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A nationwide plan to digitise immigration documents recently came into force. Since January 1, millions of foreign nationals who live in the UK must now use digital-only status documents, as all biometric residence permits expired at the end of 2024.

The Home Office says an online system will mean faster processing times and lower risk of fraud. However, the rollout has created significant problems for some migrants, with reports of non-citizens being denied entry to the UK after border agents did not accept their proof of status.

My recent work with colleagues at the Oxford Migration Observatory suggests this was predictable. When migration rules and processes change, non-citizens are less likely to understand the rules. This can have serious consequences, as their access to housing, employment and healthcare hinges on their ability to show they have a valid immigration status.

Even when migrants do understand the rules, they may still experience problems proving their status if the people they interact with – such as employers and landlords – do not, or if the processes are unclear. This has been the case for some Ukrainians in the UK, who have been unable to renew their tenancies and face losing their jobs because of uncertainty surrounding visa extensions.

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The results of an online survey by the Migration Observatory reveal non-UK citizens’ knowledge of the rights and conditions attached to their immigration status. The survey asked respondents which immigration status they held, a question not usually included in British surveys or the census.

Using this data, we compared the experiences and understanding of people who received their status under the EU Settlement Scheme (EU citizens and their family members who came to the UK under EU free movement rules) and those with “non-EUSS” statuses (typically non-EU citizens arriving on family, work or study visas).

We found that migrants were less likely to understand their rights and responsibilities when immigration rules related to their situation had recently changed.

There was, for example, no consensus among EUSS pre-settled status holders (people who arrived in the UK under EU free movement but have lived in the UK for fewer than five years) as to whether their status had an expiry date. While 72% said their status would not expire, 17% said they would need to reapply, and 11% did not know. For comparison, 99% of respondents with temporary immigration statuses – such as a work or family visa – knew their status had an expiry date.

Rules around settled status have changed several times.
Cmspic/Shutterstock

One likely reason for the confusion is that the situation is genuinely a bit complicated and keeps changing. When the EU settlement scheme was introduced, pre-settled status lasted for only five years. People who did not upgrade to the more secure “settled status” would see their leave expire.

However, since December 2022, people with pre-settled status can stay in the UK indefinitely if they still meet the original eligibility criteria. Rules on permitted absences (the amount of time somebody can spend outside the UK without it affecting their immigration status) have also changed several times.

Similarly, almost a third of in-work pre-settled status holders did not know they were eligible for most benefits, such as universal credit. This is another area where the rules have evolved following several court cases. A surprisingly high share also did not know they were entitled to free NHS hospital treatment.

By contrast, pre-settled status holders were more likely to know they could work for any employer, an area where the conditions for access have been consistent. This suggests that some people who are not aware of what they are entitled to access may refrain from seeking support they require.

Changing immigration processes

To access the labour and housing markets, receive secondary healthcare, or get married, migrants must show they hold valid leave (permission to live in the UK). At the time of the survey, most non-EUSS status holders could show a physical document, such as a biometric residence permit.

Most EUSS status holders, however, had a digital eVisa. This is a relatively new addition to the immigration system. People with an eVisa prove their status by presenting a “share code” linked to gov.uk.

Most respondents from both groups – 92% – had not experienced issues proving their right to live and work in the UK. However, problems were more common among people with a digital-only status than with physical documentation.

Read more:
Clearing the UK’s asylum backlog has led to rising refugee homelessness

In addition, this group faced different challenges — 48% of digital-only respondents who encountered an issue said it was because the person checking their status would not accept the proof provided, compared to 29% of people with physical documentation.

While most people with a digital-only status were confident they could generate a share code to demonstrate their status to an employer or landlord, a substantial minority of older respondents lacked this confidence. People who had experienced a problem proving their status in the past also lacked confidence, and they considered having a physical card to prove their status to be more important to them.

The challenges migrants face in navigating the UK immigration system are unlikely to disappear — rules and processes will continue to evolve in the years ahead in response to changes in UK migration patterns more broadly. However, policymakers cannot assume that everyone understands the rules, particularly when they keep changing. Läs mer…

Visit a supermarket in 2025 and you’ll see that a tub of Lurpak butter can cost £5.70. It may strike you that this represents a staggering increase from £3.65 just three years ago, so instead of paying the premium, you reach for the supermarket’s own brand at £3.80.

This kind of switch, multiplied across millions of shopping baskets, represents a massive shift in consumer behaviour that has been largely invisible to official statistics. But that’s changing, as the UK embarks on its biggest revolution in measuring living costs since the second world war.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is transforming the way it tracks inflation, moving from painstakingly checking prices to analysing millions of real purchases through supermarket scanners. Consider olive oil, the price of which surged by 47% in a year, or milk, which jumped by more than 25%. While official statistics captured these price rises, they couldn’t track how households adapted – whether by switching to cheaper alternatives, buying less, or cutting back elsewhere. This was a blind spot in our understanding of consumer behaviour.

Currently, price collectors visit stores across the country each month, checking the prices of about 25,000 products. It’s like taking a snapshot of what’s on the shelves at a particular moment. But this system, designed decades ago, often misses the real impact of inflation on different household types in things like choosing different products or switching stores.

This is crucial for understanding the real impact of inflation on lower-income households. These families often have less flexibility in their budgets and must make more dramatic changes to their shopping habits when prices rise. During recent periods of high inflation, many on low incomes found that official figures didn’t match their experience, which was of even higher inflation than the headline rates. And there’s a good reason why.

Inflation statistics aren’t just academic exercises. They drive decisions that affect every aspect of our financial lives. The Bank of England uses them to set interest rates, which in turn influence mortgage payments and savings returns. Employers use them in wage negotiations. Government uses them to adjust benefits, state pensions and tax thresholds. Even commercial contracts, including mobile phone bills and rail fares, are often linked to inflation rates.

When these numbers don’t accurately reflect price pressures, it can have serious consequences. If official figures underestimate the inflation experienced by lower-income households, benefit increases might not keep pace with their actual cost increases. Similarly, if wages don’t rise in line with real living costs, workers effectively experience a pay cut.

The scanner data revolution

The ONS’s new approach, to be introduced next year, will analyse around 300 million price points from supermarket scanners, covering about half of all grocery transactions in the UK. Instead of just seeing what’s on the shelf, they’ll know exactly what prices people are paying at checkouts across the country.

This massive increase in data points – from 25,000 to 300 million – will allow for a more nuanced understanding of consumer behaviour.

