Over a third of young adults have experienced poverty in the past 50 years, The Atlantic reported. Among young Americans aging from 25 to 34, 41.3 percent will spend at least a year earning less than 150 percent of the poverty line. Forty-seven percent of adults in that age group will also be unemployed for at least one period in their lives. The statistics were drawn from an analysis of data collected between 1968 and 2009 by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and reflects that even during times of economic stability, young Americans have consistently struggled financially as they enter the working world.
The New Hampshire State Police is alarmed by the burgeoning spread of ad-hoc meth labs, which have grown at a rate faster than that of neighboring states, New Hampshire Public Radio reported. The “one-pot method,” the greatest contributor to the rise in meth labs, produces extremely pure meth in a single, two-liter soda bottle by directing the energy from lithium batteries to trigger a high-risk chemical reaction. In 2008, the state police reported only one meth lab incident, while in 2011 the state saw 15. Meth’s growing presence and potency in American life has been an integral part of national debates. Midwestern states, such as Missouri and Oregon, made meth’s crucial ingredient, pseudoephedrine, only available with a prescription. The number of meth lab arrests dropped 96 percent in areas where such laws were enforced.
Yale University, whose endowment saw the best performance in the past fiscal year, has been unseated by small schools with new endowment models according to preliminary findings by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, The New York Times reported Friday. Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Tex., and Spalding University in Louisville, Ky., outperformed Yale in the last five-year period as well as exceeding the average for all endowments with returns of 9 and 8 percent, respectively. Both colleges have relatively small endowments — Abilene Christian’s is $312 million, while Spalding’s endowment doubled to $14.6 million since 2006 by investing in “underfollowed stocks.” By comparison, Yale, which has an endowment of over $1 billion and is highly invested in hedge funds and private equity, returned just 3.1 percent over the same time period.
