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USA Today
19-05-2025
- Health
- USA Today
Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis and when illness strikes just as you finally retire
Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis and when illness strikes just as you finally retire Show Caption Hide Caption Experts say Joe Biden's cancer no longer curable, but treatable Former President Joe Biden's cancer cells are ranked with a "high Gleason score." Here's what that means for his treatment. President Joe Biden's career came to an end in January after decades public service. On Sunday, May 18, a spokesperson for the former president, 82, has announced Biden has an "aggressive form" of prostate cancer that spread to the bone. Biden's diagnosis may have felt shocking to some, but it isn't a medical surprise, according to Jonathan Skinner, who studies the economics of health care at Dartmouth University. Skinner notes prostate cancer is one of the most common forms of the disease in men, particularly for those around Biden's age. Still, it's a story that feels somewhat familiar: A person finally retires after a life spent hard-at-work only to become sick. What continues to puzzle experts is understanding the complex link between retirement and mortality for many Americans. Research in this area is conflicting. Skinner says retiring doesn't absolutely cause higher mortality, and no one should worry that retiring could lead to a cancer diagnosis. But evidence suggests retirement and health are interactive. And gender, existing health conditions and other demographic factors are heavily influential on these relations. "There is not a lot of agreement over whether retirement is good or bad for your health," Skinner says. "As a consequence … if you're excited about retiring, that's probably a good sign for your health because anything that makes you happier and allows you more time to do the things you want is good for your health." On the other hand, if leaving work fills you with existential dread, or there's a lack of social support to manage costs and maintain happiness without a paycheck, retirement may not be good choice for your wellness, he says. Some past research indicated retirement was linked to higher mortality rates. A 2018 working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that male mortality rates increase by about 2% at age 62, the same age U.S. citizens can begin collecting Social Security and often exit full-time work. For women, mortality increases were smaller and less statistically significant, the researchers found. But retiring earlier doesn't have an exact connection to mortality. A 2020 study by Dutch researchers found on-time retirement was associated with a higher risk of mortality. Stepping away from work earlier, meanwhile, couldn't be associated with mortality positively or negatively. Plus, take the fact the median age of cancer diagnosis is 67 in America. A cohort of people is experiencing a higher risk of life-threatening diagnosis at the same time they're handing in resignation letters. That could be a lethal combination for many Americans. And we can't forget about "involuntary retirement," Skinner says, when people have to leave work at a range of ages earlier than they want because of adverse health. For example, Biden was advised against running for another term because of his health. "When people aren't feeling well … it's not the retirement that causes the bad health," Skinner says. Meanwhile, some may say it's better for healthy people to stop working earlier to enjoy life before getting sick. For example, @bill_retired on TikTok insists retirees have more time for exercise schedules, managing healthy diets and maintaining regular doctors' visits, let alone managing disease. "We get to manage our sickness on a much more proactive basis," he says in a video posted to his 56,000 followers. "We can manage our recovery at our own pace." Retirement news to your inbox Sign up for USA TODAY's Retirement newsletter And the relationship between retirement and mortality could also be explained by something called the "healthy worker effect": Those in good health tend to keep working while people with poor health conditions listen to their bodies as a sign to stop working. In effect, on-time retirements are often due to negative health issues, meaning these exits can lead to death sooner than later. This comes into importance as Americans, especially women, are generally living longer, meaning they work into their senior years. But staying in the workforce longer may also be a matter of how our society feels, Skinner says. Some people may consider their life worthless if they're not working. The 'magic number': The amount of money Americans think they need to retire comfortably hits record high Either way, Skinner advises trusting your gut on whether or not to cut the retirement cake: "If you are anxious to step back and retire, and you can afford to do so you, you should probably do so."
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Why Are Young People Everywhere So Unhappy?
