The term “boomerang kids” refers to adult children who move back into their parents’ house after a period of living on their own.

Traditionally, Americans expect to finish their schooling, get a job, and then move out of their parents’ home as soon as they become financially independent. Unlike in other countries where it is common for adult children to live with their parents until they marry, or even after they are married, in the U.S., adults living with their parents after graduating and getting a job is not the typical pattern.

However, things may be changing. The current generation of young adults are being called the “boomerang generation” because the lack of jobs has driven many of them to move back in with their parents, after having lived on their own while in college or after getting a full-time job. Fewer parents are experiencing what we sometimes call an “empty nest”, a home where the adult children leave and only the parents remain.

In a study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2011, about 30% of people aged 25 to 34 reported that they had moved back with their parents at one time or another. While many of these adult children say that this is a satisfactory situation, with over 75% of these young adults saying they like their living arrangement, sometimes it’s not easy for the parents. 65% parents say that it is difficult to adjust to the return of their children, especially when deciding how much help to give them.

How does this living arrangement affect the relationships between parents and adult children? About a quarter of the young adults say that their relationship with their parents has improved, a quarter say it has worsened, and about 50% say it hasn’t had any effect either way.

Last week, the United Nations (UN) released the most complete report ever created on the global problem of food waste. It found that the world wastes about 17% of all the food produced. That's about a billion tons of food a year.

A billion tons is a lot of food — it's over 2 trillion (2 ,000 ,000 ,000 ,000) pounds or about 931 billion (931 ,000 ,000 ,000) kilograms. The report says that the amount wasted is roughly twice as much as earlier studies had suggested.

The report was produced by the UN's Environment Program (UNEP) and covered food waste around the world in 2019. The study showed a several different ways in which food was wasted — at home, in restaurants and in stores.

It turns out that by far, most food waste — about 61% — happens horse. On average, the amount of food thrown out at home works out to about 163 pounds (74 kilograms) for each person every year.

Restaurants were responsible for about 26% of the food wasted. The remaining 13% was thrown away by stores.

Many people thought rich countries were more likely to waste food than countries that were less rich. That turned out not to be true. One surprising discovery was that food was wasted at about the same rate in all but the poorest countries. (The UN had difficulty measuring food waste in the poorest countries.)

But people in richer countries may waste less food at home because they are eating out at restaurants more often. That certainly seems to be the case in the US, which has low waste numbers for homes, but quite high numbers for restaurants.

In some cases, labels might be causing food waste, the report said. People might be throwing away food even though it's still good to eat, simply because the container's "Best By" or "Sell By" date has passed. In poorer countries, food may be wasted because not all homes have a refrigerator.

Why is wasting food such a problem? For one thing, the report points out, hundreds of millions of people went hungry in 2019. Also, wasting food is really bad for the planet. Farming creates between 10% and 30% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions (排放) — the pollution that's making the climate crisis worse. So when food gets thrown out, the pollution is created for nothing.

The UNEP report says that it's important for countries to study food waste more carefully in order to figure out ways to solve the problem.

Campus diversity(校园多样性) is drying up in US universities. The number of international students studying at higher learning institutions in the US had been increasing. However, at the beginning of the 2016 school year, it dropped by 10,000, according to a recent report from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI). Today, the US is home to 1.1 million foreign students enrolled at universities, colleges, and junior colleges.

Statistics show that foreign student enrollment (入学) in US dropped due to the costs of US higher education, the changing social and political climate, competition from institutions in other countries, and students’ concerns about finding a job in the US after graduation. However, Australia and Canada have experienced growth in their international enrollment with the most of overseas students coming from China. Both countries offer quality education at cheaper rates.

The biggest issue with going to school in the US is the price tag as it is the most expensive in the world for college. In 2016, the Los Angeles Times reported that the University of Southern California (USC) was the most expensive university in the US with a one-year price tag of $70,000 for tuition, books, and living expenses. Students, both foreign and home, pay the same at USC. However, at the University of Washington in Seattle (UWS), a school with about 8,000 international students, annual tuition and fees alone cost state students around $11,000, while out-of-state and overseas students pay $35,000. That’s why many foreign students and lower-class citizens choose to study at cheaper universities, which leads to many higher learning institutions’ losing their diversities.

Campus diversity is a sign of a healthy academic environment. Universities should focus on reducing the gap between lower income US citizens and international students. The only way to achieve this would be to make college affordable. The sooner schools do this, the more successful they will be.