Download or read book Economic Growth and the Middle Class in an Economy in Transition written by Zoya Nissanov and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies the evolution of the middle class in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Using data from the RLMS (Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey), the volume covers the period of transition (1991-2008) during which many fundamental economic reforms were implemented. The first part of the book is devoted to a discussion of the concept of middle class and a description of the economic situation in Russia during the transition period. Particular attention is given to variations in the distribution of Russian incomes and the estimated importance of the middle class. The second part of the book focuses on the link between the middle class and income bipolarization. The third and last section of the book uses the semiparametric "mixture model" to discover how many different groups may be derived from the income distribution in Russia, as well as what the main socio-economic and demographic characteristics of those groups are. The mobility of households into and out of the middle class during the transition period is also studied in hopes of determining the factors that contribute to such mobility. Using rigorous empirical methods, this volume sheds light on a relatively unstudied economic group and provides insight for countries which are about to enter a transition period. As such, this book will be of great interest to researchers in economics and inequality as well as professionals and practitioners working with international organizations.
Download or read book Essays on Polarization the Middle Class and Economic Growth in an Economy in Transition written by Zoya Nissanov and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Bridge to a Global Middle Class written by Walter Russell Mead and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2003 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bridge to a Global Middle Class compiles a unique series of papers originally commissioned by the Council on Foreign Relations in the wake of the financial crises of 1997-1998. This thought-provoking retrospective culls the views of economists, international financial institutions, Wall Street, organized labor and varying public-interest organizations on the issue of how to fortify our global financial infrastructure. Their effort is the culmination of an 18-month study - The Project on Development, Trade, and International Finance - that seeks to encourage the evolution of middle-class oriented economic development in emerging market countries. In addressing the world economic problems that led to the crises and examining methods to improve the workings of the world's financial markets, they offer ideas, policy recommendations, and suggest the concrete forms these might take, in the drive to transition the world economy toward strategies that offer the developing world an improved standard of living. These papers make a convincing case for middle-class-oriented economic development as the key to global prosperity and stability. U.S. and international policy-makers will find these insightful discussions valuable in forming new policy and providing the appropriate stimulus for economic development in emerging economies.
Download or read book China s Emerging Middle Class written by Cheng Li and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decades ago, there was no distinct middle class in the People's Republic of China. Any meaningful discussion of China's economy, politics, or society must take into account the rapid emergence and explosive growth of the Chinese middle class. This book details the origins and characteristics of this dramatic change.
Download or read book Under Pressure The Squeezed Middle Class written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Middle-class households feel left behind and have questioned the benefits of economic globalisation.
Download or read book The Middle Class Consensus and Economic Development written by William Easterly and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2000 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A higher share of income for the middle class and lower ethnic polarization are empirically associated with higher income, higher growth, more education, better health, better infrastructure, better economic policies, less political instability, less civil war (putting ethnic minorities at risk), more social "modernization," and more democracy.
Download or read book Understanding Economic Transitions written by Berhanu Abegaz and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding Economic Transitions explains the genesis, operation, and transformation of the centrally-planned socialist economy, which figured prominently in the lives of billions of people in twentieth-century Europe and Asia. Just as importantly, the centrally-planned socialist economy’s demise coincided with the shift from nonindustrial to industrial economy (and de-industrialization in some cases) and the onset of ICT-driven globalization. Using theory, empirics, and selected country case studies, this book teases out the enduring lessons from the myriad and fraught pathways of transition from socialism to capitalism. Understanding Economic Transitions provides a self-contained, comprehensive, and authoritative treatment of modern economic systems. This textbook has four features of particular use to students: (i) Using the prism of comparative institutionalism, it melds theory and evidence to revisit the varieties of planned and market-driven systems today; (ii) It takes economic planning seriously in theory and practice (central, cooperative, or indicative) as the most prominent marker of the ever-changing boundaries between state and market; (iii) It focuses on the dynamics of systemic transition in formerly socialist countries by contextualizing them in terms of the whence (central planning), the how (modalities of transition), and the whither (illiberal or liberal capitalism) of politico-economic transformation; and (iv) It examines the profound impact on these structural processes of the post-1990 phase of economic globalization. With its clear, comprehensive content and useful pedagogical features, this textbook will prepare students to understand how economies transition and why.
