Headline, March 23 2022/ ''' '' GRANDMAS' GROWING GRANDEUR* '' '''

''' '' GRANDMAS' GROWING

 GRANDEUR* '' '''

''WE HAVE NAMED OUR CHILDREN AFTER YOU AND THE GLOBAL FOUNDER FRAMERS OF !WOW!,'' they all said to me. Wonder struck, I turned to seek the master Urdu Poet, Ahmed Faraz :

{Aur Azmat chahiyaan....... kitni mohaabatyn tujey?

Maoo-nahn teray nam pey bachoon ka nam rakh diya}

GRANDMA IS THERE IN TIMES OF NEED : The World Students Society - for every subject in the world - rises to give the grandmothers of the universe a standing ovation. And thank them for everything.

ON THE WORLD STUDENTS SOCIETY - THE Global Founder Framers intend to have a ''glorious module'' dedicated to the grandparents the world over. On !WOW! all grandparents have lifelong membership but, 1/4 vote.

RETIREMENT? What's that? As lifespans stretch and fertility falls, the ratio of grandparents to children is higher than ever before. That has big consequences. 

THERE ARE 1.5 billion grandparents in the world, up from 0.5 billion in 1960 [though the further back one goes, the fuzzier estimates become]. As a share of the population they have risen from 17% to 20%. And the ratio of grandparents to children under 15 has vaulted from 0.46 in 1960 to 0.8 today.

By 2050 we project that there will be 2.1 billion grandparents [making up 22% of humanity], and slightly more grandparents than under-15s. That will have profound consequences.

The evidence suggests children do better with grandparents help - which usually, in practice, means from grandmothers. And it will help drive another unfinished social revolution - the movement of women into paid work.

THE MOST saccharine song of 1980 was '' There's No One Like Grandma'', performed by the St Winifred's School choir from Stockport, England. It shot to the top of British charts as kids everywhere gave it to granny for Christmas.

''Grandma, we love you,'' they sang. ''Grandma, we do. Though you maybe far away, we think of you.''

Today, as the once-cherubic choristers start to become grandmas and grandpas themselves, grandparenting has changed dramatically. Two big demographic trends are making nana and gramps more important.

First, people are living longer. Global life expectancy has risen from 51 to 72 since 1960. Second, families are shrinking. Over the same period, the number of babies a woman can expect to have in her lifetime has fallen by half, from 5 to 2.4. That means the ratio of living grandparents to children is steadily rising.

Surprisingly little research has been done into this. The Economist could not find reliable figures for how many living grandparents there are, so we asked Diego Alburez-Guriterrez of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany to produce some estimates by crunching UN age and population data with models of kinship structures in each country.

Since fertility rates and life expectancy vary enormously from country to country, the age of the grandparents has not yet dawned everywhere. They are 29% Bulgarians but only 10% of the Burundians.

Their average age varies widely, too, from 53 in Uganda to 72 in Japan. To understand what a difference plentiful grandparents make, a good place to start is in a country where they are still scarce.

Consider Senegal. Most rural Senegalese are subsistence farmers. Although fertility has dropped from 7.3 babies per woman in 1980 to 4.5 today, large families remain the norm. Children under 15 outnumber living grandparents by 3.5 to 1.

Amy Diallo, an 84-year-old matriarch wrapped in a blue and white hijab, has to think carefully when asked how many she has.

''Thirty,'' she concludes, looking up from her cross-legged position on the floor of her home in Tally Boubess, outside Dakar, the capital, on a street where horses and carts jostle with sheep and cars.

As the oldest member of her family, she commands respect. She offers moral guidance to the young : be honest and pious, uphold tradition and stop hitting your younger brother.

Every year she leads a family pilgrimage to Tivaouane, a Muslim holy city, with children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and various in-laws, perhaps a hundred in all.

Grandparents pass on traditional beliefs, stories, songs and a sense of history. More prosaically, they bring an extra pair of hands. That helps both parents and children.

A study in rural Gambia, for example, found that the presence of a maternal grandmother significantly increased a child's chance of living to the age of two.

In sub-Saharan Africa the odds of being in school are about 15% higher for children living with a grandfather and 38% higher for children who live with a grandmother.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Life, Emotions, Grandparents and Students, continues. The World Students Society thanks most profoundly, The Economist.

With most respectful dedication to Great Grandparents, grandparents, Parents, Leaders, The Global Founder Framers, and Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

See Ya all prepare for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society - the exclusive ownership of every student in the world.

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless