A recent study from Wharton suggests that as women have earned more, men have not taken up more of the chores at home. The division of labour remains stubbornly unequal: men contribute around eight hours of housework a week, women about 20. That figure for men has barely shifted since the 1980s. Crucially, it scarcely varies with income: husbands earning 20% of household pay do as much housework as those earning 80%.

Predictable consequences

The consequences are predictable. Women may win the bread, but are still expected to bake it. Pressed for time—particularly when children are young—they reduce their hours or retreat from demanding jobs in law, finance, or senior management. Even women earning more than double their partner’s wage tend to work fewer hours than their partner.

Researchers call this pattern “a smoking gun” for the stalled pay gap, which census data show has recently widened. Nor can the disparity be explained away by practical constraints. It persists among couples with high incomes, college degrees, and no small children. Men who lose their jobs, far from picking up the vacuum cleaner, devote their newfound leisure to leisure.

Economic logic suggests that households should allocate chores to the partner with the lowest opportunity cost. Yet divorce reveals the skew: when couples split, women’s time spent on housework falls and men’s rises, implying that marriage is tilted inefficiently against women. Same-sex couples divide chores more rationally, with the lower earner doing more.

Cultural norms

Cultural norms appear decisive. Immigrant women from countries where men do little housework, such as Pakistan, are more likely to avoid marriage or marry outside their community if they live in American cities where they out-earn men. Those from more egalitarian societies, such as the Nordics, face fewer such trade-offs.

What, then, might shift the balance? Teaching boys to cook and clean, normalising paternity leave, trimming long working hours, and subsidising childcare could all help. But the deeper change is cultural. The first gender revolution brought women into the workplace. The second, long-promised but still incomplete, will require men to pick up a mop.

A broad impact

The food system is both vital and destructive: it generates about one-third of global greenhouse-gas emissions, drives biodiversity loss, and consumes scarce water and soil. At present, procurement for school meals often reinforces these harms. But, say the authors of a new report, with more imaginative design it could do the opposite—shaping markets towards sustainable farming, healthier diets and local development. Instead of merely “fixing markets” after the fact, governments could use school-meal contracts to steer the private sector towards public goals.

Examples abound. Scotland’s free school-meals programme, launched in 2007 and now covering most of the primary school years, has reduced inequalities in health and access. But the report finds it could do more to promote net-zero ambitions and to create opportunities for local producers. With better strategic coordination among Scotland’s 32 councils, the £238m scheme could deliver broader environmental and economic gains.

Sweden shows the potential of a mission-driven approach. Its innovation agency, Vinnova, has worked with municipalities to prototype meals that are sustainable, nutritious, and tasty. The effort has engaged students and spurred local innovation. But without strong national backing and integration into wider food-system strategy, its impact remains limited.

Brazil offers the most ambitious model. Its national school-feeding programme, launched in 1955 and now among the largest in the world, serves more than 50 million meals daily. By law, at least 30% of procurement funds must go to family farmers, with additional incentives for sustainable production. The results have been striking: more jobs, higher household incomes, more diverse markets, and broader adoption of eco-friendly practices. The scheme is not only a tool against child hunger but also an instrument of industrial strategy.

Systemic change

The lesson is that school meals are not just good for children. Properly designed, they are good for farmers, businesses, and ecosystems too. Yet they remain underfunded and underappreciated. The global food system is failing to nourish billions of people, even as it undermines the environment that sustains it. With demand set to grow, incremental fixes will not suffice.

Recasting school meals as a plank of green industrial strategy could help. Governments already buy vast quantities of food; they could demand that it be healthy, sustainable, and locally rooted. As the UCL researchers put it, the point is not to treat school meals as a cost, but as an investment in a better economy.

Community Notes allows users to suggest context or corrections on posts. If enough other users with differing political views rate a note as “helpful”, the platform’s algorithm attaches it to the post for all to see. Since then, Meta and YouTube have copied the idea.

An effective approach

Does it work? A new study led by the University of Washington suggests it does—up to a point. Analysing 40,000 posts between March and June 2023, of which around 6,700 received attached notes, researchers found sharp drops in engagement once a note appeared. On average, reposts fell by 46%, likes by 44%, replies by 22% and views by 14% in the two days following attachment. Virality—the spread of a post beyond immediate followers—was particularly dented. Those closest to the poster were relatively unmoved, but casual readers were more likely to steer clear.