The change will also enable quicker identification of emerging price trends. After the start of the COVID pandemic and the Ukraine war, prices of certain goods changed rapidly. Scanner data could help spot these changes faster, allowing for more timely policy responses. It might also reveal regional variations in price pressures.

Take the 2023 surge in food prices – while overall food inflation hit 19%, the impact varied dramatically across households. Current statistics would not capture lower-income families switching from fresh to frozen vegetables, or from branded to value ranges.

In times of cost pressures, shoppers may switch from fresh produce to frozen.
sirtravelalot/Shutterstock

With scanner data, policymakers could spot these trends quickly and respond more precisely – perhaps by adjusting benefit payments or targeting support to specific households when essential food costs spike. Instead of waiting for quarterly surveys to reveal hardship, they will be able to see in real time how different groups are coping with price pressures.

The ONS recently said full implementation will come in 2026, a year later than planned. While it will have the technical capability ready by March 2025, it is opting for a year of parallel running to ensure accuracy. This approach reflects how crucial these statistics are for the economy.

It has already modernised other areas of price collection, including incorporating 40 million train fare data points and 300,000 used car prices. But grocery prices, being central to household budgets and varying significantly across different income groups, require extra attention.

The change is coming at a crucial time. Recent years have shown how rapidly economic conditions can change and how differently these changes can affect various segments of society. The pandemic, Brexit adjustments, and global supply chain disruptions have all contributed to price pressures.

For consumers, while the changes won’t directly lower prices, they could lead to more appropriate responses from the Bank of England, government and employers. Most importantly, it could ensure that official inflation figures better reflect the reality of the weekly shop, particularly during times of economic stress.

The transformation of inflation statistics might seem like a technical detail, but its implications reach far beyond government offices and economic reports. It’s about ensuring that the official measures of living costs better reflect the reality experienced by millions of households across the UK. In this challenging economic environment, that’s something worth getting right. Läs mer…

The UK government’s new plan to foster innovation through artificial intelligence (AI) is ambitious. Its goals rely on the better use of public data, including renewed efforts to maximise the value of health data held by the NHS. Yet this could involve the use of real data from patients using the NHS. This has been highly controversial in the past and previous attempts to use this health data have been at times close to disastrous.

Patient data would be anonymised, but concerns remain about potential threats to this anonymity. For example, the use of health data has been accompanied by worries about access to data for commercial gain. The care.data programme, which collapsed in 2014, had an similar underlying idea: sharing health data across the country to both publicly funded research bodies and private companies.

Poor communication about the more controversial elements of this project and a failure to listen to concerns led to the programme being shelved. More recently, the involvement of the US tech company Palantir in the new NHS data platform raised questions about who can and should access data.

The new effort to use health data to train (or improve) AI models, similarly relies on public support for success. Yet perhaps unsurprisingly, within hours of this announcement, media outlets and social media users attacked the plan as a way of monetising health data. “Ministers mull allowing private firms to make profit from NHS data in AI push,” one published headline reads.

These responses, and those to care.data and Palantir, reflect just how important public trust is in the design of policy. This is true no matter how complicated technology becomes – and crucially, trust becomes more important as societies increase in scale and we’re less able to see or understand every part of the system. It can, though, be difficult, if not impossible, to make a judgement as to where we should place trust, and how to do that well. This holds true whether we are talking about governments, companies, or even just acquaintances – to trust (or not) is a decision each of us must make every day.

The challenge of trust motivates what we call the “trustworthiness recognition problem”, which highlights that determining who is worthy of our trust is something that stems from the origins of human social behaviour. The problem comes from a simple issue: anyone can claim to be trustworthy and we can lack sure ways to tell if they genuinely are.

If someone moves into a new home and sees ads for different internet providers online, there isn’t a sure way to tell which will be cheaper or more reliable. Presentation doesn’t need – and may not even often – reflect anything about a person or group’s underlying qualities. Carrying a designer handbag or wearing an expensive watch doesn’t guarantee the wearer is wealthy.

Luckily, work in anthropology, psychology and economics shows how people – and by
consequence, institutions like political bodies – can overcome this problem. This work is known as signalling theory, and explains how and why communication, or what we can call the passing of information from a signaller to a receiver, evolves even when the individuals communicating are in conflict.

For example, people moving between groups may have reasons to lie about their identities. They might want to hide something unpleasant about their own past. Or they might claim to be a relative of someone wealthy or powerful in a community. Zadie Smith’s recent book, The Fraud, is a fictionalised version of this popular theme that explores aristocratic life during Victorian England.

Yet it’s just not possible to fake some qualities. A fraud can claim to be an aristocrat, a doctor, or an AI expert. Signals that these frauds unintentionally give off will, however, give them away over time. A false aristocrat will probably not fake his demeanour or accent effectively enough (accents, among other signals, are difficult to fake to those familiar with them).

The structure of society is obviously different than that of two centuries ago, but the problem, at its core, is the same — as, we think, is the solution. Much as there are ways for a truly wealthy person to prove wealth, a trustworthy person or group must be able to show they are worth trusting. The way or ways this is possible will undoubtedly vary from context to context, but we believe that political bodies such as governments must demonstrate a willingness to listen and respond to the public about their concerns.

The care.data project, was criticised because it was publicised via leaflets dropped at people’s doors that did not contain an opt-out. This failed to signal to the public a real desire to alleviate people’s concerns that information about them would be misused or sold for profit.

The current plan around the use of data to develop AI algorithms needs to be different. Our political and scientific institutions have a duty to signal their commitment to the public by listening to them, and through doing so develop cohesive policies that minimise the risks to individuals while maximising the potential benefits for all.

The key is to place sufficient funding and effort to signal – to demonstrate – the honest motivation of engaging with the public about their concerns. The government and scientific bodies have a duty to listen to the public, and further to explain how they will protect it. Saying “trust me” is never enough: you have to show you are worth it. Läs mer…

The way you see nutrition labels on food packaging is about to change. By 2025, new front-of-package labels will start appearing on grocery store shelves, and by January 2026, they’ll be mandatory.

Over the past two decades, nutrition labelling has evolved into a cornerstone of public health strategies worldwide. Traditional back-of-package labels, which provide comprehensive nutritional details, are often overlooked due to their complexity and placement, making them less effective in guiding consumer choices.

Front-of-package labels address this issue by simplifying key nutritional information and positioning it in a more prominent, visible space. This streamlined approach has proven successful in leading consumers toward healthier choices, as research indicates that simplified, visible labels can influence purchasing decisions.

Globally, front-of-package systems vary, with some countries employing warning symbols to flag excessive nutrient levels, while others use colour-coded “traffic light” systems or endorsement icons to promote healthier options.