Want to stay current with Arthur's writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. We've heard a lot lately about how miserable young Americans are. In the recently released World Happiness Report, the United States dropped to its lowest ranking since that survey began—and that result was driven by the unhappiness of people under 30 in this country. So what's going on? I have some skepticism about these international rankings of happiness. The organizations that produce them always attract a lot of attention by answering 'Which is the world's happiest country?' They derive that answer—usually Finland, with Denmark and other Nordics close behind—by getting people in multiple countries to answer a single self-assessment question about life satisfaction. I don't place much stock in this methodology because we can't accurately compare nations based on such limited self-assessment: People in different cultures will answer in different ways. But I am very interested in the change within countries, such as the falling happiness of young adults in America. New research digs deeply into this issue, and many others: The Global Flourishing Study, based on a survey undertaken by a consortium of institutions including my Harvard colleagues at the Human Flourishing Program. This survey also uses self-reporting, but it collects much more comprehensive data on well-being, in about half a dozen distinct dimensions and in 22 countries, from more than 200,000 individuals whom it follows over five years. Most significant to me, the survey shows that although young people's emotional and psychological distress is more pronounced in wealthy, industrialized nations such as the United States, it is occurring across the world. Scholars have long noted that happiness tends to follow a U-shape across the lifespan: Self-reported happiness declines gradually in young and middle adulthood, then turns upward later in life, starting around age 50. The Dartmouth University economist David G. Blanchflower—who, together with his co-author, Andrew J. Oswald, pioneered the U-shape hypothesis in 2008—has reproduced the result in 145 countries. The left-hand side of the U-shape would suggest that adolescents and young adults were traditionally, on average, happier than people in middle age. But given the well-documented increase over the past decades in diagnosed mood disorders among adolescents and young adults, we might expect that left side to be pushed down in newer estimates. And sure enough, this is exactly what the new GFS study finds, in the U.S. and around the world: The flourishing scores don't fall from early adulthood, because they now start low; they stay low until they start to rise at the expected age. That's the bad news, which is plenty bad. But there is some good news. The flourishing survey discovers one notable exception to this global pattern: a more traditional U-shaped curve among those young people who have more friends and intimate social relationships. This dovetails with my own research into how young adults in today's era of technologically mediated socializing are lacking real-life human contact and love—without which no one can truly flourish. This exception created by greater human connection is the starting point for how we might address this pandemic of young people's unhappiness. [Arthur C. Brooks: Eight Ways to Banish Misery] A plausible explanation for the more pronounced happiness problem that wealthy Western countries like the U.S. have is growing secularization—measured in the increasing numbers of so-called nones, people who profess no religious affiliation. In the United States, the percentage of the population with no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 2007, to 29 percent. Scholars have long found that religious people are, on average, happier than nonreligious people. How to account for this paradox that a practice that gives so many people a tangible well-being boost is in such clear decline? Researchers have hypothesized that the phenomenon's predominance in well-to-do countries is essentially a function of that affluence: As society grows richer, people become less religious because they no longer need the comfort of religion to cope with such miseries as hunger and early mortality. I have my doubts about this economic-determinist account. As one would expect from past studies, the new survey shows that people who attend a worship service at least weekly score, on worldwide average, 8 percent higher in flourishing measures than nonattenders. But it further reveals that this positive effect is strongest among the richest and most secular nations. This finding suggests that, contrary to the materialist hypothesis, wealth is not a great source of metaphysical comfort—and the well-being effect of religious attendance is relatively independent of economic factors. This leads to the question of what exactly is missing for so many people in wealthy countries when religion declines. Community connection and social capital are two answers. But a deeper answer is meaning, one of the study's categories of flourishing, which it measures by asking participants whether they feel their daily activities are worthwhile and whether they understand their life's purpose. GDP per capita, the survey finds, is inversely correlated with this sense of meaning: The wealthier a country gets, the more bereft of meaning its citizens feel. Others have previously observed this pattern as well. Researchers writing in the journal Psychological Science in 2013 looked at a far larger sample of nations (132) and came to the same conclusion as the GFS: In answer to the question 'Do you feel your life has an important purpose or meaning?,' respondents to the survey in higher-income nations expressed much weaker conviction than those in lower-income countries. The researchers also found that these results were likely explained by secularism in richer nations. This raises the issue of whether something about material success in a society naturally drives down religion or spirituality, and thus meaning, and so also flourishing. Many writers and thinkers throughout history have made this case, of course. Indeed, we could go back to the Bible and the New Testament story in which a rich young man asks Jesus what he needs to do to gain admission to heaven. Jesus tells the young man to sell all he has, give it to the poor, and follow him. 'At this the man's face fell,' the Gospel says. 'He went away sad, because he had great wealth.' [Arthur C. Brooks: Nostalgia is a shield against unhappiness] The Global Flourishing Study exposes many interesting patterns and will undoubtedly stimulate additional research for years to come. But you don't have to wait for that to apply the findings to your life—especially if you are a young adult living in a wealthy, post-industrial country. Here are three immediate things you can do: 1. Put close relationships with family and friends before virtually everything else. Where possible, avoid using technological platforms for interactions with these loved ones; focus on face-to-face contact. Humans are made to relate to one another in person. 2. Consider how you might develop your inner life. Given the trend toward being a none, which I've written about in an earlier column, this might seem a countercultural move. But let's define spirituality broadly as beliefs, practices, and experiences not confined to organized religion—even a philosophical journey that can help you transcend the daily grind and find purpose and meaning. 3. Material comforts are great, but they're no substitute for what your heart truly needs. Money can't buy happiness; only meaning can give you that. That last is a truism, I know. But truisms do have the merit of being true—and the flourishing survey reveals how we're in danger of forgetting these important verities. Sometimes, the cold, hard data are what we need to remind us of what we always knew but had come to overlook. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
01-05-2025
- General
- Atlantic
Why Are Young People Everywhere So Unhappy?
