier than those with children. The gap between childless adults and parents of four kids is as big as the gap between people living in middle-income countries and those living in high-income countries.


My comment:
(a) Charles Kenny
http://www.cgdev.org/content/expert/detail/1424569

is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Global_Development
(CGD; a non-profit think tank based in Washington, DC that focuses on international development; founded in 2001)

(b)
(i) In the Table of Contents: Falling Birthrates and aging global population may be what the world needs now.
(ii) Web title: An Aging Population May Be What the World Needs
(c)
(i) Margolis R and Myrskylä, A Global Perspective on Happiness and Fertility. Population and Development Review, 37: 29-56 (2011)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/d ... 11.00389.x/abstract
(ii) The abstract said, "In addition, analyses by welfare regime show that the negative fertility-happiness association for younger adults is weakest in countries with high public support for families, and the positive association above age 40 is strongest in countries where old-age support depends mostly on the family."

What did that mean?
(ii) Here is the free online link for the full text.

Margolis R and Myrskylä, A Global Perspective on Happiness and Fertility. Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, June 2010 (MPIDR Working Paper WP 2010-025)
http://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2010-025.pdf
(discussing Figure 7b at web pages 16-17: "Happiness was also among those with one child in southern European countries, underlining the value of familial support in this region. Our hypothesis about the importance of children at older ages in states with weak welfare states partially held up. Older respondents in both former socialist states and
in southern European states were significantly happier with children than those without. These countries have much weaker welfare states than continental or Nordic countries and rely much more on familial support")

* Figures (as well as Tables) are at the bottom of the link.

(d) Recommendation: Please view the graphic and skip the first half of the text, starting reading the paragraph that begins with "Aging populations pose some real challenges."