Latest news with #ClaudiaGoldin
Yahoo
11-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
WNBA Union Calls on Nobel-Winning Economist in CBA Talks
Claudia Goldin is best known for her research of gender wage gaps and labor force earnings in the U.S., for which she won the Nobel Prize in economics. The 79-year-old Harvard labor economist admits she doesn't follow basketball closely beyond what her husband Lawrence shares. Yet Goldin is eagerly assisting the Women's National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA) as an unpaid consultant during collective bargaining negotiations. Advertisement More from The Bronx, N.Y., native received a cold email from WNBPA executive director Terri Carmichael Jackson and was intrigued by the collision of the league's rising business profile with its labor tensions and other growing pains. 'I help Terri think and calm her,' Goldin said in a phone interview. 'I'm not a major league [expert]. They have real people who know the ropes. I don't know the ropes, but I do know some economics.' Goldin has been involved in multiple union meetings where she provides feedback on confidential numbers and data points highlighted in the current CBA, as well as prospective proposals for the next accord. She's being asked to interpret and analyze various salary-related figures throughout the negotiations. The WNBPA and WNBA are four months away from the Oct. 31 expiry of their current CBA. Advertisement Phoenix Mercury star and CBA committee member Satou Sabally told reporters Tuesday that the league's recent counter proposal was a 'slap in the face.' Sabally said it's important to put 'emphasis on the players that are in our league right now.' Her comments came the same week the W announced it will expand to 18 teams by 2030. Goldin said the expansion news gives reason to further push back against team owners, who have pointed to years of financial losses to curb the prospect of seven-figure salaries. The Washington Post previously reported the league and its teams lost more than $40 million last season. Goldin isn't buying sour economic projections, though, especially as new media deals worth $2.2 billion are set to kick in next season. 'If team owners were losing so much money, then why is someone paying $250 million for a team?' Goldin asked, referring to the current expansion fee. 'There have been equity sales that have gone for enormous amounts. If they're losing money, why is so much being paid for parts of them?' Goldin, who recently penned an opinion piece on this subject for The New York Times, said her goal is to help create an equitable labor accord that reflects the demand for players. The NBA, which owns more than 40% of the WNBA, pays players 51% of basketball-related income, which is gross operating revenue gained by the league and its teams. Goldin says the strict definition of BRI in the NBA CBA provides a key advantage over the women counterparts, who receive 50% of incremental revenue, defined as earnings that exceed set certain growth targets. Advertisement Having such contrasting equity structures is unjust, she said, as WNBA franchises sell for record numbers on the backs of player performance and off-court influence. 'In a company that's growing rapidly, who gets the fruits of the increased value of equity? It's never the laborers, since they're considered to be replaceable,' Goldin said. 'But this is a case in which you almost want ownership by the players. … They create the value, so they should have a large piece of the increased equity.' Goldin says it's been a 'steep learning curve' operating in basketball union circles. She selectively finds times to chime in during meetings. Recently, get-togethers have mostly entailed union and league lawyers combing over proposal details. In the meantime, she is absorbing more about a sport she didn't get to play at the Bronx High School of Science. Along with her husband, another Harvard economics professor, Goldin plans to attend the 2025 WNBA All-Star Game in Indianapolis on July 19. That weekend, she will meet with more players as they push for a CBA that will usher in a new era for women's basketball. Advertisement And Goldin can boast of at least one sports accomplishment of her own when speaking with those athletes: She said one of her proudest moments was delivering a strike when she tossed the first pitch before a Boston Red Sox vs. New York Yankees game last July. 'I nailed it,' she said. Best of Sign up for Sportico's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Forbes
16-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
No More Babies? Nobel Laureate's Take On Fertility Decline
