On Monday, May 4th, Yaroslava Babych, Academic Director of ISET Policy Institute, participated in a conference “Gender Biased Sex Selection in Georgia: Context, Evidence, Implications and Proposed Solutions” jointly organized by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Bank that took place in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Judging by Georgia’s average birth rate, it clearly belongs into the European family of nations. At 1.82 children per woman, according to the latest data, the Georgian nation is below (but still relatively close to) 2.1, the birth rate at which the population size remains steady. On average, the birthrate in Europe is around 1.5, which is significantly lower than it was only fifty years ago.

On Tuesday, April 7th, ISET hosted Professor Giorgio Brunello from the University of Padova. Prof. Brunello presented his recent paper titled "Pappa Ante Portas: The Retired Husband Syndrome in Japan”, which he collaborated with his colleague Professor Marco Bertoni.

On Wednesday, April 1st, ISET hosted Dr. Asger Moll Wingender from the University of Copenhagen. Dr. Wingender presented his paper “Irrigation and Autocracy” co-authored with Jeanet Sinding Bentzen and Nicolai Kaarsen.

A little-known experiment launched in 2009 is about to revolutionize Georgia’s countryside. “Teach for Georgia (TG)” [1] is a small program administered by the National Center for Teachers’ Professional Development, seeking to stream new blood into the public education system. With a tiny annual budget of 212,000 GEL, TG was initially conceived as a publically-funded “startup”, an attempt to think and act out-of-the-box.