The Future of Marriage in America

http://marriage. rutgers. edu/Publications/SOOU/TEXTSOOU2007. htm The State of Our Unions The Social Health of Marriage in America 2007 Essay: The Future of Marriage in America David Popenoe  © Copyright 2007 Introduction In this year’s essay, David Popenoe argues that long-term trends point to the gradual weakening of marriage as the primary social institution of family life. More Americans today are living together, marrying at older ages or not at all, and rearing children in cohabiting or solo parent households. Overall, the U. S. trends are following the far-advanced trends toward nonmarriage in Northwestern European nations, albeit at a slower and more uneven pace. Popenoe attributes the weakening of marriage to a broad cultural shift away from religion and social traditionalism and toward faith in personal independence and tolerance for diverse life styles – otherwise known as â€Å"secular individualism. † This cultural shift is a central feature of modern societies and therefore unlikely to be reversed. Compared to Europeans, moreover, Americans are more libertarian and thus may be more susceptible to harshly negative consequences of secular individualism on family life. As Popenoe concludes, it will probably require a cultural awakening, perhaps prompted by rational self-interest, to avoid such an outcome. We will have to adopt the view that personal happiness depends on high-trust and lasting relationships and that such relationships require constraints on short-term adult interests in order to foster long-term commitments to children, and thus to the future. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE IN AMERICA David Popenoe Almost a decade ago, in our first annual State of Our Unions Report in 1999, the lead essay was â€Å"What’s Happening to Marriage. † The picture we painted was hopeful, if not especially optimistic. Marriage, we reported, â€Å"is weakening but it is too soon to write its obituary. † In this, our ninth annual report to the nation, I want to summarize what has been happening to marriage in recent years and peer into the future. One question in particular is compelling: Is marriage in America headed in the direction of the European nations, where it is an even weaker social institution than in the United States? Or are we, as in other areas of our national life—such as our higher level of religious participation and belief—the great exception to the seemingly entrenched trends of the developed, Western societies? This raises, in turn, another intriguing question: Is America still a single nation in family terms, or are we becoming more divided by region and class? Marriage and Family Trends of the Past Decade There can be no doubt that the institution of marriage has continued to weaken in recent years. Whereas marriage was once the dominant and single acceptable form of living arrangement for couples and children, it is no longer. Today, there is more â€Å"family diversity:† Fewer adults are married, more are divorced or remaining single, and more are living together outside of marriage or living alone. [The most recent data are available in the second half of this report. Today, more children are born out-of-wedlock (now almost four out of ten), and more are living in stepfamilies, with cohabiting but unmarried adults, or with a single parent. This means that more children each year are not living in families that include their own married, biological parents, which by all available empirical evidence is the gold standard for insuring optimal outcomes in a child’s development. In the late 1990s quite a bit was written about a â€Å"marriage and family turnaround,† or a reversal of the many family weakening trends. Most negative family trends have slowed appreciably in recent years; they have not continued in the dramatically swift trajectory upward that prevailed in the 1970s and 1980s. Much of this may be due simply to the slowing of social trends as they â€Å"mature. † The only major family trend that has actually reversed direction is divorce. After rising steeply, beginning around 1965, the divorce rate has dropped gradually since the early 1980s, apparently mainly the result of adults becoming better educated and marrying at a later age. Other possible reasons for the decreasing divorce rate are the rise of non-marital cohabitation and a decline in second and subsequent marriages. Divorcees, for example, have become more likely to cohabit rather than remarry, thus avoiding remarriages that have always had a disproportionately high risk of divorce. The Marriage Gap One surprising development of recent years is the growth of a marriage and divorce â€Å"gap† between differently educated segments of the population. People who have completed college (around a quarter of the population) tend to have significantly higher marriage and lower divorce rates compared to those with less education. Among those married in the early 1990s, for example, only 16. 5 percent of college educated women were divorced within ten years, compared to 46 percent for high school dropouts. Indeed, most of the recent divorce rate decline has been among the college educated; for those with less than a high school education, the divorce rate actually has been rising. 1) The weakening of marriage and the resultant growth of family diversity thus is found much more prominently among those with less education and associated lower incomes. The underlying reason for this may be as simple as the fact that the personality and social characteristics enabling one to complete college are similar to those that foster today’s long-term marriages. Or, that delayed entry into the adult world of work and childbearing, and the incr ease in income and knowledge that college typically fosters, better allows mature values and financial security to undergird choice of partner and family life. Whatever the reasons, this marriage and divorce gap has been a major contributor to the growing economic inequality in America. Some expect the marriage gap to grow larger in the future because children tend to follow the family behavior of their parents. Children of the educated and financially comfortable are better socialized to marry successfully and to contain childbearing within marriage, whereas children of the lower classes often do not have this advantage. But it is doubtful that this gap will have much effect on the over-all drift of marriage in America. The increase in the college-educated portion of the population has been slowing appreciably. And the fertility of college-educated women has dropped. Twenty-four percent of college-educated women aged 40-44 were childless in 2004, compared to only 15 percent of women that age who didn’t finish high school. (2) On a national scale, the continuation of this fertility discrepancy could seriously counteract any beneficial family effects of higher education. The European Direction No matter how weak it has become, however, compared to other modern nations marriage remains at the center of American life. About 85 percent of Americans are expected to marry sometime in their lives, compared to less than 70 percent in a number of European nations. Only ten percent of Americans in an international survey agreed that â€Å"marriage is an out-dated institution,† compared to 26 percent in the UK and 36 percent in France. (3) Only about ten percent of American couples are cohabiting outside of marriage, compared to almost one third in Sweden. And our commercial wedding industry certainly has become huge. Yet an overriding question is whether marriage and family trends in every modern society are headed in a common direction. In other words, is there a set of family trends endemic to modern (urban, industrial, democratic, and still mostly Western) societies that supercedes economic, cultural, and even religious differences among regions and nations? If so, the current family system in the United States is not an exception but merely a laggard; we will gradually be swept up in the tide. Up to now, the pacesetters in most contemporary marriage and family trends—all moving in the direction of a non-marriage culture—have been the nations of Northwestern Europe, especially the Nordic countries. They have the latest age at first marriage, the lowest marriage and highest non-marital cohabitation rates, and the largest number of out-of-wedlock births. The nations in Southern Europe such as Spain, Italy and Greece, with less cohabitation and fewer out-of-wedlock births, tend to look more like the United States. Family traditionalism remains stronger in these southern nations, and young people live longer in their childhood homes, often until they marry, rather than living independently or in cohabiting unions. The United Kingdom and the Anglo-settler nations, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, typically stand somewhere in between the two extremes. But with respect to each of the dominant family trends of recent decades the other modern nations have been moving, albeit at varying speeds and not without some temporary lapses, in the Northwest European direction. The percentage of people getting married has been going down, the number of people cohabiting outside of marriage has been increasing, and the out-of-wedlock birth percentage has been skyrocketing. Between the early to mid 1990s and the early 2000s, for example, the marriage rate dropped twelve percent in Italy, 14 percent in Spain, 22 percent in Canada, 28 percent in New Zealand and 24 percent in the United States. At the same time, the non-marital cohabitation percentage (of all couples) climbed 23 percent in Italy and Australia, 53 percent in the United Kingdom, and 49 percent in the United States. The nonmarital birth rate jumped 24 percent in the United States, 48 percent in the United Kingdom, 96 percent in Italy, and a whopping 144 percent in Spain. 4) In one major respect the United States has long been the pacesetter and not the laggard. For generations, we have had the highest divorce rate. Yet even this is now changing. The U. S. rate has been dropping for several decades, while the divorce rate in many European nations has stayed the same or been climbing. The number of divorces per one thousand married women in the United Kingdom in 2002 was 14. 4, not too far from the United States rate of 18. 4. In the past, the incidence of family breakup was closely aligned with the incidence of divorce, but this is no longer the case. Because more people now cohabit in place of marrying, when a cohabiting couple breaks up it is not registered as a divorce would be. Unfortunately, we have no standard reporting system for the breakup of cohabiting couples, but all empirical studies show that cohabiting couples breakup at a much higher rate than married couples. While only ten percent of American couples cohabit, some 20 percent of British couples do. So if we are considering total family breakup, it is likely the case that Britain plus a number of other European nations now surpass us. There is one other important respect in which America has been in the vanguard of family trends—we have the highest percentage of mother-only families. Many European nations have a much higher percentage of out-of-wedlock births than we do, but the great majority of these births are to unmarried but cohabiting couples. In America, much more often, children are born to a lone mother with the father not in residence and often out of the child’s life. Nearly half of all extramarital births in America were of this nature in 2001, according to the latest available data. 5) One reason is our relatively high percentage of births to teenagers, 80 percent of which are non-marital and more than half of those to lone mothers; another is that 70 percent of all unwed births to African Americans are to lone mothers. However, the gap in mother-only families between the United States and other nations of the West is also in the process of diminishing. Being born to a lone mother is onl y one route to living in a mother-only family. Another route is through the break-up of parents after the child is born, which is far more common among parents who cohabit compared to those who marry. With parental break-up rates in other nations climbing rapidly, thanks largely to increased non-marital cohabitation, many of these nations are catching up with us in the alarming statistic of mother-only families. Even by the early 1990s, according to the calculations of several scholars, New Zealand had caught up with the United States with nearly 50 percent of children expected to experience single parenting by age 15, and the figure for Canada and five European countries exceeded 33 percent. (6) These percentages would probably be much higher if they were recalculated today using more recent data. So if we are moving in the direction of the more negative family trends of other modern nations, and they are moving in the direction of our negative trends, where does this leave us? Aren’t we all in a common basket, destined to witness an institution of marriage that is ever weakening? Before considering this, let us first have a look at the possibility that America is becoming increasingly bifurcated into two distinct cultures. Could it be that only one part of America is moving in a European family direction? The American Red-Blue Divide The recent family trends in the Western nations have been largely generated by a distinctive set of cultural values that scholars have come to label â€Å"secular individualism. † It features the gradual abandonment of religious attendance and beliefs, a strong leaning toward â€Å"expressive† values that are preoccupied with personal autonomy and self-fulfillment, and a political emphasis on egalitarianism and the tolerance of diverse lifestyles. An established empirical generalization is that the greater the dominance of secular individualism in a culture, the more fragmented the families. The fundamental reason is that the traditional nuclear family is a somewhat inegalitarian group (not only between husbands and wives but also parents and children) that requires the suppression of some individuality and also has been strongly supported by, and governed by the rules of, orthodox religions. As a seeming impediment to personal autonomy and social equality, therefore, the traditional family is an especially attractive unit for attacks from a secular individualistic perspective. On average, America has been moving in the direction of secular individualism, as can be seen in the general drift of our family trends. But the â€Å"on average† covers up some very substantial variations, some of which account for why, looked at internationally, we are a nation with relatively conservative family values. A recent National Cultural Values Survey (7) found that American adults usefully can be split into three groups, based on the degree to which they have embraced secular individualism, ranging from the Orthodox to the Progressives, with Independents in the middle. The survey found 31 percent of the population in the religiously Orthodox category, 17 percent in the secular Progressive category, and 46 percent as Independents. The Orthodox category is far larger than one finds in Western Europe and the other Anglo nations, and the Progressive category (i. e. , secular individualist) is considerably smaller, and therein lies the major basis for American family exceptionalism. One thing that makes these categories so prominent in American culture is that they are strongly expressed geographically. As analyzed by demographers at the University of Michigan, the two extremes are reflected in the so-called Red (Republican) and Blue (Democratic) state distinction frequently made in recent national political analysis. 