These beneficiaries have been empowered to use these skills to improve their living standards, as well as the viability of their businesses and income generating activities.

UNESCO: UNIVA Functional Literacy Programme (UFLP)

Much of this increase in demand will come from the transportation sector and largely in the developing world, where poorer people will use oil and other conventional energy sources to improve their living standards.

FORBES: Tarballs And Fouled Ecosystems Are Awful But Oil Is Here To Stay

Earlier, the protesters in Sofia burned their utility bills in public, accusing the government of failing to improve their falling living standards and demanding the expulsion of the three foreign-controlled power distributors that control the local market: CEZ and Energo-Pro from the Czech Republic, and Austria's EVN.

NPR: Bulgarians Protest Foreign Power Companies

If international lenders want to help countries improve their standards of living, they should tie debt forgiveness to the implementation of the five basic principles of economic progress.

FORBES: Fact and Comment

The proportion of respondents saying they expected their living standards to improve within five years rose from 62% in 2004 to 73% in 2009.

ECONOMIST: Happiness and wealth

But in their haste they failed to distinguish between employees' right to organise, which badly needed strengthening, and their living standards, which they also tried to improve through legislation.

ECONOMIST: Enemies of promise | The