Download or read book The Vanishing Middle Class new epilogue written by Peter Temin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-03-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the United States has developed an economy divided between rich and poor and how racism helped bring this about. The United States is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with few families in the middle. In this book, MIT economist Peter Temin offers an illuminating way to look at the vanishing middle class. Temin argues that American history and politics, particularly slavery and its aftermath, play an important part in the widening gap between rich and poor. Temin employs a well-known, simple model of a dual economy to examine the dynamics of the rich/poor divide in America, and outlines ways to work toward greater equality so that America will no longer have one economy for the rich and one for the poor. Many poorer Americans live in conditions resembling those of a developing country—substandard education, dilapidated housing, and few stable employment opportunities. And although almost half of black Americans are poor, most poor people are not black. Conservative white politicians still appeal to the racism of poor white voters to get support for policies that harm low-income people as a whole, casting recipients of social programs as the Other—black, Latino, not like "us." Politicians also use mass incarceration as a tool to keep black and Latino Americans from participating fully in society. Money goes to a vast entrenched prison system rather than to education. In the dual justice system, the rich pay fines and the poor go to jail.
Download or read book Stemming Middle Class Decline written by Nancey Green Leigh and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are Americans as well-off as they used to be? The answer affects everything from product markets and housing sales to social tranquility and presidential (and local) elections. This volume examines what is happening to the American middle class. In a detailed and comprehensive analysis, Nancey Green Leigh tracks changes in the pattern of income distribution over a twenty-year period. While earnings have increased, there is a widening gap between what middle-level earnings can purchase and the cost of a middle standard of living. Due to the fact that this decline has not been experienced equally in all regions, separate analyses are reported for urban and rural locations, major census regions, and the largest states. To identify which workers have been most affected, Leigh compares earning trends by race, gender, educational level, industry of employment, part- or full-time status, and fringe benefit recipiency. Rejecting short-term and demographic explanations, Leigh links the decline of the middle class to economic change and industrial restructuring. Leigh concludes her work by examining planning and policy prescriptions to improve the prospects of membersâand aspiring membersâof the middle economic class. She documents the decreasing ability of middle-level earners to purchase a middle standard of living and attributes the decline in part to failures in planning. Failures of planning, she observes, have contributed to the growing divergence between middle-level earnings and the middle standard of living. Stemming Middle-Class Decline provides comprehensive data and trends on workers, communities, regions, and the nation that all policymakers and government officials should read and examine with care.
Download or read book Prosperity without Growth written by Tim Jackson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can prosperity possibly mean in a world of environmental and social limits? The publication of Prosperity without Growth was a landmark in the sustainability debate. Tim Jackson’s piercing challenge to conventional economics openly questioned the most highly prized goal of politicians and economists alike: the continued pursuit of exponential economic growth. Its findings provoked controversy, inspired debate and led to a new wave of research building on its arguments and conclusions. This substantially revised and re-written edition updates those arguments and considerably expands upon them. Jackson demonstrates that building a ‘post-growth’ economy is a precise, definable and meaningful task. Starting from clear first principles, he sets out the dimensions of that task: the nature of enterprise; the quality of our working lives; the structure of investment; and the role of the money supply. He shows how the economy of tomorrow may be transformed in ways that protect employment, facilitate social investment, reduce inequality and deliver both ecological and financial stability. Seven years after it was first published, Prosperity without Growth is no longer a radical narrative whispered by a marginal fringe, but an essential vision of social progress in a post-crisis world. Fulfilling that vision is simply the most urgent task of our times.
