The 007s — Week 1
I have 18 apps on my phone and my average daily screen-time for last week read 4 hours 30 minutes (before you judge I was down with COVID and was doomscrolling to recover) — the point being that I constantly expose myself to way too much information and retain the not-so-fun-bits, I am thus going to document 7 new things that I found interesting (thus 007s) starting this week:
- Trip Chaining: Trip chaining involves grouping errands or other activities into one trip instead of returning home in between each one. The more errands you group together, the more vehicle trips you save. Data on a populations trip chaining patterns often direct public transport planning in a city. Women statistically partake in greater amounts of “trip chaining”- where multiple stops are included on a tour.
- Unicode Consortium: The world’s ‘fastest-growing language’, used by more than 90% of the world’s online population, is emoji. The emojis we have on our smartphones are chosen by Unicode Consortium. A non-profit corporation: Unicode Consortium develops, maintains, and promotes software internationalization standards and data, which specifies the representation of text in all modern software products and standards. To simply put it, when the Consortium decides a particular emoji (say ‘spy’) should be added to the current stable, it also decides on the code that should be used. Each phone manufacturer (or platform such as Twitter and Facebook) then designs their own interpretation of what a ‘spy’ looks like. But they are bound to use the same code so that when the users communicate between different platforms, they are broadly saying the same thing.
3. Time Poverty: Over the last two decades, global wealth has risen. Yet material affluence has not translated into time affluence. Most people report feeling persistently ‘time poor’ — like they have too many things to do and not enough time to do them. Time poverty is linked to lower well-being, physical health and productivity. Individuals, organisations and policymakers often overlook the dire effects of time poverty. This problem is particularly acute for professional women, who face difficulties in achieving what is euphemistically called the ‘work-life balance’ since they continue to hold responsibilities in their households in addition to their paid employment — given that 75% of the world’s unpaid care work is performed by females.
4. Pesero: A pesero is a form of public transport, most commonly seen in Mexico City. Its name derives from the fact that in the beginning of this form of transport a flat fee of one peso was charged per ride (hence the name “pesero” which could be interpreted as “peso collector”). Every day under normal circumstances, residents of Mexico City take 17 million rides in peseros, a fleet of green-and-white vans or microbuses that are part of the city’s informal transportation system.
5. Poverty Penalty: Poverty penalty refers to the relatively higher cost shouldered by the poor, when compared to the non-poor, in their participation in certain markets. Poverty penalty takes at least five possible forms, depending on specific context: poorer quality, higher price, non-access, non-usage, and catastrophic spending burden. First documented by the sociologist David Caplovitz and more recently by economist Ronald Mendoza, this concept talks about how poor households often pay higher prices at local convenience stores when they do not have transport or access to cheaper stores, or because they do not receive bulk discounts. Such “Market failures” mean that some products (such as health insurance) may not be available to poorer households, who then pay for more expensive substitutes.
6. The Plough Hypothesis: Danish economist Ester Boserup was the first to come up with the plough hypothesis: as per the hypothesis — societies that have historically used the plough would be less gender-equal than those that haven’t. The theory is based on the relative female-friendliness of shifting agriculture (which is done using handheld tools like hoes or digging sticks) versus plough agriculture (usually driven by a powerful animal like a horse or an ox), the idea being that the former is more accessible to women. This sex difference in accessibility is partly because of the differences between male and female bodies. Ploughing requires ‘significant upper body strength, grip strength, and bursts of power’ and this privileges male bodies. Upper-body mass is approximately 75% greater in men because women’s lean body mass tends to be less concentrated in their upper body.
7. The Paradox of Thrift: The paradox of thrift is an economic theory that argues that personal savings can be detrimental to overall economic growth. It is based on a circular flow of the economy in which current spending drives future spending. It calls for a lowering of interest rates to boost spending levels during an economic recession. The paradox of thrift also refers to contrasting implications of savings to households and to the economy as a whole. If all the people of an economy increase the proportion of income that is saved, the value of savings in the economy will not increase, rather it will decline or remain unchanged.
