Book Description
What did the Latin American economies achieve in the course of a hundred years? Per capita income increased fivefold, yet today it is lower in proportion to the industrial countries than it was a century ago. Modern infrastructure was built and industry grew to 20 percent of GDP, but the region's share of world trade was halved. Social indicators such as life expectancy and literacy improved dramatically, but inequity and poverty worsened.
This comprehensive economic history examines the political, institutional and economic forces that shaped Latin America's complex and often paradoxical development process over the twentieth century. By examining quantitative data alongside the region's political economies, the book provides historical context for the development strategies, choices, successes, and failures of the Latin American countries.
Commissioned by IDB President Enrique V. Iglesias, the book draws on studies and consultancies prepared by a number of specialists on Latin America. A comprehensive Statistical Appendix provides regionwide and country-by-country data in such areas as GDP, manufacturing, sector productivity, prices, trade, income distribution, and living standards.
Moving chronologically through the century, the book focuses on two dramatic waves of expansion that shaped regional growth: first, an export boom as the century began, and second, import-substitution industrialization corresponding to renewed expansion of the international economy following the Depression and the two World Wars. Following the debt crisis of the 1980s, Latin America at century's end has returned to where it began, with reliance on the free market and export-led growth. However, the book outlines the changes in economic structures and approaches that make today's economic scenario radically different from the old.
Customer Reviews:
A Fascinating Way to Study History!!!.......2001-02-10
"Progress, Poverty and Exclusion. An Economic History of Latin America in the 20th Century" is a fascinating book from the cover to the annexes. The contrast between a XX th century modern city and a shanty town showed in the cover gives the reader an initial idea of the position of the writer regarding Latin American economic development. Poverty, exclusion and income concentration are problems that are inherent to the vast majority of Latin American economies and Rosemary Thorp makes sure that the reader remembers that throughout the book. Her social focus is perfectly compatible with a serious economic analysis based on well-documented facts and statistical data. Every student of Latin American history, politics and economics should have this book in his or her shelves. Furthermore, any scholar dealing with Latin American issues should not forget to read Thorp's work "every morning" to remember what is that the Latin American economies achieved in the course of a hundred years. Finally, I highly recommend accompanying the reading of this book with another masterpiece, "The Economic History of Latin America" by Victor Bulmer-Thomas
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Poverty, Progress, and Population
E. A. Wrigley
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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ASIN: 0521529743 |
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E.A. Wrigley, the leading historian of industrial England, exposes the inadequacy of what was once accepted wisdom regarding England's industrial revolution and suggests what he believes should replace it. He examines the issues from three viewpoints: economic growth; the transformation of the urban-rural balance; and demographic change in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In addition, he shows why England's early modern economy and society grew faster and more dynamically than its continental neighbors.
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The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880-1970
Stephan Thernstrom
Manufacturer: iUniverse
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ASIN: 1583484434 |
Book Description
The Other Bostonians challenges many myths and assumptions about the development of America. Newspapers and other familiar sources record the lives of only the prominent five percent of the population. Beyond these privileged few lie the millions who are born, live, and die unnoted by the chroniclers of their era. Now, with the assistance of computers and a team of researchers, Stephan Thernstrom has gone to the available records of these people, to the raw and uninterpreted data in old city directories, fading marriage license applications, and abandoned local tax records. He has assembled and analyzed this neglected body of evidence to provide one of the most thorough series of observations ever made on the patterns of migration and social mobility in a changing American community.
"Thernstrom has written a superb book. It is the best and most ambitious analysis of social mobility yet to appear and will undoubtedly serves as a model for future studies." -American Historical Review
"The best piece of quantitative history yet published. It is destined to be a highly influential book." -New York Times Book Review
"This is an important book-indispensably important-for students of American social mobility." -American Journal of Sociology
Book Description
To those who, seeing the vice and misery that spring from the unequal distribution of wealth and privilege, feel the possibility of a higher social state, and would strive for its attainment. -Henry George, Progress and Poverty Why do we have ups and downs in the national economy? Why does poverty continue to exist while a minute number of Americans enjoy a staggering increase in their personal wealth year after year? What went wrong in a country that professes to be dedicated to the proposition that we are all created equal? As timely now as it was when it was written in 1871, Progress and Poverty is an honest and fascinating look at the financial order and the increasingly distorted distribution of income and wealth of life in America. George lays out simply and elegantly what the underlying problem is and how we might solve it. AUTHOR BIO: HENRY GEORGE (1839-1897) was a noted American economist and founder of the single-tax movement. He first outlined the doctrine in the pamphlet Our Land and Land Policy in 1871 and later wrote the more elaborate treatise Progress and Poverty (1879), which sold millions of copies all over the world.
