bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
European Transitions: From Malthus to Pincus
Authors: Chesnais Jean-Claude
Published: October 2023

Except for a few places like Ireland and Albania, on the eve of the First World War Europe had embarked upon the modern fertility decline. The system of fertility regulation drew upon much earlier sources. From the time of the Renaissance, in those densely populated areas of western Europe where the dominant countries which would be future colonial powers were gathering strength, a regime of delayed and restricted marriage based on a degree of sexual asceticism (of religious inspiration) was establishing itself. This phenomenon has no known historical equivalent. Marriage restriction as a means of birth control is capable, as already seen, of reducing fertility considerably. It is more or less intense depending on the pressure of subsistence. However flexible this homeostatic system of adapting human numbers to the environment may have been, it still had its limits. It ceased to be sufficient when the mortality decline reached a certain level, thus giving a new boost to demographic growth.
Secular Growth in the Industrial World
Authors: Chesnais Jean-Claude
Published: October 2023

Modern economic development has a long history. From the eighteenth century onwards, Western countries experienced a lasting increase in their rates of demographic growth. While admitting a degree of impoverishment, it appears that already in that period increases in agricultural production were at least equal to population growth. For over two centuries there was a considerable population increase, but, in contrast to past increases, this wave of growth was not interrupted by famine. Moreover, instead of a resulting fall in living standards, which had been the case hitherto via the well-known mechanisms described by Malthus and illustrated for England by Lee (1980), there was a rapid economic expansion. A new demographic and economic system emerged, characterized by unprecedented growth in both sectors. Such was the upheaval that it was soon termed a ‘revolution’.
Economic Breakthrough in Poor Countries
Authors: Chesnais Jean-Claude
Published: October 2023

Although in most cases the demographic growth of less developed countries is in the process of slowing down, it is likely to continue for several decades yet. Aside from quasi-arithmetical constraints associated with number and structure, such as food requirements, educational costs, and the creation of employment opportunities-upon which it is easy to reach minimal agreement-the economic implications of this phenomenon are not only difficult to anticipate, but widely disputed. The usual theoretical postulates which serve as a frame of reference are in fact analytically debatable. Some may even be logically reversed. And they have the limitation of only very scant empirical testing.
A Simple Market
Authors: Lesourne Jacques
Published: October 2023

This chapter is devoted to the analysis of a market characterized by hypotheses as simple as possible. 1. All the actors have perfect knowledge of the goods (or service exchanged); the quality of the goods is the same for all the sellers and it remains identical throughout the evolution of the market. 2. The contracts between agents are for immediate execution and valid for only one period. 3. The buyers are of a given number, constantly present on the market, and each one desires to acquire at each period a single unit of goods (or services). 4. The sellers are of a given number and each one has at his disposal at each period one unit of goods (or services) to sell. The transaction costs are nil. 5. The sellers (or buyers) only have knowledge of their own transactions during the preceding period. 6. The search for information is made by the buyers who draw at no cost a sample of sellers at each period. 7. The price set by a seller is independent of the buyer.
The Market and Irreversibilities
Authors: Lesourne Jacques
Published: October 2023

If the simple market in the last chapter necessarily converges towards the traditional equilibrium, it is because its operation engenders no costs: the individuals draw their job samples free of charge and can discover any job whatsoever; they can change jobs without having the least expense to bear while the firms can replace one worker with another without having to experience the least loss. It is an ideal world far removed from reality. As a result, however, one cannot help but wonder what happens to the dynamics of a market when irreversibilities are taken into account. To furnish an answer to that question is the aim of this chapter, a chapter which will permit the introduction of several notions of importance for all that follows in the book.
The Forming of Opinions
Authors: Lesourne Jacques
Published: October 2023

Twice already, the role of opinion forming in market dynamics has appeared in this book: in Chapter 3 when the workers, in the presence of information costs, accepted being unable to hope for revenues superior to those observed in the past, and in Chapter 6 when the individuals, faced with goods of unknown quality, used prices to form an assumption on the quality of the goods. Nevertheless, in both cases, the creating of opinion did not make up the central element of the hypothesis. It will be entirely different in this chapter which deals with the influences that individuals exert on their respective opinions: direct influences resulting from contacts, and indirect influences resulting from parallel efforts to interpret price formation.
Free-Riding and Private versus Social Cost Benefits
Authors: Kostoris Fiorella Padoa Schioppa , Powell John E
Published: October 2023

