Month: July 2018

United States (Conversation) – On Jan. 24, 2014, police found Josh Boren, a 34-year-old man and former police officer, dead in his home next to the bodies of his wife and their three children. The shots were fired execution-style on Boren’s kneeling victims, before he turned the gun on himself. On Aug. 8, 2015, 48-year-old David Ray Conley shot and killed his son, former girlfriend and six other children and adults at his former girlfriend’s home. Like Boren, Conley executed the victims at point-blank range. Both men had histories of…

World Wide (Conversation) – Nigeria and Mississippi are a world apart physically, but the rural American state and the African country have much in common when it comes to the obstacles they had to overcome to implement sex education in their schools. Three lessons about overcoming these obstacles come out of research that several colleagues and I conducted on how sex education came to be in Nigeria and Mississippi. The lessons are particularly relevant for similarly religious and conservative places where people often worry – as they do throughout the…

United States (Conversation) – The abortion debate is at the center of U.S. political dialogue. As of June 2018, 49 percent of Americans consider themselves pro-choice, while 45 percent consider themselves pro-life. Voices from both sides flood social media feeds, while newspapers, radio and television programs frequently cover the topic. Since 2011, politicians have enacted 400 pieces of legislation restricting this medical procedure. One important group’s voice is often absent in this heated debate: the women who choose abortion. While 1 in 4 women will undergo abortion in her lifetime,…

United Kingdom (Conversation) – Since 21-year-old Swedish student Elin Ersson live streamed her protest against the deportation of an Afghan asylum seeker, the video has been viewed more than 11m times on Facebook. The young woman refused to sit down until the man was removed, announcing to the camera and her fellow passengers: “I’m doing what I can to save a person’s life.” At one point in the video, a man with a British accent is heard telling Ersson: I don’t care what you think. What about all these children…

United States (Conversation) – Millennials, the generation born between 1981 and 1996, see America’s role in the 21st century world in ways that, as a recently released study shows, are an intriguing mix of continuity and change compared to prior generations. For over 40 years the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, which conducted the study, has asked the American public whether the United States should “take an active part” or “stay out” of world affairs. This year, an average of all respondents – people born between 1928 and 1996 –…

United States (Conversation) – A sizeable academic literature seeks to explain why the Americans have a smaller welfare state than similar Western countries, especially in Europe. One interesting observation this literature relies upon is that the US population believes in the meritocratic principles of the “American dream”. It is true that American opinions place more weight on hard work than luck, compared to Europeans, to explain people’s success in life, and that such beliefs make people less supportive of redistribution (Alesina, Stantcheva and Teso, 2017). However, this does not necessarily…