Societal volunteering and COVID-19 mortality in high-income countries: a cross-sectional study.

OBJECTIVES: This study aims to quantify the relationship between societal volunteering and the impact of COVID-19 in that society. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. SETTING, PARTICIPANTS AND OUTCOME MEASURE: Data on societal volunteering were collected for 32 high-income countries (international analysis) and 50 US states (US analysis). Using regression analysis, the ability of this variable to explain COVID-19 mortality was compared with other variables put forward in the public debate (eg, vaccination rate, obesity, age). COVID-19 mortality was measured as the number of deaths due to COVID-19 per million inhabitants, from January 2020 until January 2022. RESULTS: Societal volunteering explains 43% (resp. 34%) of observed variation in COVID-19 mortality (R²) in the international (resp. US states) analysis. Compared with other variables, societal volunteering better explains the variation in COVID-19 mortality across countries and US states, with only the prevalence of smokers displaying a higher R² in the international analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Countries and states with more societal volunteering have been less impacted by COVID-19, even after accounting for differences in demographics, gross domestic product, healthcare investments and vaccination rates. Although this evidence is not causal, our findings suggest that factors beyond the public-private debate might impact the resilience of societies to a pandemic, with societal volunteering being one such factor.

Sugar rush or sugar crash? Experimental evidence on the impact of sugary drinks in the classroom.

Sugary drinks in schools have been demonized for their potential long-term contribution to rising obesity rates. Surprisingly, there is only little evidence on the immediate effects of sugary drinks in schools. This paper provides experimental evidence on the in-class effects of sugary drinks on behavior and student achievement. We randomly assigned 462 preschool children to receive sugary drinks or artificially sweetened drinks and collected data before and after consumption. Our findings suggest that the consumption of one sugary drink induces an initial "relaxing" effect for boys, before making them more restless. Girls' behavior is not significantly affected. We find a negative effect on student achievement for boys and a positive effect for girls. We show the robustness of the results across two field experiments.

Measuring sustainable development goals performance: How to monitor policy action in the 2030 Agenda implementation?

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and corresponding targets for 2030 have been adopted by world leaders at the historic UN summit in 2015. Rankings are often constructed in order to hold countries accountable to achieve these targets. This paper illustrates the sensitivity of rankings to the choice of indicators and methodological assumptions by comparing the three most prominent methods using the sample of EU28 countries. The results of our analysis suggest that a country's relative position depends almost entirely on the chosen method and indicators.