Subject to all these caveats, let us examine the various kinds of market failure observed in Italy and the means devised to overcome them. The analysis will follow a textbook procedure in order to verify systematically whether the conditions cited to justify public action actually exist, that is to say conditions that prevent the market from achieving an efficient (Pareto1) optimum or cause the achievable (Pareto) optimum to be considered socially undesirable. Leaving aside the factors we have already described briefly above, which are associated with the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ and are in turn specific examples of more general instances of imperfect information and market incompleteness, the main reasons why the market may be unable to achieve a Pareto optimum, according, for example to Stiglitz (1986), stem from the existence of pure public goods, externalities, and natural monopolies.
Contestable Markets and Government Failures
Authors: Kostoris Fiorella Padoa Schioppa , Powell John E
Published: October 2023

Although economic-policy measures in favour of pure public goods and goods with high externalities are limited in Italy, the same cannot be said of so-called natural monopoly markets, where declining average and marginal costs made possible by increasing returns to scale and scope inhibit competitive market solutions. Indeed, if firms were to set prices equal to their marginal costs, which in the above-mentioned circumstances are necessarily lower than their average costs, they would make losses rather than profits.
Imperfect Information, Market Incompleteness, and Strategic Intervention
Authors: Kostoris Fiorella Padoa Schioppa , Powell John E
Published: October 2023

So far, we have examined a number of classical causes of market failure in Italy stemming from the existence of pure public goods, externalities, and natural monopolies; they offer an equal number of reasons for direct or indirect public intervention in the market.
Direct Public Investment and Public Support for the Disposable Income of Households
Authors: Kostoris Fiorella Padoa Schioppa , Powell John E
Published: October 2023

The first strategic intervention we wish to explore relates to measures to reduce regional disparities, with particular reference to the problems of the Mezzogiorno. No Italian economic-policy document fails to assert the public sector’s involvement in efforts to overcome the country’s so-called economic dualism, and yet the first thing to strike the researcher is the lack of sufficient empirical evidence to judge the extent to which this concern is translated into observable facts. In the course of the analysis that follows, it will also emerge that the available information is ambivalent and difficult to interpret. Nevertheless, with very little hesitation we shall be able to argue that public action in the Mezzogiorno can be criticized on at least four counts, namely that it is too biased towards supporting demand rather than increasing supply in the South, that public investment may promote not only the development of the infrastructure but also the growth of the criminal economy, that financial assistance to private firms, though considerable in size, is of low effectiveness owing to the tenuous link with actual real investment and with the growth in value-added, and finally that public dirigistic regulation is excessive, aggravating disequilibria in the labour market.
Incentives and Disincentives for Private-Sector Employment
Authors: Kostoris Fiorella Padoa Schioppa , Powell John E
Published: October 2023

As we have seen, the unemployment benefits and firing constraints that currently exist in Italy appear to have serious and adverse implications. Here too, therefore, market flexibility must be increased by laying greater emphasis on public incentives to encourage employment in the private sector.
Real and Financial Aspects of Private Investment
Authors: Kostoris Fiorella Padoa Schioppa , Powell John E
Published: October 2023

The second aspect of the supply-management policy on which we wish to focus concerns public measures to stimulate private investment, having already discussed investment by general government and public corporations. Investment is one of the strategic public objectives, owing to the importance of capital in creating value-added and growth. Greater capital investment is necessary, because although output can be increased in the short term by changing the utilization rate of existing capacity and, to some extent, the number of workers and working hours, in the long term technical coefficients, wages and prices are perfectly adjusted, capital is at an optimum as a result of past investment, and potential capacity is fully utilized. At the same time employment, working hours, labour hoarding, and the use of every other means of production are at the desired levels, so that actual production coincides with potential production and employment is affected by the level of productive capacity.
General Characteristics of the Welfare State
Authors: Kostoris Fiorella Padoa Schioppa , Powell John E
Published: October 2023

Hitherto we have discussed strategic public interventions affecting the most important factors of production-labour and capitaland aggregate supply in the Italian economy, with particular reference to the elimination of regional imbalances (especially with regard to the Mezzogiorno) and sectoral disequilibria (speaking of industrial and financial restructuring).
‘Political’ Prices
Authors: Kostoris Fiorella Padoa Schioppa , Powell John E
Published: October 2023

Up to this point we have touched upon income redistribution when dealing with social security, education, and health, and have expressed our suspicion that public expenditure in these strategic fields displays regressive tendencies. Income redistribution is obviously also achieved in other ways, in particular via transfer payments for interest on the public debt, interference with relative prices (and inflation1), and via direct taxation.
Tax Structure and Proposals for Tax Reform
Authors: Kostoris Fiorella Padoa Schioppa , Powell John E
Published: October 2023