Customer Reviews:
Simply the Best.......2004-05-17
I won't go into too much detail - the other reviewers have said it so eloquently and accurately. I believe this is one of the best books ever written and ranks up there with Shakespeare, the bible and Mozart in the sense that it is almost perfect in both artistic and literary form, yet it is a book aimed at solving the economic woes faced by modern civiliasations. For anyone under the opinion that political economy is the dismal science, no doubt in part due to cynics such as Maynard Keynes, Marx etc., and the modern econimc rationalist outlook, this book will be enlightening and uplifting. if you read this book it will change your life.
As timely in 2003 as it was when it was written.......2003-12-02
Progress & Poverty is the missing puzzle piece for those of us who look around at the combination of magnificent and accelerating technological progress and the increasingly distorted distribution of income and wealth in America, with many people lacking sufficient income to meet their most basic needs, and wonder what went wrong in a country which professes to be dedicated to the proposition that we're all created equal.
The book's subtitle -- An Inquiry in the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth... The Remedy -- describes it beautifully: why we have the ups and downs of our economy, which cause incredible human misery, and why we have increasing poverty at the same time that there is hugely increasing wealth.
And Henry George provides a logical and workable -- even elegant -- remedy, one which will untangle many of the perverse incentives we cope with today: we say we value work, but we tax it. We say we want to promote sales, but we tax them. We say we want to encourage entrepreneurial effort, but we allow huge barriers designed to discourage the person with an idea from being able to execute it. We say we want a society that naturally creates more jobs, but we allow a relative few of us to pocket the funds which would create those jobs. We say we value initiative, but we reward the "dog in the manger" far more than we reward the laborer. We say that urban blight is a bad thing, but our tax code encourages it. We say we dislike urban sprawl, and long commutes, and low wages -- but we've failed to implement the simple tax reform that will correct these ills. We work longer hours than our counterparts in other countries, and have less to show for it. We allow a relative few to own our airwaves, and resell them at higher and higher prices, collecting advertising revenues from all who would run for public office or advertise their products.
If we truly mean to end poverty, to reward initiative, to ensure that the next child born in America is truly the equal of all who are here today, to ensure that our environment is protected for the common good, George's framework for understanding provides the missing puzzle piece.
And as we consider what sort of country we'd like Iraq to be, it is worth considering that if we only give them a constitution without giving them an economic system that considers all people equal, truly equal, we've not accomplished much with the American lives we've lost there.
If we can figure it out for Iraq, with all its oil wealth, maybe we can figure out how to share America justly among Americans, too.
George lays out simply and elegantly what the underlying problem is and how to solve it.
He dedicates the book "To those who, seeing the vice and misery that spring from the unequal distribution of wealth and privilege, feel the possibility of a higher social state and would strive for its attainment." Might you be among those who see and feel, and would strive, if only you could see the source of the problem?
Churchill, Twain, Huxley, Shaw and many others came to see what George was pointing out. Will you?
This one is worth your time!
Get a copy for yourself, and send one to your favorite legislator, be he/she local, state or federal. Then start looking for other Georgists, also known as Geoists. You'll find them a lively group with a vision that might inspire you, too. And it is refreshing to be with people who seek a finer society, not more advantage or privilege -- "private law" -- for their own benefit!
It changed my life.......2001-06-19
People do not argue with the teaching of George, they simply do not know it. And it is impossible to do otherwise with his teaching, for he who becomes acquainted with it cannot but agree.
Why isn't this book better known?.......2000-09-08
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this book, written over a hundred years ago, is the accuracy of the predictions that Henry George made on what would happen if solutions other than the one he proposed would be followed. The only alternative to his sollution which he said would also work to reduce the difference between rich and poor was the use of government regulation. This has to some extent been taken up in all countries of the world, and while it has indeed slowed the processes which Henry George described, it has led to exactly the problem he predicted. "For instance, to take one of the simplest and mildest of the class of measures...--a graduated tax on incomes. The object at which it aims is good; but this means involves the employment of a large number of officials clothed with inquisitorial powers; temptations to bribery, and perjury, and all other means of evasion, which beget a demoralization of opinion, and ptu a premium upon unscrupulousness and a tax upon conscience..." That seems to be a pretty good descrition of civic life today.
