Even though economics is much about the study of ways
of increasing welfare, studies of the effects of widening income gaps in the
developing world are often watering down the negative effects claiming that the
“trickle-down” effect is bound to happen at some point in the longer run (“when
we are all dead” Keynes).
A much more subtle argument waiving income gap as a
substantial threat to development, is that the bulk of people in most lower
developed countries LDC have witnessed increasing incomes even though much of
that wealth has accumulated in the hands of the few richest. In other words the
situation of the entire groups concerned has improved in terms of income.
Nevertheless a more “obscure” negative effect is
undermined by this dialectic: The effect of income gap widening on the
collective happiness. It is obscure in the sense that it would be difficult to
establish objective quantitative measures.
The Idea came to me at a pre-graduation party with my
schoolmates in Italy. Almost all my Scandinavian friends were wearing the
traditional graduate’s hat. One of them, from Denmark, told me jokingly that
with this very hat he can do whatever he wants to do: work in a restaurant,
travel or even study biochemistry.
But in that innocent joke lies the essence of a very
fundamental economic difference between most developing and some developed
countries: Income gap “width”. In fact the differences (or the genii coefficient
for the matter) in wages between the highest and the lowest paying jobs in
Denmark is actually negligible compared to that in my home country of Tunisia. According
to the CIA’s GINI index table, published as part of the “world fact book”,
Tunisia ranks 63 with a 40% gini index while Denmark only comes in rank 137
with a much lower income disparity represented by a 24.8% gini index.[1]
And this fact has serious implications not only on the
job market structure but on the entire perception of one’s life. My friend
would have been just fine (income wise) if he had been a waiter. For him
opportunity is not a rare and colossal chance but it is the norm. Thus my
friend will go on a gap year: He will work for a few months and then go on to
travel and meet friends and plainly just relax. That is not the case for only
my friend, but generally for the whole generation of Scandinavians! And I hope
the reader is not mistaken, the school he is about to graduate from is an
International institution and yet his “ambitions”, even though greatly open and
flexible, are “easy” and simple.
Now if we consider mine and my similar companions’
case. Almost all my friends from LDC will go on to study a “Hard” science or
course in an American College. In this we are very lucky as the USA’s higher
education’s system is rich and can accommodate many international students on very
high scholarship coverage. This is the case for a very lucky (because the
number of talented “poor” people will always be less than the number of “poor”
people selected to study in a world class higher institutions) elite of LDC
students, and still the difference in life prospects and style will differ: The
constant “threat” of expulsion or simple removal of scholarship will push these
students to perform as best as can be performed when it comes to academia
matters. Upon completion of education there will be a haunting quest for a job
in the country of study or the MDC in general. This quest will go beyond simple
search for the best work conditions possible: For “us” it is also about family
honor, about skipping some steps of the social ladder and at the base of it all
for pure survival.
Consider now, the overwhelming majority of people in
LDC: The majority that did not get lucky enough to study or rather escape to a
MDC. In this arena, everybody still wants and strives to be doctors, engineers,
ministers and most likely presidents (if they are lucky to be in politically
developed LDC in the first place). Firstly that places enormous pressure on the
weak higher educational institution. Secondly, all “technical” manual jobs
related schools are viewed by society almost as a pre-jail school. I recall
that a middle school, in my natal Tunisian city of Bizerte, is branded with the
very degrading nickname of “Donkey school” (literally and in English). It is
denoted so just because an entire generation ago it was home to a technical
school. At the end of the educational very competitive process, economies that
are largely based on primary and secondary sectors are not suitable to
accommodate the influx of university graduates. From this emerges a very
peculiar “structural underemployment”: There are too many wannabe doctors and
presidents and there are only a few posts to fill. The Tunisian university
graduate unemployment figures are one of the most daunting examples of this
catastrophic turnout. Most likely most of the undesired graduates will end up
doing the simple jobs anyway: this time around, they will be untrained and
their existential satisfaction will be forever shattered.
What we have here is a far too large number of
underemployed depression-prone somehow young but still wasted very central
years in the alleles of corrupt universities: and that is a catastrophic
turnout is. A wide income gap produces the carrot (well-paying jobs) and the
stick (manual low paying labor). This is equally as disastrous in outcomes to
the society as a whole. For the risk is placed on the existential wellbeing of
the whole society.
2 comments:
bonne analyse de la situation
This explains the situation of nowadays, grate article !
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