Over the past ten years economic growth in Asia has contributed to a reduction of poverty as well as fertility rates, and greater prosperity has contributed to gains in life expectancy.

Indonesia has made impressive progress in reducing income inequality and improving living standards since the Asian Financial Crisis but the decline in poverty has slowed in recent years while inequality has risen and a large part of the population remains vulnerable.

The potential role of social protection in the development process has received heightened recognition in recent years, yet making a strong investment case for social protection remains particularly challenging in many emerging and developing countries. This report challenges us to think deeply about the economic rationale for social protection investments through an inclusive development lens. It helps us understand the links between social protection, growth and inequality; how to measure those links empirically; social protection’s impact on inclusive growth; and how to build a more solid economic case for greater social protection investments.

This is the fourth edition of Society at a Glance Asia/Pacific, the OECD’s overview of social indicators for the region. The report addresses the growing demand for quantitative evidence on social well-being and its trends across countries in Asia and the Pacific. Chapter 1 introduces this ...

Economics is a social science concerned mainly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Beyond the various theories and models, however, economics has close relationship with day to day life. This book reviews the economic journey of India over the last seventy years, and seeks to stimulate the readers’ thinking on some major issues and potentialities facing the Indian economy. Five main themes flow through the book – India’s potential to be the World’s third largest economic power by 2030, the challenges of socio-economic equity that India faces, the several opportunities that India has in that journey, the critical role of governance, leadership, management and administration, and the importance of mindset changes to power India’s futureeconomic growth. A special focus is laid on the role of government policies and projects in socio-economic development. The book sensitises the readers, including college students in general, and students of economics in particular, to the happenings around us which have significant economic import. The book makes all through its seventy chapters several suggestions to power India’s growth as a global economic superpower, on a plank of socioeconomic equity. This book serves as an expansive thought primer and focussed execution guide for an economically independent and resurgent India.

Thailand has made impressive economic and social progress over several decades. However, the COVID-19 crisis has interrupted this progress. Thanks to its sound macroeconomic policy framework, Thailand was well placed to respond rapidly to the sharp economic downturn. Nevertheless, achieving high-income country status will require, in addition to a strong recovery programme, a set of policy reforms focused on productivity growth and human capital accumulation. Thailand has made remarkable progress in expanding access to education, and the share of highly educated workers has increased significantly. Nevertheless, because of skills mismatches, substantial labour shortages have prevailed in a range of occupations and industries, which makes it important to improve vocational education and adult training programmes. As the demand for services has become important globally, Thailand has an opportunity to boost its exports of services, diversify its economic activity, and therefore become more resilient in the face of unexpected shocks. This would involve a focus on digital services and business-to-business services, which represent a large share of the value of manufacturing products. Focus on human capital, skills, digital technology, and high-value services would help Thailand resume strong economic growth and social progress after the COVID-19 crisis. SPECIAL FEATURES: HUMAN CAPITAL; TRADE IN SERVICES

This book mobilises the theory of uneven and combined development to uncover the geopolitical economic drivers of China’s rise. The purpose is to explain the formation and trajectory of its economic ‘accumulation system’ — which remains a confounding hybrid of statist and neoliberal forms of capitalism — as the outcome of China’s geopolitical engagement of the USA during the late stages of the Cold War, and its participation in manufacturing global production networks (GPNs). Fear of geopolitical catastrophe drove China to open its economy, while GPNs enabled China to generate substantial export surpluses which could be recycled through state-owned banks as cheap credit and subsidies to large, vertically integrated and politically-controlled state-owned enterprises. In this way, a synergy emerged between the ‘neoliberal’ and ‘Keynesian-Fordist’ sectors of the economy, while the national-territorial state retained its form and expanded its functions. The book chronicles how this reliance on export surpluses, however, rendered China extremely vulnerable to external shocks — prompting a dramatic monetary and fiscal stimulus response to the crisis of 2008, even while sustaining the illusion of economic ‘decoupling’ from the global economy. Finally, it examines the growing role of the state in the current crisis-ridden economic model, as well as China’s current geoeconomic and geopolitical expansionism in areas such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the militarisation of the East and South China Seas.

The outlook for the global economy has darkened. Global financing conditions have tightened, industrial production has moderated, trade tensions have intensified, and some large emerging market and developing economies have experienced significant financial market stress. Faced with these headwinds, the recovery in emerging market and developing economies has lost momentum. Downside risks have become more acute and include the possibility of disorderly financial market movements and an escalation of trade disputes. Debt vulnerabilities in emerging market and developing economies, particularly low-income countries, have increased. More frequent severe weather events would raise the possibility of large swings in international food prices, which could deepen poverty. In this difficult environment, it is of paramount importance for emerging market and developing economies to rebuild policy buffers while laying a stronger foundation for future growth by boosting human capital, promoting trade integration, and addressing the challenges associated with informality,

Firmly rooted in the International Political Economy (IPE) tradition, this book addresses the negative consequences of globalisation, what is termed here the ‘dark side of globalisation’. It explores different definitions of globalisation, whether the globalisation we have seen since the 1970s is substantially new, and to what extent it can be governed. Building on these foundations, the work assesses the prospects for de-globalisation. By focusing on this dark side of globalistion, the authors show how the global economic crisis, and its various local and sectorial manifestations, intensified – rather than generated – existing trends. This scholarship provides an account of the current predicament that is both more complex and more persuasive than the opposition between globalisation and de-globalisation.

This book brings together various threads of research in the field of gender mainstreaming. It aids in further supporting and understanding the role of gender in health and safety research, practice, and policy. It looks at gender mainstreaming as being recognised as key in cultivating sustainable worker health and working systems due to it being a central component of many international policy initiatives. This book deals with gender mainstreaming being advocated at a policy level, while focusing on the limited recognition and discourse on the issue of gender and its direct and indirect association to workers’ health in the field of occupational health and safety. This book addresses problems facing gender-sensitive policies and outlines and reflects upon current best practice principles and practices to support the development and implementation of policies, interventions, and research initiatives.