There is no convergence of opinion in Italy on the form a tax reform should take. Some argue it would be sufficient to increase the tax burden on self-employed persons and small firms and to raise indirect taxes, which appear to be relatively low today; others consider the Italian tax system should be radically overhauled in much the same way as elsewhere, since the present tax regulations are highly distorting, and thus cause serious economic inefficiency and conspicuous inequality of treatment.
Introduction
Authors: Lockwood Matthew
Published: October 2023

This book is a study of human, social, and economic reproduction in Rufiji, a district of coastal Tanzania. It contains two parts, each of which addresses a particular question. In the first half I ask how fertility in Rufiji changed over the twentieth century, and what social and economic transformations were involved. In the second half, attention shifts to one village, Mng’aru, and I examine the influence of household demography on the work patterns of men and women.
The Historical Demography of Coastal Tanzania
Authors: Lockwood Matthew
Published: October 2023

By the standards of historical demography where long series of registers or other records exist, either in Africa or elsewhere,1 writing a demographic history of Rufiji means becoming a detective faced with a minimum of clues. There is an inverse relationship between the specificity of the reconstruction and its distance in time from the present.
The Historical Roots of a Fertility Regime
Authors: Lockwood Matthew
Published: October 2023

In Chapter 1 we saw that the available evidence for Rufiji, and the Coast Region of which it is a part, pointed to stagnation of fertility up to around 1950, and a rise thereafter. In the attempt to understand this pattern, the first step must be to identify the immediate or proximate biosocial component causes producing it.
Inequality and Accumulation in Mng’aru
Authors: Lockwood Matthew
Published: October 2023

Rufiji is a poor part of a poor country, and for most people the ceiling on accumulation has been low. A major conclusion in the previous chapter was that accumulation through investment in farming and the employment of wage labour are rare.
Introduction
Authors: Andersen Torben M
Published: October 2023

A recurrent theme in macroeconomics ever since the publication of Keynes ‘s General Theory (1936) has been whether the adjustment of prices and wages is sufficiently rapid to avoid any problems in the allocation mechanism. Conflicting views on the causes for businesscycle fluctuations, and the role of economic policy, can usually be attributed to different assumptions concerning the adjustment of wages and prices. For a long period of time the adjustment process-or lack thereof-for wages and prices was postulated in a predominant part of the literature.1 This is well known from textbook versions of Keynesian models and has in its most sophisticated form developed into the so-called disequilibrium or fix-price models (see Barro and Grossman 1971; Dreze 1975; Benassy 1975; and Malinvaud1977). This approach has produced many insights but suffers from the problem that the incentives underlying the postulated adjustment processes are not made explicit. This is particularly worrisome for issues related to economic policy, since we need to know whether different forms of policy intervention might change the adjustment process for prices and wages and thus invalidate the premisses for the analysis leading to the policy recommendations.
Empirical Evidence
Authors: Andersen Torben M
Published: October 2023

Are prices sticky or do they adjust to changes in market conditions? Casual empiricism suggests a positive answer to both questions. Prices are often observed to adjust infrequently, and supply does not always equal demand; but, on the other hand, price changes are also often experienced. Prices do change, but do they change instantaneously to changes in market conditions, and if not, what drives the adjustment process? The issue that interests us at this stage is whether prices adjust instantaneously or sluggishly to changes in market conditions. If evidence points towards the latter, there is a need to consider reasons why price-setters react ‘slowly ‘ to changes in market conditions. The focus here is not on product-specific prices but more on general or aggregate phenomena relating to the adjustment of prices. We shall start by presenting some stylized facts on the behaviour of prices over the business cycle. The empirical evidence presented here imposes as little theory as possible, aiming at presenting some facts motivating the theoretical interest in price adjustment. More rigorous testing of particular price models will not be covered here but will be taken up in relation to the presentation of the theories.
Menu Costs
Authors: Andersen Torben M
Published: October 2023

If prices do not adjust, it is natural to associate this fact with adjustments being costly. It is rather obvious that costly price adjustments-or so-called menu costs-will make prices less flexible than they would be in the absence of such costs. It is also intuitive that if these costs are fairly ‘small ‘ we should expect firms to avoid price adjustment if they are exposed to only ‘small ‘ shocks, while they will find it worth while to adjust to ‘larger ‘ shocks. Is this all, or do the costs of adjusting prices have other less obvious implications? This chapter addresses this question and outlines the basic implications of costly price adjustment and its policy implications; it also provides a critical evaluation of the explanatory power of these models. This section presents some basic results concerning the implications of menu costs for the adjustment of prices. To avoid unnecessary complications, the starting-point is a static model; the next section deals with implications in dynamic models.
Introduction
Authors: Albala-Bertrand J M
Published: October 2023

