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Growing Inequality (growing + inequality)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences85%

Selected Abstracts

The Implications of Increased Survivorship for Mortality Variation in Aging Populations

POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 3 2010
Michal Engelman
The remarkable growth in life expectancy during the twentieth century inspired predictions of a future in which all people, not just a fortunate few, will live long lives ending at or near the maximum human life span. We show that increased longevity has been accompanied by less variation in ages at death, but survivors to the oldest ages have grown increasingly heterogeneous in their mortality risks. These trends are consistent across countries, and apply even to populations with record-low variability in the length of life. We argue that as a result of continuing improvements in survival, delayed mortality selection has shifted health disparities from early to later life, where they manifest in the growing inequalities in late-life mortality. [source]

Demographic Change and Asian Dynamics: Social and Political Implications

ASIAN ECONOMIC POLICY REVIEW, Issue 1 2009
Takashi INOGUCHI
J11; D63; F2; H55; H56 This article describes the demographic change and its social and political implications in East and South-East Asia with a trajectory up to 2050. It selectively touches on inequalities, migration, social policy, and international security. In the course of this exercise, I present two hypotheses: one relating to the formation of the new middle class, and the other relating to the geriatric peace argument. The first hypothesis posits that when the growing inequalities in terms of per capita income aggravate the sense of happiness among the low- and middle-income strata as contrasted to high-income strata, the formation of a new middle class becomes more difficult. The second hypothesis posits that when the aging population carries a large demographic weight, it tends to be transformed into strong political voice, which is, in turn, translated into larger government spending on social policy items often accompanied by a likely decline in the defense expenditure budget. These hypotheses paint a provocative picture of East and South-East Asia in the next four decades, especially in the wake of the deepening economic difficulties prevailing over the entire globe. I present these hypotheses for further conceptual elaboration and empirical analysis. [source]

,Stew Without Bread or Bread Without Stew': Children's Understandings of Poverty in Ethiopia

CHILDREN & SOCIETY, Issue 4 2010
Laura Camfield
This paper explores children's understandings of poverty, ill-being and well-being in Ethiopia using data collected through group exercises with children aged 5,6 and 11,13 participating in Young Lives, an international study of childhood poverty. In some respects the characteristics of poverty reported by children resemble those reported by adults participating in similar exercises. However, the children's addition of appearance and clothing, and their explanations of the reasoning behind the importance of these indicators of well-being reflect growing inequalities in Ethiopia, where experiences of relative poverty and social exclusion are increasingly common. This evidence argues for broadening the focus of child poverty reduction to include the psychosocial costs of lacking the culturally specific resources required for full participation in society. The paper also illustrates ways in which poverty can be explored by asking about ill-being and that children as young as five years are able to address these themes through well-designed research methods. [source]

Struggling to Save Cash: Seasonal Migration and Vulnerability in West Bengal, India

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 4 2003
Ben Rogaly
This article concerns an important but overlooked means by which able-bodied poor people get hold of lump sums of cash in rural West Bengal: seasonal migration for agricultural wage work. Drawing on a regional study of four migration streams, our main focus here is on the struggle to secure this cash by landless households in just one of those streams, originating in Murshidabad District. Case studies are used to illustrate the importance for women in nuclear families of maintaining supportive networks of kin for periods when men are absent. A parallel analysis is made of the negotiations between male migrant workers and their employers, at labour markets, during the period of work, and afterwards. The article then briefly discusses some of the contrasting ways in which remittances are used by landless households and owners of very small plots of land, in the context of rapid ecological change, demographic pressure and growing inequality. [source]

Globalization and Restructuring during Downturns: A Case Study of California

GROWTH AND CHANGE, Issue 2 2001
Ashok Deo Bardhan
Restructuring through foreign outsourcing, whereby greater imports of manufactured inputs substitute for blue-collar labor, is shown to intensify when industries experience declines in sales. The magnitude of this effect was four to seven times greater in California industries experiencing a 20 percent sales decline from 1987-1992, relative to those industries whose sales dropped by 5 percent. Foreign outsourcing explains a quarter to two-fifths of the rise in payroll inequality between blue and white collar workers in California and perhaps five to ten percent of the rise in the remainder of the U.S. Past work linked growing inequality with foreign outsourcing and restructuring with economic downturns. Here, foreign outsourcing is used as an example of a particular efficiency augmenting measure, which occurs predominantly, though not exclusively, in troubled industries. [source]

Putting a Human Face on Development

INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL, Issue 166 2000
Rubens Ricupero
The century is ending with failure to solve two major threats to the future: mass unemployment and growing inequality. Furthermore, in the poor parts of the world, the very possibility of sustainable development has been questioned by the economic crisis that started in Asia two years ago. This monetary and financial crisis truly deserved to be called a "crisis of development", for three main reasons. First, it hit almost exclusively most of the developing countries, at the same time sparing and even benefitingthe industrial economies. Second, paradoxically, it was much more destructive in the most advanced of the developing nations. Third, it has created uncertainties and questions regarding the possibility of regaining the previous levels of economic performance that characterised "the Asian tigers". Competition is very analogous to games. Both need fair rules and impartial arbiters. Governments and trade negotiators think that these are sufficient, forgetting a third and fundamental element. To play a game, you have to learn how to play it; through education and time to train. A key to success will be access to information. [source]

African Independent Churches in Mozambique: Healing the Afflictions of Inequality

MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2002
James Pfeiffer
The recent explosive proliferation of African Independent Churches (AICs) in central Mozambique coincided with rapid growth of economic disparity in the 1990s produced by privatization, cuts in government services, and arrival of foreign aid promoted by Mozambique's World Bank/International Monetary Fund Structural Adjustment Program. Drawing on ethnographic research in the city of Chimoio, this article argues that growing inequality has led to declining social cohesion, heightened individual competition, fear of interpersonal violence, and intensified conflict between spouses in poor families. This perilous social environment finds expression in heightened fears of witchcraft, sorcery, and avenging spirits, which are often blamed in Shona ideology for reproductive health problems. Many women with sick children or suffering from infertility turn to AICs for treatment because traditional healers are increasingly viewed as dangerous and too expensive. The AICs invoke the "Holy Spirit" to exorcise malevolent agents and then provide a community of mutual aid and ongoing protection against spirit threats. [Mozambique, social inequality, African Independent Churches, intrahousehold, health] [source]