Main stories
UK growth - UK avoids triple-dip recession
Benefit cap  - kicks in at £500 per week
UK Budget 2013 - analysis and comment
EU Budget - historic reduction agreed
UK economy - GDP falls by 0.3%
Quantitative Easing - put on hold
Poverty - recession and relative poverty
Welfare reform - the end of universal benefits
Underemployment - over 3 million
CPI inflation - at 2.7%
Autumn statement - austerity to continue
Energy prices - set to rise
Libor - rate fixing scandal
Greek exit - a little nearer
Competition policy - new regulator planned
Fiscal union - rejected by UK
Europe - a Tobin tax?
Credit ratings - US credit rating
Greek bailout - Euro problems
Top international universities for Economics
Top UK universities for Economics
 
Keep up to date - contribute to discussion -watch videos...More..
Updates Get the latest updates on the UK economy, including GDP, inflation...More...
Ask the tutor - your opportunity to ask a question...
  Study guides Latest resources for students from Economics Online.  More...
How to answer data response questions. More...
Multiple choice tests Improve knowledge and understanding of Economics. More...
Market structures revision presentations
Economics tuition - from specialist tutors. Find out more..or REGISTER
City of London The financial crisis reveals a fundamental weakness .. More...
Recommended texts
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tutors required Economics, Mathematics Business Studies Register here

 

 

 

 

 

 

The costs of growth

While growth improves a country’s chances of development, it also creates a number of economic and social costs.

Negative externalities

As growth increases, production and consumption increase and there are likely to be considerable external costs as a result, such as deforestation, and the knock-on effects such as increased flooding; desertification of regions suffering over-production; pollution of rivers; depletion of non-renewable resources and long term climate change.

Exhaustion of environmental capital

The environment is a scarce resource and a factor of production, which resembles capital. If the environment is over-exploited and miss-used, future development prospects will be restricted. A lack of property rights over often vast areas of land means that there is no incentive to conserve such resources. This impacts on the poor, who suffer most from polluted drinking water and loss of agricultural land.

Urban squalor

Urbanisation tends to go hand in hand with economic growth and an exodus from the land to the cities, as can be witnessed in much of India, China, and Latin America. The resulting squalor is one of the most widely recognised costs of rapid economic growth. The urban slums that exist in many parts of the developing world today closely resemble those that existed in large cities in the UK, and across Europe, at the end of the 18th Century because of rapid industrialisation.

See: Measures of Economic Welfare

 


Rss Feed Tweeter button Facebook button Linkedin button Digg button Youtube button