Rarifying Babies (Photo by) Countries and policy-makers have been scratching their heads at the dramatic and seemingly irreversible decline in couples making babies around the globe. Most of the people doing this scratching are men. So it is helpful to have a woman take a fresh look at an issue that combines women's most intimate choices with some of the broadest historical and economic trends. And not just any woman. Claudia Goldin's unquestionable credibility as a Nobel laureate in economics is coupled with her career-long analysis of women, work and family. In her latest working paper, Babies and the Macroeconomy, Economics Nobel Laureate Claudia Goldin gives the most insightful analysis yet on the dramatic decline in babies around the world. She takes a wide-angle view on the relationship between fertility and economic development. Building on decades of research into gender, labor markets, and family dynamics, she offers a macroeconomic framework for understanding why birth rates have plummeted across much of the developed world—and why some countries (Japan, South Korea, Spain) are falling so much faster than others. Goldin's argument is simple but profound: economic growth alone does not determine fertility. Instead, it is the interplay of growth, gender norms, and cultural adaptation that shapes reproductive choices. In countries where gender roles lag behind rapid economic modernisation, fertility collapse is both steeper and more difficult to reverse. Want More Babies? Help Women Work This research extends and contextualizes the themes of Goldin's earlier work, particularly Career & Family, which traced the evolution of women's choices over the past century—from early 20th-century pioneers to post-1970s cohorts who have slowly begun to balance both career and family. While Career & Family focused on individual and institutional decisions—education, job design, and marriage dynamics—her new paper puts these micro-level trends into a global, macroeconomic perspective. The result is a compelling narrative that connects national economic trajectories with deeply personal family decisions. And it offers important insights for policy-makers and business leaders attempting to address declining birth rates, stalled gender progress, and economic sustainability in aging societies. The relative speed of economic change impacts people's ability to adapt. Goldin analyses 12 high-income countries, dividing them into two groups: In the first group, fertility declines have been relatively more gradual, supported by progressive gender norms and the development of family-friendly public policies. 'When nations develop more continuously and across a longer time frame,' writes Goldin, 'less generational conflict arises and the fertility desires of men and women are more similar.' In the second group, by contrast, birth rates fell more suddenly and deeply—sometimes below the 'lowest-low' threshold of 1.3 children per woman—with far weaker signs of recovery. It's not just the speed of change that creates the dramatic fertility drops, but the gender gaps in adapting to that change. 'It is the speed with which tradition-bound people are catapulted into modernity that gives generations little time to adapt and brings old ways into sudden conflict with the new.' They grow rich fast but hang on to 'social norms that seem out of touch with economic reality.' They create both gender and generational conflicts that become obstacles to making more babies. She says people come to their childbearing years with two sets of cultural references – the one they were born into and the one they adopt by age 20, which integrates current economic realities. And that the sum of these two attitudes may be different for men and women. For women, the two positions may cancel each other out, for men they may add up to a preference for the ways things were. 'It is not,' she adds, 'that males are inherently more traditional. Rather, they benefit more from patriarchal traditions. Women, however, see greater gains from more equal gender relationships.' Gender Role Changes - Slow And Fast There has been much debate and confusion about what is going on – or how to address it. Goldin suggests that economists were simply not equipped with the tools to analyse the phenomenon. 'The notion that the number of children declined with rising incomes had been so contrary to the Malthusian equilibrium and to usual notions of demand theory as to require new theoretical and empirical apparatus.' And it required overlapping the macro with the micro lens. Rapid economic growth in countries with entrenched patriarchal norms creates a mismatch between women's massive move into education and labour markets, and the persistence of traditional expectations (and reactions) in the household. A lag in cultural keeping up you can almost feel. When institutions and cultural values fail to evolve in tandem with women's fast-changing aspirations, the result is a kind of demographic freeze: women vote with their wombs and their wallets. They delay or abandon childbearing rather than compromise their new-found autonomy or equality. These countries did not necessarily invest in public childcare, shared parental leave, or flexible work arrangements at the same pace as their economic expansion. Or with the same whole-heartedness and cultural alignment. The result was not just delayed fertility, but often permanently foregone births. This macro-level insight aligns with the argument in Career & Family, where Goldin emphasised that the unfinished revolution in gender roles—and particularly the unequal division of unpaid care work, or 'couple equity'—remains the most persistent barrier to gender balance. And that the challenge of what she calls 'greedy work', where companies ignore caregiving realities and pile on unforgiving and inflexible schedules, forces couples to make hard choices. This new paper offers compelling statistical evidence that these micro-level inequities have ripple effects that reshape national demographics and, in turn, long-term economic prospects. What, then, are the implications of Goldin's analysis for countries grappling with demographic decline, workforce shortages, and rising dependency ratios? She challenges the assumption that prosperity alone will produce demographic stability. The fertility collapse in high-income East Asian and Southern European countries suggests otherwise. Growth without gender equity—particularly in the domestic sphere—unexpectedly leads not to baby booms, but to birth dearths. She reframes gender equity policies not as social 'extras' but as core infrastructure for long-term economic sustainability. Countries that invested early in family supports—Sweden, France, Denmark—are now benefiting from the rare combination of higher fertility rates and strong female labour force participation. Those that did not are struggling to reverse declining trends, throwing around absurd-level cash incentives and pro-natal political rhetoric. This echoes the final chapters of Career & Family, where Goldin noted that achieving true equity requires a transformation in workplace structures—what she called the shift to 'temporal flexibility'—as well as broader cultural change. In economies where long hours and linear career paths remain the norm, and where caregiving remains feminized and undervalued, families struggle to find a viable equilibrium. Goldin's macro perspective invites leaders to consider demographic change as not just a statistical inevitability but as a function of values, institutions, and inter-generational justice. If younger generations are opting out of parenthood, what does that say about the economic and emotional choices they face? And what responsibilities do current policymakers, employers, and educators bear in redesigning for the future? From a business perspective, the lessons are equally clear. Employers can no longer assume a steady pipeline of young workers, nor can they ignore the structural barriers that push talented women and young parents out of management tracks during caregiving decades, typically concentrated in the thirties. Organisations that design for two-income households—offering predictable hours, parental leave, remote flexibility, and performance models based on outcomes rather than time—will not only attract more gender balanced talent but will also contribute to broader societal resilience. It will also make them more prepared for ageing workforces, many of whom share similar flexibility needs and desires as parents. In that sense, the 'quiet revolution' Goldin described in women's workforce participation needs a new chapter: one that fully integrates the realities of family life into the architecture of economics. Goldin's Babies and the Macroeconomy is both an extension and a reorientation of her groundbreaking historical work. It shifts the gaze from individual narratives to global patterns, and from policy lag to demographic consequence. Modernity, when unevenly distributed—economically advanced but socially traditional—creates sharp tensions between opportunity and reproduction – and between genders and generations. Her model predicts that in periods of rapid and sudden economic and social change 'men will want more children than will women.' The message for policymakers and business leaders is that gender equity is not a partisan or political issue—it is a cornerstone of demographic and economic sustainability. Societies that aspire to balance growth with well-being must invest in the institutions that support caregiving, recognise the full humanity of both men and women, and make time for the choices that sustain and continue life. Goldin's work is a call to action. Declining birth rates are not just a problem for future generations—they are a reflection of current failures to recognise and accompany the differing paces of cultural and economic change. America's 20th century 'Baby Boom' glorified marriage, motherhood, and the 'good wife.' Can we reverse 21st century fertility rate declines by celebrating parenthood, especially fatherhood, and changing workplace rules so fathers are not punished (or not promoted) for taking time off and requesting flexible work arrangements? Reversing the trend will require more than subsidies and slogans. It will demand a deep and sustained commitment to gender equity—in the workplace, the home, but above all, in the culture.
Time of India
27-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
In 'big, beautiful bill ', Trump accounts just a political stunt to boost baby boom?