Want to stay current with Arthur's writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. We've heard a lot lately about how miserable young Americans are. In the recently released World Happiness Report, the United States dropped to its lowest ranking since that survey began—and that result was driven by the unhappiness of people under 30 in this country. So what's going on? I have some skepticism about these international rankings of happiness. The organizations that produce them always attract a lot of attention by answering 'Which is the world's happiest country?' They derive that answer—usually Finland, with Denmark and other Nordics close behind—by getting people in multiple countries to answer a single self-assessment question about life satisfaction. I don't place much stock in this methodology because we can't accurately compare nations based on such limited self-assessment: People in different cultures will answer in different ways. But I am very interested in the change within countries, such as the falling happiness of young adults in America. New research digs deeply into this issue, and many others: The Global Flourishing Study, based on a survey undertaken by a consortium of institutions including my Harvard colleagues at the Human Flourishing Program. This survey also uses self-reporting, but it collects much more comprehensive data on well-being, in about half a dozen distinct dimensions and in 22 countries, from more than 200,000 individuals whom it follows over five years. Most significant to me, the survey shows that although young people's emotional and psychological distress is more pronounced in wealthy, industrialized nations such as the United States, it is occurring across the world. Scholars have long noted that happiness tends to follow a U-shape across the lifespan: Self-reported happiness declines gradually in young and middle adulthood, then turns upward later in life, starting around age 50. The Dartmouth University economist David G. Blanchflower—who, together with his co-author, Andrew J. Oswald, pioneered the U-shape hypothesis in 2008—has reproduced the result in 145 countries. The left-hand side of the U-shape would suggest that adolescents and young adults were traditionally, on average, happier than people in middle age. But given the well-documented increase over the past decades in diagnosed mood disorders among adolescents and young adults, we might expect that left side to be pushed down in newer estimates. And sure enough, this is exactly what the new GFS study finds, in the U.S. and around the world: The flourishing scores don't fall from early adulthood, because they now start low; they stay low until they start to rise at the expected age. That's the bad news, which is plenty bad. But there is some good news. The flourishing survey discovers one notable exception to this global pattern: a more traditional U-shaped curve among those young people who have more friends and intimate social relationships. This dovetails with my own research into how young adults in today's era of technologically mediated socializing are lacking real-life human contact and love—without which no one can truly flourish. This exception created by greater human connection is the starting point for how we might address this pandemic of young people's unhappiness. Arthur C. Brooks: Eight Ways to Banish Misery A plausible explanation for the more pronounced happiness problem that wealthy Western countries like the U.S. have is growing secularization—measured in the increasing numbers of so-called nones, people who profess no religious affiliation. In the United States, the percentage of the population with no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 2007, to 29 percent. Scholars have long found that religious people are, on average, happier than nonreligious people. How to account for this paradox that a practice that gives so many people a tangible well-being boost is in such clear decline? Researchers have hypothesized that the phenomenon's predominance in well-to-do countries is essentially a function of that affluence: As society grows richer, people become less religious because they no longer need the comfort of religion to cope with such miseries as hunger and early mortality. I have my doubts about this economic-determinist account. As one would expect from past studies, the new survey shows that people who attend a worship service at least weekly score, on worldwide average, 8 percent higher in flourishing measures than nonattenders. But it further reveals that this positive effect is strongest among the richest and most secular nations. This finding suggests that, contrary to the materialist hypothesis, wealth is not a great source of metaphysical comfort—and the well-being effect of religious attendance is relatively independent of economic factors. This leads to the question of what exactly is missing for so many people in wealthy countries when religion declines. Community connection and social capital are two answers. But a deeper answer is meaning, one of the study's categories of flourishing, which it measures by asking participants whether they feel their daily activities are worthwhile and whether they understand their life's purpose. GDP per capita, the survey finds, is inversely correlated with this sense of meaning: The wealthier a country gets, the more bereft of meaning its citizens feel. Others have previously observed this pattern as well. Researchers writing in the journal Psychological Science in 2013 looked at a far larger sample of nations (132) and came to the same conclusion as the GFS: In answer to the question 'Do you feel your life has an important purpose or meaning?,' respondents to the survey in higher-income nations expressed much weaker conviction than those in lower-income countries. The researchers also found that these results were likely explained by secularism in richer nations. This raises the issue of whether something about material success in a society naturally drives down religion or spirituality, and thus meaning, and so also flourishing. Many writers and thinkers throughout history have made this case, of course. Indeed, we could go back to the Bible and the New Testament story in which a rich young man asks Jesus what he needs to do to gain admission to heaven. Jesus tells the young man to sell all he has, give it to the poor, and follow him. 