Suchergebnisse

Introduction / Nazrul Islam and Rob Vos -- Globalization, offshoring, and economic insecurity in industrialized countries / William Milberg and Deborah Winkler -- Managing financial instability in developing countries: why prudence is not enough / Yilmaz Akyuz -- Insurance, credit, and safety nets for the poor in a world of risk / Daniel Clarke and Stefan Dercon -- Assessing the success of microinsurance programs in meeting the insurance needs of the poor / Paul Mosley -- Assessing the insurance role of microsavings / David Hulme, Karen Moore, and Armando Barrientos -- Can microfinance reduce economic insecurity and poverty? By how much and how? / Nazrul Islam -- Insurance against losses from natural disasters in developing countries / Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer and Reinhard Mechler.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on bloomsburycollections.com. The world is witnessing the paradox of simultaneous increase in income and insecurity. According to available data, global average per capita income has increased in recent decades, while at the same time actual and perceived insecurity has also increased. This paradox is true for both developed and developing countries. However, the concrete form and causes of insecurity differs across these two groups of countries. To the extent that income levels in many developing countries are very low, economic insecurity in these countries takes a starker and chronic form. In Financing for Overcoming Economic Insecurity, leading experts examine the causes and consequences of rising economic insecurity and policy measures that can be adopted to overcome insecurity. The volume contains papers addressing issues of economic insecurity pertaining to both developed and developing countries and caused by both economic factors and natural hazards. It also discusses the issues at both macro and micro levels. The volume's focus on policy measures, such as redistribution and reinvestment of profit income in developed countries and imposition of capital control and promotion of micro insurance in developing countries, should be of much help to policymakers as well as researchers.

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-being. Second, insecurity is related to income volatility and the risk of downward mobility into poverty. Third, adverse events such as unemployment, family dissolution, or poor health commonly trigger income losses. Fourth, the effects of adverse events are mitigated by insurance relationships provided by government programs, employer benefits, and the informal support of families. Empirical research in these areas reveals high levels of economic insecurity among low-income households and suggests an increase in economic insecurity with the growth in economic inequality in the United States.

Abstract
Difficulties related to the problem of evaluating the economic security / insecurity, including the threshold of economic security / insecurity, namely the impossibility of giving an analytical description of a criterion entirely made up of a set of indicators describing the degree of economic security / insecurity, makes more and more researchers, including the authors, to seek indirect ways of finding solutions, for example considering systemic risk., as a measure of evaluation. Thus, starting from a new approach, and given the specific components of systemic risk to financial stability: the banking sector, corporate sector, public sector, volume of credits, economic activity index the threshold vector of economic security / insecurity can be developed. The study shows that systemic risk can be used to measure the threshold of economic security /insecurity.

BACKGROUND. Interest in the health and behavioral effects of economic insecurity appears to vary with the performance of the economy. The current recession in the United States and Western Europe and growing unemployment in Eastern Europe make it timely to analytically review the recent research concerned with the health effects of economic contraction. METHODS. The research concerned with the health and behavioral effects of economic insecurity is organized by dependent variable and method. Rules for determining which effects are supported by strong and which by weak evidence are developed and applied to the literature. RESULTS. Evidence for effects on symptoms of psychological distress, seeking help for psychological distress, and nonspecific physiological illness is strong. Evidence for effects on suicide, child abuse, adverse birth outcomes, and heart disease is characterized as weak or sufficiently controversial to warrant skepticism. CONCLUSIONS. The health effects of economic security are undoubtedly mediated by economic policies. Estimating the effect of policy alternatives on the incidence of various outcomes is, however, very difficult given the current state of the research. The effect of rising unemployment on health in Eastern Europe cannot, moreover, be estimated from existing research. Effects estimated from Western economies probably do not generalize to situations in which the meaning of economic insecurity is conditioned by profound social and political reforms.