The Republican tax bill contains flashy goodies for families with kids. The flashiest: savings accounts for children — branded Trump Accounts — created and initially funded by the Treasury Department. These will consist of $1,000 in invested assets for each American citizen born through 2028, plus whatever funds parents later add. So if you want to have a baby, hurry up! The seeding of the accounts (previously called MAGA Accounts) expires at the end of President Donald Trump's term. The president has made his goal clear: 'I want a baby boom.' House Republicans also proposed expanding the Child Tax Credit from $2,000 to $2,500; that would also expire in four years. But if more babies are the goal, these cash carrots are the wrong incentive. Claudia Goldin said it best in her recent paper, 'Babies and the Macroeconomy': 'The birth rate is … clearly determined by forces that are independent of the whims of governments.' In a 2021 review of the literature of thirty-five studies across Europe and North America, 'Can Policies Stall the Fertility Fall?,' the three authors — a statistician, a sociologist and a public health expert, all in Norway — concluded that even sizable cash benefits have a modest impact on fertility. ALSO READ: Is Trump targeting Harvard because the elite university rejected his youngest son Barron? What you need to know Live Events Instead, the authors found child care and paid leave to be more promising levers. Access to child care slightly increased both the number of children families have and the number of first-time births — especially among low- to middle-class families. Child care support may increase the fertility of stay-at-home mothers by giving their older toddlers access to care. Paid parental leave was also found to have small, but positive, effects on fertility, in particular for higher-earning parents. Unfortunately, paid leave for parents and child-care support are largely missing from the reconciliation bill, though there are a handful of renewed and expanded tax credits for businesses that provide these things. The GAO reports that these have historically been underutilized. Perhaps baby-making isn't the goal anymore. After all, Trump Accounts cannot be accessed until the kids turn 18 and are explicitly for the kids, not the parents making the babies. Perhaps a better way to view Trump Accounts is not as encouraging a baby boom, but as a broader investment in family economic well-being. ALSO READ: Did Harvard reject Barron Trump? Truth behind his college choice has sparks buzz online That would be good news. As a country, we chronically underinvest in the young in favor of the old. Parents are more pessimistic about their kids' future, according to Wall Street Journal polling, than any time in recent memory. The US is an international outlier with its high share of single parents. Labor policy still doesn't reflect the reality that in most households, all parents are working. But there are better ways to promote familial financial well-being than Trump Accounts. The same criticisms apply as when Democratic Senator Cory Booker ran for president on a platform of baby bonds: First, families need support today, not locked up funds to be used two decades from now. This is particularly true for the bottom half of the income distribution. Second, none of these savings accounts speak to each other — 529, 401k, IRA, FSA or HSA, now Trump Accounts. It can be hard to predict where you'll need the savings, and savers are penalized for withdrawing for other uses. Hence the long-time conservative push for universal savings accounts. ALSO READ: Trump's promise to make US world's 'crypto capital' to be a reality soon? Check details Third, there is still a taxpayer cost attached: a nearly $20 billion price tag when combining the costs of seeding the accounts and tax-free contributions, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. If the contribution program doesn't expire after 3.5 years, the price tag will rise by another $15 billion over the next 10 years, based on their average expected annual expenditures for 2027 and 2028. I believe we need more public investment in children, but the question remains: Who is paying for that? And fourth, two-thirds of American kids cannot read or do math at grade-level by fourth grade. This suggests that instead of an investment whose biggest expected use is higher education, children need earlier investments in high-quality tutoring to stay on track. Before sharing in the noble goal of stock ownership, let's get reading and math right. ALSO READ: This US state poised to enforce age verification on Apple, Google app stores for users under 18 To which I'd add a fifth: a four-year expiration date suggests a short-term political mindset and budget trickery much more than seeding the ground for long-run family flourishing. When it comes to supporting families, President Trump would do best to return to his roots. In his first term, he doubled the Child Tax Credit; boosted funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant, the country's primary way of delivering child-care support to low-income families; passed 12 weeks of paid parental leave for all federal workers; and proposed a universal 6-week paid leave program for all American moms. On top of this, he oversaw a time of exceptional economic growth. This go-around he seems determined to inflict tariff pain and higher costs on American families. An extra $500 in child tax credit payments per family for a few years sounds nice, until you realize that the costs of tariffs per family are currently estimated to be nearly $3,000, per the Yale Budget Lab. Moreover, the bill as drafted puts us somewhere between $3 and $4 trillion more into debt; guess who inherits that. It might not have had the snazzy Trump Account branding, but Trump's first term arguably was a much better deal for babies.