When I have mentioned Henry George, the usual answer has been "Who?" Those who had heard of him mostly thought that his ideas only applied to agrarian societies. In fact, he recognized that land was only one (though the most fundamental) form of monopoly, and he makes it clear that he included all monopolies, not just land, into the realm of the rights of the community rather than a private owner. In this day, he would certainly hhave comments about how the airwaves have been distributed, for example.
The main surprise to me about this book is how completely unknown it has become. Anyone who reads this with an open mind will be convinced by Henry George's arguments.
Still Relevant.......2000-08-16
Reviewing classics is always an iffy proposition. I've certainly learned more about the land tax from other sources than from this book. The book also can't give you any idea of how his ideas are being applied today, and the fact that modern Georgists talk about taxing pollution and other "economic bads", in a natural outgrowth from George's ideas. Similarly, reading John Locke won't give you an idea of what the United States government is like. Still it's worth reading for seeing where the ideas come from. And on that basis, this is a great book.
Although the point of this book is the ideas, and I think it's besides the point to criticize writing style when discussing nonfiction, George's florid prose and tendency to offer a dozen analogies to drive home each point make currently available abridgements of Progress and Poverty a reasonable alternative.
Book Description
In 1997, Mexico launched a radical new program to combat poverty. Initially named Progresa and now known as Oportunidades, the revolutionary program has become an important example of a sustainable and scalable poverty reduction strategy in the developing world. In Progress against Poverty, Santiago Levy--the main architect of Progresa-Oportunidades--offers his unique perspective on the development of the program, the reasons for its success, the challenges it faces, and its applicability in other nations.
Progresa-Oportunidades was pioneering in its approach. It dispenses money directly to poor households--a change from the traditional method of providing subsidized necessities through intermediaries. However, those cash transfers are conditioned on specific patterns of behavior--recipients must invest in their own nutrition, health, and education. Also, Progresa-Oportunidades was designed to have a widespread, measurable, and sustained impact on various indicators of poverty. It is ambitious in scale, with a national rather than local focus, and its progress is measured through comprehensive evaluation of program operations and results.
Scholarly evaluations of Progresa-Oportunidades have been overwhelmingly positive, and it has inspired similar strategies in numerous developing nations. In addition to discussing micro- and macroeconomic dimensions of the program, Levy reveals the factors that have contributed to its sustainability, as well as the public information mechanisms supporting its implementation and the role of the evaluation process. He identifies the future challenges the program faces, such as making its incentives compatible with those of other social programs, and discusses its transferability to other countries.
Customer Reviews:
good results, but unfinished.......2007-05-07
Levy was the Mexican minister who ran a vital government program, Progress Opportunities. It tackled the endemic problem of poverty in Mexico. Unsurprisingly, Levy's tone is quite upbeat. What else is he likely to say? Think perhaps of books just out by candidates for the US Presidency.
But Levy's book does have a lot of substance. It will never be a best seller. Let's make that clear. It is a dry read, of the ilk that thrills economists. Replete with tables of statistics and much data analysis. To give the man his due, the quantitative results are impressive. Since 97, Mexico has made significant headway in reducing longstanding poverty.
To Levy's credit, he does not claim the job is done. The book does offer the hope that finally, Mexico can start of break out of a cycle of poverty that has afflicted generations of its people.
Book Description
Poverty, disease, and illiteracy had long bedeviled the U.S. South, even before the agricultural depression of the 1920s became subsumed within the Great Depression of the 1930s. The essays collected in this volume examine a variety of responses to economic depression and poverty. They recount specific battles for civil, educational, and labor rights, and explore the challenges and alternatives to the corporate South in the post World War II agribusiness era. Scholars from both the U.S. and Europe assess how far the South has come in the last century, what forces (from the Sears Roebuck Catalog to the Civil Rights Movement) have been at work in its transformation, and whether the region's reincarnation as the Sunbelt has lifted the burdens of southern history. Contributors assess labor strikes and demonstrations that have not always found a place in histories of the region and revisit and reassess key southern figures from Erskine Caldwell and James Agee to Albert Gore and Lyndon Johnson. They draw our attention to neglected writers whose representations of poverty deserve more critical attention, and they provide critical analysis of contemporary authors and filmmakers.
