U.S. Resettles Fewer Refugees, Even as Global Number of Displaced People Grows

Pew Research Center | READ STORY

The U.S. has resettled more refugees than any other country – about 3 million since 1980. Generally, in years when more people around the globe are displaced by conflict, violence or persecution in their countries, the number of refugees resettled by the U.S. has increased. But in the last few years, the number of refugees annually resettled by the U.S. has not consistently grown in step with a worldwide refugee population that has expanded nearly 50% since 2013, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and U.S. State Department data.

Young Kids Spend Over 2 Hours a Day on Screens

Common Sense Media | READ STORY

The average amount of time spent with mobile devices each day has tripled (again), going from 5 minutes a day in 2011 to 15 minutes a day in 2013 to 48 minutes a day in 2017. Overall, children 8 and under spend an average of about two-and-a-quarter hours (2:19) a day with screen media, up from 1:55 in 2013 but almost exactly the same amount they devoted to screens in 2011 (2:16). But online videos and content accessed through subscription services are a substantial part of the mix: Children spend an average of 17 minutes a day watching online videos from a source such as YouTube, 17 percent of all TV/video viewing time, and families with young children are now more likely to have a subscription video service such as Netflix or Hulu (72 percent) than they are to have cable TV (65 percent).

Huge Swaths of America's Communities Are Economically Stagnant: How Can We Make Them Grow?

Fast Company | READ STORY

After the dust from the 2008 recession settled, the consensus around the U.S. economy has: We’re doing fine. From 2011 onward, national-level jobs reports have shown a fairly steady uptick in employment and new business formation. From an unemployment rate of around 10% in 2010, we’ve dropped down to just 4.4%.

$63 Trillion of World Debt in One Visualization

Visual Capitalist | READ STORY

If you add up all the money that national governments have borrowed, it tallies to a hefty $63 trillion. In an ideal situation, governments are just borrowing this money to cover short-term budget deficits or to finance mission-critical projects. However, around the globe, countries have taken to the idea of running constant deficits as the normal course of business, and too much accumulation of debt is not healthy for countries or the global economy as a whole.

The Opioid Epidemic, Explained

Vox | READ STORY

If nothing is done, we can expect a lot of people to die: A forecast by STAT concluded that as many as 650,000 people will die over the next 10 years from opioid overdoses — more than the entire city of Baltimore. The US risks losing the equivalent of a whole American city in just one decade.