8) The more Progressive Blue states are principally those of the Northeast, the Upper Midwest, and the West Coast, while the more Orthodox Red states are found in the South, the lower Midwest, and the Mountain region of the West. Reflecting their different ideologies, the Blue states tend to have lower marriage and higher cohabitation rates, along with lower fertility, while the Red states are more t raditional in their family structure. [See box in the second half of this report. The ideology and family behavior found in the Blue states resembles that of the other Western nations, although not quite as far down the path of Progressivism. If one were referring only to this part of America, one would not be talking about American exceptionalism. The large Orthodox population of the Red states, however, does give the United States a unique configuration in the modern world. If it were not for this population, we would not be having a â€Å"culture war† and we probably would not even be having a national conversation about the weakening of marriage. There is no such conversation about marriage in the Northwestern European nations, despite the fact that the institution of marriage is considerably weaker there than it is here. It is clear that the family structure of America is exceptional in some respects. The question is, are we so exceptional that we can resist the modern trend of marriage and family decline? So far the answer is no—we have been headed down the same path as every other modern, Western society toward ever-increasing secular individualism with its associated family structures. If this trend continues, the family structure of the Red states will come to look more and more like today’s Blue states, and the Blue states will look ever more like Europe. The Prospect for Cultural Change To reverse this trend of marriage and family decline would take a cultural transformation of some kind, and it is interesting to consider and evaluate what this might look like, and what could bring it about. One potential source of change would be a significant expansion in influence and authority of today’s orthodox, anti-individualist religions. Much has been written in recent years about the weakening of secularization, pointing out that modernization no longer necessarily means the demise of religion. The evidence for this comes from the newly modernizing countries of the world, however, where orthodox religions have actually been gaining, rather than losing, strength. There is no evidence that anything like this has been happening to date in the Western European and Anglo nations. Quite the opposite; with each passing year these nations—including the United States—are more secular than ever before. The National Cultural Values Survey noted above found that regular churchgoing has dipped below 50 percent and only 36 percent believe â€Å"people should live by God’s principles,† concluding that â€Å"America no longer enjoys cultural consensus on God, religion, and what constitutes right and wrong. â€Å"(9) A powerful indicator of future trends are the beliefs and attitudes of today’s young people, which are unmistakably more secular and individualist than those of their elders. A recent study concluded that emerging adults (ages 18-24) in America, compared to their earlier counterparts and their older contemporaries, are more disaffected and disconnected from society, more cynical or negative about people, and have moved in a liberal direction. (10) A Pew Foundation national survey found that 20 percent of today’s young people (18-24) say they have no religious affiliation or are atheist or agnostic, nearly double the percentage of the non-religious found in that age group less than 20 years ago. In the same time period the percentage of young people who did not agree that they had â€Å"old fashioned values about family and marriage† jumped from 17 percent to 31 percent. (11) A study in Britain, starkly pointing up the entrenched nature of this generational shift, found that a child with two religious parents has only a 50 percent chance of being religious, while a child with one religious parent has 25 percent chance of being religious. 12) Another cultural transformation that could move the family in a more traditional direction is widespread immigration. In combination with low birthrates, massive immigration is capable of changing the culture, social experiences, and self-identity of a population—including the ideologies of secularism and individualism. This possibility is beginning to be discussed in Europe, where birthrates in many nations remain well below replacement level and immigration, mostly from orthodox Muslim countries with high birthrates, is h igh and growing. The percentage of foreign born in many Western European nations is now similar to that in America, around twelve percent, but the birthrates of these groups are typically far higher than the indigenous populations. Projections are that the percentage of people of â€Å"foreign origin† may reach as high as one third in some European nations by 2050, and far higher than that in the major cities. (13) What is not known is how these new immigrants ultimately will react to secular individualism and the other cultural beliefs and practices of modern, Western democracies. As many have noted, because of long-standing antipathies between peoples of the Muslim faith and those of Christianity, often violent and going back well more than a millennium, it does seem possible that Europe faces the prospect of a major cultural transformation sometime in the future through immigrants who, rather than assimilate, will pull the culture in a new direction. The immigration situation in the United States, however, is different, and it does not seem as likely that in the foreseeable future immigrant groups will be able to seriously shift our culture in a more traditional direction. The most likely candidate for cultural change, of course, is the growing Hispanic population. The percentage of Hispanics is projected to reach 25 percent of the total population by 2050, when non-Hispanic Whites will make up only a slim majority. (14) But unlike Europe we are already a nation made up of many different immigrant groups; many Hispanics have been here for years, and they share a common religious heritage in Christianity. Thus Hispanics don’t pose the same threat of not assimilating to Western culture as do the Muslims. Indeed, to date, Hispanics seem to have assimilated into the American culture of secular individualism more than the reverse. For example, the unwed birth percentage among Hispanics has jumped from 19 percent in 1980 to 48 percent in 2005 and stands well above the percentage for the non-Hispanic White population (25 percent). Hispanics have the same divorce rate as non-Hispanic Whites, and in recent years their rate of non-marital cohabitation has grown faster than that of any other immigrant group. These trends contradict earlier expectations that Hispanics might bring this nation a new wave of family traditionalism. The prediction of the continued growth of secular individualism within modern cultures rests on some powerful facts. So far in the Western experience, at least, the dominant sociological factors associated with secular individualism are that the higher the educational and income levels of a population, and the more urbanized it is, the greater the degree of secular individualism. Is it likely that any time in the near future educational, income, and urbanization levels in America will drop? They have been increasing inexorably for three centuries, so a turnaround would most likely occur only in the event of some catastrophe, either natural or man-made. Absent such a catastrophe (which certainly can not be ruled out in today’s world), the most likely future scenario is that secular individualism will increasingly dominate the cultures of the West. The best prospects for cultural change, therefore, rest on the possibility that, at some time in the future, new generations of secular individualists themselves will undergo a change of heart. One way this might occur is through the growth of new, non-orthodox religious ideologies that remained compatible with secular individualism but take it in new directions. Unfortunately, the new religious strains that have emerged in recent decades, so-called New Age religions, have been profoundly individualistic. None has shown any interest in preserving marriage and family solidarity. Indeed, they seem part and parcel of the secular individualist movement, albeit with a more â€Å"spiritual† bent. The same seems to hold true for today’s rapidly growing â€Å"green† movement, which itself shows signs of becoming a new quasi-religion in which the environment has replaced God as a focus of almost divine adoration. So far there is little evidence that â€Å"pro-green† translates into â€Å"pro-marriage† or â€Å"pro-family,† although it is conceivable that somehow the conservation of nature could become translated into the conservation of the family. Any widely accepted â€Å"new morality† that might change family behavior would probably have to be compatible with secular individualism’s motivating force—rational self-interest. The self-interest of today’s young people still includes the desire to have strong intimate relationships and to want to do best by their children. And there is every reason to believe that these interests will continue into the future because they are, in fact, an intrinsic part of being human. The task that lies ahead, then, is to help young people to see the importance of marriage and strong families as the best way to achieve these interests; to help them realize that a better and more meaningful way of life, both for themselves and for their children, involves a commitment to long-term marriage. What Can be Done? As a first step, the institution of marriage needs to be promoted by all levels of society, particularly the families, the schools, the churches, the non-profit sector, and the government. The great majority of American high school seniors still want to get married, with 82 percent of girls and 70 percent of boys recently saying that â€Å"having a good marriage and family life† is â€Å"extremely important† to them. These percentages, in fact, represent a slight increase from the late 1970s. 15) But as high schoolers reach young adulthood, when the attraction of cohabitation and careers gains strong currency, making the actual commitment to marriage is not easy. Young people need, therefore, to be made continually aware of the many benefits married life brings, both for themselves and for their children. The empirical evidence is now strong and persuasive that a good marriage enhances personal happiness, economic success, health and longevity. This ev idence should become a regular part of our educational programs and our public discourse. Yet successful marriage promotion requires more than empirical evidence. Marriage has fallen by the wayside, in part, because it receives less and less social recognition and approval. Any norm of behavior requires for its maintenance the continuing support of the community, including active social pressures to uphold it. When social approval and pressures wither, the norm weakens. Today’s young people have been taught through the schools and in their communities a strong message of tolerance for â€Å"alternative lifestyles. † â€Å"Thou shalt not make moral judgments about other people’s family behavior† seems to have become a dominant message in our times. The reason for this is completely understandable; children and young people come from ever more diverse family situations which are not of their own doing, and they should be fully accepted and not be penalized. The problem is that this moral message is carried on into adult life, where it is applied not to children and young people but to adults who do have choices about how they shape their lives. In an effort not to judge much less stigmatize any adult life style, we have all too often become virtually silent about the value and importance of marriage. This silence is extremely damaging to the promotion of a pro-marriage culture. The widespread promotion of marriage is directed at only half of the problem, however. Getting people to marry is one thing, helping them to stay married is something else entirely. Helping people to stay married is the main focus of an important set of programs known as marriage education. Typically conducted in group settings rather than counseling situations, marriage education programs focus on developing the knowledge, attitudes and skills needed for making a wise marital choice and having a successful marriage. Although marriage education has been around for many decades, it recently has been thrust into the limelight thanks to widespread publicity and government financial assistance. The importance of marriage