That is encouraging, since falsehoods are known to spread more rapidly and broadly than truths. But timing matters. Notes that arrived within hours blunted a post’s reach; those that took two days were largely pointless, since most engagement had already peaked. Notes on altered media, such as doctored videos, and on high-profile posts made the biggest dent.

Mooted impact

The broader picture is less rosy. Overall reductions in engagement, taking into account activity before notes were added, were much smaller—12% fewer reposts and 13% fewer likes, for instance. And the study covers only X, using data from early 2023, before Mr Musk tweaked the system again and shut down free access to the platform’s API. That makes further independent research nearly impossible.

Whether crowd-sourced moderation can scale across platforms is also unclear. If avid fact-checkers spend their energy on X, will they bother doing the same on TikTok or Instagram? X has at least published its code and data, but other firms remain closed.

Community Notes is no panacea. But the study suggests it is not mere window-dressing either. For misinformation, as for most things online, timing and visibility are everything.

Shaping decisions

A study by researchers at Washington State University sheds light on what shaped those decisions. Surveying 294 small entrepreneurs seven months later, they found that politics mattered as much as money. Supporters of the ruling party were quicker to adopt digital payments, not because they had more resources, but because they viewed the policy as credible and aligned with their values. Those sceptical of the government often resisted—even when they could afford to change.

This runs against the grain of entrepreneurship research, which has traditionally stressed income, education, and access to capital as the key drivers of innovation. In India’s case, political identity proved equally important. “Political identification reduces ambiguity and lowers the threshold for action,” the researchers note. Entrepreneurs who trusted the government felt surer of what to do; those who did not sometimes withheld action, even at a cost to themselves.

The findings also complicate the picture of resource-driven innovation. Higher-income entrepreneurs who distrusted the ruling party were often the least likely to adopt digital payments, whereas poorer ones sometimes adopted out of necessity. In other words, resources were not destiny; politics shaped how those resources were deployed.

Wider implications

That lesson matters beyond India. Policymakers in any polarised society should not assume that financial incentives alone will drive technological uptake. Identity influences whether people see new rules as opportunities or threats. The authors argue that nonpartisan messengers—local leaders, peer entrepreneurs or NGOs—may be more effective than government diktats in encouraging adoption. If people perceive change as imposed from above, many will resist unless they already trust the hand that delivers it.

The study suggests that entrepreneurship is about more than seizing opportunities; it is also about making sense of them. Political identity helps determine which signals are heeded, which technologies are embraced, and which policies are ignored. In India, demonetisation revealed not just the fragility of cash-based economies, but also the strength of partisan lenses in shaping economic behaviour.

For entrepreneurs, resources still matter. But in times of upheaval, trust and identity may matter more.

A new book by Suzanne Mettler and Trevor Brown, both scholars of government and both raised in small towns, traces how that transformation unfolded and what it means for America’s democracy. Drawing on five decades of county-level data across all 3,143 counties, along with interviews with local party leaders in Georgia, Ohio, Michigan, and North Carolina, they show how rural-urban divides have widened, how conservative organisations have entrenched Republican dominance, and why the consequences reach far beyond the countryside.

Skewing politics

The rise of effective one-party rule in rural America, they argue, has skewed the political system itself. Rural areas enjoy structural advantages through the Senate and the Electoral College. For the first time in American history, those advantages are concentrated almost entirely within one party. The result is a Republican Party with disproportionate power over federal elections and all three branches of government—even when a majority of voters would prefer different policies.

This, the authors say, is not because rural voters are uniquely extreme. Survey data suggest that people in small towns are no more ideologically polarised than those in cities. But the politicians they send to Washington often are. Rural Republicans have backed measures such as regressive tax cuts that benefit the wealthy but remain broadly unpopular. The lack of electoral competition in many districts, meanwhile, leaves voters with little choice, weakens accountability, and heightens the risk of poor representation or corruption.

Yet Mettler and Brown are not fatalists. “We are certainly concerned, but we do not think we have reached a point of no return,” they write. Just as politics helped to forge the rural-urban chasm, they argue, it can help bridge it.

Economic solutions

Part of the answer lies in economics. Many rural communities remain in long-term decline, and public policies that improve health care, infrastructure, and job prospects could raise living standards. But policy alone is not enough. For American democracy to function properly, voters must face a genuine choice at the ballot box. That requires Democrats to rebuild their rural presence through party organising and grassroots work—closing the distance between candidates and constituents who often see them as out-of-touch elites.

