scholarly journals Economy or austerity? Drivers of retrospective voting before and during the Great Recession

2020 ◽  
pp. 019251212091913
Author(s):  
Marco Giuliani

During the Great Recession, exceptionally harsh economic conditions were often countered by austerity policies that, according to many, further worsened and protracted the negative conjuncture. Both elements, the poor state of the economy and the contractionary manoeuvers, are supposed to reduce the electoral prospects for incumbents. In this article, we compare the relative explanatory powers of these two theories before and during the economic crisis. We demonstrate that in normal times citizens are fiscally responsible, whereas during the Great Recession, and under certain conditions, austerity policies systematically reduced the support for incumbents on top of the state of the economy. This happened when the burdens of the manoeuvers were shared by many, in more equal societies, when the country was constrained by external conditionalities and when readjustments were mostly based on tax increases.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loris Vergolini ◽  
Eleonora Vlach

The recent economic downturn has had profound influences on contemporary European societies. This paper analyzes how the Great Recession affected the drop-out rate among university students in Italy, and whether their chosen field of study moderated its effect. To examine the potential long-term effects of this economic downturn on social inequality, we also explore whether students from less-advantaged families who enrolled in prestigious fields were those pushed out from university in disproportionally high numbers. We investigate the interacting influence of the economic crisis, social inequalities and field of study on drop-out rate using data from the Istat “Survey on the educational and occupational paths of high school graduates” in two cohorts of university students (one who attended university prior to and one during the Great Recession). Results obtained from propensity score matching show that the economic crisis had a negative effect on university participation, which was however less strong for Medicine students. Students from lower socio-economic backgrounds in the most remunerative fields of study (those leading to liberal professions), tended to leave university more often than their well-off peers.


2020 ◽  
pp. 258-274
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Hewitt

This chapter turns to the twenty-first century to study the implications of narrative form to the representation of contemporary fiscal catastrophe. It argues that the legacy of the narrative dispute between the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians can be seen in contemporary explanations of the Great Recession, including the 2011 report generated by the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis and two Hollywood films, The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short. All three texts are shaped by both the imperative to represent the complexity of global finance and the impulse to offer a simple explanation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-338
Author(s):  
Shivangi

This article argues that the poor state of paediatric medicine in India still restrains and often prevents the healthy development of far too many young Indians. Infants as junior-most citizens deserve diligent care, as they have legal entitlements to specialised medical services, ensuring their survival and healthy growth, ultimately for the benefit of the entire nation. The article first traces the somewhat stunted colonial institutional development of paediatric medicine in India. It then proceeds to perform a critical analysis of the continuing harm of negligence concerning the health and upbringing of India’s vulnerable infants, challenging the state to become more committed to integrated child development.


2020 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 236-240
Author(s):  
Jessamyn Schaller ◽  
Price Fishback ◽  
Kelli Marquardt

This paper reexamines the association between local economic conditions and fertility using a new dataset of county-level birthrates and per capita income in the United States spanning the period 1937-2016. Using a panel data model, we estimate that growth in local income is positively associated with birthrates over our entire sample period and that the strength of that association peaked during the 1960-1990 period and has declined in recent decades. We additionally estimate dynamic responses to local income shocks, finding that birthrates remain elevated for up to four years after a shock.


2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 689-710 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Cozzolino ◽  
Chelsea Smith ◽  
Robert L. Crosnoe

The economic crisis of the Great Recession in the late 2000s had implications for the intergenerational transmission of inequality within families. Studying patterns of college enrollment across the Great Recession among U.S. youth from diverse family contexts provides insight into how economic volatility can either compound or undercut the advantages that some parents can give their children. Although college enrollment among 18- to 21-year-olds did not decline during or after the Great Recession, analyses of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979–Young Adult cohort revealed that this general trend subsumed variability by family history, local economic conditions, and age. Histories of family stability and sufficiency were associated with higher odds of college enrollment over time and across age, but this advantage was largest during the Recession in high-unemployment communities. These results illuminate how life course consequences of early family life can fluctuate with volatility and opportunity in the broader economy.


2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-441
Author(s):  
Janine Brodie

AbstractThe 2008 global financial meltdown, commonly called the ‘Great Recession’, was the most serious crisis in capitalism since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and a fundamental repudiation of neoliberal governing assumptions. This paper focuses on the contexts that informed two governmental responses to this economic crisis — restoration and retrenchment through public austerity. It explains that these responses were contingent, experimental, inequitable and, in the end, unsuccessful. Restoration and retrenchment, however, were entirely consistent with previous neoliberal crisis-responses and the abiding ambitions of this governing project. As the economic crisis crawled into the second half of a decade, the idea of inequality was increasingly identified as an underlying cause of crisis and its amelioration as a necessary part of rebuilding economies and communities in a post-crisis era. The paper tracks the case for the revival of equality politics and policies in the early twenty-first century.


Author(s):  
Lindsay A. Owens ◽  
Karen S. Cook

The effects of recessions on social and political attitudes are likely smaller than the effects on employment, income, and wealth, but relatively modest aggregate effects may be masking differences in attitudes between individuals who live in areas most and least affected by recessions. To investigate social and political attitudes in geographical context, we exploit a new data source that matches individuals to their county of residence to analyze whether changing economic conditions at the county level are associated with changing confidence in major social institutions and with changing levels of interpersonal trust. We find that individuals in particularly affected counties are more likely to decrease their support for organized labor and the federal government. County-level hardship does not appear to be associated with changes in interpersonal measures of trust, however, suggesting that two very different processes may be at play.


Subject The state of Mexican education. Significance The OECD released its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 report on December 6. The triennial study evaluates the quality, equity and efficiency of school systems, and the latest assesses to what extent 15-year-old pupils have the necessary knowledge and skills to participate in modern societies. Impacts The report will trigger mutual accusations of responsibility for the poor state of education between supporters and opponents of reform. The effectiveness of reform will see uneven implementation and outcomes in different states. Consequently, Mexico will perform poorly in the next PISA test, to be published in 2018.


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