Category: Society

aeaweb.org

6-year long study of Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) finds that they improve the lives of children living in poverty in Indonesia.
The positive effects included better nutrition and greater access to healthcare for children in families that received CCTs.
The study provides guidelines for policymakers that want to implement similar programs, and it’s one of the first big studies of how CCTs improve lives.
CCTs are about providing poor, working families with money based on simple conditions (like children regularly attending school).

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on January 8, 2021

Like gold or oil, water has become a commodity traded on Wall Street.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange launched the first water market with $1.1 billion contracts tied to water prices in California.
Farmers, hedge funds and municipalities can bet on the future prices of water, and future water available in western US.
Water scarcity and water pricing are going to become a “hot topic” in the years to come.
This could help farmers protect their revenues, but putting a basic human right in the hands of financial institutions and investors might be dangerous in the long term.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on December 11, 2020

cnbc.com

What has an interesting business model, and combines green tech with blockchain? Apple co-founder’s, Steve Wozniak's new company, Efforce.
It’s a decentralized platform where investors can benefit financially from energy efficiency projects.
Essentially, companies can register their green-energy upgrade projects, and get funding through the platform to execute those projects.
All in all, this could allow companies en masse to switch to green energy, contributing to global reductions in CO2 production, and helping to combat global warming.
Efforce has been around for a year, and they just released their token, #WOZX, on two of the biggest cryptocurrency marketplaces.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on December 11, 2020

Big moment for the meat industry - chicken bites produced in bioreactors without killing animals have passed a safety review by the Singapore Food Agency.
At the moment, by weight, 60% of mammals on Earth are livestock, 36% are humans, and only 4% are wild animals.
The producer, Eat Just, will sell their chicken bites in one restaurant, they’ll be expensive - but with scale, they’ll become less expensive than normal meat.
They claim it’s nutritionally the same as chicken meat, but there are differences, and it’s up to consumers to tell if they like it.
"Cultured meat” and plant-based products are important to reduce the negative impact of traditional meat production.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on December 4, 2020

Using a global automated censorship tracking system deployed in 2018, researchers from Censored Planet project find censorship worryingly increasing in 103 countries.
These countries include democratic countries like Norway, Japan, India, Italy, Israel and Poland.
Many countries start with a valid reason to implement network blocking infrastructure - for example to block child porn sites - and then they start using it willy-nilly.
Some examples include blocking human rights sites, or dating sites, and often happen in the wake of large political events, social unrest or new laws.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on November 20, 2020

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