Canadian policy

The Canadian government’s new policy requiring front-of-package nutrition symbols aims to guide consumers toward healthier food choices by highlighting foods high in sodium, sugars or saturated fats. These nutrients are closely linked to chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and hypertension.

Designed for simplicity and consistency, the labels feature a black-and-white magnifying glass icon. This design’s uniformity in size, placement and bilingual presentation is intended to make it easily recognizable and understandable.

Fresh produce, plain dairy products and raw, single-ingredient meats are exempt from the regulations, acknowledging their inherent nutritional benefits.

Front-of-package labels simplify key nutritional information and position it in a more prominent, visible space.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

The policy is intended to promote transparency and improve public health by helping Canadians make more informed food choices. With full implementation set for January 2026, further research and targeted actions such as meetings and correspondence on healthy eating by Health Canada are required to ensure the effectiveness of the policy.

Health Canada’s development of these front-of-package labels has been shaped by years of research and stakeholder consultations.

Since 2016, extensive consumer testing, including focus groups, online surveys and in-store experiments, has informed decisions regarding the labels’ design, size and placement. As a result, the labels have been refined to better meet their goal of providing consumers with clearer, more actionable nutritional information.

While the initiative holds promise, several gaps could undermine its overall effectiveness. Varying levels of health literacy may hinder consumers’ ability to fully comprehend and act on the front-of-package labels, with some potentially unaware of the health risks associated with flagged nutrients like sodium, sugars and saturated fats.

Additionally, manufacturers face challenges in adhering to new labelling standards, reformulating products to meet healthier benchmarks and overcoming potential consumer resistance.

Addressing these issues requires significant investment in consumer education, alongside targeted support for manufacturers from the Canadian government in form of consultation in adapting to the new requirements.

The policy also presents an opportunity to engage consumers more deeply in their health choices. Education campaigns such as community workshops and public health initiatives, and point of sale posters that explain the purpose and interpretation of front-of-package labels, can empower consumers to make informed decisions.

These campaigns should address disparities in health literacy, ensuring that all Canadians benefit from the initiative regardless of socioeconomic status. Collaborative efforts among government agencies, health-care providers and community organizations could amplify these educational initiatives, reaching a wider audience.

Industry response

Mock packaging displays shown during a Health Canada announcement about labelling requirements for pre-packaged foods, in Ottawa in June 2022. Pre-packaged foods with high levels of saturated fat, sugar or sodium will require nutrition warnings on the front of the package starting in 2026.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

For manufacturers, the introduction of front-of-package labels often triggers efforts to reformulate products, reducing sodium, sugars or saturated fats to avoid negative labelling.

This process frequently involves ingredient substitution, recipe adjustments or portion size reductions. However, retaining the taste, texture and overall consumer satisfaction of a product while meeting nutritional targets requires significant innovation. If reformulated products fail to meet consumer expectations, brands risk losing loyalty and market share.

The stakes are particularly high for manufacturers whose flagship products are most at risk of being flagged. To overcome these challenges, collaboration with food scientists, ingredient suppliers and regulatory bodies is essential. Research and development efforts must focus on finding innovative solutions that meet regulatory requirements without sacrificing consumer preferences.

Beyond reformulation, compliance with front-of-package labelling requirements presents logistical and financial challenges. Packaging must be redesigned to incorporate the bilingual, standardized labels, often at significant cost. Smaller manufacturers with limited resources may find these changes particularly burdensome.

Updating supply chains to include new packaging materials and ensuring consistent application across product lines add further complexity. In addition to these financial and operational pressures, reformulation may affect production processes and shelf life, necessitating further adjustments.

Potential impact

Despite these challenges, front-of-package labelling has the potential to drive significant change within the food industry. By prioritizing healthier formulations, companies can gain a competitive advantage, particularly as consumer demand for health-conscious products grows.

Over time, this shift could lead to broader industry trends, pushing manufacturers toward greater transparency and accountability in their product offerings.

However, these positive outcomes require supportive policies. Tax incentives, subsidies for reformulation and clear regulatory guidance can help ease the financial and operational burdens faced by manufacturers, particularly smaller businesses.

While front-of-package labelling shows promise in promoting healthier choices and encouraging innovation, its long-term impact remains to be fully understood.

Key areas for future research include examining how manufacturers prioritize reformulation, tracking changes in nutrient composition over time, and analyzing consumer behaviour in response to labelled products. Studies that link front-of-package labels to dietary intake and health outcomes could provide a comprehensive view of their effectiveness in achieving public health goals.

This story was co-authored by Christopher Marinangeli. He is a nutrition scientist and regulatory expert with the Centre for Regulatory Research and Innovation at Protein Industries Canada, a not-for-profit organization and one of Canada’s five Global Innovation Clusters. Läs mer…

The portrait of President Andrew Jackson has recently made a comeback in the Oval Office. “Old Hickory” – Jackson’s nickname – has long been a favorite of President Donald Trump.

Trump identifies with Jackson on many levels. As a man and a leader, he likes the brash, confrontational, hypermasculine, lionlike attitude that characterized the seventh president. Jackson pushed executive power to the limits, just like Trump tries to do.

And there is a commonality of philosophical and political visions. The two tap into the same definition of freedom. They both believe the president has freedom from all restraint and from every form of legislative or judicial control.

However, differences exist between the two that might prompt Trump to consider the potential danger of how he governs and whom he listens to.

Personal loyalty and devotion

As an expert on American presidents, I can state with confidence that Trump is not the first to insist on complete obedience from his subordinates. Nor is he the first to take disagreement personally.

Trump’s attempt to create an army of sycophants, along with his effort to purge government staff he deems disloyal, is nothing new in America.

Personal loyalty and devotion were important to Andrew Jackson, who didn’t trust human nature. But he was steadfast in his trust, once he decided to place it in a person.

When Jackson had to choose his advisers and shape his first Cabinet, he relied on cronies from his beloved Tennessee – plus a handful of relatives.

The most famous and infamous of those chums was John H. Eaton. Eaton had developed a brotherly relationship with Jackson. Jackson felt indebted to him because Eaton had run his presidential campaigns of 1824 and 1828. Eaton would become secretary of war, but he also ended up embarrassing the president.

A political cartoon depicts President Andrew Jackson sitting stunned as his Cabinet, represented as rats, runs to escape his falling house during the political scandal surrounding the Eaton Affair.
Bettman/Getty Images

First off, he had an affair with a married woman, Margaret O’Neale Timberlake, whose husband was often at sea. When in 1828 Mr. Timberlake died abroad, rumor spread that he had slashed his own throat because of Margaret’s infidelity.