The rural-urban divide is one of the defining features of America’s politics. Whether it becomes permanent, and whether it continues to tilt the system towards minority rule, will depend less on demographic inevitabilities than on the choices politicians make now.

On the whole, life after work improves well-being. Yet not all groups thrive. Those on modest earnings who spent their careers in physically demanding jobs, and high earners who retire late, are especially prone to dips in mental health. Women, the unmarried, and the poor fare worse still.

Different outcomes

The study, one of the first to chart mental health across the three stages of retirement—before, during, and after—analysed data from 1,583 Dutch adults who left the workforce between 2007 and 2023. The average retirement age was 66-67. Researchers tracked psychological well-being, depression, and anxiety up to five and a half years either side of retirement.

For low earners (below the minimum wage), mental health was weakest throughout, showing an initial “honeymoon” lift after work ended but declining within two and a half years. Middle earners enjoyed a healthier trajectory, though physically strenuous jobs eroded the benefits. High earners saw little change before and after retirement but reported a sharp improvement once they stopped working. Those who delayed retirement experienced slower gains.

The findings underline the need for targeted policy. Retirees with the lowest incomes remain particularly vulnerable, the researchers warn. Future work could also explore whether choosing to retire, rather than being forced out, alters the pattern.

Retirement, then, is not a uniform release into leisure. It is a transition with distinct phases—and, for some, lingering risks.

Researchers tested the views of more than 3,000 adults on immigration from the European Union. A randomly selected group was asked to read a 400-word vignette about “Sonia”, a Polish nurse working in the NHS, who cherishes British values of hard work and fairness, and spends her free time watching David Attenborough documentaries. After reading Sonia’s profile, 73% of participants said EU immigration was a good thing—20 percentage points higher than the 53% who had read only a neutral passage about baking bread.

Well designed messaging

The message was no accident. It combined personal narrative, emotional cues, and facts—such as the contribution of migrant doctors and nurses to Britain’s health service—designed to appeal especially to voters with authoritarian leanings. Such voters, characterized by a preference for order, rules, and strong leadership, tend to be most skeptical of immigration and were more likely to back Brexit in 2016. Polling before last year’s election suggested that supporters of the Conservatives and Reform UK scored higher on authoritarian measures than those backing Labour, the Liberal Democrats, or the Greens.

That such a short passage can yield a swing of 20 points suggests views are malleable. The dominant political narrative since the referendum has been almost uniformly negative—“stop the boats” and “smash the gangs” have been more familiar refrains than stories of economic benefit. Yet the fiscal case is plain: the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts billions in additional tax revenues from immigration, with little strain on welfare.

The Cambridge team also tested a second message, tailored to liberal voters, in which Sonia was recast as a fashion student enchanted by the inclusiveness of the Queen’s Jubilee. That version raised support for EU immigration by 12 points. But it was the nurse’s story that proved far more persuasive across the spectrum.

Things can be changed

The researchers caution against writing off sceptics as irredeemable. Voters may appear entrenched, but exposure to positive, relatable stories about migrants can alter perceptions quickly. As they note, “a swing of 20 points on such a divisive issue tells us that attitudes are far from fixed.”

The lesson is obvious. If Britain’s leaders wish to make the case for immigration, they should do more than cite spreadsheets. A story about Sonia, the nurse, is more potent than another chart about GDP.

Broad benefits

Launched in 2018, the scheme has already been shown to boost enrolment among poorer students. The new research, the first to examine long-term outcomes, suggests that those who qualify are more likely to persist once on campus. Among students near the income eligibility cut-off, 96.6% of Promise recipients stayed on into their second year, compared with 93.4% of those just above the threshold. The three-point gap is statistically significant at an institution where retention is already high.

Comparisons with a broader group reinforce the trend. Promise students had a second-year retention rate of 95.8%, slightly higher than the 94.9% recorded among peers from families earning under $120,000. Graduation rates and debt loads also looked more favourable, though the evidence was less conclusive.

The findings suggest that financial guarantees matter not only for who enrols, but for who stays. For a state worried about keeping its brightest students, the promise seems to be delivering.

The study surveyed 646 people in England and 1,501 in Japan—two ageing societies with shrinking workforces. Respondents were asked to approve or deny visas for migrants across a range of jobs, from doctors to telemarketers.

