Rapid economic growth in China during the past 25 years has been accompanied by increasing economic inequality. China’s old-age social security system has long been restricted to urban areas, leaving the 70 per cent of the population living in rural areas with little or no coverage. The lack of social security for elderly people in rural areas poses a threat to social stability and raises socia...

The article presents critical analysis of the state of the art in contemporary studies in social organization as factor affecting rural economic growth. We outline two major theoretical and methodological challenges that researchers have to face in order to progress further in understanding of the driving forces and obstacles to sustainable rural economic growth in developing societies. First, ...

Emily Beller and Michael Hout examine trends in U.S. social mobility, especially as it relates to the degree to which a person's income or occupation depends on his or her parents' background and to the independent contribution of economic growth. They also compare U.S. social mobility with that in other countries. They conclude that slower economic growth since 1975 and the concentration of th...

This research suggests that a Darwinian evolution of entrepreneurial spirit played a significant role in the process of economic development and the dynamics of inequality within and across societies. The study argues that entrepreneurial spirit evolved non-monotonically in the course of human history. In early stages of development, risk-tolerant, growth promoting traits generated an evolution...

Inrecent years political scientists and economists have spent considerable efforts investigating the impact of income inequality both on political institutions and social conflict (Boix 2003, 2008; Acemoglu and Robinson 2006; Geddes 2007) and on growth and development (Atkinson andBourguignon 2000). In this article I focus on the latter question: I discuss the extent to which (that is, the cond...

For several years there has been tension between contrasting visions of the future of enterprise computing: the so-called integrated suite versus best-of-breed strategies, championed respectively by Oracle and IBM. Commonly, this conflict has been seen as a matter purely of technical efficiency and relative cost; but it is much more. Whether one approach or the other is destined to prevail is a...

Economic insecurity describes the risk of economic loss faced by workers and households as they encounter the unpredictable events of social life. Our review suggests a four-part framework for studying the distribution and trends in these economic risks. First, a focus on households rather than workers captures the microlevel risk pooling that can smooth income flows and stabilize economic well...

Much economic theory, especially the orthodox variety, keeps away from structural methods and makes little or no reference to social structure: the word ‘structure’ is used only rarely and casually, so that its sense remains unclear. This paper argues that economics might gain from a richer, more fluid treatment of social structure, as proposed in recent social theory. After considering the str...

Social legislation is the popular topic of the day. If he realizes it the Forgotten Man must be mildly annoyed by being so well remembered. While the noisy protagonists of the various styles of social insurance are making their stirring pleas it is only right that the opponents have their day in court. Dr. Ochsner ably presents the case. His long and active career as a student in the Health Ins...

Historical data, theory and computer simulations support a connection between growth and economic inequality. Our present world with large regional differences in economic activity is a result of fast economic growth during the last two centuries. Because of limits to growth we might expect a future world to develop differently with far less growth. The question that we here address is: “Would ...