Clean air policy is fundamentally a child health intervention, as air pollution worsens asthma and can limit lifelong lung development. Evidence shows that stringent clean air measures can improve children’s lung function within years, particularly among disadvantaged groups, while generating wider economic benefits through lower healthcare costs, improved productivity, and better long-term health.

Generative AI performs strongly with structured clinical data but struggles to interpret the informal, culturally diverse language patients use to describe symptoms, creating risks for safety, efficiency, liability, and health equity. Successful deployment requires real-world validation, human oversight, continuous monitoring, and patient-centered interfaces designed around natural communication.

AI offers major opportunities for healthcare but remains vulnerable to serious failures when moved from controlled testing into real clinical settings. Safe integration requires strong clinical leadership, human oversight, rigorous validation, cybersecurity controls, and clear liability frameworks, ensuring that technological innovation never bypasses patient safety or medical governance.

AI is reshaping the traditional relationship between technology and skills. Evidence from European regions suggests that as AI capabilities mature, the relative advantage of highly skilled workers may decline, shifting labour-market value toward specific tasks, human judgment, adaptability, and control over technology. The effects, however, vary significantly depending on regional AI capabilities and technological maturity.

Clinical AI performs impressively in controlled benchmarks but remains unreliable in real-world healthcare, with risks involving diagnostic bias, unsafe triage, skill degradation, and rising short-term costs. Safe deployment requires rigorous clinical validation, adaptive regulation, continuous oversight, and clear human accountability.

Lower fertility may not automatically weaken economic growth. Historical evidence suggests that labour scarcity can stimulate automation and productivity, offsetting a smaller workforce. However, today’s ultra-low fertility is unprecedented and could eventually reduce the number of innovators and ideas, making its long-term economic consequences highly uncertain.