See China Shock 2.0 Sparks Global Backlash Against Flood of Cheap Goods: Emerging economies join U.S. and Europe in shielding domestic manufacturers from a rising tide of Chinese imports by Jason Douglas and Dave Sebastian of The WSJ.
In the year 2000, Chinese exports were equal to less than 1% of global GDP. In 2022, they were about 3.5% of global GDP. So it looks like it is about 4 times higher now.
See Suddenly There Aren’t Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed: Birthrates are falling fast across countries, with economic, social and geopolitical consequences by Greg Ip and Janet Adamy of The WSJ. Excerpts:
"Some estimates now put the number of babies each woman has below the global replacement rate of about 2.2. The U.S. long ago passed that level. South Korea’s rate, the world’s lowest, was once unimaginable."
"In 2017, when the global fertility rate—a snapshot of how many babies a woman is expected to have over her lifetime—was 2.5, the United Nations thought it would slip to 2.4 in the late 2020s. Yet by 2021, the U.N. concluded, it was already down to 2.3—close to what demographers consider the global replacement rate of about 2.2. The replacement rate, which keeps population stable over time, is 2.1 in rich countries, and slightly higher in developing countries"
"In research published in 2021, the University of Maryland’s Kearney (Melissa Kearney, an economist at the University of Maryland specializing in demographics) and two co-authors looked for possible explanations for the continued drop. They found that state-level differences in parental abortion notification laws, unemployment, Medicaid availability, housing costs, contraceptive usage, religiosity, child-care costs and student debt could explain almost none of the decline. “We suspect that this shift reflects broad societal changes that are hard to measure or quantify,” they conclude.
Kearney said while raising children is no more expensive than before, parents’ preferences and perceived constraints have changed: “If people have a preference for spending time building a career, on leisure, relationships outside the home, that’s more likely to come in conflict with childbearing.”
Meanwhile, time-use data show that mothers and fathers, especially those that are highly educated, spend more time with their children than in the past. “The intensity of parenting is a constraint,” Kearney said."
See How Online Shopping Is Saving the Bricks-and-Mortar Store: Retailers are increasingly relying on their shops as fulfillment hubs by Kate King of The WSJ. Excerpts:
"Overall, nearly 42% of e-commerce orders last year involved stores, up from about 27% in 2015"
"Online sales accounted for 15.4% of total retail sales last year, up from 14.7% in 2022 and 6% in 2014"
See U.S. Overdose Deaths Decline for First Time Since 2018: Fentanyl deaths ease but remain near historic highs by Jon Kamp of The WSJ. Excerpts:
"There were about 107,500 overdose deaths in 2023, down 3% from the year before and the first decline in five years"
"The last two declines came in 2018 and 1990, a year when there were just 8,400 overdose deaths nationwide."
"the U.S. recorded more than 100,000 overdose deaths for the third year in a row. Last year’s tally is roughly double the entire overdose fatality count from as recently as 2015."
"The Drug Enforcement Administration recently said it seized more than 79 million fentanyl pills last year, nearly tripling the number seized two years earlier."
See The Surge in Young Workers Has a Dark Side: Sexual Harassment of Teens on the Job: Regulators have stepped up their pursuit of companies they say didn’t do enough to protect teenage employees by Lauren Weber of The WSJ. Excerpts:
"Employers are relying more on young workers to fill jobs amid a tight labor market, and have lobbied state legislators to loosen age restrictions on the hours and types of jobs teenagers can take on. In April this year, 5.8 million 16- to 19-year-olds were working, the highest April count since 2009. That number surges in the summer when teens flock to jobs waiting tables, working the counters at fast-food restaurants and staffing cash registers at retail stores."
See There’s Not Enough Power for America’s High-Tech Ambitions: Georgia is a magnet for data centers and other cutting-edge industries, but vast electricity demands are clashing with the newcomers’ green-energy goals by David Uberti of The WSJ.
See Computer-Science Majors Graduate Into a World of Fewer Opportunities: Those from top schools can still get jobs. They are just not all going to Facebook or Google by Katherine Bindley, Corrie Driebusch and Lindsay Ellis of The WSJ.
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