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This paper provides a synthesis of the literature on and recent trends in new technologies and its effect on 21st century children (0-18 years old). It begins by providing an overview of recent trends in the access and use of new technologies as well as a summary of online opportunities and risks. It then explores a variety of factors, including economic, social and cultural status which underlie these trends and lead to online and offline inequalities. Building digital resilience is an important skill for 21st century children. Effective strategies to accomplish this include encouragement of active rather than passive Internet use, e-safety in the school curriculum, and teacher and parental Information and Communication Technology (ICT) support. A focus on younger children (primary school or younger) and the effects of new emerging technologies would be helpful for future research.

We assess the relationship between numeracy skills and numeracy practices among adults in everyday life and at work from the Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), an international survey of about 250 000 adults aged 16-65 years old conducted by the OECD in 33 countries/economies. The level of proficiency and the intensity of engagement in numeracy practices are two embedded aspects of numeracy. Proficient adults use numeracy frequently and adults who regularly engage in numeracy practices improve their performance. Individual and contextual factors influence, in different ways across countries, the strength of these links. The intensity of the use of numeracy in everyday life decreases as the lapse of time since a person’s studies increases. Moreover, employed people engage in mathematical activities less in the private setting if they do not do so intensively in the workplace.

Global trade imbalances narrowed in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. They have remained at a lower level but are still of concern to policy makers because of the risks they pose to individual economies, as well as globally. However, the ultimate causes of these imbalances are not fully clear. Current account positions reflect the gap between national saving and investment, which are in turn affected by policy distortions, including in trade policy. Simulations of the OECD’s METRO model show liberalisation of existing trade distortions would modestly narrow aggregate trade imbalances in the medium term for some countries. Reducing tariffs, non-tariff measures and the combined market access and productivity-enhancing effects of pro-competitive measures in services all have some rebalancing potential. Liberalisation would also offer economically significant income gains for all countries. By contrast, narrowing trade imbalances using trade restrictions would come at disproportionately high economic costs for all countries.

Norway’s success in maintaining high living standards, low inequality and good progress in gender balance owes much to its business sector. High-productivity business-sector jobs support high wages and profits, providing capacity to fund comprehensive public services and inclusive employment practices. Ensuring that the business sector thrives as globalisation and technologies evolve further and as the oil and gas sector enters long-term decline requires maintaining business-friendly conditions. This paper examines framework conditions, notably competition legislation and policy affecting firm entry and exit (“firm dynamics”). It evaluates how best to encourage new business models, as well the growing issue of labour supply among older cohorts. Education policy’s role in providing skills conducive to good lifetime earnings is also discussed.

Large-scale research and development programmes in neuroscience are giving rise to a host of new approaches, techniques and capacities to understand, read and intervene in the human brain. Some of these technologies reframe how we understand mental health and cognition, while others promise new applications for treating disease and even enhancing human capabilities. These developments in neuroscience and associated technologies have many ethical, legal and social implications including issues of product safety, human enhancement, dual use, privacy, and human identity. There is broad agreement among stakeholders that social aspects of brain research must be examined alongside the scientific and technical ones. In fact, good ideas for achieving such integration have emerged within the field of governance of emerging technology and within the national brain initiatives themselves. This report identifies, and seeks to address, key challenges for realising the responsible development of neurotechnology. In particular, the report analyses frameworks and mechanisms for integrating social concerns in the early development of technology, and discusses best practices for research funders across the public and private sector.

Many OECD countries have undergone reforms over the past decade to introduce advanced roles for nurses in primary care to improve access to care, quality of care and/or to reduce costs. This working paper provides an analysis of these nurse role developments and reforms in 37 OECD and EU countries. Four main trends emerge: 1) the development in several countries of specific advanced practice nursing roles at the interface between the traditional nursing and medical professions; 2) the introduction of various new, supplementary nursing roles, often focused on the management of chronic conditions; 3) the rise in educational programmes to train nurses to the required skills and competencies; and 4) the adoption of new laws and regulations in a number of countries since 2010 to allow certain categories of nurses to prescribe pharmaceuticals (including in Estonia, Finland, France, Netherlands, Poland and Spain).

Diversity in the classroom includes differences in the way students’ brains learn, or neurodiversity. Neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) affect increasingly large numbers of students. Education systems must work to meet the needs of these students and ensure that all types of learners thrive at school and beyond.

The empirical literature on development has labelled as “middle-income trap” (MIT) the fact that many developing economies struggle to adjust to new sources of growth after reaching middle-income levels. For Latin America and the Caribbean, this is an especially challenging scenario, as only Chile, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay have become high-income economies in the last six decades while several other LAC countries, already middle-income as early as 1950, stayed in that income range. This paper analyses empirically the main policy areas explaining the MIT, based on the experiences of 76 emerging economies and OECD countries, comparing those which evaded it and those which stayed there since the 1950s. Based on more than 200 000 estimations using a linear discriminant analysis, we identify institutional, social and economic features that help characterise policy priorities to overcome the middle-income trap. Furthermore, using the Synthetic Control Method, we present for selected Latin American countries their main policy gaps according to their unique characteristics.

This assessment of the present context for evolving socio-economic patterns and trends in the United States is intended to support consideration of prospects for gains in income shares among the lower income population, recognising that the United States is: a very large heterogeneous population; highly dispersed over a large geographic area; highly technologically developed; and with relatively high incomes by world standards. All of these factors conduce to the need to recognize the characteristics of individual nations as they move toward improved incomes for their populations. The key factor for the future in the US will be better utilisation of the underemployed population to abet the need for skilled workers to support a large aging dependent population, including better education, and greater mobility providing access to employment and to other social and economic opportunities. It is hoped that this assessment adds further dimension to the important challenges addressed here.

The German system of nuclear third party liability has always been, and arguably still is, the object of considerable interest in the international nuclear law community.

This report presents new evidence on how Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are changing the demand for skills at work. While the use of ICT at work increased in a large majority of countries between 2011 and 2014, a significant number of workers do not seem to have sufficient skills to use these technologies effectively. The diffusion of ICTs is also changing the way work is carried out, increasing the raising the demand for “soft skills” such as communication, self-direction and problem solving. While these findings offer some new and interesting insights, the report discusses various avenues for further analysis.