The emphasis of this study is on the framework of economic and social effects of disaster situations rather than on disaster policy prescription. We prefer to concentrate on the analytical framework within which policy-making should be based and carried through rather than on actual policy-making. This frame work is also intended to facilitate a critical analysis of existing viewpoints on disasters, particularly in relation to the economy. The study refers especially to developing countries affected by large natural disasters in the last three decades, but as most prevailing views derive from disaster analysis in developed countries, especially the USA, the developed world is also well represented.
Indirect Disaster Effects and In-built Responses
Authors: Albala-Bertrand J M
Published: October 2023

Indirect effects of disasters are mentioned by most authors, who suggest that they are likely to be larger than direct effects (see Chapter 1, sect. 3.3 for definitions), but evidence regarding indirect effects is either poorer than that for direct effects or simply non-existent. We intend to show in this chapter that indirect disaster effects are more a possibility than a reality. In actual disaster situations, these effects are often unimportant for the economy and society as a whole and are rapidly counteracted within the disaster area. We attempt to show, especially for the economy, first, the probable outcome of a disaster impact in the absence of an in-built counteraction and, secondly, how that outcome would be modified by endogenous or in-built mechanisms of response. The rationale for proceeding this way is to show that in-built societal mechanisms may prove sufficient to prevent most potential indirect effects on the economy and society, making our results more consistent with those of actual disaster situations than with sensationalist claims.
Disaster-Response Motivations
Authors: Albala-Bertrand J M
Published: October 2023

The way individuals and groups respond to disasters is largely determined by pre-disaster societal characteristics and conditions. If we assume an individual to be fully ̔rational̓, his response will be determined first by the range of available options and second by both economic and non-economic considerations. Setting aside problems of knowledge, information costs and calculation, societal structures and dynamics will differentiate among individuals and groups by imposing, explicitly or otherwise, different restrictions upon choice. For the purpose of this chapter, choice and motivation refer to actual emergency and reconstruction responses as well as preventive and alleviative measures. We present below the range of motivations (or rationalities) and decision processes behind the choices of decision-makers (private, public, and international) in the face of disaster response.
Effects of Disaster Situations on Economy and Society
Authors: Albala-Bertrand J M
Published: October 2023

Disaster situations have effects on economy and society. Previous chapters have focused on short-rather than long-term effects. We attempt here to give a more general view, accounting also for ̔incidental interference̓ from disasters (see Chapter 1, sect. 5.2). First, we show a record of longer-term effects of disasters by means of a number of studies carried out especially for developed countries and some evidence derived from developing countries. Secondly, the previous point is integrated into the material displayed so far to establish a general picture of the effects of disaster situations.
Individual agents vs. Individual persons
Authors: Walsh Vivian
Published: October 2023

The constructed concept of rationality (in its various versions) embodied in neo-classical economic models primarily characterizes the choices or actions of an ‘individual economic agent’. General equilibria with rational or ‘optimal’ properties are then the result of such choices by all of the individual agents in a given model. It seems reasonable therefore to begin our investigation by examining these individual agents. If problems arise in the interpretation of these agents, such problems would necessarily affect the neo classical constructed concept of rationality at its roots and cause difficulties in turn for ‘optimality’ claims concerning the general equilibria which are wholly built up out of the choices or actions of the individual agents.
The Rationality (Or Optimality) Of Allocations
Authors: Walsh Vivian
Published: October 2023

The rationality of individual economic agents is, as has been seen, a continually recurring theme in neo-classical theory; but it is not studied simply or solely in response to some deep interest in the nature of human individuals, as might be the case with a philosopher studying the nature of persons. This can be seen from the fact that methodological individualism is paid only lip service, when supposedly a fundamental assumption. Rather, economic theorists are interested in the rationality of individual economic agents because it is believed that, if all the agents in a model are rational in the required sense (and given certain other assumptions), it can then be shown that the model will have an equilibrium (not necessarily unique) and that any such equilibrium will possess certain properties believed to be desirable. A key concept in such arguments is that of an ‘allocation’ of the goods which are available in the model (whether through production or as an initial endowment) to the agents appearing in the model. Certain closely connected classes of allocations have then proved to be of especial interest to neo-classical theory, namely those known as ‘perfectly competitive’ allocations. and those called ·Pareto optimal’ allocations.
Agriculture and Regional Imbalances
Authors: Zamagni Vera
Published: October 2023

