The US economy appears strong on the surface, with low unemployment and stable inflation expectations. But beneath the surface, a growing wealth divide is reshaping consumer spending. Let’s break down the numbers and what they mean for the broader economy.

Top earners drive US growth as wealth gap grows

The US Senate's negotiators have agreed to a tentative deal to decrease the disparity in the sentences announced in offences involving crack and powder cocaine and plan to include the measure in a government spending bill.

Currently, mandatory minimum sentences for committing offences related to crack are 18 times lengthier compared to the minimum sentence in the case of power cocaine, which has resulted in Black Americans' disproportionate incarceration, as the government adopted the policy almost four decades ago.

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As per the deal finalised by bipartisan negotiators, they will narrow down the proportion to 2.5-to-1 . The measure is most likely to be attached to the year-end spending bill by Congress that is currently being discussed by lawmakers.&nbsp;

Last year, legislation for the complete elimination of disparity in sentences awarded in cases of crack and cocaine powder passed by a wide margin in the House of Representatives, although the Senate has not yet passed the legislation.

The 2.5-to-1 proportion has received public support from various Senate Republicans, which includes the highest-ranking member of the party on the Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley.

WATCH| U.S: Senate passes legislation on banning TikTok for lawmakers

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There is no retroactive relief for those who have been already convicted in cases of crack-related offences in the tentative deal, which the sentencing reform groups have been demanding.&nbsp;

The disparity in sentences between crack and powder goes back to the 1980s' war-on-drugs policies. A law was passed by Congress in 1986 to set up mandatory minimum sentences for offences related to drug trafficking, which dealt with offences related to crack and powder cocaine using a 100-to-1 ratio.&nbsp;

(With inputs from agencies)

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The US Senate's negotiators have agreed to a tentative deal to decrease the disparity in the sentences announced in offences involving crack and powder cocaine and plan to include the measure in a government spending bill.

The US Senate's negotiators have agreed to a tentative deal to decrease the disparity in the sentences announced in offences involving crack and powder cocaine and plan to include the measure in a government spending bill. Currently, mandatory minimum sentences for committing offences related to crack are 18 times lengthier compared to the minimum sentence in the case of power cocaine, which has resulted in Black Americans' disproportionate incarceration, as the government adopted the policy almost four decades ago. ALSO READ| US Senate passes $858bn defence bill; repeals vaccine mandate for troops As per the deal finalised by bipartisan negotiators, they will narrow down the proportion to 2.5-to-1 . The measure is most likely to be attached to the year-end spending bill by Congress that is currently being discussed by lawmakers. Last year, legislation for the complete elimination of disparity in sentences awarded in cases of crack and cocaine powder passed by a wide margin in the House of Representatives, although the Senate has not yet passed the legislation. The 2.5-to-1 proportion has received public support from various Senate Republicans, which includes the highest-ranking member of the party on the Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley. WATCH| U.S: Senate passes legislation on banning TikTok for lawmakers There is no retroactive relief for those who have been already convicted in cases of crack-related offences in the tentative deal, which the sentencing reform groups have been demanding. The disparity in sentences between crack and powder goes back to the 1980s' war-on-drugs policies. A law was passed by Congress in 1986 to set up mandatory minimum sentences for offences related to drug trafficking, which dealt with offences related to crack and powder cocaine using a 100-to-1 ratio. (With inputs from agencies)

US Senate to narrow sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine

The share of US&nbsp;nursing home residents who are recorded as having schizophrenia has soared over the past decade. As The New York Times reported last month, the change is driven in part by a surge of questionable diagnoses.

A 2012 government effort to reduce unnecessary antipsychotic drug use in nursing homes included an exemption for residents with schizophrenia. Since then, the diagnoses have grown by 70%. Experts say some facilities are using the schizophrenia loophole to continue sedating dementia patients instead of providing the more costly, staff-intensive care that regulators are trying to promote.

The impact of this has been more severe on Black residents, a new study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society has found. Since the new rules went into place, Black Americans with dementia have been 1.7 times as likely as their white nursing home neighbors to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, said Shekinah A. Fashaw-Walters, a public health researcher at the University of Minnesota and the study’s lead author.

Black nursing home residents are already more likely to live in facilities that rank lower in numerous quality measures, she said, and now face higher health risks of being misdiagnosed as schizophrenic to justify antipsychotic prescriptions. For residents with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, antipsychotic drugs increase the risk of infections and falls, and double the risk of death, studies have shown.