education is magnified by the fact that the marital relationship today is so different from what it was in the past. Marriage is now based almost entirely on close friendship and romantic love, mostly stripped of the economic dependencies, legal and religious restrictions, and extended family pressures that have held marriages together for most of human history. Until fairly recent times marriages had little to do with romantic love, sexual passion, or even close friendship; they were functional partnerships in the intense struggle of life. Today, a successful marriage rests almost entirely on how well one gets along, intimately and for the long term, with someone of the opposite sex. The â€Å"relationship knowledge† this requires has never been part of formal education, but there is no reason to believe that it can not effectively be taught to married couples and those about to be married, as well as to younger people as part of the high school curriculum. Indeed, the initial empirical evaluations of marriage education programs conclude that they are both well-received and have generally positive outcomes. Marriage promotion and marriage education are essential steps, but in order fully to rebuild the institution of marriage there would probably have to be a cultural shift of a more fundamental nature. Modern cultures would need to pull back from the now dominant thrust of secular individualism—the excessive pursuit of personal autonomy, immediate gratification, and short-term personal gain—and give greater emphasis to issues of community and social solidarity. This could come about through a growing realization, based on rational self-interest, that our personal happiness and sense of well-being over the long course of life are less affected by the amount of independence, choice, bodily pleasure and wealth we are able to obtain than by the number of stable, long-term and meaningful relationships we have with others. (16) And through a greater recognition of the fact that short-term adult interests can be in conflict with the long-term health and wellbeing of children, and that our children’s welfare has everything to do with the future of our nation. Conclusion America is still the most marrying of Western nations, but nevertheless we are caught up in the prevailing trends of modernity that lead toward an ever-weakening institution of marriage. Marriage rates have been dropping and cohabitation and out-of-wedlock birth rates have been rising, thanks in large part to the growing influence of secular individualism in all modern cultures. The negative effects of this are felt most profoundly by our children, who are growing up in family situations that are less and less optimum from a child-development perspective. As we move in the direction of the weaker family structures of Europe it is important to remember that we lack many of the welfare â€Å"safety-nets† found there, and therefore the negative effects of marital decline on children are likely to be heightened in this country. We are not a unified nation in family terms. We have a marriage gap, whereby the college-educated have a stronger marriage culture than the less well-educated. And we have a Red state/Blue state divide, whereby the nation is geographically split up into areas of family traditionalism and non-traditionalism. Yet these divisions remain peripheral to the overall waning of marriage in America. The rebuilding of a stronger marriage culture is possible. In addition to the heavy promotion of marriage built around the self-interest of today’s young people, it will probably require a cultural shift of some magnitude, one in which stable, predictable, and long-term relationships with others come to be viewed as the best foundation for adult personalities, childrearing, and family life. Footnotes 1. Steven P. Martin, â€Å"Trends in Marital Dissolution by Women’s Education in the United States,† Demographic Research 15-20 (December 2006), 537-560. 2. Jane Lawler Dye, â€Å"Fertility of American Women: June 2004. † Current Population Report, P20-555, Washington, DC: US Census Bureau (2005),Table 7. 3. Reported in Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, â€Å"Marriage and Divorce: Changes and their Driving Forces,† unpublished manuscript, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (2007). 4. Unless otherwise indicated, all calculations are by the National Marriage Project from published international data sources. . Lisa Mincieli and Kristin Moore, â€Å"The Relationship Context of Births Outside of Marriage: The Rise of Cohabitation,† Child Trends Research Brief 2007-13 (May 2007). 6. Patrick Heuveline, J. M. Timberlake, and F. F. Furstenberg, Jr. , â€Å"Shifting Childrearing to Single Mothers: Results from 17 Western Countries,† Population and Devel opment Review 29-1 (March 2003), 47-71. 7. Culture and Media Institute, Alexandria, Virginia (2007). 8. Ron J. Lesthaeghe and Lisa Neidert, â€Å"The Second Demographic Transition in the U. S. : Exception or Textbook Example,† Population and Development Review December 2006), 32-4. 9. Executive Summary, op. cit. 10. Tom Smith, â€Å"Generation Gaps in Attitudes and Values from the 1970s to the 1990s,† in R. A. Settersten, Jr. , F. F. Furstenberg, Jr. , and R. C. Rumbaut (eds. ), On the Frontier of Adulthood: Theory, Research, and Public Policy (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2004). 11. The Pew Research Center, â€Å"A Portrait of Generation Next,† Washington, DC, 2007. 12. Alasdair Crockett and David Voas, â€Å"Generations of Decline: Religious Change in the 20th Century,† Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (December 2006), 45-4. 3. David Coleman, â€Å"Immigration and Ethnic Change in Low-Fertility Countries: A Third Demographic Transition, † Population and Development Review 32-3 (September 2006), 401-446. 14. Philip Martin and Elizabeth Midgely, â€Å"Immigration: Shaping and Reshaping America,† Population Bulletin 58-2 (June 2003), p. 22. 15. Data from Monitoring the Future surveys, reported in this second half of this report. 16. For an important statement about this, see John Ashcroft and Phil Caroe, â€Å"Thriving Lives: Which Way for Well-Being? † Relationships Foundation, Cambridge, England (2007). SOCIAL INDICATORS OF MARITAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING TRENDS OF THE PAST FOUR DECADES Marriage Divorce Unmarried Cohabitation Loss of Child Centeredness Fragile Families with Children Teen Attitudes About Marriage and Family THE RED/BLUE AMERICAN FAMILY DIVIDE The Red State/Blue State divide has become a familiar theme in national politics. In a series of recent presidential elections, the so-called Red states have tended to vote Republican and the Blue states have voted Democratic. The Red states consist of the South (e. g. Alabama), the lower Midwest (e. g. Oklahoma), and the Mountain Region of the West (e. g. Montana). The Blue states are those of the Northeast (e. g. Massachusetts), the upper Midwest (e. g. Minnesota), and the West Coast (e. g. California). Less well known is the fact that the Red and Blue states also differ significantly in family terms, and this may help to explain their politics. The Red states typically have a more traditional family structure than the Blue States; people in the Red states marry younger and in larger numbers, cohabit outside of marriage less, and have more children. This is in large part because Red Staters are likely to be more religiously observant and to belong to denominations that profess allegiance to more conservative social values. However, the Red states also have higher divorce and out-of-wedlock birth rates than the Blue states, and these rates can hardly be considered indicators of traditionalism, much less religiosity. A closer look at the actual demographic differences among the states can help us to better understand the nature and causes of the Red/Blue American family divide. Red states have significantly higher marriage rates. The national marriage rate was 41 marriages per 1000 single women in 2005. Some of the highest marriage rates are found in the South, with Arkansas (77) and Alabama (54) leading the pack, and in the Mountain states of Idaho (66), Wyoming (60) and Utah (58). The lowest marriage rates, in contrast, are found in the Northeast with Pennsylvania (24), New Jersey (27), Delaware (28) and Connecticut (28) at the bottom. a) Higher marriage rates are associated with less non-marital cohabitation, and this also clusters geographically along Red/Blue lines. The national rate of unmarried partner households (as percent of all couple households) was 10% in 2005. States in the South and Midwest have the lowest percentages: Alabama (6%), Mississippi (8%), Kansas (8%), and Arkansas (8%). At the opposite pole are the states in the Northeast and Northwest: Vermont (14%), Maine (13%), Oregon (12%) and Washington (12%). (b) Statewide fertility rates fo llow a similar Red/Blue geographic distribution. The national fertility rate was 67 births per 1000 women ages 15-44 in 2005, but it was in the 70s in a number of Red states, Idaho (77), Kansas (70), and Georgia (70), and only in the 50s for Vermont (51), Maine (54) and Massachusetts (56). In addition to family traditionalism, the fertility rate in a number of southwestern States is greatly affected by the higher-fertility Hispanic population. (c) Put all together, these demographic characteristics add up to more married couples with children in the Red states and fewer in the Blue states, and this is ne of the biggest reasons for the Red/Blue political divide. Married people with children have tended disproportionately in recent presidential elections to favor the Republican Party. Indeed, for recent elections the correlation between married-with-children and voting Republican is one of the highest ever found between demographic factors and voting behavior. (d) Yet the Red states also, interestingly, have the highest out-of-wedloc k birth percentages and divorce rates. While 37% of all births in the U. S. ere out-of-wedlock in 2005, the unwed birth percentages for the Red states of Mississippi (49%) and Louisiana (48%) are far ahead of the Blue states of New Hampshire (27%) and Minnesota (30%) A closer examination, however, shows that this Red/Blue geographic pattern of unwed births is heavily dictated by the racial and ethnic make up of each state, as well as by educational and income levels. States such as Mississippi and Louisiana are at the top partly due to the extremely high unwed birth percentages for Blacks (77%) and Hispanics (50%). The state with the highest overall unwed birth percentage is New Mexico (51%), owing mainly to the contribution of its large Hispanic population. If one removes Blacks and Hispanics from the equation and looks just at unwed births among Whites, a geographic pattern more influenced by family traditionalism emerges. For the White population only, the unwed birth percentage in Mississippi (26%) is lower than for the White population in New Hampshire (27%). Unwed birth percentages below the national average of 25% for Whites are also found in the Red states of Alabama (21%), North Carolina (23%), and Georgia (23%). In contrast, above average unwed birth percentages for Whites are found the in secular and cohabitation-high Blue states of Vermont (32%) and Maine (35%) and Oregon (29%). (e) The picture is further complicated, however, by the fact that marriage, cohabitation, and unwed birth rates are so strongly affected by income and educational levels. In general, people with lower incomes and less education tend to marry less, cohabit more, and have more births out-of-wedlock. While professed traditional family values may help to generate fewer unwed births, they do not seem to provide much protection against divorce. The highest divorce rates are found in the more religiously-based Red states such as Arkansas (25), Oklahoma (25), and West Virginia (23), in striking contrast to more secular Blue states such as Pennsylvania (11), and Massachusetts (11). The national divorce rate was 16 divorces per 1000 married women in 2005. (f) Level of educational achievement is the single factor that probably best explains the geographic distribution of divorce. The lower the educational (and associated income) level, the higher the divorce rate, and educational levels are substantially lower in the Red states than in the Blue states. The Blue states of the West Coast stand as an exception to this education-based pattern, however, with the divorce rates for highly-educated Oregon and Washington being above the national average (probably California, too, but unfortunately divorce rates for that state are not available). In addition to education, therefore, another important causal factor in divorce may be the level of geographic mobility in a state, making the more recently settled and more transient populations of the West Coast and Mountain states more vulnerable to divorce. Mobility levels may also help to account for another geographic exception: the long-settled Red states of the Central Plains (e. g. Iowa and North Dakota) have very low divorce rates, comparable to those of the East Coast states. Footnotes: a. Calculations by the National Marriage Project obtained using data from the Current Population Surveys, March 2005 Supplement, as well as Births, Marriages, Divorces, and Deaths: Provisional Data for 2005, National Vital Statistics Report 54:20, July 21, 2006, Table 3. The exceptionally high marriages rates in Nevada and Hawaii are not considered here because so many out-of-staters go to these states to get married. b. Calculations by the National Marriage Project using data downloaded from the American Community Survey, 2005. c. Fertility rates from â€Å"Births: Preliminary Data for 2005,† National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 55, No. 11, December 28, 2006. d. Ron J. Lesthaeghe and Lisa Neidert, â€Å"The Second Demographic Transition in the US: Exception or Textbook Example? ,† Population and Development Review 32:4 (December, 2006). e. Unmarried mother birth data from â€Å"Births: Preliminary Data for 2005,† National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 55, No. 11, December 28, 2006. f. Calculations by the National Marriage Project obtained using data from the Current Population Surveys, March 2005 Supplement