Italy is famous for its wide variety of geographical and climatic types, and as such this variety does not really need further illustration here: it has been an inspiration for poets and musicians, painters and town-planners, as well as a favourite topic of discussion for historians. Perhaps what is not so well known is that there is no part of the Italian landscape that, for geological and historical reasons, has escaped man’s efforts to manipulate it. This is true of the relatively scarce flatlands (only per cent of the total land area), as they are frequently situated near to the sea, and as such consist of alluvial plains which are constantly being reclaimed only to be eroded again; what is more surprising is that the same is also true of the hills and mountains which make up the rest of the land area, as the pressure caused by an ever-increasing population has led to attempts to cultivate these areas even more intensely, and this in tum has led to the growing need for protective measures, as more and more of the fertile topsoil is washed away or subsides as a result of the rain.
International Trade and Capital Flows
Authors: Zamagni Vera
Published: October 2023

If there was one area in which Count Camillo Benso di Cavour’s ideas were applied in full, it was that of free trade: the Sardinian customs tariffs and trade agreements, enacted by Cavour in the 1850s along the lines of the English example, were immediately extended to the newly unified Italy. Subsequently, tariffs were lowered even further following the navigation agreement signed on 13 June 1862 and the trade agreement signed on 17 January 1863 with France. As a result, Italy could boast ‘the most liberal tariffs that had ever been adopted in Europe up to that time’.
The Banking System: Its Evolution and Role
Authors: Zamagni Vera
Published: October 2023

The banking system of any country that is industrializing must, itself, undergo a series of important changes in line with that country’s new needs: it becomes more important in quantitative terms, and also less uniform, qualitatively speaking, when compared with its pre-industrial form. According to Toniolo, who avails himself of Goldsmith’s thesis,‘In general, during modern economic development, the financial superstructure grows more quickly than income and real wealth itself … Growth in income is usually accompanied by an increased specialization and division of the savings process on one hand, and of capital formation on the other’.2 Furthermore, an increasingly large part of savings is channelled through financial intermediation, while the cost of financial capital tends to diminish.
State, Industry, Finance, and Society between the First World War and the Post-War Period, 1914—1922
Authors: Zamagni Vera
Published: October 2023

Some sections of the Italian population were already on the warpath when war finally broke out in 1914. Although the parliamentary majority was neutral, there were many strong, vociferous groups crying out for Italian intervention in the war. Besides the nationalists, who were without a doubt the loudest and most cohesive group, there were democratic groups who took their lead from the struggles of the Italian Risorgimento, revolutionaries who thought that the war offered the opportunity to revolutionize the social order (among whom Mussolini was quick to make a name), cultural groupings of an anti-positivist and irrationalist nature, and also some industrial circles who saw the war as a possible answer to those problems of economic stagnation and excessive productive capacity which had materialized in 1913 and 1914. The industrialists became increasingly interested in the prospect of intervention, as they gradually realized the mistaken nature of the economic forecast which predicted that they, as industrialists, would prosper as a result of the manufacture of industrial products for the war effort of the belligerents.
The Economic Policies of Fascism,1922—1943
Authors: Zamagni Vera
Published: October 2023

Mussolini’s coming to power marked the beginning of a period in the economic history ofltaly which is sadly noted for a number of dramatic episodes, from the international crisis of 1929 to imperialism, from the war economy to the collapse in production and consumption. The following three chapters will try to throw some light on this period in order to understand how the country’s economic structure had changed from that of the first 50 years of unification. Despite this dramatic period of war and economic crisis, the process of industrialization that had begun earlier did not come to a halt, although it almost certainly followed a different path from the expected one.
The Slow Social Progress under Fascism
Authors: Zamagni Vera
Published: October 2023

One of the first reforms introduced by the Fascist regime as soon as it came to power was in connection with education. The urgency with which this reform was carried out has been interpreted in different ways by various scholars; some of them point out that plans for educational reform had been bandied about for over years prior to this, and that therefore the educational world was waiting with bated breath for some kind of change. Others underline the fact that Mussolini had himself been a schoolteacher, and was therefore particularly interested in this area, and especially in the possibility of a Fascist school system forming the basis for a true Fascist society. One must also take Giovanni Gentile, Education Minister in Mussolini’s first ‘cabinet’, into account. He was an idealist philosopher, determined to see that his elitist and humanistic ideology be considered as the basis for this reform.
The Building of New Foundations,1946-1952
Authors: Zamagni Vera
Published: October 2023