“I wanted to look at that increase in schizophrenia by race to see if this policy had a differential effect,” she said.

The findings align with past research on schizophrenia diagnoses. Among all age groups, clinicians are already more likely to misdiagnose a patient as schizophrenic — and more likely to prescribe antipsychotics — if they are Black, said Stephen Strakowski, vice dean of research at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin.

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“When clinicians talk to a Black or white patient who look otherwise similar symptom wise, they overemphasise psychotic symptoms, delusions and hallucinations, relative to other symptoms in Black patients compared to how they do with white patients,” he said.

“So it wouldn’t be a terrible surprise that if you now incentivise&nbsp;the diagnosis, the difference will be magnified.”

Experts have long been concerned about nursing home drugging. The National Partnership to Improve Dementia Care began in 2012 after years of research showed that antipsychotic medications were widely used in nursing homes despite warnings from the Food and Drug Administration about the potential harms.

The partnership includes federal and state agencies, nursing homes, advocacy groups and caregivers. It supports caring for dementia patients without drugs. This approach often requires substantial staffing and additional training, whereas antipsychotic medications can make it easier for nurses and aides to handle difficult-to-care-for residents and costs less.

The partnership called on state inspectors to look more closely at prescribing practices and to issue citations for unnecessary drug use. The prescription rates are counted in official statistics that the government uses to help rate facilities, a five-star system that serves as a consumer guide for families choosing a nursing home.

On the surface, the partnership has had a significant impact, boasting a hefty reduction in the share of residents being given antipsychotic medications. But The Times’ report found that more than half of the officially reported reduction in drug use was attributable to the increase in schizophrenia diagnoses from the loophole in the new rules.

Responding to The Times’ reporting last month, Catherine Howden, a spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said, “It is unacceptable for a facility to inappropriately classify a resident’s diagnosis to improve their performance measures. We will continue to identify facilities which do so and hold them accountable.”

Nursing homes have increasingly become a provider of last resort for the nation’s most vulnerable citizens, and some of the increase in prevalence of schizophrenia diagnoses could be driven by the movement of schizophrenia patients into nursing homes from other institutions.

But many experts say the schizophrenia exception is a major factor. The exemption was created because antipsychotic medications are still considered the best treatment for many people with the disorder. But schizophrenia is almost always diagnosed at a young age, and the increase among older residents since the rule went into effect is hard to otherwise explain. When government investigators looked at the medical claims history of nursing home residents with schizophrenia diagnoses in 2018, they found that 1 in 3 had no history of treatment for the disorder.

It would not be the first time that incentives had unintended consequences for nursing home behaviour. One reason the drug rate grew so much in the first place, other researchers have found, was in reaction to an earlier government crackdown on the use of physical restraints.

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Research has repeatedly shown that Black Americans tend to receive less care, and often worse care, than white Americans across a range of health problems. Fashaw-Walters said more attention is needed on how this plays out for older African Americans and other people of color. Too often, she said, policies are thought of as “colorblind” when in fact they might contribute to inequities.

“There is such an increased risk with antipsychotics for all sorts of adverse outcomes, whether it’s falls or death,” she said. “This national partnership could be implicated in some of these adverse outcomes. That’s the kind of scary part that I think about the most.”

The share of US nursing home residents who are recorded as having schizophrenia has soared over the past decade. As The New York Times reported last month, the change is driven in part by a surge of questionable diagnoses.