In Washington, D.C., gossip soon became ugly about what was known as the Eaton Affair. It ultimately led to the resignation of some Cabinet officials.

Jackson was irate. He had always realized he didn’t belong in the elite society of Washington, D.C. He was too self-conscious about his entire persona and too aware that he was perceived as an interloper. Consequently, he usually reacted defensively and often violently, thus betraying insecurity: “Our society wants purging here,” he wrote to one of his friends in 1829.

Under the same roof

Jackson’s clan lived with him in the White House. There was Andrew Jackson Jr., a nephew and his adopted son. Andrew Jr. would inherit a huge fortune, but he would die in debt. It’s no surprise that historians have described him as “irresponsible and ambitionless, a considerable disappointment to his father.”

There was Andrew Jackson Donelson and his wife, Emily. Donelson was the nephew of the just-deceased wife of the president, Rachel Jackson, who tragically died just days after her husband won the 1828 election. Donelson had served with Jackson in the Florida War – known as the First Seminole War – and later became his private secretary. Emily Donelson would act as the president’s hostess in the White House.

Another close friend from Tennessee, Maj. William B. Lewis, also moved into the White House. Also a presidential adviser, Lewis gained the official title of second auditor of the Treasury. But the Donelsons couldn’t stand the man. Emily Donelson would eventually label him a “sycophant” who had seized an opportunity to “save himself all expense.”

As he shaped his first Cabinet, Jackson consistently ignored the suggestions coming from the two higher-profile characters of his administration, Martin Van Buren and John C. Calhoun. It wasn’t just an ideological difference; it was that neither of them had been early Jackson men.

Surrounded by a few favorites

Jackson, the president who made no secret that he was running a one-man show, had a presidential style derived from his military experience. As a general, Jackson rarely summoned councils of war. When he had to decide on a given course of action, he didn’t share responsibility.

But critics saw things in a totally different way. In the spring of 1831, Sen. George Poindexter, a hesitant Jacksonian, complained that Jackson was “surrounded by a few favorites who controlled and directed all things.”

To describe the informal group of friends, family members and advisers whom they believed maintained too great an influence over the president, the opposition coined the phrase “kitchen cabinet.”

But the opposition’s image of the “kitchen cabinet” was not the reality. No matter his personal quirks, Jackson proved to be an excellent administrator. And contrary to Emily Donelson’s fears, he resisted sycophants and self-interested counselors.

Elon Musk, right, is a top adviser and donor to Donald Trump and directs the administration’s effort to cut government spending.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images

A builder, not a destroyer

Jackson escaped manipulation because he managed to keep his eyes on his higher goal, the expansionist idea of the American nation.

He sought to create a blueprint for a government that would outlast him. He enacted impersonal rules that were sustained by elaborate systems of checks and balances. Whether you like him or not, Jackson was a builder, not a destroyer, of administrations.

The circumstances of the Jackson and Trump presidencies might look similar, but the key is that they are two very different men. Both wanted to fully reform the federal government, faced scandal, felt like an outsider in Washington, D.C., and had all sorts of close loyalists around pushing their agendas.

But Jackson didn’t get distracted. So he was not a useful puppet for those who sought to exploit him that way.

By contrast, it will be difficult for Trump to morph into President Jackson. Since the 1970s, the power of unelected and unconfirmed presidential aides and counselors has become more intense.

These individuals may easily end up negotiating deals or directing the course of events while escaping both congressional oversight and public scrutiny.

In their unaccountable influence, they are joined by major donors to a president’s campaign or causes.

There’s no doubt that they are a potential liability more dangerous than Jackson’s sycophants, more problematic than his cronies, more embarrassing than his wacky nephews. Läs mer…

In Zimbabwe they say, Hanzi bhande rinonzvenga vakadzi vakapinda mumigoghi (The gold belt will disappear if women go into the underground mine).

Many men on artisanal or small-scale gold mining sites are uncomfortable working with women in their syndicates because of this commonly held cultural belief, that women “pollute” the sacredness of the mining space.

Read more:
Informal mining in South Africa is here to stay. Police brutality won’t end it – here’s what will

Yet women remain a lively, if sidelined, community in the country’s growing mining sector. By 2000 there were more than 500,000 people working in artisanal and small-scale mining in Zimbabwe. By 2018 it was estimated that number could be up to 1.5 million. But this doesn’t include people operating illegally.

Women’s roles have varied inside this industry: they have been vendors, sex workers, and alluvial gold washers, panning for gold along streams.

We are researchers of resource extraction and environmental change and of history and the environment. Zimbabwean women in artisanal mining are the subject of our recent paper, drawn from a larger study in Mazowe, 40km from the capital, Harare.

While the main goal of the research was to understand women’s experiences and power relations in this apparently masculine sector, we realised there was something else to be uncovered. A secret world of ritual, rite and rumour.

Women sifting gold above ground.
Jabulani Shaba

We found that women under spiritual and ancestral possession (often referred to as masvikiro) have developed a new commercial vision on the mines.

They have created spiritual shrines that are visited by men seeking to make their fortunes. They profit from the beliefs of miners that their ritual instructions help them find gold.

Women at these mines are not allowed to go underground themselves, but their occult spirit being accompanies miners deep underground and guides them in looking for gold.

So, some women have tapped into spiritual economies in Mazowe to support their livelihood. Even in a deeply patriarchal society, these women push back against the social and cultural order of masculine mine spaces.

The study

Our study of occult practices is one of the outcomes of extensive fieldwork over the course of 13 months in the small mining community of Jumbo in Mazowe.

Women mining above ground, panning for gold in rivers.
Tafadzwa Ufumeli/Getty Images

Research involved interviews with 40 women and 20 men, as well as social conversations and observations. It included analysis of social media, mining reports and archive material. The goal was to shine a light on the dynamics that shaped women’s experiences in a gold mining frontier.

This included exploring the connections between gender and the occult, and the intimate rituals of how women survive on the mines.

Women’s many roles

Persisting land inequalities in Zimbabwe have catapulted women into artisanal gold washing to support their rural livelihoods. Yet poverty was not the only trigger; other women acquired gold mining licences and accumulated more profits in Mazowe.

Some women in Mazowe engaged in cross border trading activities and those who worked as domestic workers in South Africa and Botswana returned to Mazowe and invested in gold pits. They sub-contracted male labourers to work for them – a process that came to be known as ku sponsor makomba (financing gold pits).

