Development Economics Research Trends - Case Study Example

Name: Professor: Course: Date of Submission: Patchwork Text on Inequality Introduction The primary objective of this review is to explore and detail the discourse of inequality by reviewing secondary materials and extant literature that reveal the patched character of the subject. The work involves review of electronic books, strategic research articles, and print books covering inequality. Because the subject is broad and too extensive to be covered exhaustively in this article, the scope of the work will skew much toward apparent features that characterize conventional inequality: social, economic, and political aspects. As argued by Neckerman (2004), the question of inequality has been covered and reported in diverse approaches for the past one century. Despite much publicity and attention from social scientists, the relationship between inequality and the enlisted features (economic development, social, and political) remains scantly understood. In particular, for the past half a century the economic wisdom on inequality and growth has been founded on two fallacies. On the effect of inequality on economy, proponents argue that is an important prerequisite for incentives that cultivate economic growth. However, this argument has been challenged through a number of research studies. Eicher and Turnovsky (2003) concluded that measures of inequality and economic growth do not correlate although there were some signs of positive relationships in developed compared to developing economies. Results presented by Rocha (2008) for nine developed countries covering the period 1830-1985 indicated ruled out correlation between inequality and economic development. An example in this context can be inferred from the Philippine and South Korean economies that in the 1960s shared similarities when gauged from major economic parameters (GDP per capita, Average saving rates, investment per capita). The contrast unveiled in a span of the succeeding thirty years within which the fast growth in South Korea saw the economy expand five-fold while that of Philippine barely changed. The other fallacy greatly associated with President Kuznet’s hypothesis (Keister and Southgate 2012) that inequality exacerbates during the initial phases of economic growth and the society approaches equity as economic improvements are recorded appears instable from the context of empiricism. The rise in inequality in the contemporary economic environment challenges Kuznet’s ideology because even in the most developed economies, inequality prevails in scales equal of comparable to that of developing and emerging economies. This review will explore patchwork texts to chronicle the different contexts characterizing the inequality discourse. The analyses will reveal varying attitudes that anchor inequality, detail the differing constituents of the discourse, and detail the apparent remedial measures that as seen as potential correctors of the recorded trends. Theoretical Perspective Although the discourse of inequality is challenging to explore, there are rhetoric elements that surface constantly in the discussions about the subject that point at its nerve that has maintained the discourse from earlier generations even to the current society. According to Keister and Southgate (2012), inequality is ubiquitously covered in the lens of wealth ownership disparities, success in varied social economic and political stances, power, and other natural attributes such as race and gender. However, economic instruments dominate the list of features often deployed to characterize inequities. At the core of the discourse of inequality is the Adam Smith’s philosophical argument that individual’s within the society are better of let to operate free without the high handedness of their governments that dictates upon their activities (Eicher and Turnovsky 2003). The rationale behind this premise is ingrained on the economic perspective of inequality, which views free market economies as the appropriate scenarios via which the free will of man is seen to naturally shun inequities for love of one another. This theoretical perspective anchored on the observation that the natural sense of help for one another displayed by men is a constant function of the amount of favors expected from the other party as an output of their extended hand. The rationale is that equity in nature is cultivated by the tendency of men to work zealously to try to not only win their colleagues’ hearts but also to show them their cooperation is for their long-term advantage: give and take precedence. This theoretical reasoning shows that men would try to be good toward their fellow statesmen not to favor their humanity, but they target their self-love that would cultivate return favor in order to continue enjoying the fruits of the cooperation. It is imperative that every man in the society seeks maximal self-gains and not that of the society or the public per se. From a theoretical standpoint, how the society views inequality and their attitudes toward the discourse influences its impact on their way of life. In this case the views and attitudes of Americans toward Inequality are reviewed. This discussion concurs with Eicher and Turnovsky (2003) contention that Americans’ view on inequality anchored firmly on three main aspects of the prevailing political and economic environment that are seen to influence the beliefs and culture of the society. The American society clings onto a culture that is established on the belief in stability and availability of opportunities, and self-centered explanations for individual’s achievements: social economic attributes that are seen to justify the acceptance of unequal distribution of economic rewards. Additionally, the American society inherently entwines personal forces deriving from an individual’s status in the hierarchy of inequality that constitutes beliefs and general public attitudes toward the disparity through experiential differences and self interests. Generally, social distinctions such as race and gender are important determinants of what is defined as inequality in the society. The concept of social liberalism has been documented widely as a vehicle for drastic changes in the realm of inequality. However, the non uniformity of the realism of liberalism has created another component of inequality because as people of particular race tend to become more equal, some racial characteristics are leveraged at some groups to label them less equal. Therefore, the influence of both social economic status and social liberalism on attitudes toward inequality is highly variable. Globalization and Inequality As the discussion about this concept expanded, there emerged a dichotomy of meanings: international and global inequalities that now require proper definitions of the terms in order to foster realistic understanding. According to Eicher and Turnovsky (2003), international inequality was coined to imply the inequality between state-nations primarily based on income disparities. Additionally, the global inequality is a term coined to connote an individualistic inequality in which disparity prevails between individuals irrespective of their country of origin: the world is considered as one in this perspective. The international inequality can be measured in tools such as the income per capita in between countries. In assessing international inequality, national fiscal documents such as Gross Domestic Income (GDI) are compared for different t countries. Important to