The share of US nursing home residents who are recorded as having schizophrenia has soared over the past decade. As The New York Times reported last month, the change is driven in part by a surge of questionable diagnoses. A 2012 government effort to reduce unnecessary antipsychotic drug use in nursing homes included an exemption for residents with schizophrenia. Since then, the diagnoses have grown by 70%. Experts say some facilities are using the schizophrenia loophole to continue sedating dementia patients instead of providing the more costly, staff-intensive care that regulators are trying to promote. The impact of this has been more severe on Black residents, a new study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society has found. Since the new rules went into place, Black Americans with dementia have been 1.7 times as likely as their white nursing home neighbors to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, said Shekinah A. Fashaw-Walters, a public health researcher at the University of Minnesota and the study’s lead author. Black nursing home residents are already more likely to live in facilities that rank lower in numerous quality measures, she said, and now face higher health risks of being misdiagnosed as schizophrenic to justify antipsychotic prescriptions. For residents with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, antipsychotic drugs increase the risk of infections and falls, and double the risk of death, studies have shown. “I wanted to look at that increase in schizophrenia by race to see if this policy had a differential effect,” she said. The findings align with past research on schizophrenia diagnoses. Among all age groups, clinicians are already more likely to misdiagnose a patient as schizophrenic — and more likely to prescribe antipsychotics — if they are Black, said Stephen Strakowski, vice dean of research at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin. Also read | Tour of the neighbouring galaxy: NASA shares stunning video of the Andromeda “When clinicians talk to a Black or white patient who look otherwise similar symptom wise, they overemphasise psychotic symptoms, delusions and hallucinations, relative to other symptoms in Black patients compared to how they do with white patients,” he said. “So it wouldn’t be a terrible surprise that if you now incentivise the diagnosis, the difference will be magnified.” Experts have long been concerned about nursing home drugging. The National Partnership to Improve Dementia Care began in 2012 after years of research showed that antipsychotic medications were widely used in nursing homes despite warnings from the Food and Drug Administration about the potential harms. The partnership includes federal and state agencies, nursing homes, advocacy groups and caregivers. It supports caring for dementia patients without drugs. This approach often requires substantial staffing and additional training, whereas antipsychotic medications can make it easier for nurses and aides to handle difficult-to-care-for residents and costs less. The partnership called on state inspectors to look more closely at prescribing practices and to issue citations for unnecessary drug use. The prescription rates are counted in official statistics that the government uses to help rate facilities, a five-star system that serves as a consumer guide for families choosing a nursing home. On the surface, the partnership has had a significant impact, boasting a hefty reduction in the share of residents being given antipsychotic medications. But The Times’ report found that more than half of the officially reported reduction in drug use was attributable to the increase in schizophrenia diagnoses from the loophole in the new rules. Responding to The Times’ reporting last month, Catherine Howden, a spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said, “It is unacceptable for a facility to inappropriately classify a resident’s diagnosis to improve their performance measures. We will continue to identify facilities which do so and hold them accountable.” Nursing homes have increasingly become a provider of last resort for the nation’s most vulnerable citizens, and some of the increase in prevalence of schizophrenia diagnoses could be driven by the movement of schizophrenia patients into nursing homes from other institutions. But many experts say the schizophrenia exception is a major factor. The exemption was created because antipsychotic medications are still considered the best treatment for many people with the disorder. But schizophrenia is almost always diagnosed at a young age, and the increase among older residents since the rule went into effect is hard to otherwise explain. When government investigators looked at the medical claims history of nursing home residents with schizophrenia diagnoses in 2018, they found that 1 in 3 had no history of treatment for the disorder. It would not be the first time that incentives had unintended consequences for nursing home behaviour. One reason the drug rate grew so much in the first place, other researchers have found, was in reaction to an earlier government crackdown on the use of physical restraints. Also read | As schools shift back to classroom teaching, are students ready to be reintroduced to outer world? Research has repeatedly shown that Black Americans tend to receive less care, and often worse care, than white Americans across a range of health problems. Fashaw-Walters said more attention is needed on how this plays out for older African Americans and other people of color. Too often, she said, policies are thought of as “colorblind” when in fact they might contribute to inequities. “There is such an increased risk with antipsychotics for all sorts of adverse outcomes, whether it’s falls or death,” she said. “This national partnership could be implicated in some of these adverse outcomes. That’s the kind of scary part that I think about the most.”

Racial disparity in schizophrenia diagnoses in nursing homes

The number of&nbsp;children&nbsp;who do not attend school is rising, child marriage has not dropped in decades and millions of young&nbsp;children&nbsp;will die mostly preventable deaths by 2030 if global poverty is not addressed, the&nbsp;United Nations Children&#39;s Emergency Fund&nbsp;(UNICEF)&nbsp;said in a bleak report issued on Tuesday.

Poor&nbsp;children&nbsp;are twice as likely as rich&nbsp;children&nbsp;to die before age five, and poor girls are more than twice as likely to become child brides in signs of troubling&nbsp;inequality, said the annual report by the United Nations&#39;&nbsp;children&#39;s agency.