In the post-2000 era, illegal gold mining continued to escalate. This was followed by a surge of sex workers in artisanal gold mining sites across the country. Sex work offered a lucrative business opportunity for women in a declining economic situation. Women in our study highlighted the need to provide food for their families as a key factor that pushed them into the sex trade.

Sifting the soil for gold.
Jabulani Shaba

A further commercial opportunity in Mazowe’s mines became spiritual work.

Rituals, rites and rumours

In Zimbabwe there is a long history of superstitions about women and mining. We discovered occult practices are popular and are used for different purposes by various social groups.

In the postcolonial period, miners have become targets of a growing number of fake prophets and diviners. They promise easy access into the mining world and a guarantee of striking rich gold veins.

Men in the mines use the occult to increase their dominance and masculinity over other men. There are many forms of rituals, including using marijuana (mbanje) to instil courage and chase away evil spirits.

Some women tapped into these existing spiritual life worlds to make money through spiritual entrepreneurship. In Mazowe, for example, Nehanda – a powerful and revered ancestral spirit – is still venerated. Artisanal miners shared stories about visits to these shrines to seek advice from women under the possession of Nehanda’s spirit. The diviners provide specific instructions for rituals that the men need to perform at mining sites.

A group discussion with sex workers in Mazowe District.
Jabulani Shaba

There were also numerous stories of how the older women were consulted by miners. It was reported, for example, that one helped the miners through kurombesa (the use of ritual charms). Miners would suck her breast and then they would strike a gold belt afterwards.

While these stories portray a “mythical” productive role played by women in ritual practices, they also show how this mining community regards the female body. In this case, it is associated with good fortune and at the same time death. It’s important to note that the sucking of breasts was seen to be a sacred activity and miners were supposed to honour the purity of the act.

These local beliefs have roots in the country’s precolonial history. Like many cultures across Africa, Zimbabwean iron smelters have traditionally used female body features in decorating and creating the shapes of their mining tools.

Read more:
Colonial powers tried to stifle traditional healing in Zimbabwe. They failed and today it’s a powerful force for treating mental illness

Sex workers in the district also developed new strategies of making a living, tapping into rituals and using rumours circulating in the community. These women gained an understanding of the social economic dynamics of mining settlements: when some miners get money from selling gold, they spend it on alcohol and sex.

However, some men in the community feared the agency of sex workers who were using rituals. They referred to these women as “sperm mongers” who secretly kept used condoms to take the sperm to “witchdoctors” to create potions to bathe in. It was believed this would make them sexually appealing.

While some sex workers denied the claims, a few admitted to them. One said:

We use muti to attract our clients and get more money to feed our families – as compared to our men who usually want the money to spend and drink alcohol.

Redefining a woman’s place

We argue that instead of being just “polluters of the mines”, women are central to understanding the ritual life of artisanal gold mining in Zimbabwe.

A neglected part of women’s history can be understood by unpacking their entrepreneurial everydayness. This can help to trace the role of women as they work to survive within male dominated communities. Läs mer…

Commuting in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, presents challenges for its 17 million residents. Massive traffic jams and unsafe driving cause chaos on the roads, leading to long delays.

The chaos has become a pressing concern for residents. Reaching Gombe, Kinshasa’s central business district, for instance, can take up to five hours from surrounding neighbourhoods.

When he came to power in January 2019, President Felix Tshisekedi promised to combat Kinshasa’s traffic chaos by targeting road infrastructure. This included constructing an interchange and flyover. One-way traffic was introduced on certain streets. These have had little effect. Kinshasa’s traffic issues persist.

While congestion in the capital is usually blamed on poor infrastructure, there are some harder-to-see causes. As social science researchers, we set out to understand what institutional factors might be behind the city’s gridlock.

In a recent paper, we analysed an illegal revenue-generating scheme inside Kinshasa’s traffic police agency involving a coalition of traffic police agents, their managers and judicial officers. We studied the role this scheme plays in the city’s traffic conditions.

Under the scheme, known as the quota system, station managers (police commanders) assign street agents a daily quota of drivers to escort to the station, often based on fabricated allegations.

Our findings and analysis provide insights into how the quota system causes traffic jams and accidents, undermining the police agency’s mandate of traffic regulation. We also detail how corruption operates as a coordinated system rather than as isolated acts of individual misconduct.

The problem

Like many traffic police agencies worldwide, Kinshasa’s traffic police are tasked with managing key intersections and enforcing traffic rules.

Similar to many other civil servants in the Democratic Republic of Congo, police officers earn meagre salaries – around US$70 monthly. Anecdotal observation suggests that the police service lacks funds for basic necessities such as fuel or communication costs. Low resources have contributed to police officers extracting funds from drivers, partly for personal profit, partly to cover the costs for their police work.

A major way in which this is done is through a specific scheme involving traffic police agents. We found that station managers assign different street agents a daily quota of drivers to bring to the station.

To meet this quota, agents often use brute force and have the discretion to invent infractions that they report at the police station. The dilapidated state of most cars in Kinshasa helps police officers with this task.

At the station, agents pass the allegations to judicial officers, who have the power to issue charges – or demand bribes so drivers avoid formal penalties. Many drivers try to avoid this extortion by developing relationships with influential protectors. These are people who can intervene on a driver’s behalf and are often high-placed security officers or politicians.

Our research

After three years of qualitative fieldwork, we built trust with a large number of individuals inside and around the traffic police agency. This enabled us to design data collection systems in 2015 to study the traffic police agency’s practices.

We relied on the cooperation of 160 individuals and generated the following data:

direct observations of over 13,000 interactions between officers and drivers at intersections
station records of 1,255 escorted vehicles, including bribe negotiations and outcomes
traffic flow and accident data from 6,399 hourly observations.

To quantify the cost of this scheme on public service, we added an experiment: we collaborated with police commanders to reduce the daily quotas for some teams and days.

We encouraged commanders to temporarily cut their teams’ quotas in half. Reducing quotas could be expected to lower corruption demands on agents, reducing corruption overall. It would also enable agents to focus more of their time on managing traffic – an outcome later confirmed by our findings.

To ensure this approach worked, we compensated commanders for the private income losses they would experience due to the quota reduction, which we carefully estimated before implementing the study. This compensation is not unlike traditional anti-corruption incentives routinely used across the world, except that rather than it being targeted at street-level agents, it targeted the node of this particular scheme: the police commanders.

