Living Standards and Prosperity

Author(s):  
Brian Nolan

This introductory chapter develops and motivates the overarching topic of the book, which is how rich countries have fared in recent decades in terms of the generation of prosperity for ordinary working families and the lessons to be learned from analysing their performance. It sets out how this is at the core of current concerns and debates, not least about the impact of globalization and technological change and the growth in inequality, and the economic, social, and political consequences. It then provides an outline and roadmap of the structure of the book, in terms of the range of topics to be addressed. In doing so it sets out how the various elements fit together and contribute to the overall aim of the book.

This book addresses the central challenge facing rich countries: how to ensure that ordinary working families see their living standards and the prospects for their children improve rather than stagnate over time. It presents the findings from a comprehensive analysis of performance over recent decades across the rich countries of the OECD, in terms of real income growth around and below the middle. It relates this performance to overall economic growth, exploring why these often diverge substantially, and to the different models of capitalism or economic growth embedded in different countries. In-depth comparative and UK-focused analyses also focus on wages and the labour market and on the role of redistribution. Going beyond income, other indicators and aspects of living standards are also incorporated including non-monetary indicators of deprivation and financial strain, wealth and its distribution, and intergenerational mobility. By looking across this broad canvas, the book teases out how ordinary households have fared in recent decades in these critically important respects, and how that should inform the quest for inclusive growth and prosperity.


2021 ◽  
pp. 172-190
Author(s):  
Francis Teal

While all the evidence we have points to the rising living standards for most of the very poorest, the wages of unskilled labour in poor countries remain a fraction of those in rich countries. Those potential workers are seen as a threat to the living standards of the unskilled in rich countries and the political impetus to limit their access to those labour markets has been, and remains, one of the most potent issue in the politics of rich countries. This aversion to immigration as a threat to the wages of the unskilled often transmutes into a hostility to trade, as goods, which use a lot of unskilled labour, can be imported more cheaply. Both immigration and trade are seen as a threat to the unskilled. Two dimensions of this threat are examined in this chapter—the impact of Chinese exports on wages in the US and the impact of immigration on the UK economy.


Author(s):  
Brian Nolan

This chapter sets out the central challenge facing rich countries, on which this volume is focused: how to restore inclusive economic growth and prosperity. It describes how rising inequality in the rich countries over recent decades is now widely seen as undermining growth and even more so the living standards and prospects of ordinary working families. It reviews key themes in the debate about why inequality has been rising, and why this should be such a central concern. The chapter then outlines the approach taken in this book, which is to examine in depth the experiences of ten rich countries, posing the same set of questions about what has happened to inequality and ordinary living standards over recent decades, and why. The aim is to learn from these varying experiences, analysed through a common lens, about how inclusive growth can best be supported.


The 2008 financial crisis triggered the first contraction of the world economy in the post-war era. The impact of the crisis and austerity on children varied widely across the rich world. Countries differed in their ‘initial conditions’ with respect both to the extent and nature of child poverty and to the capacity of the welfare state to protect children from the effects of an economic downturn. This introductory chapter sets out the scope and motivation of the volume as well as the overarching research questions and methods. Using a set of in-depth analyses of the impact of the economic crisis and its aftermath on children in eleven OECD countries, the chapter gives an overview of what happened to child poverty in rich countries after the outbreak of the financial and economic crisis, how countries responded to it, and what could be done differently to protect children in future crises.


2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402110242
Author(s):  
Aina Gallego ◽  
Alexander Kuo ◽  
Dulce Manzano ◽  
José Fernández-Albertos

Despite recent attention to the economic and political consequences of automation and technological change for workers, we lack data about concerns and policy preferences about this structural change. We present hypotheses about the relationships among automation risk, subjective concerns about technology, and policy preferences. We distinguish between preferences for compensatory policies versus “protectionist” policies to prevent such technological change. Using original survey data from Spain that captures multiple measures of automation risk, we find that most workers believe that the impact of new technologies in the workplace is positive, but there is a concerned minority. Technological concern varies with objective vulnerability, as workers at higher risk of technological displacement are more likely to negatively view technology. Both correlational and experimental analyses indicate little evidence that workers at risk or technologically concerned are more likely to demand compensation. Instead, workers concerned about technological displacement prefer policies to slow down technological change.