Noting some progress in halving global mortality rates for&nbsp;children&nbsp;under five&nbsp;since 1990 and boys and girls attending primary school in equal numbers in 129 countries, the report said such developments have been neither even nor fair, with repercussions for global turmoil.

&quot;Some of the big challenges that we now face, like refugees and migrants, are connected within equality&nbsp;and poverty,&quot; Justin Forsyth, Undine&#39;s deputy executive director, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Narrowing that inequity &quot;is good for those&nbsp;children, but it&#39;s also good to stop future crises&quot;,&nbsp;he said.

The report called for stronger efforts to educate the&nbsp;world&#39;s&nbsp;children, noting that on average each additional year of education a child receives increases her or his adult earnings by about 10 per cent.

Also it said for each additional year of schooling completed on average by young adults, a nation&#39;s poverty rate drops nine&nbsp;per cent.

About 124 million&nbsp;children&nbsp;do not go to primary and lower-secondary school, a number that has increased about two&nbsp;million since 2011, it said.

Children&nbsp;born to educated mothers are almost three&nbsp;times less likely to die and more likely to go to school, delay marriage and postpone child bearing, said the report, entitled &quot;State of the&nbsp;World&#39;s Children&quot;.

The rate of child marriages among the&nbsp;world&#39;s&nbsp;poorest&nbsp;girls has remained unchanged since about 1990, and 15 million girls are married as&nbsp;children&nbsp;every year, it said.

If nothing is done, it said 69 million&nbsp;children&nbsp;will die before age five&nbsp;from mostly preventable causes by 2030, and nearly of half of them will be from sub-Saharan Africa.

Nine out of ten&nbsp;children&nbsp;in the same region will be living in extreme poverty, which means living on less than $1.90 US&nbsp;per day, it said.

Battling such poverty and equality and promoting education for&nbsp;children, particularly girls, were among the UN&#39; s Sustainable Development Goals, a set of 17 goals adopted last fall to tackle an array of global woes by 2030.

Educating&nbsp;children&nbsp;is particularly critical given the global conflicts fueled by decimalization, Forsyth added.

&quot;There is a direct link between&nbsp;children&nbsp;for many, many years missing out on education and then the ability of more extremist elements to organize,&quot; he said.

(Reuters)

The report paints a grim picture of two different worlds for kids that keep growing further apart

The number of children who do not attend school is rising, child marriage has not dropped in decades and millions of young children will die mostly preventable deaths by 2030 if global poverty is not addressed, the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) said in a bleak report issued on Tuesday. Poor children are twice as likely as rich children to die before age five, and poor girls are more than twice as likely to become child brides in signs of troubling inequality, said the annual report by the United Nations' children's agency. Noting some progress in halving global mortality rates for children under five since 1990 and boys and girls attending primary school in equal numbers in 129 countries, the report said such developments have been neither even nor fair, with repercussions for global turmoil. "Some of the big challenges that we now face, like refugees and migrants, are connected within equality and poverty," Justin Forsyth, Undine's deputy executive director, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Narrowing that inequity "is good for those children, but it's also good to stop future crises", he said. The report called for stronger efforts to educate the world's children, noting that on average each additional year of education a child receives increases her or his adult earnings by about 10 per cent. Also it said for each additional year of schooling completed on average by young adults, a nation's poverty rate drops nine per cent. About 124 million children do not go to primary and lower-secondary school, a number that has increased about two million since 2011, it said. Children born to educated mothers are almost three times less likely to die and more likely to go to school, delay marriage and postpone child bearing, said the report, entitled "State of the World's Children". The rate of child marriages among the world's poorest girls has remained unchanged since about 1990, and 15 million girls are married as children every year, it said. If nothing is done, it said 69 million children will die before age five from mostly preventable causes by 2030, and nearly of half of them will be from sub-Saharan Africa. Nine out of ten children in the same region will be living in extreme poverty, which means living on less than $1.90 US per day, it said. Battling such poverty and equality and promoting education for children, particularly girls, were among the UN' s Sustainable Development Goals, a set of 17 goals adopted last fall to tackle an array of global woes by 2030. Educating children is particularly critical given the global conflicts fueled by decimalization, Forsyth added. "There is a direct link between children for many, many years missing out on education and then the ability of more extremist elements to organize," he said. (Reuters)

UNICEF finds growing inequality between world's poorest and richest children

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