By Tracey Burns. Did you ever wonder if education has a role to play in stemming the obesity epidemic sweeping across all OECD countries? Or what the impact of increasing urbanisation might be on our schools, families, and communities? Or whether new technologies really are fundamentally changing the way our children think and learn? If so, you’re not alone. More...

By Gökhan Kula and Markus Schuller. Ladies and gentlemen, let us be clear: as a society we are increasingly attracted to simplistic solutions, be it in the form of religious denominations or through the populist promises of salvation of parties on the right and left margins. Now, we could also utilise this escape route in the financial industry we work in, on the grounds that simplification has been accepted in other areas of society. But not so fast. More...

By Marianna Georgallis. One month ago, all eyes turned to the Greek drama playing out in Europe. It has been a month of fraught negotiations, a shock referendum and a European Union and its leaders put under the spotlight, with European values of solidarity and unity questioned and, some might say, threatened. The focus has been largely on numbers – on the billions needed to avoid a Grexit, on the daily €60 cash withdrawal limit currently in place. More...

By Peter Gregory. It is erroneous for the UN to claim that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has been “the most successful anti-poverty movement in history”. The extraordinary reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty over the last 25 years has been caused by market-led economic growth. We must re-cast foreign aid and charity to reflect this reality. More...

By Carole Biau. One of Aesop’s fables tells of an old man on the point of death, who summoned his sons around him to give them some parting advice. He gave the eldest son a bundle of sticks and asked him to break it. The son was unable to, and his two brothers did no better. The old man then took the bundle apart and gave each of them a stick, which was easily broken. More...

By Nathalie Girouard. In a recent lecture on climate change, the OECD Secretary-General stated that “Tomorrow’s societies engineered around yesterday’s solutions won’t get us there.” The OECD’s work on green growth is just one example of where the Organisation is working towards the development of solutions for today. More...

By Monika Queisser. In Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell recalls his experiences in the 1920s living on the margins of society in the two European capitals. Orwell joined the “tramps”, as they were called, the army of people, mostly male, without stable housing, moving around between cheap hotels, shelters and often prison, occasionally finding casual jobs, pawning their few belongings to buy food, and living with the constant threat of hunger, illness and violence. More...

By Glenda Quintini and Stéphane Carcillo. Agnès attended a French High School but left at 16 with poor qualifications. She had not enjoyed school and was pleased to leave but now she would be pleased to go back as work has not been as pleasant or easy as she had expected. More...

By Ariana Mozafari. On 3 July, Secretary-General Angel Gurría gave a lecture at the London School of Economics entitled, “Climate: what’s changed, what hasn’t, and what we can do about it – six months to COP21”. He discussed the usual mitigation tactics that royal family members and celebrities are jumping onto: rewiring the economy, an end to fossil fuel subsidies, financing investments in green infrastructure, and aligning contradictory policies to complement the climate effort. More...