Mint
27-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
Trump Accounts? Republicans Have Had Better Ideas
The Republican tax bill contains flashy goodies for families with kids. The flashiest: savings accounts for children — branded Trump Accounts — created and initially funded by the Treasury Department. These will consist of $1,000 in invested assets for each American citizen born through 2028, plus whatever funds parents later add. So if you want to have a baby, hurry up! The seeding of the accounts expires at the end of President Donald Trump's term. The president has made his goal clear: 'I want a baby boom.' House Republicans also proposed expanding the Child Tax Credit from $2,000 to $2,500; that would also expire in four years. But if more babies are the goal, these cash carrots are the wrong incentive. Claudia Goldin said it best in her recent paper, 'Babies and the Macroeconomy': 'The birth rate is … clearly determined by forces that are independent of the whims of governments.' In a 2021 review of the literature of thirty-five studies across Europe and North America, 'Can Policies Stall the Fertility Fall?,' the three authors — a statistician, a sociologist and a public health expert, all in Norway — concluded that even sizable cash benefits have a modest impact on fertility. Instead, the authors found child care and paid leave to be more promising levers. Access to child care slightly increased both the number of children families have and the number of first-time births — especially among low- to middle-class families. Child care support may increase the fertility of stay-at-home mothers by giving their older toddlers access to care. Paid parental leave was also found to have small, but positive, effects on fertility, in particular for higher-earning parents. Unfortunately, paid leave for parents and child-care support are largely missing from the reconciliation bill, though there are a handful of renewed and expanded tax credits for businesses that provide these things. The GAO reports that these have historically been underutilized. Perhaps baby-making isn't the goal anymore. After all, Trump Accounts cannot be accessed until the kids turn 18 and are explicitly for the kids, not the parents making the babies. Perhaps a better way to view Trump Accounts is not as encouraging a baby boom, but as a broader investment in family economic well-being. That would be good news. As a country, we chronically underinvest in the young in favor of the old. Parents are more pessimistic about their kids' future, according to Wall Street Journal polling, than any time in recent memory. The US is an international outlier with its high share of single parents. Labor policy still doesn't reflect the reality that in most households, all parents are working. But there are better ways to promote familial financial well-being than Trump Accounts. The same criticisms apply as when Democratic Senator Cory Booker ran for president on a platform of baby bonds: First, families need support today, not locked up funds to be used two decades from now. This is particularly true for the bottom half of the income distribution. Second, none of these savings accounts speak to each other — 529, 401k, IRA, FSA or HSA, now Trump Accounts. It can be hard to predict where you'll need the savings, and savers are penalized for withdrawing for other uses. Hence the long-time conservative push for universal savings accounts. Third, there is still a taxpayer cost attached: a nearly $20 billion price tag when combining the costs of seeding the accounts and tax-free contributions, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. If the contribution program doesn't expire after 3.5 years, the price tag will rise by another $15 billion over the next 10 years, based on their average expected annual expenditures for 2027 and 2028. I believe we need more public investment in children, but the question remains: Who is paying for that? And fourth, two-thirds of American kids cannot read or do math at grade-level by fourth grade. This suggests that instead of an investment whose biggest expected use is higher education, children need earlier investments in high-quality tutoring to stay on track. Before sharing in the noble goal of stock ownership, let's get reading and math right. To which I'd add a fifth: a four-year expiration date suggests a short-term political mindset and budget trickery much more than seeding the ground for long-run family flourishing. When it comes to supporting families, President Trump would do best to return to his roots. In his first term, he doubled the Child Tax Credit; boosted funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant, the country's primary way of delivering child-care support to low-income families; passed 12 weeks of paid parental leave for all federal workers; and proposed a universal 6-week paid leave program for all American moms. On top of this, he oversaw a time of exceptional economic growth. This go-around he seems determined to inflict tariff pain and higher costs on American families. An extra $500 in child tax credit payments per family for a few years sounds nice, until you realize that the costs of tariffs per family are currently estimated to be nearly $3,000, per the Yale Budget Lab. Moreover, the bill as drafted puts us somewhere between $3 and $4 trillion more into debt; guess who inherits that. It might not have had the snazzy Trump Account branding, but Trump's first term arguably was a much better deal for babies. More From Bloomberg Opinion: This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Abby McCloskey is a columnist, podcast host, and consultant. She directed domestic policy on two presidential campaigns and was director of economic policy at the American Enterprise Institute. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
Mint
12-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
