Is the United States the Best Place for Women? May 23, 2012 by Donald Marron Women in the United States have the best quality of life of any developed nation, according to the Better Life Index recently released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The index combines eleven different measures of wellbeing, including health, education, income, and life satisfaction. Australia gets top honors for overall wellbeing, but U.S. women top the rankings (women in red, men in black; you’ll probably have to click to read this chart): Any such index rests on many assumptions and value judgements, of course. So kudos to the OECD for providing a completely interactive version of the index. If you don’t like the way they combine the eleven ... Continue reading →

With about five months until the election and seven months until the departure of Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, Glenn Somerville and Felix Salmon have two of the first goes at guessing his successor.On the Democratic side, possibilities include Laurence D. Fink of BlackRock, the asset manager; Erskine Bowles, who served on President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform; Daniel K. Tarullo, a member of the Federal Reserve Board; and Roger C. Altman, the investment banker.For the Republicans, the front-runners include Robert B. Zoellick, the head of the World Bank; John B. Taylor, the Stanford economist; Glenn Hubbard, the head of Columbia Business School and a Mitt Romney adviser; and Kevin Warsh, a former member of the Federal Reserve Board.From the Democratic list, ... Continue reading →

Twitter uses the t.co domain as part of a service to protect users from harmful activity, to provide value for the developer ecosystem, and as a quality signal for surfacing relevant, interesting Tweets. Back to Twitter Learn more Continue reading →

Pete Souza/The White House In the photo that has hung in the West Wing for three years, President Obama looks to be bowing to five-year-old Jacob Philadelphia, his arm raised to touch the president’s hair — to see if it feels like his. WASHINGTON — For decades at the White House, photographs of the president at work and at play have been hung throughout the West Wing, and each print soon gives way to a more recent shot. But one picture remains after three years, its staying power testifying to the thousand words it seems worth to those who see it. In the photo, President Obama looks to be bowing to a sharply dressed black boy, who stands erect beside the Oval Office desk, his ... Continue reading →

The percentage of Americans who call themselves pro-choice is at a new low, according to a Gallup poll. Asked to pick one of the two labels applied to the abortion debate, a full 50 percent said they were pro-life, whereas only 41 percent said they were pro-choice, down from the previous low of 42 percent recorded in May of 2009.Republicans are the most lopsidedly pro-life group, at 72 percent. Only 22 percent identify themselves as pro-choice. Among Independents, the figures are 47 percent pro-life to 41 percent pro-choice. A majority of Democrats are still pro-choice: 34 percent pro-life to 58 percent pro-choice.Do these results indicate a stable trend in public opinion away from legal abortion? Not necessarily. In the years Gallup has been asking this ... Continue reading →