Popularity at university affects well-being later in life
MISSED deadlines and late arrivals to lectures might not make you popular with your professors. But having a full social life at university can benefit your well-being for decades afterwards, according to new research.
People who were very socially active at the age of 20 had better emotional health in their 50s, the 30-year study found.
“Considering everything else that goes on in life over those 30 years… it is extraordinary that there appears to be a relationship between the kinds of interactions college students and young adults have and their emotional health later in life,” lead author Cheryl Carmichael, of the University of Rochester, said.
“Having lots of social connections at 20 was beneficial for later life because they helped us to figure out who we were, and helped us build a ‘tool set’ to be drawn on later,” the researchers said.
“It’s often around this age that we meet people from diverse backgrounds, with opinions and values that are different from our own, and we learn how to best manage those differences,” Carmichael said.
As a person hits the age of 30, the quality – rather than the quantity – of relationships becomes more important, the study found.
For the study, which was published in the journal Psychology and Aging, the researchers contacted individuals who, as college students, had participated in a study at the university some 30 years earlier. – Daily Mail Yet the bank was beginning to “run out of road”, said Andrew Colquhoun, the head of Asia-Pacific sovereign ratings at Fitch. Volatility has all but disappeared from trading in Japanese government debt as monetary largess corners the market. A similar dynamic is deadening debt backed by mortgages, assets and local-government IOUs. The focus, Colquhoun said, should be on evaluating which securities the BOJ bought to see what was gaining traction and what was not – and recalibrating accordingly.
Kuroda also should be prodding the government to carry out the structural reforms needed to boost wages and gross domestic product. In its latest growth strategy, unveiled last month, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government said it was aiming for 2 percent real growth over the next few years. That was highly unlikely to happen, though, without extending the yen’s already massive 35 percent drop under Abe, Colquhoun said. “We need real progress on reforms to get there.”
To that extent, Kuroda is stuck. Government officials make it clear that a yen below ¥125 (R12.72) to the dollar is undesirable (it’s about 123). That’s why Pimco has a point in favouring longer-term debt.
The BOJ can talk about surging inflation all it wants, but conditions on the ground indicate otherwise. In the meantime, as he tries to change them, Kuroda should be mindful that job one is to do no harm to Japan’s revival.