By 2050, up to 55% of the world population will be living in urban areas, consuming 80% of the world’s food. Already around a third of produced food goes to waste at a value of USD 940 billion annually.
Category: Rural
Pulling together or drifting apart? Regions in the recovery
To further help in that process, we’re launching a new OECD Regional Recovery Platform that will help national and subnational governments track the recovery using internationally comparable subnational data, and support the development of policies to build back better and ultimately bring regions together.
Remote work: should I stay or should I go?
The ability to telework provided an important source of resilience for people, firms and places during the pandemic. In OECD countries, teleworking grew from around 16% of employees before the crisis to around 37% during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020.
Counting the cost: maintaining access to education and health services in rural areas
After years of population decline, many rural communities now host schools with more teachers than students. Declining fertility rates, low rates of immigration and population ageing have put pressure on local services, pushing up costs per head in facilities with very few users and in some cases forcing closures. Can governments continue to provide services efficiently to people regardless of where they live?
An imagined country
In the early stages of the pandemic, the focus was squarely on cities. Urban density and shared spaces contributed to surging case numbers and deaths: before June, the rise in excess deaths was more than three times higher in large metropolitan areas compared to remote regions. But rural areas still reeled from the economic impacts. Businesses closed to comply with containment measures, trade slowed, and tourism activity all but ceased.