2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (136) ◽  
pp. 339-356
Author(s):  
Tobias Wölfle ◽  
Oliver Schöller

Under the term “Hilfe zur Arbeit” (aid for work) the federal law of social welfare subsumes all kinds of labour disciplining instruments. First, the paper shows the historical connection of welfare and labour disciplining mechanisms in the context of different periods within capitalist development. In a second step, against the background of historical experiences, we will analyse the trends of “Hilfe zur Arbeit” during the past two decades. It will be shown that by the rise of unemployment, the impact of labour disciplining aspects of “Hilfe zur Arbeit” has increased both on the federal and on the municipal level. For this reason the leverage of the liberal paradigm would take place even in the core of social rights.


2017 ◽  
pp. 111-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Kapeliushnikov

The paper provides a critical analysis of the idea of technological unemployment. The overview of the existing literature on the employment effects of technological change shows that on the micro-level there exists strong and positive relationship between innovations and employment growth in firms; on the sectoral level this correlation becomes ambiguous; on the macro-level the impact of new technologies seems to be positive or neutral. This implies that fears of explosive growth of technological unemployment in the foreseeable future are exaggerated. Our analysis further suggests that new technologies affect mostly the structure of employment rather than its level. Additionally we argue that automation and digitalisation would change mostly task sets within particular occupations rather than distribution of workers by occupations.


Author(s):  
Tamara Smovzhenko ◽  
Oryslava Korkuna ◽  
Ivan Korkuna ◽  
Ulyana Khromyak

Nowadays, according to decentralization and current legislation (Land Code of Ukraine, Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Law of Ukraine «On Self-Governance»), the public lands have been transferred to the CTCs since 1 February 2018. In 2018/2019, 788 CTCs received communal ownership of 1.68 ha of public lands. According to the Draft Law «On Amendments to Several Legal Documents of Ukraine on Agricultural Lands Turnover», the consolidated territorial communities become the legal entities and can acquire property rights to agricultural land plots. Therefore, transferring the lands to be used by the newly created CTCs is currently an urgent issue that requires extended scientific and practical research. The paper aims to research the role of land reform in Ukraine and its impact on increase of CTCs’ budget revenues. The stages of land reform and the development of the land reform in Ukraine as well as its implementation strategy are outlined. The disparities of the integrated satellite map and the data of the Land Cadaster of Ukraine in terms of unregistered lands are defined. The amount of a CTC budget’s increased revenues due to the reform is estimated. Statistical data on small, medium, and large farmers and their interest in the land reform are analyzed. The terms of selling the land to foreign investors and conditions of participation in land auctions are examined. The mechanisms of land purchase, selling, and lease in line with the land reform are suggested. Generalizing the presented aspects of the land reform in Ukraine and their impact on economic activity of the newly created CTCs, it can be argued that the process is quite positive and necessary for both communities and businesses in order to get additional budget revenues for CTCs. The land reform improves the living standards of Ukrainian people through the disclosure of the country’s agricultural capacity.


Author(s):  
Gerhard Bosch ◽  
Thorsten Kalina

This chapter describes how inequality and real incomes have evolved in Germany through the period from the 1980s, through reunification, up to the economic Crisis and its aftermath. It brings out how reunification was associated with a prolonged stagnation in real wages. It emphasizes how the distinctive German structures for wage bargaining were eroded over time, and the labour market and tax/transfer reforms of the late 1990s-early/mid-2000s led to increasing dualization in the labour market. The consequence was a marked increase in household income inequality, which went together with wage stagnation for much of the 1990s and subsequently. Coordination between government, employers, and unions still sufficed to avoid the impact the economic Crisis had on unemployment elsewhere, but the German social model has been altered fundamentally over the period


Author(s):  
Jonas Tallberg ◽  
Karin Bäckstrand ◽  
Jan Aart Scholte

Legitimacy is central for the capacity of global governance institutions to address problems such as climate change, trade protectionism, and human rights abuses. However, despite legitimacy’s importance for global governance, its workings remain poorly understood. That is the core concern of this volume, which engages with the overarching question: whether, why, how, and with what consequences global governance institutions gain, sustain, and lose legitimacy. This introductory chapter explains the rationale of the book, introduces its conceptual framework, reviews existing literature, and presents the key themes of the volume. It emphasizes in particular the volume’s sociological approach to legitimacy in global governance, its comparative scope, and its comprehensive treatment of the topic. Moreover, a specific effort is made to explain how each chapter moves beyond existing research in exploring the book’s three themes: (1) sources of legitimacy, (2) processes of legitimation and delegitimation, and (3) consequences of legitimacy.


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