According to a survey carried out by the Bank of ltaly, and subsequently sent on to the newly founded International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in the autumn of 1947, wartime destruction had failed to seriously damage Italian industry’s productive capacity. Only 8 per cent of industry’s capital existing in 1938 had been lost,1 although with important differences between one industrial sector and another (for example, losses in the metallurgical industry were estimated at some 25 per cent). This would thus seem to support Petri’s view that ‘the changes witnessed during the second half of the 1930s were undeniably responsible for the formation of that technical, geographical, and social order which was to enable the performance of the so-called “economic miracle” and the definitive transformation of Italy into an industrialized country’.
Yosef Weitz and the Transfer Committees, 1948–1949
Authors: Morris Benny
Published: October 2023

As the Yishuv welcomed the 29 November 1947 UN General Assembly Partition Resolution on Palestine, its leaders grimly pondered the future prospect of war and the emergent Jewish state’s major problem: of the 1.1 million or so people included in the areas earmarked for Jewish independence, close to 45 per cent were Arabs. Was there a solution to ‘the Arab problem’, as it was commonly referred to in Yishuv leadership circles?
The Harvest of 1948 and the Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem
Authors: Morris Benny
Published: October 2023

During the 1947–9 Israeli-Arab war, which pitted two more or less agrarian societies against each other, an intense struggle developed, especially during May–July 1948, over the harvest. The struggle was won by the militarily stronger and better-organized side. While it was peripheral to the outcome of the major engagements of the war and of the war itself, it was important in a variety of ways in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem and hence had a major bearing on the political outcome of the war.
Introduction
Authors: Nolan Brian , Whelan Christopher T
Published: October 2023

Poverty is a notoriously ill-defined term, both in common usage and in academic application. Empirical research on poverty has to deal first of all with the ambiguities and confusions associated with the term and concept: what is it that one is actually trying to measure? It then has to address the problem that the various approaches to measuring poverty that are used in practice may not adequately implement the underlying concept: they may not correctly identify those one would wish to call ‘poor’. Despite the attention poverty statistics receive from policy-makers and the broader public, there is remarkably little consensus among social scientists on how best to measure the condition. In this book our aim is to identify and address key problems with the ways in which poverty has generally been conceptualized and measured in relatively rich countries. The core issue is how to define and measure poverty in such countries in a way that is valid, meaningful in the context, and valuable for policy-making.
Income, Resources, and Deprivation
Authors: Nolan Brian , Whelan Christopher T
Published: October 2023

We have argued in earlier chapters that household deprivation indicators are valuable not only because they help to show in a graphic way what it means to be poor, but also because they may help in identifying the poor more accurately in the first place. Before they can safely be used for that purpose, however, we must have confidence that the indicators being employed are themselves satisfactory. By ‘satisfactory’, we mean in this context that they are likely to serve as indicators of an underlying state of generalized deprivation. In the previous chapter, analysis of the set of potential deprivation indicators on which we have information has suggested that the choice of indicators should not be governed simply by whether they are possessed by most people, or regarded by most people as a necessity. The interrelationships between the potential indicators, the way they cluster together, suggest that different dimensions are being picked up by different indicators. In this chapter we consider how this comes about and how it affects the way deprivation indicators are best employed in measuring poverty.
Income, Deprivation, and Poverty
Authors: Nolan Brian , Whelan Christopher T
Published: October 2023

The relationship between current income, wider resources, and experience of deprivation is a complex one. We have seen in Chapter 5 that there is indeed considerable variation in the extent of deprivation being experi enced by households at a similar level of current income, which is consistent with earlier studies such as Townsend (1979), Mack and Lansley (1985), and Mayer and Jencks (1988). What we have been able to show, going beyond these studies, is that this variation is to a significant degree explicable in terms of household characteristics and previous experiences. Shifting from a static to a dynamic perspective, not only current income but the accumu lation and erosion of resources over a long period are seen to affect current living standards. The criticism of the use of deprivation indicators that they must primarily reflect differences in tastes rather than resources because they are relatively weakly related to current income thus loses much of its force. In understanding why people are poor and how to alleviate poverty, this focuses attention on the dynamic processes at work, particularly in the labour market, and we turn our attention to the implications for framing policy in Chapter 9.
Implications for Tackling Poverty
Authors: Nolan Brian , Whelan Christopher T
Published: October 2023

Having discussed the implications of our work for the conceptualization and measurement of poverty in economically advanced countries, we now turn to consider what can be learnt from our approach and findings about how poverty is to be tackled in those countries. We look first at their relevance to assessment of the adequacy of the levels of support provided by the social security system, which is of central importance in effectively alleviating poverty. In the light of what we have found to be the key processes that make and keep some people poor, we then concentrate on the lessons for social security and for the role of social security versus other policies in combating poverty.
Conclusions
Authors: Nolan Brian , Whelan Christopher T
Published: October 2023