note is that inequality within a country is ignored in the context of international inequality. The global inequality, compared with the aforementioned international inequality, captures disparities between individuals without regards to their country of residence or origin. According to Milanovic (2011), household surveys are the only instruments of information that are used to generate data that is used to document global inequality. This implies that to have a clear picture of the people’s income distribution across the world, there needs to be a global household survey that can inform collation to derive worldly income distribution based on an individual. Although conclusive data about global inequalities is inadequate, it is apparent that inequality between individuals in the contemporary society is historically high. According to Rocha (2008), there are apparent forces that influence global inequity thus complicating the trend. For instance, the recent economic developments in China and India, the globe’s most populous countries, bears a complicating brunt on the pattern of inequality from the planet’s perspective in that it pushes the world inequality down. Moreover, the increasing economic improvements in poor and emerging economies contributes toward global inequality. The global inequality pattern is further difficult to measure because disparities within large economies such has the United Kingdom, France, Germany, United States, Russia and others imparts complicating effects on the discourse. Inequality: A Discourse of Concern As evinced in some literary reports, it seems inequality is a key driver of the current world social, economic, and contemporary political aspects. The international inequality that has been instigated by the drastic development of economies: China and India instills the plausible observation that inequality is an important determinant of the contemporary world. According to Brinkley (2013), the economic distortions that have resulted from China becoming the main destination of global investments have created a wide array of influences on core aspects of the international community. Although an agenda has been floated in this analysis that inequality is a fertile ground for international economic transformations, it is equally hurting for the poorest countries such as those in Sub-Saharan Africa where impacts of globalization make them worse from an inequality vantage point. Summarily, inequality is a discourse of concern in the contemporary social scientific community because close to half of the world’s human population lives without access to basic necessities (water, food, shelter, medical care) (Held and Kaya 2007). The widening gap between the few wealthy and the majority poor is incrementally widening and the developed economies’ subsidies to non-priority sectors surpasses the air to poor countries three fold. It rather fairly said that globalization underlies much of the contemporary disparities. What emerged more explicitly from the review of different texts is that despite the wide knowledge of inequalities in the society, there appears to be little of no incentive to discourage the few from getting rich at the expense of the majority poor. The precedence set by a few holding the world’s wealth is that as their money loaded accounts encourage them to spend more because they have the means, the less endowed are pressured to exhaust their savings and even indulge into debts to spend more. Milanovic (2011) observes that inequality is the invisible force that sabotages governments’ efforts to address the now recurrent financial crises because the wealthiest almost hold a veto power on policy instruments that they explore directly or indirectly to pursue shot-term individualistic interests. Inequality is a discourse of crucial social economic and political concern today than never before in the history of the world. As presented by Arroyave, Cardona, Burdorf and Avendano (2013), inequality slowly cracks the fabric of social cohesion and the general sense of community, and inculcates the emergence of antisocial tendencies such as crime and violence. The disparity discourse has been variedly blamed for the hyper consumerist society in which status greatly determines availability of bread at the table, where people shelter, and what they wear. It is apparent that though inequality is varied, sophisticated, and complex, its effects are of concern to the whole global society. For example, it is because of inequality that the federal government has been struggling to install a universal healthcare system to spare the American people the wrath of lack of adequate medical care due to high costs that are affordable only by the few wealthy in the community. The prevailing conditions have exacerbated problems such as maternal and child mortality rates, poor eating habits, and increased suffering for seniors and the mentally challenges among other social issues. Inequality has been blamed for making people more desperate and diverges into buying greater equality for opportunity without much regard for its long-term impacts; and many people now in developed economies disfavor equality of wealth and income. This context appears to justify Adam Smiths philosophy that people must seek to improve their position through their own efforts. However, the reality is that most unequal and apparently poorest economies will hardly move ahead because social mobility is delimited by the status quo (Held and Kaya 2007). Remediation It has emerged from the divergent analysis of the discourse of inequality that much of the social, economic, and political achievements during the globalization generation has been unfairly shared or owned. The remedial approaches need to bear in mind that the poor are the most hit by the inequality wave, therefore it is not much of a problem to the rich. Therefore, development and social administrative policies need to be streamlined purposively to drive the society toward aggregate cohesion anchored on trust, healthy society, and equal distribution of national resources. Conclusion This review explored the discourse of inequality. Much has been deduced about inequality and its double edged impacts on the people, but increasing or maintaining the status quo pushes the majority poor from affording shelter, food, clothing, and medical care. Over concentration of economic power to minority rich is dangerous to democracy in that it results in powerlessness of policy instrumentation and implementation. References Arroyave, I, Cardona, D, Burdorf, A & Avendano, M 2013, ‘The impact of increasing health insurance coverage disparities in mortality: health care reform in Colombia, 1998-2007’, American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 103, no. 3, pp. 100-106. Brinkley, J 2013, ‘China’s looming crisis’, World Affairs, Vol. 175, no. 6, pp. 23-31. Eicher, TS, & Turnovsky, SJ 2003, Inequality and growth: theory and policy implications, Boston, MA, MIT Press. Held, D & Kaya, A 2007, Global inequality: patterns and explanations, Cambridge, UK, Polity Press. Keister, LA, Southgate, DE 2012, Inequality: a contemporary approach to race, class, and gender, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. Milanovic, B 2011, Worlds apart: measuring international and global inequality, Princiton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Neckerman, KM 2004, Social inequality, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, NY. Rocha, GT 2008, Development economics research trends, New York, NY: Nova Publishers. Read More