Demand matters

Support for high-skilled migrants hovered around 70% in both countries. For low-skilled workers, approval slipped to the mid-50s in England and low-60s in Japan. But when jobs were in high demand, support rose sharply: visa approval rates for low-skilled but much-needed workers edged ahead of those for high-skilled migrants in low-demand sectors. Care-home staff and farm labourers, it turns out, are more welcome than surplus office managers.

The pattern held across political leanings, education levels, and degrees of social trust. In England, occupation mattered far more than country of origin. Unsurprisingly, migrants near retirement age were least favoured.

The findings complicate the familiar narrative that skill level alone drives public attitudes towards immigration. Shortages matter. In countries grappling with demographic decline, demand may blunt resistance to inflows—provided migrants are seen as filling genuine gaps.

What are those benefits? For many, things like collaboration and other forms of human-to-human interaction have been cited as the key factors behind the return to office calls. Research from INSEAD explores whether simply being in the same physical space is sufficient to support these things. Indeed, it questions whether employees even know how much or how well they interact with colleagues.

Types of relationships

The researchers explain that most of the relationships we have at work are aptly described as acquaintances. They’re not our friends, but we engage with them sufficiently often to have forged a certain kind of relationship. While these may be thought of as weak ties, and therefore less important, they have actually been shown to power collaboration and innovation.

This power is because they give us access to ideas, knowledge, and networks that we might not ordinarily have. This has obvious benefits in a work context, especially as such ties don’t require as much time and effort to maintain as close relationships.

Such weak ties are characterized by more random encounters, such as the ubiquitous water cooler moments, where we unexpectedly bump into colleagues. They don’t tend to be relationships we actively seek out or block time for. The very nature of these unexpected encounters can make it hard for us to truly appreciate their value, or indeed, understand how often they occur.

The INSEAD research shows that we often fall into the trap of believing that these encounters are far more frequent than they actually are. It’s a finding that the researchers believe may undermine employers’ return-to-office mandates, as we believe interactions happen more often than they do.

Small world

It’s a phenomenon the researcher refers to as the “small world illusion”, which he explored via a number of experiments to better understand how accurate our perceptions of encounters with acquaintances actually are.

Participants were asked to name the acquaintances and close connections they had at work, before then estimating how often they saw them in a typical week. The results show that we consistently overestimate how often we see people we know at work, but, importantly, this is far more likely with acquaintances than it is with close connections.

The researcher then looked at the dynamics in the typical workplace. Volunteers were asked to list the colleagues they regularly interacted with. Each person was then categorized as either a stranger, an acquaintance, or a close friend, with the number of interactions per week with each person also included.

Lack of connections

Interestingly, people generally don’t have many close connections at work, and certainly significantly fewer than they do outside of work. As before, people also regularly saw their weak ties less frequently than they imagined they did.

Subsequent experiments suggest this could be due to the availability bias, which is when we assume something is more common when we can readily recall examples of it. In other words, when we think about encounters with colleagues, we’re more inclined to remember the times we did see them than we are the (more frequent) times we did not. This also meant that we’re more inclined to overestimate the likelihood of getting support from our colleagues.

The results provide a timely reminder that simply initiating a return-to-office mandate isn’t going to magically improve collaboration or company culture. Organizations need to be far more intentional than that if those ends are to be achieved. What’s more, without meaningful changes, those lacklustre returns will sit alongside the very real harm return-to-office mandates cause among a workforce that generally dislikes them.

What to do

What should organizations do to overcome this? The results clearly show that managers need to be intentional in terms of providing employees with opportunities to mingle, whether that’s through overt exercises that bring people together or the provision of more informal opportunities to engage with colleagues.

Culture is also going to play a big role, as employees need to feel comfortable in asking for help from others, while also being rewarded for giving it.

When we overestimate how often we interact with acquaintances, we can develop a false sense of security about the strength of those ties. This can result in a lack of effort made in sustaining those relationships. It’s a situation that’s compounded when both sides feel the same way, resulting in a gradual withering of the bond, even when both parties want to maintain it.

The importance of casual interactions and weak ties is well established, so it matters when they aren’t maintained. The INSEAD results highlight that while return-to-office mandates are designed to ensure this doesn’t happen, it’s a process that is unlikely to achieve those results unless managers take active steps to help people connect more effectively. If we leave it to chance, we may fail to achieve the gains that face-to-face working can bring while also baking in the harms that come from removing people’s autonomy over where they work.