How a manufacturing boom could help India close the gender gap
The Donald Trump administration's announcement of reciprocal tariffs on several American trading partners is causing a strategic shift in trade globally. As India gears up to take advantage of this by ramping up manufacturing, there lurks another opportunity. Many of the manufacturing sectors in focus, such as apparel, textiles, footwear, food products and electronics, have a higher than average representation of women in their workforce. In fact, an estimated 60% of the women employed in (both formal and informal) manufacturing are in these sectors. This could be a critical moment for women's workforce participation and their economic empowerment in India, and presents an opportunity too precious to be lost. As things stand, Periodic Labour Force Survey data shows that India is at the cusp of the U-shaped curve for female employment popularized by Economics Nobel prize winner Claudia Goldin. Simply put, as India's income grows, more women should be entering the workforce, triggering a virtuous cycle of development. A gendered approach to manufacturing could provide the tipping point. Also Read: Abandon prejudices for women's participation in workforce to rise A brief look at the sectors first. The Indian textiles and apparel industry is projected to grow at a compounded 10% a year to reach $350 billion by 2030 even without the fillip that an export boost may bring. About half the women in formal manufacturing work in the textiles and apparel sector. This is an industry with a history of employing women and a demonstrated comfort with integrating them into the workforce, making it a natural focus area for scaling up female labour-intensive production. Electronics is another major sector set to expand rapidly, as Indian exports of smartphones, laptops and other items look up, thanks partly to new advantages. The electronics sector contributes about 3.4% of India's GDP. According to the ministry of electronics and information technology, the exports of India's electronics industry are expected to increase to $120 billion by 2026. Gender-representation data of the largest companies in India shows that the consumer durables sector (in which electronics falls) has 14% women, up from only 9% in 2021, driven by players such as Foxconn in Tamil Nadu's electronics hub. This is an appropriate moment to hardwire gender inclusion into India's global electronics trade strategy. Also Read: Women-centric policies need to deliver progress that's tangible and enduring Footwear is yet another area of potential growth. The industry is poised for compounded expansion of about 13% annually. Footwear manufacturing is labour-intensive and traditionally employs a high share of women. Targeted support to expand production could boost exports and create thousands of jobs for women. The potential for growth in women's employment is clearly demonstrated by our regional neighbours. Women make up 80% of the workforce in Vietnam's footwear industry, 65% in Bangladesh's garments industry and 60-65% in Malaysia's electronics industry, all of which are job- and money-spinners for their respective export sectors. Employment-linked incentive (ELI) schemes, which states commonly roll out to encourage businesses to create local jobs, can be modified to include an additional benefit linked to women's representation. These incentives can be offered in a way that blends well with existing schemes in those sectors, so that they do not require much additional budgetary support. Also Read: Rahul Jacob: Working for women bosses is a privilege one must treasure Payroll subsidies: Providing a greater subsidy for the employment of women or extending the duration for which a subsidy is paid out in the case of jobs given to women can also help. The subsidy can be set in tiers—progressive benefits with greater women's representation—to ensure a practical and sustained programme. Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) reimbursement subsidy: An easy way to roll out a payroll subsidy is to link it to the employer's EPFO contribution for women employees. This has the dual benefit of easier authentication and lower need for payroll processing resources. Capital investment support: Capital expenditure subsidies, including tax benefits and preferential financing for infrastructure investments, can have specified gender diversity targets. One-time hiring support: Since there may initially be higher costs of hiring associated with employing women, a one-time subsidy could be given to compensate for that and prevent women from being penalized for this job-opportunity-reducing cost gap. Such support should cover jobs across the skill spectrum from blue-collar to white. Also Read: Why business schools hold the key to bridging the gender gap Employment through skilling programmes: Many women gain skills under schemes like the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana or train at industrial training institutes, but are unable to participate in the job market for a variety of reasons. While this needs to be addressed, industrial employers should be incentivized to go the extra mile in hiring women with such qualifications. One-time hiring support for senior roles: An incentive for hiring women in high-level or high-skill demanding roles could help. For example, in Tamil Nadu, there is a three-year subsidy for jobs paying over ₹1 lakh per month, with an additional amount if the employee is a woman. Given our commitment to Viksit Bharat and Nari Shakti, this is the right time to harness the power of women for national development. This is a historic knock of an opportunity, one we must not miss. A manufacturing boom could help the country close the gender gap. The authors are, respectively, former secretary, ministry of labour and employment, Government of India; and founding CEO, the Udaiti Foundation.
