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By Elettra Ronchi. There’s a quiet revolution afoot: health data are increasingly collected, stored and used in digital form. Doctors, nurses, researchers, and patients are all producing on a daily basis huge amounts of data, from an array of sources such as electronic health records, genomic sequencing, high-resolution medical imaging, ubiquitous sensing devices, and smart phone applications that monitor patient health. In fact the OECD predicts more medical information and health and wellness data will be generated in the next few years than ever before. More...

By Francesca Colombo. That population is ageing across the world is well known. As fertility rates drop and life expectancy improves, a bigger share of the population is greying. At least one in four people will be aged over 65 by 2050 in about two-thirds of OECD countries. The share of those aged over 80 years will more than double, from 4% in 2010 to 10% in 2050. In Japan, Spain and Germany, this trend will be even more pronounced, with the proportion of the over-80s expected to triple, rising from 5% to 15% in Spain and Germany, and from 6% to 16% in Japan. The speed of ageing will be even more dramatic in some emerging economies. China, for example has taken only 40 years to increase life expectancy from 40 to 70 years, something that took Germany 80 years. More...

By Ken Bluestone. Two themes that resonate strongly across the OECD are the need to achieve sustainable development and the growing significance of population ageing. It is rare, however, that these two agendas are brought together to consider the importance of ageing for developing countries. More...

By Maroussia Klep. Indonesia enacted a major reform recently. On 1 January, President Joko Widodo followed through with his electoral promise to cut decades-long subsidies for energy products. Many leaders had tried before him, but retreated in the face of fierce resistance from the people. Thanks in part to low oil prices, the newly-elected President got the reform through without much trouble. The true challenge will be how to support poor households when prices start rising again. More...

By Jennifer Schappert. Two years ago today, the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka collapsed, killing over 1,100 people and injuring another 2,500. The dead and injured were garment workers, ordered to go back to work even though shops and a bank in the same building had closed immediately the day before when cracks appeared. The garment factories were indirectly supplying international retailers, highlighting the debate on whether multinational enterprises (MNEs) can make the apparel supply chain safe and healthy. More...

By Robb Rutledge. What makes us happy? Well-being researchers have identified many variables related to happiness, but we still don’t know exactly how the events of our daily lives combine to influence how we feel from moment to moment. People should get happier when good things happen, but clearly this is not the whole story.
We designed a study to investigate the relationship between rewards and happiness. We brought people into the lab and asked them repeatedly about their happiness as they chose between safe and risky monetary options. Risky choices were gambles with equal probabilities (like a coin toss) of a better or worse outcome. If they chose to gamble on a given trial, they then found out whether they won or lost. Based on the data, we developed a mathematical equation to predict how self-reported happiness depends on past events. We found that happiness depends not on how well things are going, but whether things are going better or worse than expected.

Happiness depends on safe choices (certain rewards, CR), expectations associated with risky choices (expected value, EV), and whether the outcomes of risky choices were better or worse than expected. More...

By Johan Rockström, Nobel Laureate Mario Molina, Jeffrey Sachs, Leena Srivastava and John Schellnhuber. 2015 is a critical year for humanity. Our civilization has never faced such existential risks as those associated with global warming, biodiversity erosion and resource depletion. Our societies have never had such an opportunity to advance prosperity and eradicate poverty. We have the choice to either finally embark on the journey towards sustainability or to stick to our current destructive “business-as-usual” pathway.
Three times this year, world leaders will meet to set the course for decades to come. In July 2015, heads of state meet in Addis Ababa to discuss Financing for Development. In September 2015 in New York, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be adopted. In December 2015, nations negotiate a new Global Climate Agreement in Paris. More...

By Johannes Jütting. Tradition tells us that more than 3,000 years ago, Moses went to the top of Mount Sinai and came back down with 10 commandments. When the world’s presidents and prime ministers go to the top of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) mountain in New York late this summer they will come down with not 10 commandments but 169. Too many?
Some people certainly think so. “Stupid development goals,” The Economist said recently. It argued that the 17 SDGs and roughly 169 targets should “honour Moses and be pruned to ten goals”. Others disagree. In a report for the Overseas Development Institute, May Miller-Dawkins, warned of the dangers of letting practicality “blunt ambition”. She backed SDGs with “high ambition”. More...