G8 faces uncertain recoveries; Bleak outlook for China graduates; India's two worlds: Rural and urban; Divorce in the digital age

1 G8 faces uncertain recoveries (Johannesburg Times) Europe is mired in debt and recession. Financial markets have hit violent ups and downs on fears that US stimulus efforts may soon be scaled back. Japan is finally looking up after years of stagnation - but it remains an open question if the recovery will stick. That's the global economy that will confront the heads of the Group of Eight leading economies as they gather Monday and Tuesday for their annual summit in Northern Ireland.

British Prime Minister David Cameron will serve as summit host for US President Barack Obama and the leaders of Germany, Italy, Canada, France, Japan and Russia. At the top of the agenda: New cooperation to fight tax evasion and increase transparency among governments. Also on the table will be how much help to give to rebels in Syria, and a push for lower trade barriers between the United States and the European Union.

Since last year's G-8 meeting at Camp David in the US, there has been a modest economic upswing throughout the developed world and prospects are brighter after five years of turbulence and recession. Yet despite progress, the economic outlook remains fraught with uncertainties. Chief among the question marks: When will the US Federal Reserve begin to curtail its extraordinary stimulus, which has supported the recovery in the US and helped send markets around the world to new peaks?

2 Bleak outlook for China graduates (Keith Bradsher & Sue-Lin Wong in The New York Times) A record seven million students will graduate from universities and colleges across China in the coming weeks, but their job prospects appear bleak — the latest sign of a troubled Chinese economy. Businesses say they are swamped with job applications but have few positions to offer as economic growth has begun to falter.

The Chinese government is worried, saying that the problem could affect social stability, and it has ordered schools, government agencies and state-owned enterprises to hire more graduates at least temporarily to help relieve joblessness. “The only thing that worries them more than an unemployed low-skilled person is an unemployed educated person,” said Shang-Jin Wei, a Columbia Business School economist. Lu Mai, the secretary general of the elite, government-backed China Development Research Foundation, acknowledged in a speech this month that less than half of this year’s graduates had found jobs so far. 

China quadrupled the number of students enrolled in universities and colleges over the last decade. But its economy is still driven by manufacturing, with a preponderance of blue-collar jobs. Prime Minister Li Keqiang personally led the cabinet meeting, on May 16, that produced the directive for schools, government agencies and state-owned enterprises to hire more graduates, a strategy that has been used with increasing frequency in recent years to absorb jobless but educated youths. 

A national survey released last winter found that in the age bracket of 21- to 25-year-olds, 16% of the men and women with college degrees were unemployed. But only 4% of those with an elementary school education were unemployed, a sign of voracious corporate demand persisting for blue-collar workers. Wages for workers who have come in from rural areas to urban factories have surged 70% in the last four years; wages for young people in white-collar sectors have barely stayed steady or have even declined.

3 India’s two worlds: Rural and urban (Neeta Lal in Khaleej Times) Disenchanted Indian villagers are flocking to the cities. Mahatma Gandhi claimed that ‘The heart and soul of India is her villages.’ Yet, the quintessential Indian village — once eulogized in Bollywood movies and Indian folklore as a Utopian abode – is fast turning into a liability for millions of the country’s rural poor who are moving to cities to create a better life for themselves.

In 1951, India’s urban population was 62 million, 17% of the country’s total head count. By 2011, this shot up to 377 million or 31%. By 2025, demographers reckon 42.5% of the country’s population will be hosted by urban areas. Faced with the erosion of their traditional way of life, villagers are migrating to cities with some Indian villages putting up all their land for sale for mass migration.

The scenario is similar to China where people living in its cities now outnumber those in the countryside, making it a predominantly urban nation for the first time in Chinese civilization. Urban dwellers account for 51.27% of China’s entire population of nearly 1.35 billion — or a total of 690.8 million people according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Is this a good thing or bad? In the Indian situation, say economists, the trend underscores the disenchantment of a sizeable demographic with a crunch of opportunities in rural spaces. And this is happening largely because older rural economies are disintegrating and there’s a shift from a subsistence economy model to a cash-based one.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. According to economist Stephen Green, urbanization goes hand in hand with economic growth. This is because when rural residents relocate to urban areas, they take up economically productive work, learn more skills, earn more money and buy more goods. They also drive demand for urban infrastructure and housing, which in turn bolsters economic growth. 

4 Divorce in the digital age (Fiona Graham on BBC) Michelle Crosby was just nine years old when she had to stand in a court room and tell a judge which parent she wanted to live with, a heart-breaking choice for a small girl to have to make in the most adult of environments. Divorce is considered to be the second most stressful life event most of us will ever go through. For children especially, it can seem like the end of the world.

"I had a clear insight that this is a very broken space. And that moment became the catalyst for me knowing that I wanted to go to law school and I wanted to fix it," she says. She became a lawyer, working with families in the same situation she had found herself in. Thirteen years on, she decided the time had come to go it alone and to try to make the process more collaborative and less painful.

After studying mediation training at Harvard, Ms Crosby put her ideas into practice working with families in Boise, Idaho. "I self-funded it for a few years and watched quite a few families through it. I realised we had something, and then we started to realise that we had identified archetypes," she says. "Even though lawyers were typically treating each case as unique, I could clearly see the patterns."

The final piece of the puzzle was the technology. "In this day and age, where most of us live with iPhones and iPads, there is no reason why we can't be using these existing technologies to help [families] through this transition. "So many of the conflicts that happen with families are caused by lawyer miscommunication, or something getting stuck on someone's desk or in a court process." The result was Wevorce.com.

It is a software service that is accessible from anywhere that has an internet connection - so your smartphone, tablet or laptop - because it is held in the cloud. The six-step programme guides families through decisions relating to finances, property, and most importantly, the children. Couples are screened to make sure this is right for them - where there has been domestic violence or abuse, for example, this would not be appropriate.