'At this the man's face fell,' the Gospel says. 'He went away sad, because he had great wealth.' Arthur C. Brooks: Nostalgia is a shield against unhappiness The Global Flourishing Study exposes many interesting patterns and will undoubtedly stimulate additional research for years to come. But you don't have to wait for that to apply the findings to your life—especially if you are a young adult living in a wealthy, post-industrial country. Here are three immediate things you can do: 1. Put close relationships with family and friends before virtually everything else. Where possible, avoid using technological platforms for interactions with these loved ones; focus on face-to-face contact. Humans are made to relate to one another in person. 2. Consider how you might develop your inner life. Given the trend toward being a none, which I've written about in an earlier column, this might seem a countercultural move. But let's define spirituality broadly as beliefs, practices, and experiences not confined to organized religion—even a philosophical journey that can help you transcend the daily grind and find purpose and meaning. 3. Material comforts are great, but they're no substitute for what your heart truly needs. Money can't buy happiness; only meaning can give you that. That last is a truism, I know. But truisms do have the merit of being true—and the flourishing survey reveals how we're in danger of forgetting these important verities. Sometimes, the cold, hard data are what we need to remind us of what we always knew but had come to overlook.
National Geographic
04-04-2025
- General
- National Geographic
Centuries of history and culture reduced to rubble after Myanmar earthquake
A photographer captured this damaged pagoda on April 2, 2025 in the ancient city of Ava, Myanmar. Pagodas serve as Buddhist temples and sacred buildings throughout Myanmar. Photograph by Myo Kyaw Soe Xinhua, eyevine, Redux Myanmar's temples, mosques, monasteries, and nunneries are far more than just places of worship, experts emphasize. Each plays crucial and varied roles in Myanmar society, from offering primary education, to dispensing medicine, caring for the elderly, and housing orphans and people displaced by the war. 'The damage to religious sites exacerbates the vulnerability already felt by communities,' explains Maitrii Aung-Thwin, associate professor of Myanmar and Southeast Asian History at National University of Singapore. Monasteries and nunneries are vital to Myanmar Buddhists, who visit them to make offerings and thus earn merit. 'These offerings could be anything from donating a daily alms meal to ordaining as a monk or a nun,' explains MK Long, an expert in Buddhism in Myanmar at Dartmouth University. 'In Buddhist cosmology, earning merit is understood to positively affect your circumstances in this life and future lives.' Here are some of the religious and cultural damaged across Myanmar — and what their loss means for the community.
Bloomberg
03-04-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Bloomberg Surveillance: Tariffs Announced
Watch Tom and Paul LIVE every day on YouTube: Bloomberg Surveillance hosted by Tom Keene & Paul SweeneyApril 3rd, 2025 Featuring: 1) Doug Irwin, professor at Dartmouth University, on the reset of the global trade order and whether countries will just move on without the US. The tariffs are expected to have significant economic implications, including higher US prices, slower growth, and possibly even a recession, with many countries likely to end up in a recession if the tariff rate stays on for an extended period of time. Ed Yardeni, president at Yardeni Research, talks about lowering his S&P target yet again and whether there's more even more market risks now that tariffs have been announced. Global financial markets experienced a sweeping selloff after President Trump's bid to remake the world trading order proved more aggressive than expected. The tariff announcements threaten to extend the S&P 500's recent weakness. 2) Bob Michele, CIO: Fixed Income at JPMorgan Asset Management, on signals from the bond market in the US and whether a recession is now likely. Gold hit new highs amid investors' flight to haven assets on the tariff announcement, while 10-year Treasury yields dropped to the lowest level in more than five months and the yen strengthened. 3) Tina Fordham, founder at Fordham Global Foresight, discusses President's Trump's geopolitical reset and America "going it alone." President Trump's move marks a dramatic escalation in Trump's trade war, sparking threats of retaliation from other countries and causing a selloff in global financial markets. 4) Elizabeth Economy, professor at Stanford University, talks about China getting hit hard by Trump's tariffs and whether they affect China's geopolitical strategy is being reshaped by Trump's approach. China has vowed to retaliate against Donald Trump's tariffs, which have increased by 34%, putting the world's largest economies on a collision course that risks decimating bilateral trade and upending supply chains.