In this concluding chapter, we set out the central thrust of the argument put forward in this volume, review the key findings, and discuss their implications for poverty measurement, anti-poverty policy, and further research. Despite its importance-or perhaps because of it-there is remarkably little consensus among social scientists on how best to measure poverty. Our aim in this book has been to identify and address key problems with the ways in which poverty has generally been conceptualized and measured in relatively rich countries. We have sought to first demonstrate the extent to which current practice fails satisfactorily to measure poverty as it is now most often defined in these countries. We then proceeded to develop an approach to measurement which is more in accord with that definition, employing both income and direct indicators of deprivation.
Introduction
Authors: Gauthier Anne Hèléne
Published: October 2023

Since the tum of the century, the family in industrialized countries has undergone major transformations. Family size has declined, marriage has become less popular, unions are increasingly unstable, and women are no longer assuming their traditional role of housewives. At the same time, governments ‘ policies in respect of families have also greatly changed and expanded. Initially limited to mothers ‘ and children ‘s protection, governments ‘ policies have been steadily expanded to cover other aspects of family life and a larger number of families, as well as to provide a higher level of support. As a result, what is often referred to today as family policy encompasses a large number of measures and benefits ranging from measures specifically targeted at working parents, lone-parent families, or low-income families, to those more generally designed to support all families with children. It is the trends over time in these measures and their inter-country variations which are analysed in this book. The task is an ambitious one: a period of study covering a whole century, a comparison between twenty-two countries, and an analysis of the interplay between demographic changes and family policy. The story is however a fascinating one. What is now called family policy has changed considerably over the past 100 years, revealing major similarities in the ways governments have viewed and supported families, as well as revealing major dissimilarities shaped by country-specific events, ideologies, and circumstances. Until recently, the term ‘family policy ‘ had been very little used in political and academic circles. Alva Myrdal, in Sweden, talked of ‘a programme for family security ‘ in 1939, and a German article published in 1958 used in its title the term ‘Familienpolitik ‘ (Wuermeling, et al. 1958). During these early years, references to family policy or to governmental programmes for families were however mainly confined to restricted circles. The situation changed substantially from the mid-1960s. For example, the Swedish government set up a Family Policy Committee in 1965, the Austrian government set up a Family Policy Advisory Council in 1967, while suggestions for the adoption of a national family policy were made in the United States during a series of hearings on the family in 1973 (Kamerman and Kahn, 1978).
Early Fears of Popuiation and Family Decline
Authors: Gauthier Anne Hèléne
Published: October 2023

The end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth witnessed major transformations of the economic and social structure of societies. Industrialization, urbanization, and an increased level of literacy all had a major impact on families. For some families, the new economic era brought prosperity and was synonymous with an improved standard of living. For the large majority, however, the new urban and industrial setting was instead synonymous with dismal living and working conditions. Dwellings were crowded, ill-equipped, and the working environment of most workers was highly hazardous. It is in this context that the issues of poverty and high level of mortality, especially among children, became the subject of major political concern. If the relief of poverty had been so far left to philanthropic organizations, the magnitude of the problem was now calling for governmental interventions. This problem was in fact to lead to the first governmental initiatives directed at the family. The other topic which attracted attention during this period was the decline in fertility. In several countries, since the 1870s, fertility had been declining and projections were suggesting an eventual decline in population size. At a time when population growth was perceived as a guarantee of military and political power, such a situation did not leave governments indifferent. Conversely, it led to major initiatives related to fertility and population growth. Finally, the third theme which attracted attention during this period was that of birth-control. Promoted by some feminists and Malthusian associations, the issue aroused serious controversies. In most countries, governments were to take a firm stance in making illegal the use of contraception and abortion. Essentially private in essence, the issue was thus aired in public and led to major governmental initiatives.
First Elements of Family Policies
Authors: Gauthier Anne Hèléne
Published: October 2023

As seen in the previous chapter, concern about the decline in fertility and the transformations undergone by the family led several groups to call for improved state support for families. If, so far, the support provided by governments to families had been very limited, it was to be greatly expanded in this period of major economic and social changes. In particular, three sectors were the target of government intervention: health services for mothers and children, financial support for families, and support for working mothers. Measures introduced under each of these headings constituted the first elements of family policy. These measures were however sketchy, covering only a limited fraction of the population, and not being part of any global policy of support for families. These first elements of family policy were nevertheless important as they marked a precedent in governmental support for families, in addition to providing the basis for the post-World War II welfare state development. Inter-country differences in this respect were wide. While some governments adopted full responsibility in the support of families from a very early stage, others adopted a more limited approach. In this chapter, some of the first measures adopted by governments to support families are examined. In addition, are detailed the cases of France, Germany, and Sweden which, from this early time, adopted a much more comprehensive policy to support families. These measures were partly prompted by emerging concern about population and family decline. In most cases, they were also prompted by welfare considerations, and were part of the governments ‘ fight against poverty.
The Rediscovery of Pover1y
Authors: Gauthier Anne Hèléne
Published: October 2023

