Posts by The What Works Initiative

China is now 25 percent forested, up from only 10 percent under forest cover in 1949. In a decades-long effort to fight desertification in its vast western regions, and reduce sandstorms that reach as far as Beijing, China has just finished planting a 2,000-mile greenbelt around the Taklamakan, its largest desert. The sandstorms apparently continue…

The misery and hardship endured by the world’s children is easing year after year. The share living in “severe deprivation” dropped by a third so far this century, according to UNICEF’s 2025 report. This fits the pattern. A recent World Bank report showed the number of children living in households with less than 3 dollars…

Younger generations of Americans are widely thought to be worse off financially than their parents at the same age. Youth unemployment is high, college debt is onerous, and the cost of housing has soared. And yet … in a study comparing the median wealth of Millennials, Gen Xers, and Baby Boomers when each was between…

China is dominating the world in building an electrified economy based on clean energy technology. It also remains the world’s largest emitter of carbon fumes, but it is turning that corner in ways that are being felt all over the globe. The green economy is overtaking the petroleum age. And China, so far, is owning…

Literacy – that mind-expanding, horizon-stretching, force-multiplier of personal productivity –  was long a skill of elites. Two centuries ago, one person in eight around the world could read and write. A century ago, it had grown to one in three.  Now, the latest World Bank survey puts global literacy at 93 percent. In rich countries and…

Virtually no one disputes that a serious loss of biodiversity is underway. But species extinctions actually peaked about a century ago and have been declining decade by decade, according to a sweeping new study of millions of species over the past 500 years. Most human-caused extinctions historically occurred when people brought invasive species to islands.…

As always, Americans widely believe crime to be rising – not so much in their own town and neighborhood but out there. What the data show is that the US is well on its way to giving 2025 the lowest murder rate ever recorded, after a sharp decrease in 2024 as well. Violent crime overall is…

For most of human history, giving birth was the single most life-threatening thing a woman could do. As late as the early 20th century, some estimates of maternal mortality in the United States ran as high as 1 in every 100 births – with all of the ripples of tragedy and hardship that can imply. That…

So far in the 21st century, carbon emissions per capita are falling everywhere in the US – whether red state or blue, coal producer or solar promoter.  Specifically, between 2005 and 2023, total emissions per resident fell in every state in America. Our daily lives and work are growing more energy efficient in many ways, but…

Add the Chicago River to the list of newly swimmable big-city waterways. The city held the first organized swim last month in the once forbiddingly toxic river since 1925. The river was so heavily dredged, steel-encased, and choked with sewage and other waste that, by the 1970s, only five species of fish remained.  Cue the…