National incomes and economic growth in pre-industrial Europe: insights from recent research

Pessimistic Malthusian verdicts on the capacity of pre-industrial European economies to sustain a degree of real economic growth under conditions of population growth are challenged using current reconstructions of urbanisation ratios, the real wage rates of building and agricultural labourers, and GDP per capita estimated by a range of methods. Economic growth is shown to have outpaced population growth and raised GDP per capita to in excess of $1,500 (1990 $ international at PPP) in Italy during its twelfth- and thirteenth-century commercial revolution, Holland during its fifteenth- and sixteenth-century golden age, and England during the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century runup to its industrial revolution. During each of these Smithian growth episodes expanding trade and commerce sustained significant output and employment growth in the manufacturing and service sectors. These positive developments were not necessarily reflected by trends in real wage rates for the latter were powerfully influenced by associated changes in relative factor prices and the per capita supply of labour as workers varied the length of the working year in order to consume either more leisure or more goods. The scale of the divergence between trends in real wage rates and GDP per capita nevertheless varied a great deal between countries for reasons which have yet to be adequately explained.

Homogeneous middles vs. heterogeneous tails, and the end of the ‘Inverted-U’: the share of the rich is what it’s all about

This paper examines the current global scene of distributional disparities within-nations. There are six main conclusions. First, about 80 per cent of the world’s population now live in regions whose median country has a Gini not far from 40. Second, as outliers are now only located among middle-income and rich countries, the ‘upwards’ side of the ‘Inverted-U’ between inequality and income per capita has evaporated (and with it the statistical support there was for the hypothesis that posits that, for whatever reason, ‘things have to get worse before they can get better’). Third, among middle-income countries Latin America and mineral-rich Southern Africa are uniquely unequal, while Eastern Europe follows a distributional path similar to the Nordic countries. Fourth, among rich countries there is a large (and growing) distributional diversity. Fifth, within a global trend of rising inequality, there are two opposite forces at work. One is ‘centrifugal’, and leads to an increased diversity in the shares appropriated by the top 10 and bottom 40 per cent. The other is ‘centripetal’, and leads to a growing uniformity in the income-share appropriated by deciles 5 to 9. Therefore, half of the world’s population (the middle and upper-middle classes) have acquired strong ‘property rights’ over half of their respective national incomes; the other half, however, is increasingly up for grabs between the very rich and the poor. And sixth, Globalisation is thus creating a distributional scenario in which what really matters is the income-share of the rich — because the rest ‘follows’ (middle classes able to defend their shares, and workers with ever more precarious jobs in ever more ‘flexible’ labour markets). Therefore, anybody attempting to understand the within-nations disparity of inequality should always be reminded of this basic distributional fact following the example of Clinton’s campaign strategist: by sticking a note on their notice-boards saying “It’s the share of the rich, stupid”.

Principles of banks and banking of money, as coin and paper : with the consequences of any excessive issue on the national currency, course of exchange, price of provisions, commodities, and fixed incomes ... /

Goldsmiths' Lib. cat.

Changing travel patterns and journeys to health services in Great Britain 1985-2012: An examination health service utilisation using the National Travel Survey

Background This paper examines changing patterns in the utilisation and geographic access to health services in Great Britain using National Travel Survey data (1985-2012). The National Travel Survey (NTS) is a series of household surveys designed to provide data on personal travel and monitor changes in travel behaviour over time. The utilisation rate was derived using the proportion of journeys made to access health services. Geographic access was analysed by separating the concept into its accessibility and mobility dimensions. Methods Variables from the PSU, households, and individuals datasets were used as explanatory variables. Whereas, variables extracted from the journeys dataset were used as dependent variables to identify patterns of utilisation i.e. the proportion of journeys made by different groups to access health facilities in a particular journey distance or time band or by mode of transport; and geographic access to health services. A binary logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify the utilisation rate over the different time periods between different groups. This analysis shows the Odds Ratios (ORs) for different groups making a trip to utilise health services compared to their respective counterparts. Linear multiple regression analyses were conducted to then identify patterns of change in the accessibility and mobility level. Results Analysis of the data has shown that that journey distances to health facilities were signi fi cantly shorter and also gradually reduced over the period in question for Londoners, females, those without a car or on low incomes, and older people. Although rates of utilisation of health services we re Oral Abstracts / Journal of Transport & Health 2 (2015) S5 – S63 S43 signi fi cantly lower because of longer journey times. These fi ndings indicate that the rate of utilisation of health services largely depends on mobility level although previous research studies have traditionally overlooked the mobility dimension. Conclusions This fi nding, therefore, suggests the need to improve geographic access to services together with an enhanced mobility option for disadvantaged groups in order for them to have improved levels of access to health facilities. This research has also found that the volume of car trips to health services also increased steadily over the period 1985-2012 while all other modes accounted for a smaller number of trips. However, it is dif fi cult to conclude from this research whether this increase in the volume of car trips was due to a lack of alternative transport or due to an increase in the level of car-ownership.

Opportunities and challenges in developing a whole-of-government national food and nutrition policy: lessons from Australia's National Food Plan

OBJECTIVE: The present article tracks the development of the Australian National Food Plan as a 'whole of government' food policy that aimed to integrate elements of nutrition and sustainability alongside economic objectives. DESIGN: The article uses policy analysis to explore the processes of consultation and stakeholder involvement in the development of the National Food Plan, focusing on actors from the sectors of industry, civil society and government. Existing documentation and submissions to the Plan were used as data sources. Models of health policy analysis and policy streams were employed to analyse policy development processes. SETTING: Australia. SUBJECTS: Australian food policy stakeholders. RESULTS: The development of the Plan was influenced by powerful industry groups and stakeholder engagement by the lead ministry favoured the involvement of actors representing the food and agriculture industries. Public health nutrition and civil society relied on traditional methods of policy influence, and the public health nutrition movement failed to develop a unified cross-sector alliance, while the private sector engaged in different ways and presented a united front. The National Food Plan failed to deliver an integrated food policy for Australia. Nutrition and sustainability were effectively sidelined due to the focus on global food production and positioning Australia as a food 'superpower' that could take advantage of the anticipated 'dining boom' as incomes rose in the Asia-Pacific region. CONCLUSIONS: New forms of industry influence are emerging in the food policy arena and public health nutrition will need to adopt new approaches to influencing public policy.

Agricultural incentives, growth and poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean: cross-country evidence for the period 1960-2005. Did trade liberalization increase the incomes of the poorest?

Includes bibliography

Wartime health and education : hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor, United States Senate, Seventy-eighth Congress, first session, pursuant to S. Res. 74, a resolution authorizing an investigation of the educational and physical fitness of the civilian population as related to national defense.

Claude Pepper, chairman of subcommittee.

Constructing internationally comparable real income aggregates by combining sparse benchmark data with annual national accounts data: A state-space approach

The importance of availability of comparable real income aggregates and their components to applied economic research is highlighted by the popularity of the Penn World Tables. Any methodology designed to achieve such a task requires the combination of data from several sources. The first is purchasing power parities (PPP) data available from the International Comparisons Project roughly every five years since the 1970s. The second is national level data on a range of variables that explain the behaviour of the ratio of PPP to market exchange rates. The final source of data is the national accounts publications of different countries which include estimates of gross domestic product and various price deflators. In this paper we present a method to construct a consistent panel of comparable real incomes by specifying the problem in state-space form. We present our completed work as well as briefly indicate our work in progress.