If the end of the war had raised hopes of a better future and improved standards of living, these hopes had apparently been fulfilled. The post-war economic recovery, and the expansion of the welfare state had brought general prosperity, and above all, had eliminated poverty. This at least was widely believed. The reality however proved to be very different. The rediscovery of poverty in the mid-l 960s showed that not only had the post-war developments failed to eliminate poverty, but more startling, that poverty had even increased. Governments did not remain indifferent and from the 1960s onwards a series of reforms were introduced to the system of state support for families. Breaking with the post-war policy of universalism, these reforms aimed instead at better supporting families in greatest need. This shift of emphasis, from a universal approach to a more targeted one, gave a completely new direction to state support for families.
Conclusion
Authors: Gauthier Anne Hèléne
Published: October 2023

If the terms ‘family policy ‘ and ‘family-friendly policy ‘ nowadays appear regularly on the political agenda of governments, it is the result of a long development. From very restricted interventions limited to the most necessitous and vulnerable families, governmental support for families has been greatly expanded. While there are obvious inter-country variations in the ways governments have viewed families and their own role as welfare providers, the inter-country similarities in the development of family policy over time are also striking. Yet, in the literature on family policy, the development of family policy has rarely been studied from a comparative perspective. While some studies have compared governmental support for families at one point in time, others have examined the historical development within the framework of single-country analysis. This book therefore aimed at filling this gap by analysing the development of family policy from both a historical and cross-national perspective.
Economic Considerations in the Timing of Births: Theory and Evidence
Authors: Cigno Alessandro
Published: October 2023

Two notable features of fertility behaviour in Western Europe and elsewhere in industrialized countries since the end of the Second World War have been a steady decline in completed fertility (the total number of children born to a woman) and fluctuations in the tempo of fertility (the distribution of those births over the mother’s fecund period). In Italy, for example, completed fertility has fallen from 2.11 for the cohort of women born in 1939-40, to 2.06 for the one born in 1944-5, to only l.89 for that of 1949-50. The proportion of that fertility realized before the mother reached age 30 has, however, risen from 68 per cent in the 1939-40 cohort to 74 per cent in the 1944-5 cohort, only to fall lo 72 per cent in that of 1949-50. A similar picture emerges for the rest of Western Europe.
Patrilocality, Childbearing, and the Labour Supply and Earning Power of Married Japanese Women
Authors: Ogawa Naohiro , Hodge Robert William
Published: October 2023

At the end of World War II the Japanese economy was in shambles. Since then, however, its growth has been spectacular. By 1958 GNP per capita had recovered to its pre-war level, and by 1988 it was, at nearly US$ 21,000, among the highest in the world (World Bank, 1990). During the period 1958-88 real GNP per capita grew at an annual rate of 5.8 per cent, a remarkably high figure. No less phenomenal was the unprecedented rapidity with which Japan moved through the final stages of demographic transition. After a short postwar baby boom (1947-9), Japan’s fertility level declined dramatically.
Introduction
Authors: Heymann Daniel , Leijonhufvud Axel
Published: October 2023

Deep depressions and high inflations are the two extremes of monetary instability. This book will concentrate on very high inflations. We intend to analyse these processes in some detail, using received theory as we find it helpful. But we also believe that some important aspects of them are not captured by standard theory. Its assumptions about individual decision-making abilities and systemic co-ordination do not allow a good representation of these turbulent economic processes.
Scope and Orientation of the CAP in the l 960s
Authors: Fennell Rosemary
Published: October 2023

The general circumstances surrounding agriculture in the 1950s were outlined in Chapter 1 and these formed the backdrop to the Commission’s proposals. Farm households were facing a series of interrelated challenges. At a personal level, there was greater exposure than ever before to consumer goods and services originating elsewhere in the economy. On the farm, there was a growing dependence on bought-in inputs. As with the consumer goods, many of the inputs originated in other sectors where prices and wages were rising more rapidly. As a result, the exchange value of agriculture was declining. The low elasticity of demand for many agricultural products was coupled with a decline in the share of consumer expenditure actually going to the raw material. At the same time, there were warnings of impending or actual market saturation. All these factors combined to create a serious income dilemma for farmers and it remained to be seen whether a new common policy would succeed where national policies had apparently failed.