What we found

The scheme generates large illicit revenue. The traffic police agency’s real revenue is five times larger than its official income from fines. We found that 68% of the illicit revenue generated through the quota scheme came from bribes paid by drivers after they’d been escorted to the station. The rest of the illicit revenue comes from street-level bribes outside of this quota scheme.
The revenue raised relies on extortion at police stations. Judicial police officers had the power to threaten to issue arbitrary charges. We found that, first, 82% of the allegations were unverifiable by third parties. Second, the amount raised in station bribes was strongly linked to whether a driver was able to call a powerful “protector”.
Extortion in police stations relies on the street agents’ power to arbitrarily escort drivers. These agents use their discretion to fabricate allegations and/or physical force to bring drivers to the station. When a driver was not seen making an infraction, force was more likely to be used.

Overall, this means that the scheme hinged on a coalition of managers, agents and judicial officers.

Through the reduction in the quota scheme levels, our scheme also revealed some social costs of this scheme. We found two important results.

Worse traffic: the quota scheme was accountable for a significant share of traffic jams and accidents observed at street intersections from where the agents operate. Partly through their induced absence and partly through their behaviour, the police officers also create numerous traffic jams and accidents. While this is suggestive rather than conclusive, our estimates suggest that 40% of traffic jams at the main intersections of the city are due to the scheme.

Diluted incentives to respect the law: the scheme made it less likely that drivers would respect the law. They could be escorted to a police station regardless of whether they complied with the traffic code.

Why the findings matter

Our study, which provides rare, detailed evidence of how corruption operates, has three policy implications.

Target officials’ managers, rather than the officials themselves. Visible corruption is only the tip of the iceberg, and hinges on relationships of power and coalitions inside the state.
Limit the discretion of judicial officers to charge the public, or that of agents to escort drivers to police stations arbitrarily.
Incentivise “good” corruption. Encouraging station officials to take a significant share of fines for genuine infractions could give agents an incentive to escort drivers who actually break traffic rules. However, the trade-offs between traffic flow, safety and compliance must be carefully weighed, as quotas tied to fines could worsen congestion. Läs mer…

We live in a golden age for space exploration. Scientists are gathering massive amounts of new information and scientific evidence at a record pace. Yet the age-old question remains unanswered: are we alone?

New telescope technologies, including space-based tools such as the James Webb Telescope, have enabled us to discover thousands of potentially habitable exoplanets that could support life similar to that on Earth.

Gravitational wave detectors have opened a new avenue for space exploration by detecting space-time distortions caused by black holes and supernovae millions of light-years away.

Commercial space ventures have further accelerated these advancements, leading to increasingly sophisticated spacecraft and reusable rockets, signifying a new era in space exploration.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission successfully touched down on asteroid Bennu when it was 207 million miles away from Earth and brought back rock and dust samples.

Read more:
Bennu asteroid reveals its contents to scientists − and clues to how the building blocks of life on Earth may have been seeded

Several countries have developed the ability to deploy robots on the moon and Mars, with plans to send humans to these celestial bodies in the future.

A central driver of all these ambitious endeavours is still that fundamental question of whether life exists — or ever existed — elsewhere in the universe.

The James Webb telescope was launched in 2021, and is the most powerful telescope ever sent into space.
(Shutterstock)

Defining life

Defining life is surprisingly challenging. While we intuitively recognize living organisms as having life, a precise definition remains elusive. Dictionaries offer various descriptions, such as the ability to grow, reproduce and respond to stimuli.

But even these definitions can be ambiguous.

A more comprehensive definition considers life as a self-sustaining chemical system capable of processing information and maintaining a state of low entropy, with little disorder or randomness.

Living things constantly require energy to sustain their molecular organization and maintain their highly organized structures and functions. Without this energy, life would quickly descend into chaos and disrepair. This definition encompasses the dynamic and complex nature of life, emphasizing its ability to adapt and evolve.

Life on Earth, as we currently understand it, is based on the interplay of DNA, RNA and proteins. DNA serves as the blueprint of life, containing the genetic instructions necessary for an organism’s development, survival and reproduction. These instructions are converted into messages that guide the production of proteins, the workhorses of the cell that are responsible for a vast array of functions.

This intricate system of DNA replication, protein synthesis and cellular processes — all based on long strings of molecules linked by carbon atoms — is fundamental to life on Earth. However, the universe may harbour life forms based on entirely different principles and biochemistries.

An illustration of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, which uses an X-ray spectrometer to help search for signs of ancient microbial life in rocks.
(NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Something other than carbon

Life elsewhere could use different elements as building blocks. Silicon, with its chemical similarities to carbon, has been proposed as a potential alternative.

If they exist, silicon-based life forms may exhibit unique characteristics and adaptations. For instance, they might use silicon-based structures for support, analogous to bones or shells in carbon-based organisms.

Even though silicon-based organisms have not yet been found on Earth, silicon plays an important role in many existing life forms. It is an important secondary component for many plants and animals, serving structural and functional roles. For example, diatoms, a type of algae found in the ocean, feature glassy cell walls made of transparent silicon dioxide.

This doesn’t make diatoms silicon-based life forms, but it does prove silicon can indeed act as a building block of a living organism. But we still don’t know if silicon-based life forms exist at all, or what they would look like.

Read more:
Extraterrestrial life may look nothing like life on Earth − so astrobiologists are coming up with a framework to study how complex systems evolve

The origins of life on Earth

There are competing hypotheses on how life arose on Earth. One is that that life’s building blocks were delivered on or in meteorites. The other is that those building blocks came together spontaneously via geochemistry in our planet’s early environment.

Meteorites have indeed been found to carry organic molecules, including amino acids, which are essential for life. It’s possible that organic molecules formed in deep space and were then brought to Earth by meteorites and asteroids.

On the other hand, geochemical processes on early Earth, such as those occurring in warm little ponds or in hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean, could have also provided the necessary conditions and ingredients for life to emerge.

However, no lab has yet been able to present a comprehensive, certain pathway to the formation of RNA, DNA and the first cellular life on Earth.

Many biological molecules are chiral, meaning they exist in two forms that are mirror images of each other, like left and right hands. While both left- and right-handed molecules are typically naturally produced in equal amounts, recent analyses of meteorites have revealed a slight asymmetry, favouring the left-handed form by as much as 60 per cent.

Chirality refers to the existence in nature of mirror images of the same thing.
(Shutterstock)

This asymmetry in space-derived organic molecules is also observed in all biomolecules on Earth (proteins, sugars, amino acids, RNA and DNA), suggesting it could have arisen from the slight imbalance delivered from space, supporting the theory that life on Earth is extraterrestrial in origin.

Chances of life

The slight imbalance in chirality observed in many organic molecules could be an indicator that life on Earth originated from the delivery of organic molecules by extraterrestrial life. We could well be descendants of life that originated elsewhere.

