Standards of living vary from country to country, and from one community to another. In general, a family in a developed country lives more comfortably than a family in a less developed country. People have more to ear, access to education, better health care, and safer homes. Standard of Living examines the factors that affect people's economic well-being, including war, historical factors, and resource management. In addition, it highlights countries that have successfully raised their standard of living, providing hope for the populations of the world.

6 copies of each issue at all three reading levels (216 books) and 12 Teacher's Guides for a total of 228 books

Globalization is pushing to the fore a wide variety of global problems that demand urgent policy attention. Managing Global Issues provides a comprehensive comparative assessment of international efforts to manage global problems. It identifies and explains successes and failures of such efforts, examines the roles of different actors, and outlines lessons that may guide future action by governments, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector. The volume's 16 case studies examine organized crime, drugs, corruption, human rights, labor rights, health, trade, financial markets, development assistance, the environment, the global commons, communications, weapons of mass destruction, conventional weapons, internal conflicts, and refugees. Managing Global Issues is the result of an international multidisciplinary research team composed of experts in specific global issue areas. The book's broad scope, numerous case studies and its rigorous comparative analytical framework offers a unique and valuable contribution to the rapidly growing literature on global governance. Contributors include Vinod K. Aggarwal (University of California, Berkeley), Thomas Bernauer (University of Zürich), William Drake (Carnegie Endowment), Octavio Gómez-Dantés (National Institute of Public Health, Mexico), Catherine Gwin (World Bank), Peter M. Haas (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), Christopher C. Joyner (Georgetown University), Brian Langille (University of Toronto), Robert E. Litan (Brookings Institution), Kathleen Newland (Carnegie Endowment), Peter Richardson (Transparency International), Peter H. Sand (Institute of International Law, Munich), Dinah L. Shelton (Notre Dame Law School), Timothy D. Sisk (University of Denver), Joanna Spear (King's College, London), and Phil Williams (University of Pittsburgh).

This first of two volumes of collected papers and essays charts the sequence of significant developments over the past 40 years of the most international of industries—that of gas and oil. Explained are the physical attributes of oil and gas resources, reserves, and supply in their economic and political settings, with an emphasis on the quantities. This book also explores the economic and political inputs to the global oil and gas industry’s organization and markets since the early 1960s and the consequences of a loss of control, not only for the industry itself, but also for the western world’s economy and its political stability.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

This handbook provides a comprehensive historical account of the field of Quality of Life. It brings together theoretical insights and empirical findings and presents the main items of global quality of life and wellbeing research. Worldwide in its scope of topics, the handbook examines discussions of demographic and health development, the spread of democracy, global economic accounting, multi-item measurement of perceived satisfaction and expert-assessed quality of life and the well-being of children, women and poor people. It looks at well-being in specific regions, including North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, South America and Eastern and Western Europe. In addition to contributions by leading and younger authors, the handbook includes contributions from International Organizations about their own work with respect to social reporting.

In 2013, the World Bank Group announced two goals that would guide its operations worldwide. First is the eradication of chronic extreme poverty bringing the number of extremely poor people, defined as those living on less than 1.25 purchasing power parity (PPP)†“adjusted dollars a day, to less than 3 percent of the world’s population by 2030.The second is the boosting of shared prosperity, defined as promoting the growth of per capita real income of the poorest 40 percent of the population in each country. In 2015, United Nations member nations agreed in New York to a set of post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the first and foremost of which is the eradication of extreme poverty everywhere, in all its forms. Both the language and the spirit of the SDG objective reflect the growing acceptance of the idea that poverty is a multidimensional concept that reflects multiple deprivations in various aspects of well-being. That said, there is much less agreement on the best ways in which those deprivations should be measured, and on whether or how information on them should be aggregated. Monitoring Global Poverty: Report of the Commission on Global Poverty advises the World Bank on the measurement and monitoring of global poverty in two areas: What should be the interpretation of the definition of extreme poverty, set in 2015 in PPP-adjusted dollars a day per person? What choices should the Bank make regarding complementary monetary and nonmonetary poverty measures to be tracked and made available to policy makers? The World Bank plays an important role in shaping the global debate on combating poverty, and the indicators and data that the Bank collates and makes available shape opinion and actual policies in client countries, and, to a certain extent, in all countries. How we answer the above questions can therefore have a major influence on the global economy.

Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.

The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)