Download or read book Institutions Human Development and Economic Growth in Transition Economies written by P. Tridico and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-07-19 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses the development path of transition economies in European Countries and former Soviet Republics that have experienced the transformation from planned economies to market economies since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. It examines economic growth, institutional change and human development performance.
Download or read book Selected Policy Challenges for the American Middle Class written by Ben Westmore and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American middle class has shrunk in size since 1970 according to most definitions. This “hollowing” out of the United States income distribution could result in disillusionment, diminished political engagement, and declining trust in institutions. The American middle class faces two major challenges, among others. First, child care costs in the United States are high and availability is low. Improving enrolment in child care has the potential to reverse the fall in female labour market participation since the financial crisis and result in improved well-being and economic growth. Public funding for child care programmes should be raised, and programme eligibility should be widened to benefit middle-income parents. Second, the climate transition will entail major changes to middle-class lifestyles. Reductions in US household emissions from housing and transportation will be key to achieving the overall emission reduction targets, and may prove costly. Workers in carbon-intensive sectors of the economy and households living in regions that rely on carbon-intensive activities will be affected as resources shift to greener sectors. A national climate strategy should be developed that explicitly takes into account emissions inequalities and the redistributive effects of climate policies. Active labour market policies will be key to achieving a just transition, and existing home weatherisation programmes should be expanded to cover the middle-class.
Download or read book The Middle Class Consensus and Economic Development written by William Easterly and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A higher share of income for the middle class and lower ethnic polarization are empirically associated with higher income, higher growth, more education, better health, better infrastructure, better economic policies, less political instability, less civil war (putting ethnic minorities at risk), more social modernization, and more democracy. Modern political economy stresses society's polarization as a determinant of development outcomes. Among the most common forms of social conflict are class polarization and ethnic polarization.A middle class consensus is defined as a high share of income for the middle class and a low degree of ethnic polarization. A middle class consensus distinguishes development successes from failures. A theoretical model shows how groups - distinguished by class or ethnicity - will under-invest in human capital and infrastructure when there is leakage to another group.Easterly links the existence of a middle class consensus to exogenous country characteristics such as resource endowments, along the lines of the provocative thesis of Engerman and Sokoloff 1997 that tropical commodity exporters are more unequal than other societies.Easterly confirms this hypothesis with cross-country data. This makes it possible to use resource endowments as instruments for inequality. A higher share of income for the middle class and lower ethnic polarization are empirically associated with higher income, higher growth, more education, better health, better infrastructure, better economic policies, less political instability, less civil war (putting ethnic minorities at risk), more social modernization, and more democracy.This paper - a product of Macroeconomics and Growth, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to study the determinants of growth.
Download or read book The Rise of China s Middle Class and the Prospects for Democratization Lipset s Economic Modernization Theory ASEAN Taiwan Transition Confucius Versus Realists Industrialization Urbanization written by U. S. Military and published by . This book was released on 2017-05-17 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Deng Xiaoping instituted economic reforms under the "reform and open" policy in 1978, the Chinese Communist Party has overseen a gradualist approach to modernizing China's economy. A new Chinese middle class has emerged with China's economic reforms and economic growth. According to Seymour Martin Lipset's modernization theory, there is a strong relationship between socioeconomic development and the emergence of democratic politics. The growth of an educated middle class, according to Lipset, will demand democratization as a means to achieve more participation