Customer Reviews:
The Pitfalls of Modernization According to E. Bradford Burns.......2001-03-21
E. Bradford Burns' The Poverty of Progress is a complex analysis of the degree of beneficence that modernization had upon nineteenth-century Latin America. Burns attempts to provide a novel perspective that will spark a reassessment of the common view that Latin America flourished with the implementation of the European ideals of progress, urbanization, and industrialization. With his claim that not all parts of Latin American society were in favor of the changes induced by modernization, Burns asserts his view that because progress benefited the elite minority while crippling the folk majority, modernization was ultimately a pitfall for Latin America. Due to the intricacy of Burns' argument and the informative information he provides, his Poverty of Progress successfully justifies a mandate for a reinterpretation and questioning of the traditional association of modernization with better living standards. Burns presents his argument in an organized fashion that builds the scenario of the cultural conflict. One should note that early in the first chapter, Burns shows his belief that the problems associated with modernization were due to a cultural conflict rather than a class struggle. With this in mind, Burns begins by discussing the rift between the modernizing elites, who associated progress with capitalism, and the folk, who felt threatened by the capitalist system as it opposed their old, entrenched traditions of harmony and cooperation. The capitalist ideals of individuality and competition clashed with the folk ideals causing the cultural conflict that Burns so articulately explains. He covers the goals of the elite minority which were routed in Spencerian and Darwinian evolution, Positivism, and the Enlightenment, and with these ideologies, the elites pushed for aspects of modernization such as industrialization which came at the expense of the folk majority. With his explanation of the cultural conflict and the aims of the elites, Burns then explores the majority's opposition to modernization with a discussion of the intellectuals, patriarchs, and folk. Here, one begins to understand why modernization was not entirely a beneficial development for Latin America. Burns mentions that intellectual elites began to notice the problems of modernization such as the growing dependence upon foreign investors who took control of Latin America's infrastructure. Intellectuals also pointed to the burdens of agrarian mismanagement that plagued economic conditions for the masses. Large land plots were increasingly controlled by a limited number of landlords who used the land inefficiently to produce export commodities, and economic conditions worsened for the masses as Indian, peasant, and church lands were confiscated. The masses also suffered since food was produced for export rather than for the nourishment of the country. Patriarchs hesitated to modernize as well because the new capitalist incentives for expanded agrarian production threatened their traditional norms of stability and simplicity. Burns suggests that the folks and patriarchs, having common ties in rural society, worked together in defiance against elitist modernization. Finally, he presents an important part of his argument in the last chapter when he explains that the terms "economic growth" and "development" are often misconstrued in their application to nineteenth- century Latin American history, and he offers his own definitions for these terms as well as alternatives to modernization that could have saved Latin America from its downfall. Ultimately, Burns' argument is effective in sparking debate over the degree of beneficence of modernization. One can find several strengths in Burns' The Poverty of Progress that make his belief in the detrimental consequences of modernization convincing. To begin with, the format and style he uses to present his position are effective as he first presents the elite desire for modernization, then the misgivings of the intellectuals toward the implementation of progress, and finally the opposition of the patriarchs and folk to modernization. This overview helps to illuminate the fact that Latin American society was not entirely united behind the trend for progress, and while one might criticize Burns for making broad generalities about Latin America, he dispels this judgment by explaining that his broad analysis is justified by aspects that all eighteen nations had in common: the presence of folk societies which resisted Europeanization, unbalanced power in the hands of the elite minority, and the role of the latifundio as it eventually expanded under the control of few landlords at the majority's expense. Burns also shows a great deal of wisdom in admitting the fact that his broad approach "across vast geographical and temporal spaces" is "at best suggestive," and such a statement allows his work to achieve its polemical purpose since it diffuses critics who might attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the book for its novel approach toward nineteenth-century Latin America (p. 2). This is perhaps the strongest point of the book since it works toward Burns' goal of inciting controversy and a reassessment of the true impact of modernization. Thus, in his The Poverty of Progress, Burns successfully argues that modernization in nineteenth-century Latin America was not completely beneficial as it only advanced the welfare of a select few while decimating the majority.
Good but flawed........2000-12-16
Mr. Burns advances a excellent critique regarding the attempt of South American elites to ape western style capitalism. He suggests that attempts to cram western economic/political ideas into the dynamics of Latin America did considerably more harm than good.
What Mr. Burns does not address is that the remedy advocated by many of the critics of those regimes was in very much the same vein. Marxist philosophy, theorized in the traditon of western thought- with western nations in mind, proved to be as ill a fit for Latin America as was western style capitalism.
Mr. Burns failure to realize this is the books ultimate dowfall.
The end product is a study of Latin American hierarchical elites who sought to remake Latin America in 19th century Western Europe's image and a implication the results would have been different if they had modelled it after 20th century Eastern Europe. A good book soured by moldy Marxism.
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