less population in CA, GA, HI, IN, LA and MN to match unreported divorces in these states. Divorce counts from Births, Marriages, Divorces, and Deaths: Provisional Data for 2005, National Vital Statistics Report 54:20, July 21, 2006, Table 3. The highest divorce rate, of course, is found in Nevada (38. ), and not considered here because of the out-of-stater problem. MARRIAGE Key Finding: Marriage trends in recent decades indicate that Americans have become less likely to marry, and the most recent data show that the marriage rate in the United States continues to decline. Of those who do marry, there has been a moderate drop since the 1970s in the percentage of couples who consider their marriages to be â₠¬Å"very happy,† but in the past decade this trend has swung in a positive direction. Americans have become less likely to marry. This is reflected in a decline of nearly 50 percent, from 1970 to 2005, in the annual number of marriages per 1000 unmarried adult women (Figure 1). Much of this decline—it is not clear just how much—results from the delaying of first marriages until older ages: the median age at first marriage went from 20 for females and 23 for males in 1960 to about 26 and 27, respectively, in 2005. Other factors accounting for the decline are the growth of unmarried cohabitation and a small decrease in the tendency of divorced persons to remarry. The decline also reflects some increase in lifelong singlehood, though the actual amount can not be known until current young and middle-aged adults pass through the life course. The percentage of adults in the population who are currently married has also diminished. Since 1960, the decline of those married among all persons age 15 and older has been 13 percentage points—and 25 points among black females (Figure 2). It should be noted that these data include both people who have never married and those who have married and then divorced. In order partially to control for a decline in married adults simply due to delayed first marriages, we have looked at changes in the percentage of persons age 35 through 44 who were married (Figure 3). Since 1960, there has been a drop of 20 percentage points for married men and 18 points for married women. (But the decline has not affected all segments of the population. See the accompanying box: The Marriage Gap. ) Marriage trends in the age range of 35 to 44 are suggestive of lifelong singlehood. In times past and still today, virtually all persons who were going to marry during their lifetimes had married by age 45. More than 90 percent of women have married eventually in every generation for which records exist, going back to the mid-1800s. By 1960, 94 percent of women then alive had been married at least once by age 45—probably an historical high point. (1) For the generation of 1995, assuming a continuation of then current marriage rates, several demographers projected that 88 percent of women and 82 percent of men would ever marry. 2) If and when these figures are recalculated for the early years of the 21st century, the percentage of women and men ever marrying will almost certainly be lower. It is important to note that the decline in marriage does not mean that people are giving up on living together with a sexual partner. On the contrary, with the incidence of unmarried cohabitation increasing rapidly, marriage is giving ground to unwed unions. Most people now live together before they marry for the first time. An even higher percentage of those divorced who subsequently remarry live together first. And a growing number of persons, both young and old, are living together with no plans for eventual marriage. There is a common belief that, although a smaller percentage of Americans are now marrying than was the case a few decades ago, those who marry have marriages of higher quality. It seems reasonable that if divorce removes poor marriages from the pool of married couples and cohabitation â€Å"trial marriages† deter some bad marriages from forming, the remaining marriages on average should be happier. The best available evidence on the topic, however, does not support these assumptions. Since 1973, the General Social Survey periodically has asked representative samples of married Americans to rate their marriages as either â€Å"very happy,† â€Å"pretty happy,† or â€Å"not too happy. â€Å"(3) As Figure 4 indicates, the percentage of both men and women saying â€Å"very happy† has declined moderately over the past 25 years. (4) This trend, however, is now heading in a positive direction. 1 Andrew J. Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992): 10; Michael R. Haines, â€Å"Long-Term Marriage Patterns in the United States from Colonial Times to the Present,† The History of the Family 1-1 (1996): 15-39. 2 Robert Schoen and Nicola Standish, â€Å"The Retrenchment of Marriage: Results from Marital Status Life Tables for the United States, 1995. † Population and Development Review 27-3 (2001): 553-563. 3 Conducted by the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago, this is a nationally representative study of the English-speaking, non-institutionalized population of the United States age 18 and over. Using a different data set that compared marriages in 1980 with marriages in 1992, equated in terms of marital duration, Stacy J. Rogers and Paul Amato found similarly that the 1992 marriages had less marital interaction, more marital conflict, and more marital problems. â€Å"Is Marital Quality Declining? The Evidence from Two Generations,† Social Forces 75 (1997): 1089. THE MARRIAGE GAP There is good news a nd bad news on the marriage front. For the college-educated segment of our population, the institution of marriage appears to have gained strength in recent years. For everyone else, however, marriage continues to weaken. Thus there is a growing â€Å"marriage gap† in America, between those who are well educated and those who are not. Recent data indicates that, for the college educated, the institution of marriage may actually have strengthened. It once was the case that college-educated women married at a lower rate than their less educated peers. Indeed, marriage rates for college-educated women were lower well into the late 20th Century. Since around 1980, however, this situation has reversed. College-educated women are now marrying at a higher rate than their peers. Not only that, but the divorce rate among these women is relatively low and has been dropping. This may be due partly to the fact that college-educated women, once the leaders of the divorce revolution, now hold a more restrictive view of divorce than less well educated women. b The out-of-wedlock childbearing of college-educated women has always been well below that of other segments of the population. Now, among those who delay marriage past age 30, this is the only group becoming more likely to have children after marriage rather than before. c There is more good news. The marriages of the college educated have become more egalitarian than ever, both in the sense that husbands and wives are matched more equally in their educational and economic backgrounds, and that they hold more egalitarian attitudes about marital gender roles. d As icing on the cake, all of this may add up to greater marital happiness. The percentage of spouses among this group who rate their marriage as â€Å"very happy† has held fairly steady over recent decades, whereas for other parts of the population the percentage has dropped significantly. In large numbers, therefore, the college educated part of America is living the American dream—with happy, stable, two-parent families. There is one problem, however, and it is a serious one for the future of the nation. College-educated women aren’t having enough children to replace themselves. In 2004, for example, twenty four percent of women 40 to 44 years old with a bachelor’s degree were childless, com pared to only fifteen percent of those without a high school degree. f For the non college-educated population, unfortunately, the marriage situation remains gloomy. Marriage rates are continuing to decline, and the percentage of out-of-wedlock births is rising. In the year 2000, fully forty percent of high-school drop-out mothers were living without husbands, compared with just twelve percent of college-grad mothers. g Because of the many statistically well-documented benefits of marriage in such areas as income, health, and longevity, this gap is generating a society of greater inequality. America is becoming a nation divided not only by educational and income levels, but by unequal family structures. a Joshua R. Goldstein and Catherine T. Kenney, â€Å"Marriage Delayed or Marriage Foregone? New Cohort Forecasts of First Marriages for U. S. Women,† American Sociological Review 66-4 (2001): 506-519. b Steven P. Martin and Sangeeta Parashar, â€Å"Women’s Changing Attitudes Toward Divorce: 1974-2002: Evidence for an Educational Crossover,† Journal of Marriage and Family 68-1 (2006): 29-40. c Steven P. Martin, â€Å"Reassessing Delayed and Forgone Marriage in the United States,† unpublished manuscript (2004), Department of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD. Robert Schoen and Yen-Hsin Alice Cheng, â€Å"Partner Choice and the Differential Retreat from Marriage,† Journal of Marriage Family 68-1 (2006): 1-10; Arland Thornton and Linda Young-DeMarco, â€Å"Four Decades of Trends in Attitudes Toward Family Issues in the United States: the 1960s Through the 1990s,† Journal of Marriage and Family 63-4 (2001): 1009-1037. e Calculation by the Na tional Marriage Project of data from The General Social Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago. f Jane Lawler Dye, Fertility of American Women: June 2004, Current Population Report, P20-555, Washington, DC: U. S. Census Bureau (2005): Table 7. g David T. Ellwood and Christopher Jencks, â€Å"The Uneven Spread of Single-Parent Families,† in Kathryn M. Neckerman (ed. ) Social Inequality (New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004), 3-77. |   | |Figure 1. Number of Marriages per 1,000 Unmarried Women Age 15 and Older, by Year, United States (a) | | |Year |Number | | | |1960 |73. |(b) | | |1970 |76. 5 | | | |1975 |66. 9 | | | |1980 |61. 4 | | | |1985 |56. | | | |1990 |54. 5 | | | |1995 |50. 8 | | | |2000 |46. 5 | | | |2005 |40. | | |a We have used the number of marriages per 1,000 unmarried women age 15 and older, rather than the Crude Marriage Rate of | |marriages per 1,000 population to help avoid the problem of compositional changes in the population, that is, changes which stem| |merely from there being more or less people in the marriageable ages. Even this more refined measure is somewhat susceptible to | |compositional changes. |b Per 1,000 unmarried women age 14 and older. | |S ource: U. S. Department of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2001, Page 87, Table 117; and Statistical | |Abstract of the United States, 1986, Page 79, Table 124. Figure for 2004 was obtained using data from the Current Population | |Surveys, March 2004 Supplement, as well as Births, Marriages, Divorces, and Deaths: Provisional Data for 2005, National Vital | |Statistics Report 54:20, July 21, 2006, Table 3. http://www. cdc. gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr54/nvsr54_20. pdf) The CPS, March | |Supplement, is based on a sample of the U. S. population, rather than an actual count such as those available from the decennial | |census. See sampling and weighting notes at http://www. bls. census. gov:80/cps/ads/2002/ssampwgt. htm | |Figure 2. Percentage of All Persons Age 15 and Older Who Were Married, by Sex and Race, 1960-2005 United Statesa | | |Total Males |Black Males |White Males |Total Females |Black Females |White Females | | | | | | | | | |1960 |69. 3 |60. 9 |70. 2 |65. 9 |59. 8 |66. 6 | |1970 |66. 7 |56. 9 |68. |61. 9 |54. 1 |62. 8 | |1980 |63. 2 |48. 8 |65. 0 |58. 9 |44. 6 |60. 7 | |1990 |60. 7 |45. 1 |62. 8 |56. 9 |40. 2 |59. 1 | |2000 |57. 9 |42. 8 |60. 0 |54. 7 |36. 2 |57. 4 | |2006 |56. 3 |40. 9 |58. 5 |53. |34. 3 |56. 3 | |a Includes races other than Black and White. | |b In 2003, the U. S. Census Bureau expanded its racial categories to permit respondents to identify themselves as belonging to more than | |one race. This means that racial data computations beginning in 2004 may not be strictly comparable to those of prior years. | |Source: U. S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, Series P20-506; America's Families and Living Arrangements: March 2000 and| |earlier reports; and data calculate d from the Current Population Surveys, March 2006 Supplement. | |Figure 3. Percentage of Persons Age 35 through 44 Who Were Married by Sex, 1960-2005, United States | | | | | | | |Year |Males |Females | | |1960 |88. 0 |87. | | |1970 |89. 3 |86. 9 | | |1980 |84. 2 |81. 4 | | |1990 |74. 1 |73. 0 | | |2000 |69. 0 |71. | | |2006 |67. 9 |69. 5 | |Source: U. S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1961, Page 34, Table 27; Statistical Abstract of | |the United States, 1971, Page 32, Table 38; Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1981, Page 38, Table 49; and U. S. Bureau | |of the Census, General Population Characteristics, 1990, Page 45, Table 34; and Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2001,| |Page 48, Table 51; internet tables (http://www. ensus. gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2005/tabA1-all. pdf) and data calculated | |from the Current Population Surveys, March 2006 Supplement. Figure for 2006 was obtained using data from the Current Population | |Surveys rather than data from the census. The C PS, March Supplement, is based on a sample of the U. S. population, rather than an| |actual count such as those available from the decennial census. See sampling and weighting notes at | |http://www. bls. ensus. gov:80/cps/ads/2002/ssampwgt. htm | |Figure 4. Percentage of Married Persons Age 18 and Older Who Said Their Marriages Were â€Å"Very Happy,† by Period, United States | | | | | |Period |Men |Women | |1973-1976 |69. |68. 6 | |1977-1981 |68. 3 |64. 2 | |1982-1986 |62. 9 |61. 7 | |1987-1991 |66. 4 |59. | |1993-1996 |63. 2 |59. 7 | |1998-2004 |64. 4 |60. 4 | |Source: The General Social Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago. The trend for| |both men and women is statistically significant (p

