Recently the New York Times ran an obituary for Kay Ann Johnson, a professor of Asian studies and political science at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the author of China’s Hidden Children: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human Costs of the One-Child Policy. Johnson’s book focuses on one of the less-discussed tragedies of China’s one-child policy (since changed to […]
A new policy report from the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration warns that “planetary and human systems [are] reaching a ‘point of no return’ by mid-century, in which the prospect of a largely uninhabitable Earth leads to the breakdown of nations and the international order.” This apocalyptic vision of the year 2050 follows a long […]
Mother’s Day is a celebration of motherhood and mothers within each family. As the US marks the day, it also seems appropriate to celebrate the improvements in the lives of mothers, who have benefited from the spread of better medical technology, information about best practices and general economic development. Perhaps nowhere is that progress more […]
As every parent knows, infancy and childhood can be fraught with peril. From Sudden Infant Death Syndrome to suffocation, the list of dangers to infants is extensive. But the risks today pale in comparison to those that children faced in the past. Judith Flanders’ exhaustively detailed book, Inside the Victorian Home: a Portrait of Domestic […]
The Chinese government is finally considering ending all of its cruel and pointless limits on childbearing, after softening its one-child policy to a two-child policy in 2016. To increase the birth rate, a recent South China Morning Post editorial even recommended that China adopt an “at least one child” policy. That is because, in a […]
In recent decades, China’s suicide rate has declined more rapidly than any other country’s. It has fallen from among the world’s highest rates in the 1990s, to among the lowest — below the US and only slightly higher than the UK. Rural women are responsible for the lion’s share of the decline. Unlike in most […]
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Attwood’s novel about the government forcing women to bear children to counter a declining population, resonated with audiences across the world. However, the reverse Handmaid’s Tale—the idea of coercing people to have fewer children—ought to generate just as much outrage. Particularly when that coercion is justified by baseless fears. “Too Many” People Stanford University biologist […]
Happy International Women’s Day! You may have heard that today is, as The Guardian once put it, “an important day in the socialist calendar,” its history intertwined with that of the Soviet Union. Today, socialist feminism enjoys a surprising popularity in many universities’ Women’s Studies departments. Self-identifying socialist feminists hope to fight what they call […]
The 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution has brought with it much whitewashing of history. Perhaps the most absurd example of this whitewashing is a New York Times article claiming that women in the Communist bloc “enjoyed many rights and privileges unknown in liberal democracies at the time.” The reality of centrally planned economics is […]
Earlier this month, the United Nations urged the world to celebrate the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, advertising it on social media using the hashtag #EndPoverty. The UN noted the incredible progress on the issue: Poverty has declined globally, from 1.7 billion people in 1999 to 767 million in 2013, a drop in […]
Rafia Zakaria made some outstanding points in her recent New York Times oped, “The Myth of Women’s ‘Empowerment'” – but she also made some conspicuous omissions. In her piece, she draws attention to the international aid industry’s flawed and patronising approach to female empowerment. However, she overlooks the importance of women’s economic empowerment, focusing solely […]
China experienced the greatest advancement out of poverty of all time, partly thanks to the manufacturing boom which followed economic liberalisation in the 1980s. But there is a common misconception regarding the consequent working conditions: many imagine all Chinese factories to be “sweatshops” in which workers toil to serve the “greed” of capitalists. That, however, […]
Does capitalism help or hurt women is an enduring question. And one that a fascinating book, Capitalism, For and Against: a Feminist Debate (Cambridge University Press), seeks to answer that question. Philosophy professors Ann Cudd of Boston University and Nancy Holmstrom of Rutgers University both want more freedom and higher material living standards for women. But they […]
Has anything changed the world more than the internet? South Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang thinks so. He would argue that one invention – an engine of liberation – has had a far more powerful effect on daily lives. He means the washing machine, of course, which the late Hans Rosling called the greatest invention of the industrial revolution. […]
Angus Deaton, the Nobel-prize winning economist (who also sits on the advisory board of HumanProgress.org), recently reiterated his belief that on the whole the world is getting better – if not, as he accepted, everywhere or for everyone at once. Perhaps that comes as no surprise to regular CapX readers, but the idea that the world is getting […]
