Birth rate is a measure of how many babies are born relative to the population of a given area – city, country, continent, or whatever. Like infant mortality rate, it’s usually expressed as a number out of 1,000 (x/1,000). Poorer, less educated populations of people tend to have higher birth rates.
Archive for the ‘Give Page’ Category
Birth Rate is…
Thursday, October 29th, 2009A Developing Country is…
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009A developing country in general is a country that has low levels of industrialization and low standards of living. While there is no universally accepted means of determining the dividing line between a developing and developed country, statistical measurements like standard of living, GDP per capita, life expectancy, industrialization, and literacy rate among others all help determine a country’s classification. That being said, not all developing countries are the same. Some have relatively high standards of living, but low life expectancy rates while others are the complete opposite.
Family Planning is…
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009Family planning is the ability to choose the number of children in a family and the space of time between births. Women in many countries do not have these options either because of a lack of resources or their rights are restricted. Family planning is an important component to improving women’s health as well as creating more stable and successful families.
Human Trafficking is…
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009Human trafficking is when people, usually poor or otherwise vulnerable people, are taken captive and exploited. They are often transported far from home and treated as slaves or forced into hard labor or prostitution. Most of these helpless people are women and children who are subject to brutal living conditions. Human trafficking is a major international problem with estimates of the number of trafficked people ranging between 500,000 to 4,000,000 a year.
Greenhouse Gases are…
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009Greenhouse gases are thought to be a major culprit in global warming. Gases including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and even water vapor, trap heat from the sun and make the Earth warmer – just like glass in a greenhouse traps heat and makes the air inside warmer. These gases exist naturally in the atmosphere, but human activities have increased their concentrations and subsequent air warming to a level that could potentially have disastrous climactic effects.
Natural Resources are…
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009Natural Resources are materials that are produced by or derived from the environment and used by people for many different purposes – things like energy production, building, and food. The environment provides natural resources that are essential to life like pure air, light, clean water, and food as well as the basic inputs to our industrial societies like wood, oil, gas, iron, and land.
Bryce Cullinane Is Supporting YOU For President!
Friday, October 23rd, 2009At 23 years old, Bryce Cullinane started PoliticsUnder30.org to help young people get involved in the politics. But it’s not about getting you to vote for someone or even just to vote – it’s about making you the candidate. Bryce took a few minutes with us to tell us what he’s up to and how you can become our next President.
>>TILE brings you exclusive interviews from people doing great things in SPEND, GROW, and GIVE. To view more, click on TILEcasts in the TILE Library.
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Just graduated and they’re already hitting you up for an alumni donation? What’s the point?
Friday, October 23rd, 2009“Hello, my name’s Susan and I’m calling you about your beloved alma mater… How about starting with a small monthly donation of $200?”
Sound familiar? Every graduate receives these calls seemingly moments after that graduation cap tassel crosses from right to left. Alumni donations have a large impact on colleges for several reasons and so they are solicited with what may appear to be overzealous enthusiasm. You may wonder how these people expect a new graduate to be able to donate anything. Don’t you need a job first?
Well, while your school is definitely hoping for a sizable check, that’s actually not the main reason for the unsolicited call. A large part of a school’s ranking is based on the rate of alumni donations – the percentage of graduates who give back to their school. By encouraging you to donate, sometimes even as little as $1, colleges are trying to maintain or even boost a significant factor in ratings determination. They also want to get you in the habit of giving.
While the size of your alumni donation right now might not be close to Warren Buffet’s, it still has a big impact on how your school is ranked and your giving patterns in the future.
Recession Or Not, The Wealthy Are Passing
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009There are some ways that money moves around in an economy that have very little to do with the stock market or unemployment statistics.
- Even though the recession has ruined many a good portfolio, Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy is predicting a “golden age of philanthropy” between 1998 and 2052.
- Wealthy individuals often distribute their assets at death among heirs, tax payments, charities, and legal fees, and these distributions are largely unaffected by the current economic climate. As a result, analysts project that this is the largest wave of charitable giving ever in the United States.
- Some people, though, are donating large chunks of their net worth while they are still alive, thereby eliminating the portion that would typically go to the government after death, and confounding the researchers at Boston’s CWR.
Facts & Figures
- CWR researchers projected an overall wealth transfer of $41 trillion between 1998 and 2052, mostly as resulting from asset exchanges at death.
- The $41 trillion estimate still applies during the recession because researchers used a very conservative 2% annual increase in wealth in their calculations.
- Federal data show approximately $12 trillion being transferred to heirs between 1998 and 2017.
Best Quote
“The downturn is not going to keep people from dying, and it is not going to keep a wealth transfer from occurring.” – Paul Schervish, Director of The Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College
When is a pig better than cash?
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009For many of the poorest people around the world, holding onto cash is just as difficult as getting their hands on it in the first place. For one thing, lacking food or basic necessities, there are immediate needs that cash will go to right away. Nothing is invested, which makes it harder for a person to make more money and eventually, escape from poverty. Too many hungry children or parents in desperate need of medicine siphon off cash as soon as it appears, trapped in an endless cycle of poverty.
For this reason, many microfinance and poverty-alleviation institutions are making loans of durable goods like pigs, bicycles, or refrigerators rather than cash. These are called in-kind loans. It’s much harder to give away pieces of a pig (until it’s eventually butchered of course), so it tends to last longer – hopefully long enough to grow from a small, inexpensive piglet to a fat hog that will fetch a good price at the market and allow its owner to repay the loan and, hopefully, reinvest the profit.
This isn’t to say that cash loans don’t help – they can save lives – but it’s also important that the people receiving the loan know how and are able to turn that cash into a durable asset that will reap greater returns and profit in the long term.