The Drake equation, developed by astronomer Frank Drake in 1961, provides a framework for estimating the number of detectable civilizations within our galaxy.

This equation incorporates factors such as the rate of star formation, the fraction of stars with planets, and calculates the fraction of those planets where intelligent life may emerge. An optimistic estimate using this formula suggests that 12,500 intelligent alien civilizations might exist in the Milky Way alone.

The primary argument for extraterrestrial life remains probabilistic: considering the sheer number of stars and planets, it seems highly improbable that life wouldn’t have arisen elsewhere.

The probability of humanity being the sole technological civilization in the observable universe is considered to be less than one in 10 billion trillion. Additionally, the chance of a civilization developing on any single habitable planet is better than one in 60 billion.

With an estimated 200 billion trillion stars in the observable universe, the existence of other technological species is highly likely, potentially even within our Milky Way galaxy. Läs mer…

For much of the 20th century, efforts to remake government were driven by a progressive desire to make the government work for regular Americans, including the New Deal and the Great Society reforms.

But they also met a conservative backlash seeking to rein back government as a source of security for working Americans and realign it with the interests of private business. That backlash is the central thread of the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” blueprint for a second Trump Administration.

Alternatively disavowed and embraced by President Donald Trump during his 2024 campaign, Project 2025 is a collection of conservative policy proposals – many written by veterans of his first administration. It echoes similar projects, both liberal and conservative, setting out a bold agenda for a new administration.

But Project 2025 does so with particular detail and urgency, hoping to galvanize dramatic change before the midterm elections in 2026. As its foreword warns: “Conservatives have just two years and one shot to get this right.”

The standard for a transformational “100 days” – a much-used reference point for evaluating an administration – belongs to the first administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Bill in Washington on Aug. 14, 1935.
AP Photo, file

Social reforms and FDR

In 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt faced a nation in which business activity had stalled, nearly a third of the workforce was unemployed, and economic misery and unrest were widespread.

But Roosevelt’s so-called “New Deal” unfolded less as a grand plan to combat the Depression than as a scramble of policy experimentation.

Roosevelt did not campaign on what would become the New Deal’s singular achievements, which included expansive relief programs, subsidies for farmers, financial reforms, the Social Security system, the minimum wage and federal protection of workers’ rights.

Those achievements came haltingly after two years of frustrated or ineffective policymaking. And those achievements rested less on Roosevelt’s political vision than on the political mobilization and demands made by American workers.

A generation later, another wave of social reforms unfolded in similar fashion. This time it was not general economic misery that spurred actions, but the persistence of inequality – especially racial inequality – in an otherwise prosperous time.

LBJ’s Great Society

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs declared a war on poverty and, toward that end, introduced a raft of new federal initiatives in urban, education and civil rights.

These included the provision of medical care for the poor and older people via Medicaid and Medicare, a dramatic expansion of federal aid for K-12 education, and landmark voting rights and civil rights legislation.

As with the New Deal, the substance of these policies rested less with national policy designs than with the aspirations and mobilization of the era’s social movements.

Resistance to policy change

Since the 1930s, conservative policy agendas have largely taken the form of reactions to the New Deal and the Great Society.

The central message has routinely been that “big government” has overstepped its bounds and trampled individual rights, and that the architects of those reforms are not just misguided but treasonous. Project 2025, in this respect, promises not just a political right turn but to “defeat the anti-American left.”

After the 1946 midterm elections, congressional Republicans struck back at the New Deal. Drawing on business opposition to the New Deal, popular discontent with postwar inflation, and common cause with Southern Democrats, they stemmed efforts to expand the New Deal, gutting a full employment proposal and defeating national health insurance.

They struck back at organized labor with the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which undercut federal law by allowing states to pass anti-union “right to work” laws. And they launched an infamous anti-communist purge of the civil service, which forced nearly 15,000 people out of government jobs.

In 1971, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce commissioned Lewis Powell – who would be appointed by Republican President Richard Nixon to the Supreme Court the next year – to assess the political landscape. Powell’s memorandum characterized the political climate at the dawn of the 1970s – including both Great Society programs and the anti-war and Civil Rights movements of the 1960s – as nothing less than an “attack on the free enterprise system.”

In a preview of current U.S. politics, Powell’s memorandum devoted special attention to a disquieting “chorus of criticism” coming from “the perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians.”

Powell characterized the social policies of the New Deal and Great Society as “socialism or some sort of statism” and advocated the elevation of business interests and business priorities to the center of American political life.

A copy of Project 2025 is held during the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Building a conservative infrastructure

Powell captured the conservative zeitgeist at the onset of what would become a long and decisive right turn in American politics. More importantly, it helped galvanize the creation of a conservative infrastructure – in the courts, in the policy world, in universities and in the media – to push back against that “chorus of criticism.”

This political shift would yield an array of organizations and initiatives, including the political mobilization of business, best represented by the emergence of the Koch brothers and the powerful libertarian conservative political advocacy group they founded, known as Americans for Prosperity. It also yielded a new wave of conservative voices on radio and television and a raft of right-wing policy shops and think tanks – including the Heritage Foundation, creator of Project 2025.

In national politics, the conservative resurgence achieved full expression in President Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign. The “Reagan Revolution” united economic and social conservatives around the central goal of dismantling what was left of the New Deal and Great Society.

Powell’s triumph was evident across the policy landscape. Reagan gutted social programs, declared war on organized labor, pared back economic and social regulations – or declined to enforce them – and slashed taxes on business and the wealthy.

Publicly, the Reagan administration argued that tax cuts would pay for themselves, with the lower rates offset by economic growth. Privately, it didn’t matter: Either growth would sustain revenues, or the resulting budgetary hole could be used to “starve the beast” and justify further program cuts.

Reagan’s vision, and its shaky fiscal logic, were reasserted in the “Contract with America” proposed by congressional Republicans after their gains in the 1994 midterm elections.

This declaration of principles proposed deep cuts to social programs alongside tax breaks for business. It was perhaps most notable for encouraging the Clinton administration to pass the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, “ending welfare as we know it,” as Clinton promised.

Aiming at the ‘deep state’

Project 2025, the latest in this series of blueprints for dramatic change, draws most deeply on two of those plans.

As in the congressional purges of 1940s, it takes aim not just at policy but at the civil servants – Trump’s “deep state” – who administer it.

In the wake of World War II, the charge was that feckless bureaucrats served Soviet masters. Today, Project 2025 aims to “bring the Administrative State to heel, and in the process defang and defund the woke culture warriors who have infiltrated every last institution in America.”

