Anecdotes from a Brazilian grad student (2 of 6): Social decline.

When he's back in Brazil, the one Brazilian grad student lives at home, since his parents are getting older and a neighbor once told him that by the time he has lived his full life, he'll have more years without his parents than with them.

Anyhow, he said that just a few years ago, his father advised him to stop going outside after 8pm at night.

"Why?", I was like.

"It's bad," he said.  "When the economy is horrible, society is thin in a poor country, it disappears."