The Hunters: Phantom Chapter 34

We didn't weaken it, not enough!† Meredith shouted to her friends over Jealousy's shouts. The phantom, if anything, appeared stronger as it crossed the garage in one great leap and backhanded Meredith across the face. Meredith felt a searing pain, saw a bright flash of light, and felt herself slam against the wal . Dazed, she staggered back onto her feet. The phantom was coming toward her again. More slowly this time, with a smile of anticipation. The spell must be doing something then, Meredith thought groggily, or it wouldn't care if I finished my part or not. Meredith gripped her fighting stave. She wasn't going down easily, not if she could prevent it. Alaric had cal ed her a superhero. Superheroes kept fighting, even when the odds were stacked against them. She sliced out viciously, expertly, with the end of the fighting stave. Al those hours of practice paid off, because the phantom didn't seem to expect the blow, and rather than the stave passing harmlessly through mist, Meredith caught the phantom in its solid form, just above the rose in its chest. The blade at the end opened a deep wound in the phantom's chest, and when Meredith pul ed it back for a second blow, viscous green fluid dripped from the end of her weapon. As she swung again, Meredith's luck ran out. The phantom reached out toward her, its hand moving so fast that Meredith didn't see it until the phantom was holding the other end of the stave. Sharp as the stave was, poisonous as the coating of al those bits of silver and wood and iron were, the phantom held it lightly and easily, and pulled. Meredith went skidding across the garage floor toward the phantom, fast and helpless, and the phantom reached out lazily with its other hand to catch her, a sneer of contempt and anger on its glassy face. Oh no, Meredith's internal voice babbled, not like this. It can't end like this. Just before it touched Meredith, though, the phantom's face changed, suddenly blossoming into an expression of confusion. It let go of the stave, and Meredith yanked herself back and caught her balance, wobbling furiously, gasping for breath. The phantom stared past her, Meredith forgotten, at least for the moment. The phantom's glassy teeth were bared, and there was an expression of terrible rage on its greentinted face. As Meredith watched, the muscles in its icysolid arms seemed to strain, then dissolve to swirls of armshaped mist, then solidify again, stil in the same tense stil ness. She can't move, Meredith realized. She turned to look behind her. Mrs. Flowers stood straight and tal , her blazing blue eyes fixed on the phantom. She held out her hands in front of her, her face set in strong, determined lines. Several strands of her gray hair had escaped from her bun, standing out in al directions as if caught by static electricity. Mrs. Flowers's lips moved soundlessly, and, as the phantom strained to move, Mrs. Flowers strained, too, looking as if she was struggling to support something cripplingly heavy. Their eyes, cool intent blue and glacierclear green, were locked together in silent battle. Mrs. Flowers's eyes were steady, but her arms were shaking violently, and Elena didn't know how much longer the older woman would be able to hang on and keep the phantom under control. Not long, she suspected. The battle with the kitsune had taken a lot out of Mrs. Flowers, and she hadn't recovered ful y yet. She wasn't ready for a new fight. Elena's heart was thumping like crazy, and she couldn't stand to look at the bloody figures of Damon and Stefan on the other side of the garage, because the one thing she knew she couldn't do right now was panic. She needed to be able to think. â€Å"Meredith,† Elena said crisply, with such a tone of authority that her friends al turned away from watching the struggle between Mrs. Flowers and the phantom to look at her. â€Å"Finish your part of the ceremony.† Meredith looked at Elena blankly for a moment and then snapped into gear. That was one of the many wonderful things about Meredith: She could always be relied upon, no matter what, to pul herself together and get on with the job. â€Å"I have fed the phantom of jealousy,† Meredith said, looking down at the floor where her brown candle stil burned, â€Å"but now I cast my jealousy away.† Meredith's words rang with truth, and the candle went out. The phantom flinched and grimaced, flexing its fingers angrily. The deep red of the rose in its chest dul ed to a dark pink for a moment before flushing back to crimson. But†¦ it didn't seem like it was defeated; it seemed merely irritated. Its eyes never left Mrs. Flowers's, and its ice-sculpted muscles stil were straining forward. Almost al the candles were out. Only two flames were flickering, from the blue and red candles, only two victims feeding the phantom with their jealousy. So, with almost al its victims torn away from it, shouldn't the phantom be weaker? Shouldn't it be sick and struggling? Elena turned to Alaric. â€Å"Alaric,† she whispered. â€Å"What did the book say? Shouldn't the spel be starting to kil the phantom by now?† Alaric was watching the silent showdown between Mrs. Flowers and the phantom again, his own fists clenched and his body straining as if he could somehow lend Mrs. Flowers his strength, and it took a little time – time we don't have, thought Elena furiously – for him to drag his attention to Elena. When he did and she repeated her question, he turned a more analytical gaze on the phantom, and a new worry dawned in his eyes. â€Å"I'm not entirely sure,† he said, â€Å"but the book did suggest†¦ the book said something like, ‘Every word truly spoken by its victims, each dark emotion wil ingly rejected, wil draw back to them the life the phantom has stolen from their thoughts and deeds. The creature wil crumble with every honest word spoken against it.' It could be just rhetoric, or maybe the person who wrote down the spel had heard about the ritual without seeing it performed, but it sounds†¦Ã¢â‚¬  He hesitated. â€Å"It sounds like the spel ought to be kil ing the phantom by now,† said Elena flatly. â€Å"It sounds like this isn't working right.† â€Å"I don't know what's going wrong,† said Alaric unhappily. The world shifted and everything snapped into focus. â€Å"I do,† said Elena. â€Å"It must be because this is an Original, not an ordinary phantom. We didn't create it with our emotions, so we can't destroy it just by taking them away. I think we're going to need to try something else.† Stefan and Damon were stil locked in combat. They were both bloody and battered. His hurt arm dangling at an unnatural angle, Stefan moved as though something inside him had been damaged, but they were both stil attacking each other viciously, Stefan no less than Damon. Elena reasoned that they must be fighting on their own initiative now. The phantom, absorbed in its battle with Mrs. Flowers, was no longer muttering poisonous encouragement to them. If Damon and Stefan weren't being seduced by Jealousy's voice, maybe they could be persuaded to listen to someone else. Elena, trying not to catch the phantom's attention, eased her way toward the fighters. Damon was bleeding from his neck and a long cut on his head, and the skin around both his eyes was bruising up. He was limping, but he was clearly gaining the upper hand. Stefan, circling warily now just out of arm's reach, was not only curled forward to protect whatever was injured inside him but had a long strip of torn skin hanging from his cheek. Damon was grinning savagely at him, moving closer with every shift of his feet. There was an alertness to Damon's eyes that spoke only of the predator within, of his joy in the hunt and in the kil . Damon must have forgotten in the pleasure of the fight who he was battling, Elena told herself. He would never forgive himself, once he was himself again, if he real y seriously hurt Stefan, or even kil ed him. Although, something inside her whispered, part of him has always wanted this. She shoved the thought aside. Part of Damon might want to hurt Stefan, but the real, whole Damon did not. If there was anything that fighting the phantom had shown her, it was that the dark emotions everyone hid in their depths weren't al of who they real y were. They weren't their true selves. â€Å"Damon,† she shouted. â€Å"Damon, think! The phantom is influencing you! It's making you fight.† She heard her voice rise pleadingly. â€Å"Don't let it beat you. Don't let it destroy you.† Damon didn't seem to hear her, though. He stil wore that feral smile, and prowled a little closer to Stefan, edging him farther and farther toward the corner of the garage. Pretty soon Stefan would be trapped, boxed in and unable to run. And, catching a glimpse of the defiant expression on Stefan's poor, battered face, Elena realized with a sinking heart that Stefan wouldn't run, even if Damon gave him the chance. The part of Stefan that hated Damon was in control of him now. Stefan bared his teeth in a ferocious snarl. Damon pul ed back his fist to deliver a powerful blow, his canines extending in anticipation of drinking his brother's lifeblood. More quickly than she had ever moved before, at least as a human, Elena flung herself between them as Damon's fist swung forward. Eyes squeezed closed, she threw her arms wide to protect Stefan and awaited the impact. Damon was moving so fast by the time she jumped in front of him that momentum was carrying his whole body forward. With his inhuman strength, it was a punch that would break her bones and crush her face. But Damon stopped in time, as only a vampire could. She could feel the rush of displaced air from the blow, even the brush of his knuckles against her face, but there was no pain. Gingerly Elena opened her eyes. Damon stood poised, coiled to strike, one arm stil raised. He was breathing hard, and his eyes glittered strangely. Elena returned his gaze. Was there a tiny bit of relief shining in Damon's eyes? Elena thought so. The question was, was it relief that he had stopped himself before he kil ed her, or that she had stopped him from kil ing Stefan? Surely Damon could have thrown her out of the way by now and attacked Stefan again, if that was what he real y wanted. Elena took a chance and reached out toward Damon's fist, folding those battered knuckles within her own smal er hand. He didn't resist as she lowered his fist to his side, passively al owing himself to be moved. â€Å"Damon,† she said softly. â€Å"Damon, you can stop now.† His eyes narrowed and she knew he could hear her, but his mouth was tight and fierce, and he didn't answer. Without letting go of Damon's hand, Elena turned toward Stefan. He was close behind her, his eyes fixed on Damon. He was panting rapidly, and he wiped the back of his hand absently against his mouth, smearing blood across his face. Elena reached out and took his hand, sticky as it was with blood. Damon's hand tensed in hers, and she glanced at him to see he was staring at her other hand, the one that was holding Stefan's. Stefan saw where Damon was looking, too, and the corners of his swol en mouth drew up in a bitter little smile. Behind them, the phantom snarled as it fought Mrs. Flowers's power. It sounded louder, fiercer. â€Å"Listen,† she said urgently, looking from one brother to the other. â€Å"The phantom's not focusing on you now, so you can think for yourselves. But Mrs. Flowers won't be able to hold her for long. So you need to do it; you need to start thinking now, instead of just acting. I need to tel you†¦ um.† She cleared her throat uncomfortably. â€Å"I never told you this, but when Klaus was keeping me prisoner, after Katherine's death, he used to show me†¦ images. Memories, I guess, Katherine's memories. How you both were with her, back when you were human. When you were young and alive and loved her. How much you loved her. I hated it, seeing how real that love was. And I knew that you noticed me at first only because of the love you had for her then. It's always bothered me a little bit, even though I know your love for me now is deeper.† Both brothers were looking at Elena now, and Stefan's lips parted to speak. Elena shook her head briskly and went on. â€Å"No, let me finish. It's bothered me a little bit. It hasn't destroyed me, and it hasn't changed what I feel†¦ for either of you. Because I also know that you might have noticed me for Katherine's sake, but that once you got past it, you both saw me, Elena. You don't see Katherine in me anymore.† She had to venture into dangerous territory now, so she proceeded cautiously, trying to lay out her argument with logic and sensitivity. â€Å"So, I know that, right? But when the phantom spoke to me, it dredged up that old jealousy and made it burn inside me again. And the other things the phantom said to me are partly true, too. Yes, I'm jealous sometimes of girls with† – she smiled despite herself – â€Å"normal love lives. But in my most centered moments, I know I wouldn't want to be them. What I've got is amazing, even if it's hard.† Elena swal owed. â€Å"And so I know that what the phantom said to you is partly true. You're jealous of each other. You're angry about things from the past, and you're upset that I love both of you. But I also know that's not all there is. It's not the most important thing, either. Not anymore. Things have changed since the days when jealousy and anger were the only emotions between you. You've worked together, and you've protected each other. You've become brothers again.† She gazed into Damon's eyes, searching for a response. â€Å"Damon, Stefan was devastated when he thought you were dead. You're his brother, and he loves you, and he didn't know what to do with you gone. You're a big part of his life – past and present. You're the only one who's been there with him throughout his history.† She swung to look at Stefan. â€Å"Stefan, Damon didn't hide from you the fact that he was alive because he wanted to make you suffer, or to be free of you, or whatever the phantom was convincing you of. He wanted to be able to come back in a way and at a time that he could show you things were going to be different. That he was capable of changing. And you were the person he wanted to change for. Not me. You. You're his brother and he loves you, and he wanted things to be better between you.† Elena paused for breath, and to gauge what effect, if any, her speech was having on the brothers. At least they weren't currently trying to kil each other. That had to be a good sign. They stared at each other now, their faces unreadable. Damon licked the blood from his lips. Stefan reached up and careful y ran his free hand over the torn skin on his face and chest. Neither one said a word. Was there a connection left between them? Damon was looking at the cuts on Stefan's neck with an almost soft expression in his black eyes. Elena let go of them and threw up her hands. â€Å"Fine,† she said. â€Å"If you can't forgive each other, then just think about this. The phantom wants you to fight. It wants you to kil each other, to hate each other. Your jealousy is what's feeding it. One thing I know about you – about both of you – is that you've never given your enemies anything they wanted, not even if it would have saved you. Are you going to give in to what this phantom, this manipulative monster, wants? Is it going to control you, or are you going to control you? Does either of you real y want to murder your brother for someone else?† At the same exact moment, Damon and Stefan blinked. After a few seconds, Stefan cleared his throat awkwardly. â€Å"I'm glad you're not dead after al ,† he offered. The corner of Damon's mouth twitched. â€Å"I'm relieved I didn't manage to kil you today, little brother,† he answered. Apparently, that was al they had to say. They held each other's eyes for a beat longer, then turned to Elena. â€Å"So,† said Damon, and he was beginning to smile, a wild, reckless smile that Elena recognized. Damon the unstoppable, Damon the antihero, was back. â€Å"How do we kil this bitch?† Mrs. Flowers and the phantom were stil locked in their silent, almost motionless battle. Mrs. Flowers was beginning to lose ground to the phantom, though. The phantom's stance was wider; its arms had spread out. It was gradual y gaining the power to move, and Mrs. Flowers's hands and arms were shaking with strain. Her face was pale, and the lines of age around her mouth seemed deeper. â€Å"We have to hurry,† Elena said to Damon and Stefan. They skirted around Mrs. Flowers and the phantom, and joined the others who, white-faced and wary, were watching them approach. In front of them, only two candles stil burned. â€Å"Stefan,† Elena said. â€Å"Go.† Stefan stared down at the dark blue candle stil burning on the floor of the garage. â€Å"I've been jealous of everyone lately, it seems,† he said, the shame evident in his tone. â€Å"I've been jealous of Matt, whose life seems so simple and good to me, who I know could have taken Elena out of the shadows and given her the uncomplicated life she deserves. I was jealous of Caleb, who seemed like the kind of golden boy who would be a good match for Elena, so much so that I distrusted him even before I had reason to, because I thought he was after her. And especial y, I was jealous of Damon.† His gaze left the candle and settled on his brother's face. Damon looked back at him with an inscrutable expression. â€Å"I suppose I've always been jealous of him. The phantom was tel ing the truth when she said that. When we were alive, he was older, faster, stronger, more sophisticated than I was. When we died† – Stefan's lips curled up in a bitter smile of remembrance – â€Å"things only got worse. And, even more recently, when Damon and I found we could work together, I've resented how close he was to Elena. He has a piece of her that I'm not a part of, and it's hard not to be jealous of that.† Stefan sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. â€Å"The thing is, though, I love my brother. I do.† He looked up at Damon. â€Å"I love you. I always have, even when we were at our worst. Even when al we wanted to do was kil each other. Elena's right: We're more than the bad parts of ourselves. I have fed the phantom of jealousy, but now I cast my jealousy away.† The blue candle flickered and went out. Elena was watching the phantom closely, and saw the rose in its torso dul for a moment. The phantom flinched and snarled, then renewed its struggle against Mrs. Flowers's spel . As it gave a powerful twist, the older woman staggered backward. â€Å"Now!† Elena muttered quietly to Damon, looking at him meaningful y and wishing more than ever that she had her powers of telepathy. Distract her, she hoped her eyes said. Damon nodded once, as if to say he understood her message, then cleared his throat theatrical y, drawing every eye to him, and picked up the dark red candle, the last one burning in the line. He dabbed a line of his blood down its length and spent a few seconds posed with his head lowered pensively, his long, dark eyelashes brushing his cheeks. He was milking the moment for every drop of drama. Once every eye was fixed on him, Elena touched Stefan and indicated for him to help her approach the phantom from either side. â€Å"I have been jealous,† Damon intoned, staring down at the flame of the candle he held. He flicked his eyes up quickly at Elena, and she nodded encouragingly. â€Å"I have been jealous,† he repeated, frowning. â€Å"I have coveted that which my brother has, over and over again.† Elena slipped closer to the phantom, coming up beside it on its right side. She could see that Stefan was inching nearer on its left. Mrs. Flowers saw them, too. Elena could tel , because the older woman raised her eyebrows fractional y and began to mutter her spel more loudly and fiercely. Damon's voice rose, too, everyone in the room competing for Jealousy's attention, to keep it from noticing Stefan and Elena's machinations. â€Å"I don't need to go into every single detail of my past,† Damon said, his familiar smirk appearing on his battered face, a smirk that Elena found oddly reassuring. â€Å"I think there's been enough of that here today. Suffice it to say there are things I†¦ regret. Things that I would like to be different in the future.† He paused dramatical y for a moment, his head thrown back proudly. â€Å"And so I admit that I have fed the phantom of jealousy. And now I cast jealousy out.† In the moment that Damon's candle went out – and thank God it had gone out, Elena thought; Damon was apt to cling to his worst impulses – the rose in the phantom's chest dul ed again to a dark pink. Jealousy snarled and wobbled ever so slightly on its feet. At that same instant, Stefan lunged for the cut across the phantom's chest and got his hand inside it, inside the phantom's torso, and grabbed for the rose. A gout of green, viscous fluid spurted from the wound as Stefan squeezed the rose, and then the phantom screamed, a long, unearthly howl that made al the humans flinch. Bonnie clapped her hands over her ears, and Celia moaned. For a moment, Elena thought they were going to win that easily – that by attacking the rose at the phantom's heart, Stefan had defeated it. But then the phantom steadied itself and, with a huge flexing of muscle, pul ed suddenly out of Mrs. Flowers's control, and in one smooth motion ripped Stefan away from its side, his hand coming empty out of its chest, and threw him across the garage. Stefan hit the wal with a muffled thump, slid to the floor, and lay stil . Evidently exhausted by her battle with the phantom, Mrs. Flowers also sagged backward, and Matt rushed to catch her in his arms before she hit the ground. The phantom smiled slowly at Damon, showing its sharp teeth. Its glacier-clear eyes glittered. â€Å"It's time to go, Damon,† Jealousy said softly. â€Å"You're the strongest one here. The best of al of them, the best of anyone. But they'l always fawn over Stefan, the weakling, the brat, your useless baby brother. No matter what you do, no one wil ever care for you the way these mortals do for him. The way everyone, for hundreds of years, has always cared for Stefan. You should leave them behind. Make them suffer. Why not leave them in danger? They'd do the same to you. Elena and her friends traveled through dimensions, faced slavery, braved the greatest perils, to save Stefan, but they left you lying dead, far from home. They came back here and were happy without you. What loyalty do you owe them?† Damon, his face in shadow now that al the candles were out, gave a dark, bitter little laugh. His black eyes gleamed in the dimness, fixed on the phantom's clear ones. There was a long silence, and Elena's breath caught in her throat. Damon stepped forward, stil holding his candle. â€Å"Don't you remember?† he said, his voice cool. â€Å"I cast you out.† And with superhuman quickness, before anyone could even blink, he lit his candle again with a flick of Power and threw it, straight and true, directly into the phantom's face.