As in the 1971 Powell memorandum, Project 2025 promises to mobilize business power; to “champion the dynamic genius of free enterprise against the grim miseries of elite-directed socialism.”

Whatever their source – party platforms, congressional bomb-throwers, think tanks, private interests – the success or failure of these blueprints rested not on their vision or popular appeal but on the political power that accompanied them. The New Deal and Great Society gained momentum and meaning from the social movements that shaped their agendas and held them to account.

The lineage of conservative responses has been largely an assertion of business power. Whatever populist trappings the second Trump administration may possess, the bottom line of the conservative cultural and political agenda in 2025 is to dismantle what is left of the New Deal or the Great Society, and to defend unfettered “free enterprise” against critics and alternatives. Läs mer…

Rural America faces many challenges that Congress and the federal government could help alleviate under the new Trump administration.

Rural hospitals and their obstetrics wards have been closing at a rapid pace, leaving rural residents traveling farther for health care. Affordable housing is increasingly hard to find in rural communities, where pay is often lower and poverty higher than average. Land ownership is changing, leaving more communities with outsiders wielding influence over their local resources.

As experts in rural health and policy at the Center for Rural and Migrant Health at Purdue University, we work with people across the United States to build resilient rural communities.

Here are some ways we believe the Trump administration could work with Congress to boost these communities’ health and economies.

1. Rural health care access

One of the greatest challenges to rural health care is its vulnerability to shifts in policy and funding cuts because of rural areas’ high rates of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.

About 25% of rural residents rely on Medicaid, a federal program that provides health insurance for low-income residents. A disproportionate share of Medicare beneficiaries – people over 65 who receive federal health coverage – also live in rural areas. At the same time, the average health of rural residents lags the nation as a whole.

Rural clinics and hospitals

Funding from those federal programs affects rural hospitals, and rural hospitals are struggling.

Nearly half of rural hospitals operate in the red today, and over 170 rural hospitals have closed since 2010. The low population density of rural areas can make it difficult for hospitals to cover operating costs when their patient volume is low. These hospital closures have left rural residents traveling an extra 20 miles (32 km) on average to receive inpatient health care services and an extra 40 miles (64 km) for specialty care services.

The government has created programs to try to help keep hospitals operating, but they all require funding that is at risk. For example:

The Low-volume Hospital Adjustment Act, first implemented in 2005, has helped numerous rural hospitals by boosting their Medicare payments per patient, but it faces regular threats of funding cuts. It and several other programs to support Medicare-dependent hospitals are set to expire on March 31, 2025, when the next federal budget is due.
The rural emergency hospital model, created in 2020, helps qualifying rural facilities to maintain access to essential emergency and outpatient hospital services, also by providing higher Medicare payments. Thus far, only 30 rural hospitals have transitioned to this model, in part because they would have to eliminate inpatient care services, which also limits outpatient surgery and other medical services that could require overnight care in the event of an emergency.

Rural emergency hospitals can get extra funding, but there’s a catch: They have no inpatient beds, so people in need of longer care must go farther.
AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis

Services for pregnant women have also gotten harder to find in rural areas.

Between 2011 and 2021, 267 rural hospitals discontinued obstetric services, representing 25% of the United States’ rural obstetrics units. In response, the federal government has implemented various initiatives to enhance access to care, such as the Rural Hospital Stabilization Pilot Program and the Rural Maternal and Obstetric Management Strategies Program. However, these programs also require funding.

Expanding telehealth

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth – the ability to meet with your doctor over video – wasn’t widely used. It could be difficult for doctors to ensure reimbursement, and the logistics of meeting federal requirements and privacy rules could be challenging.

The pandemic changed that. Improving technology allowed telehealth to quickly expand, reducing people’s contact with sick patients, and the government issued waivers for Medicare and Medicaid to pay for telehealth treatment. That opened up new opportunities for rural patients to get health care and opportunities for providers to reach more patients.

However, the Medicare and Medicaid waivers for most telehealth services were only temporary. Only payments for mental and behavioral health teleheath services continued, and those are set to expire with the federal budget in March 2025, unless they are renewed.

One way to expand rural health care would be to make those waivers permanent.

Increasing access to telehealth could also support people struggling with opioid addiction and other substance use disorders, which have been on the rise in rural areas.

2. Affordable housing is a rural problem too

Like their urban peers, rural communities face a shortage of affordable housing.

Unemployment in rural areas today exceeds levels before the COVID-19 pandemic. Job growth and median incomes lag behind urban areas, and rural poverty rates are higher.

Rural housing prices have been exacerbated by continued population growth over the past four years, lower incomes compared with their urban peers, limited employment opportunities and few high-quality homes available for rent or sale. Rural communities often have aging homes built upon outdated or inadequate infrastructure, such as deteriorating sewer and water lines.

Rental homes in older towns can become run down. Community maintenance of pipes and other services also requires funding.
LawrenceSawyer/E+ via Getty Images

One proposal to help people looking for affordable rural housing is the bipartisan Neighborhood Homes Investment Act, which calls for creating a new federal tax credit to spur the development and renovation of family housing in distressed urban, suburban and rural neighborhoods.

Similarly, the Section 502 Direct Loan Program through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which subsidizes mortgages for low-income applicants to obtain safe housing, could be expanded with additional funding to enable more people to receive subsidized mortgages.

3. Locally owned land benefits communities

Seniors age 65 and older own 40% of the agricultural land in the U.S., according to the American Farmland Trust. That means that more than 360 million acres of farmland could be transferred to new owners in the next few decades. If their heirs aren’t interested in farming, that land could be sold to large operations or real estate developers.

That affects rural communities because locally owned rural businesses tend to invest in their communities, and they are more likely to make decisions that benefit the community’s well-being.

A farmer carries organic squash during harvest. Young farmers often struggle to find land to expand their operations.
Thomas Barwick/Stone via Getty Images

Congress can take some steps to help communities keep more farmland locally owned.

The proposed Farm Transitions Act, for example, would establish a commission on farm transitions to study issues that affect locally owned farms and provide recommendations to help transition agricultural operations to the next generation of farmers and ranchers.

About 30% of farmers have been in business for less than 10 years, and many of them rent the land they farm. Programs such as USDA’s farm loan programs and the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program help support local land purchases and could be improved to identify and eliminate barriers that communities face.

We believe that by addressing these issues, Congress and the new administration can help some of the country’s most vulnerable citizens. Efforts to build resilient and strong rural communities will benefit everyone. Läs mer…