in politics. This thesis assesses the validity of Lipset's argument that socioeconomic development is likely to result in a democratic transition through the growth of a liberal middle class in the case of contemporary China. This assessment assesses how closely China's middle class fits Lipset's model and whether China's middle class displays characteristics that suggest that Lipset's framework of democratization will hold true in China. Since spreading democracy around the world was reasserted as a long-range U.S. objective in the early 1990s, attention has focused on prospects for democratization in China. This thesis illuminates the political implications of China's growing middle class and argues that China's economic modernization does not guarantee democratization. This is important because the rationale for American politics of engagement with China rests in part on the assertion that economic growth over the long run may lead to China's democratization. CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION * A. PURPOSE * B. CONCEPTUAL SIGNIFICANCE * C. LITERATURE REVIEW * 1. Approaches to Democratization * 2. Perspectives on Classes and Democratic Behaviors * 3. Taiwan as a Case Study * 4. Opinions on U.S. Implications * 5. Overall Literature Assessment * D. METHODOLOGY * E. SOURCES * F. THESIS SYNOPSIS * CHAPTER II - REQUISITES FOR DEMOCRACY * A. INTRODUCTION * B. LIPSET'S MODEL * 1. Industrialization * 2. Urbanization * 3. Education * 4. Wealth * C. SUPPORTING AND OPPOSING ARGUMENTS * 1. Huntington's Argument: Supporting * 2. Przeworski's Argument: Opposing * 3. Pei's Argument: The Reality in China * D. QUANTIFYING THE GROWTH OF CHINA'S MIDDLE CLASS * E. CONCLUSION * CHAPTER III - CHINA'S MIDDLE CLASS IN DEMOCRATIZATION * A. INTRODUCTION * B. THE ROLE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS IN DEMOCRATIZATION * C. WHO IS CHINA'S MIDDLE CLASS * 1. Liberal versus Conservative * 2. Confucius versus Realists * D. THE PROSPECTS FOR FAILURE * E. CONCLUSION * CHAPTER IV - TAIWAN CASE STUDY: ASIAN MIDDLE CLASS AT WORK * A. INTRODUCTION * B. THE TWO ECONOMIES: THE RISE OF TAIWAN AND CHINA * 1. The Comparison * 2. The Contrast * 3. Conclusion * C. THE TWO STATES * 1. The Taiwanese Roadmap and how the PRC is Already on It * 2. The PRC's Path to a Taiwanese Roadmap of Transition * 3. Conclusion * CHAPTER V - REPLICATING TAIWAN'S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT * A. INTRODUCTION * B. THE ROLE OF WAR * C. THE ROLE OF THE UNITED STATES * D. ROLE OF THE STATE * E. THE ROLE OF ECONOMIC AND NON-ECONOMIC FACTORS * F. CONCLUSION * CHAPTER VI - CONCLUSION * A. INTRODUCTION * B. PROSPECTS FOR DEMOCRATIZATION * C. CONCLUSION
Download or read book The Clash of Progress and Security written by Allan George Barnard Fisher and published by New York : Kelley. This book was released on 1966 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1935.
Download or read book An East Asian Renaissance written by Indermit Singh Gill and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2007 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An East Asian Renaissance, by a World Bank team led by Chief Economist for East Asia & Pacific, Dr Homi Kharas and Economic Adviser, Dr Indermit Gill is the first comprehensive analysis of the new forces and challenges at play in the region since the Bank's seminal report of 1993, The East Asian Miracle. The report argues that regional flows of goods, finance and technology are helping even smaller East Asian countries reap the benefits of economies of scale and that this regional integration must be encouraged. But it also points out that these measures have to be supported by actions at the domestic level to ease the stresses and strains that rapid economic growth leaves in its wake. East Asia must now turn to the urgent domestic challenges of inequality, social cohesion, corruption and environmental degradation arising from its economic success.
Download or read book Economic Growth and Structural Features of Transition written by Enrico Marelli and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines, theoretically and empirically, the key aspects and differences of economic growth as well as the main structural features of development in transition countries, from the 1989 fall of the Berlin wall to the 2008-09 global financial crisis and recession. Topics include institutional change and governance, human capital and social capital, models of growth and employment – productivity relationship, sectoral/regional structure and trade integration, income distribution/inequality and many features of labour markets performance. Most of the chapters refer to the European transition countries; in some cases a comparative perspective - Eastern versus Western EU countries – is adopted. This book is useful reading for researchers, scholars and students in the fields of economics of transition, economic growth, development economics, European economic integration, regional economics and labour economics.