Call of the Wild Chapters 4 5 6

What do his parents think? Alex’s parents are very worried about him. They become even more worried when they realize that he told the post office to hold all of the letters they sent him until a certain date. Where does Chris/Alex travel in this chapter and what is the time line (dates and locations) July 9th 1990- Datson is flooded is flooded at Lake Mead July 10th 1990- Chris hikes toward N California August 1990- He gets a ride from/meets Crazy Ernie Chapter 5. What did the people of Bullhead City think of Chris/Alex? He is remembered as a strange but nice person. The employees at the McDonald’s where he worked said he worked at a slow pace, which contradicts what was said about his work ethic earlier in the novel. They said he needed to bathe more and one lady feels he quit because she told him so. Describe the slabs in your own words. The slabs are an abandoned military base that has become home to a lot of drifters. What do we learn about Chris/Alex in this chapter? Is your view of him changing? In this chapter we learn that Chris’s work ethic is starting to disappear because the former employees say that they felt he worked slow. My opinion is not really changing any of him because he still is very odd and obviously he is not all right. 4. Trace the timeline in this chapter. May 1991- Departs Las Vegas July/August 1991- Oregon coast September 1991- Hitchhiked down highway 101 to Bullhead city Several months later- moved to the slabs Chapter 6. What changes do you notice in the narrative stance of chapter 6? Chapter 6 isn’t really about chris, its more about the people he met and the lives he affected. Why did they send Krakauer a letter from Ronald Franz? Because Franz wanted a copy of the magazine article which featured Chris and felt very attached to him. In Chris/Alex’s letter to Ron Franz he reveals his philosophy of life. This is important for an understanding of what happened to him. Summarize his ideas in your won words. If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will first appear to be crazy† 57. This is important because for the first time in words he is sort of describing the lifestyle that he is trying to live. He put the ideolism that he is living by into a phrase. What did Krakauer learn when he visited Franz? He learned that Franz was a very physically large men who did not show his age. He had always been praying for Chris to walk back down the road. When he learned that Chris had died, â€Å"{he} became an athiest† because his prayers were not answered†

Exam 2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Exam 2 - Essay Example Also, he said that he would be willing to sell the Dealership to a third party. The loan officer verbally said that the Bank would not foreclose or sue on the promissory note as long as the note was paid when the Dealership was sold, but not later than September 1, 2010. Analysis: The promissory note and the deed of trust both contained the following clause: â€Å"Any amendment hereto or modification hereof must be in writing signed by both parties. Any waiver or indulgence of any default by Dealer shall not operate as a waiver of any subsequent default. Time is of the essence hereof.† Clearly, the Dealer was able only to reach a verbal settlement with the bank officer, so his liability exists and he can be prosecuted for not making a written negotiation. Issue 2: The promissory note called for monthly payments of interest but 16 of the 24 interest payments due under the note had been made untimely. Moreover, the last three payments had not been paid at all. Analysis: It is astonishing that the bank did not take action in time. The bank could have sought legal help against the Dealer earlier too. In such circumstances, the role of the concerned lean officer should be examined by the court. as stated by the website â€Å"Cornell Law School †¦ Lawyers in the Best Sense† under the auspices of the American Law Institute and the National Conference of Commissioners on United States Laws. Needless to say, this article is equipped with a strong framework to prevent unfair and unreliable financial action and prosecute the wrong doer. â€Å"U.C.C. – ARTICLE 3 – NEGOTIABLE INSTRUMENTS.† Cornell Law School †¦ Lawyers in the Best Sense. The American Law Institute and the National Conference of Commissioners on United States Laws, 2005. Web. 7 Aug. 2010.

Critically Analyse the Impact of Psychological Coping Strategies on Research Paper

Critically Analyse the Impact of Psychological Coping Strategies on the Patients Life Outcome - Research Paper Example The uncertainty in the outcomes of the various studies was taken into consideration to stress the need for further research to cope with the pain and handicap reducing methods by dealing with the patient psychologically were discussed. The psychological impact of the support given by the family members, friends and society were taken into consideration and the result of the reaction of the disabled person was also mentioned. The life outcomes of a lower limb amputated are physical, psychological and psychosocial conditions. This situation is somewhat out of the limits of the surgeon or a doctor. The nurses attending the patient during the course in the hospital and after discharge have more roles to play. The time taken to adjust to the disability depends on the nature of the patient. Though the time of adjustment depends on the sex also, it depends more on the circumstances. Men are more worried about losing their opportunities if they are the supporters of the family. (I think there should be the reference to suppose) The same worry plays with the women also, if they have the responsibility of supporting the family. So the study about coping with the disability depends more on the support the disabled person gets from the hospital, family, friends, and relatives decide the course of acceptance and his will of acceptance finally plays a critical role in coping with the problem. 'Coping' is the word used by health professionals, which means about the patient's understanding and managing the situations that arise due to the disability. Body image and disturbance of self-esteem were the main issues that affect the disabled person. The lot of literature till date that focussed on leg amputation can be divided into three categories: 1.Clinical observations of psychosocial responses, experiences, and expected phase for adaptation; 2.detailed in nature, empirical studies that show the effect of particular psychosocial responses and experiences among those with limb losses and 3. the investigations, which are related to each other and enable one to predict the relationship between a host of socio-demographic, experiential, personality, environmental, and disability-related variables and certain psychosocial indices of adaptation to the traumatic loss1. The results of clinical observations link the loss of lower limb to castration, loss of the spouse, and even equal to capital punishment in some sensitive persons. One thing in common is that the people who are amputated feel more depression, tension, and pressure when they think about daily life activities and future course of action. The empirical research on amputated persons has gathered the results regarding predictive power of a person's socio-demographic characteristics (present age, age at the time of amputation, marital status), disability-related variables, psychological variables and the context of the environment.     

Reguirements Modeling Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Reguirements Modeling - Assignment Example BPM can also be referred to as Business process management or a holistic management approach. It aligns a company’s business processes with clients’ needs. BPM improves the business’ efficiency and effectiveness through working towards integration with technology, innovation and flexibility. Therefore, BPM can be referred to as a process enhancement process. It is said that BPM helps organizations to be more effective, efficient and also more capable of making changes in an organization compared to a traditional hierarchical management method. These business processes also have a large impact on the costs and revenues of an organization. When Business process management employs a managerial approach, it views processes as strategic assets owned by an organization. According to BPM, these processes must be understood, improved and managed in order to deliver quality services and services to clients (Acharya 127). Data flow diagrams represent the flow of information and data in an information system graphically. This enables a person to denote the processes in an information system from the data’s viewpoint. Data flow diagrams also help a person know how a system operates, the system’s accomplishments and how to implement the accomplishments. Data flow diagrams are also used in designing information-processing systems by system analysts. DFD is also used in commence of a business process modeling so as to lay down the functions which a system has to carry out. It also helps to focus on information exchanges between processes and also show a relationship between those functions. Unified Modeling language is a consistent modeling language in software engineering. UML includes a collection of graphic notation techniques. These strategies help in the making of visual models of software-intensive systems that are object-oriented. Unified Modeling

Supply Chain Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 6

Supply Chain Management - Essay Example However, there are many challenges that companies face while trying to improve supply chain management. One big challenge that they face is customer service, which means that ensuring that the products that a customer want are delivered at the right place and at the right time is a huge challenge for companies. This is made worse by the fact that the number of customers keeps on rising and meeting their needs is the only way they can maintain them because of the high competition in today’s market (RFID STUDY GROUP at Pennsylvania State University, 2006). The other challenge is cost control; this is because companies in order to improve their supply chain management have to find a way to control costs. These are hard tasks considering their operating costs are under a lot of pressure. These pressures that cause an upswing in operating costs rise from, regular technology upgrades and advancements to keep up with the competitors, global customers who require goods to be shipped to them, expansion in costs of healthcare and constant increase in commodity prices. These pressures are not under companies’ control and, therefore, controlling them becomes a very hard task that leads to operating costs of supply chain management being high. The other challenge is risk management and planning since supply chain management requires a lot of good planning and the right strategy for managing risks involved (W.K, P, & K.H, L, 2000). This is because this process has to be assessed periodically and its design has to keep on changing to ensure that market changes are accommodated. Companies have to identify risks and quantify as well as controlling them. There are constant changes in supply chain management such as introduction of new products to the market, new acquisition, new intellectual property to be protected, as well as maintenance of assets and security of shipping products. All these have to be planned and integrated prior to the process to

Modern Day Attacks Against Firewalls and VPNs Essay

Modern Day Attacks Against Firewalls and VPNs - Essay Example VPN is an important technological advancement for remote workers as well as organizations to share the data in privately. The security issues surrounding VPNs are cracking of offline password, deficiency of account lock out, poor default formation and VPN thumbprint among others (Hills, 2005). In the similar context, firewalls are the security system used as secure the flow of information between the two networks. Firewalls places a bottleneck between the networks which ensures the privacy and confidentiality of the data shared between the two networks. There are two types of firewalls such as ‘packet filtering firewall’ and ‘stateful inspection firewall’. The common threats pertaining to firewalls include attacks from malicious codes such as virus, worms and information theft among others (Rao et al., 2011). This paper intends to explain the modern day attacks against firewalls and VPNs by explaining concepts of these two information technology tools. In th e light of aforesaid description, the essay intends to explain and discuss modern day attacks against firewalls and VPNs. The technology of firewalls was first established in 1980 and since then it has undergone several modifications and alternations. Firewalls are integrated security system designed to secure network from unauthorized access. Firewalls are also useful for protecting the outside fire. Firewalls are also considered as a system of network security which controls flow of traffic over the network created by set of protocols (Brown University, n. d.). Firewalls as act as a ‘software solution’ and ‘hardware appliance’. Firewalls can also be defined as the security measures, which protect local system as well as network system from the potential threats. The two types of firewalls are packet filtering and stateful inspection firewall. A packet filtering firewalls allows the flow of packets that meets certain specific criteria. The rules of the filtering depend on

Economic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 7

Economic - Essay Example This paper explores the reasons why China’s economy might grow more slowly than it has in the last three decades. High dependence on investment for growth rather than consumption is likely to hurt China’s economy in the future. In the view of many economists, China needs to reduce this overreliance and rebalance in order to enable consumption to take control of the economy. The gross domestic product (GDP) of the country is mainly driven by consumption rather than investment. The annual GDP of China shows high potential of slowing in the future irrespective of the implementation of reforms (Tian Para 1). According to Robin Bew, a London-based Economist Intelligence Unit managing director, the Chinese economic growth is likely to decline to 7.3% in 2014. The rate of economic growth will slow further to 5.9% in 2018 and to approximately 5% after the next ten years, according to the EIU (Tian Para 5). Taking a keen look at the economy of China, one cannot fail to see looming signs of future economic doom. Banks have invested heavily into green energy project creating numerous corporations, which have in turn catapult China to the spot light as the world biggest producer of solar panels. High investments in the manufacturing sector have begun to take a toll on the country’s economy with bankruptcy hitting most banks that investment heavily solar panel manufacturing. The booming property market is growing in such a way that it seems to have surpassed government control. When the boom is finally over, anyone can only pray that China has a soft landing. However, the Chinese private consumption still remains the lowest when compared to major economies of the world. Unfortunately, there have been minimal attempts by the government to implement reforms that could reverse this trend. The Chinese government has practically balked at any possible reform that could boost consumption. The Chinese government policy is more of its old

Northern Ireland Political Conflict Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Northern Ireland Political Conflict - Case Study Example This essay discusses the various perspectives to the peace process and conflict resolution in Northern Ireland showing that the outcome of the peace process as an enduring framework could be interpreted in different ways. After the finalisation of the Northern Ireland accord, all Northern Ireland political groups agreed on the formation of a new coalition government, but in 1999 the peace process faced a major setback when the IRA refused to disarm. The IRA claimed that it would disarm only after a new government is formed. The Ulster Unionists wanted disarmament of the IRA and boycotted the Assembly session that would have nominated a new coalition government. Thus the initiated Northern Irish government that was promised in the 1998 accord was brought to a halt in 1999. This process of new government formation was attempted several times although failed consequently due to IRA's failure to keep promises on decommissioning, a position they held in 1998. The IRA disarmed completely in 2005 to end violence making way for an enduring peace process in the region. However it is important to focus on whether this has been successful. Globalisation seems to have played a major role in transforming the approach to conflict and in bringing about stability within a region. This could be explained by the fact that the emergence of global institutions associated with globalisation can bring about changes towards de-territorialsing sovereignty and can also provide solutions to resolve the ethno national conflicts within a trans-national context. Globalisation perspectives consider the national problems at a global level and in case of both Northern Ireland and Israel Palestine conflicts, conflict resolution has been associated with global integration although in these two cases, there have been many differences in the structure, dynamics and outcomes of the peace process (Ben Porat, 2005). Ben Porat (2005) has highlighted the fact that the Agreement in Northern Ireland meant for peaceful resolution has been based on a power sharing model between Protestants and Catholics so that both the groups could claim and express their national identity. This according to Ben Porat is quite in contrast to the peace process in the Middle East and agreement between Israel and Palestine that focused on partition rather than power sharing. Coakley (2003) points out that the agreement of 1998 between British and Irish governments has been a subtle political document which could be exemplary and a model for other similar conflicts. Coakley discusses extensively on the features of the agreement suggesting that the document included several important decisions and compromises in the areas of citizenship, rights, equality, reforms, and criminal justice systems, release of prisoners, demilitarization and decommissioning of paramilitary weapons. All these aspects were considered within the agreement and being a very comprehensive document, the 1998 settlement could be considered as exemplary as some of its features would be common to all similar conflicts providing a basis for conflict resolution. Dingley (2005) however claim that the 1998 agreement which has been considered