Economic Austerity Research Articles

Assessing Greece’s social vulnerability patterns in times of perma-crisis (2008–2022)

IntroductionThe study aims to map and analyse the development of social vulnerability patterns in Greece through a perma-crisis context (economic crisis, austerity, covid-19, energy, and inflation crisis) over the period 2008-2022.MethodsThe paper rests on the construction of a composite index of four key pillars of social vulnerability (employment, living conditions, health, and education) consisting of 15 selected variables obtained from the official Eurostat datasets and using PCA analysis.ResultsOur findings show that social vulnerability patterns in Greece demonstrate a considerable shift during the stated period where certain social groups (i.e., NEETs and precarious workers) seem to suffer the most. The first pattern (2008-2016) is largely characterized by the intensity and severity of the economic crisis and austerity measures, which contributed to the exacerbation of social vulnerability. The second pattern (2017-2022) presents a gradual decline mainly due to the recovery of the economy and a decrease in unemployment rates featuring a strong tendency to reach the pre-crisis levels in the years to come.DiscussionThe high levels of social vulnerability leading to social exclusion, poverty, and the widening of inequalities, impede the country’s resilience and recovery efforts and undermine social cohesion.

Assessing stigma: Health and social worker regard towards working with people using illicit drugs in Athens, Greece

BackgroundAfter the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and resulting economic austerity, the rise in illicit drug use engendered an increased need for people who use drugs (PWUD) to access medical care, compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. Research shows that perceptions of medical staff towards PWUD facilitate or act as a barrier to accessing health care. This study provides a better understanding of health and social work professionals’ perceptions by assessing stigma levels towards PWUD in Athens, Greece.MethodsThis is a mixed-method study. It calculates the stigma score for professionals (n = 60) and the stigma score associated with specific drugs based on the Medical Condition Regard Scale through a quantitative analysis of responses to a semi-structured online survey about attitudes of health and social work professionals towards PWUD. It draws on the qualitative analysis of 12 semi-structured interviews with 16 service managers, providers, and health services advocates working in the charity sector to determine whether perceptions of PWUD affect writing and implementing policy and protocols for services.ResultsStigma towards PWUD exists amongst health and social work professionals in Athens. Professionals who have worked with PWUD for longer periods of time, professionals who have had specific training on working with PWUD, and professionals who feel that they have the necessary training to work with PWUD all demonstrated a higher stigma score than those reporting the opposite. Cannabis and opioids were associated with lower stigma scores while shisha had the highest level of stigma associated with it. Finally, professional environments are not conducive to alleviating stigma as the lack of training specific to stigma, the lack of professional supervision, and worker burn-out are key barriers faced by professionals in their everyday practice.ConclusionsReducing and eliminating stigma towards PWUD among health and social workers requires immediate action. Measures to be taken include: introducing training programs focused on stigma towards PWUD to healthcare providers, social workers, lawyers, police, the media; increasing professional supervision on field work for health and social workers; introducing low barrier health care and specialist units. Peers and field-focused organisations should meaningfully participate in drug and alcohol policymaking, program development, and implementation.

Decreasing Productivity in the Primary Healthcare: A Study of the Brazilian Case

ABSTRACT: In 2015, the United Nations (UN) proposed the 2030 Agenda, a resolution that outlines the global goals for sustainable development. This report focuses on promoting health and well-being, emphasizing the importance of primary healthcare (PHC). However, Brazil faces challenges in managing its healthcare system, exacerbated by fiscal policy changes that have reduced public sector expenditures after 2015. This study was motivated by these recent changes in Brazil’s fiscal policy. We evaluated potential fluctuations in total factor productivity (TFP) in 5,524 Brazilian municipalities’ primary healthcare from 2015 to 2019. TFP, a measure of efficiency and production technology in PHC, was computed using the bootstrapping Malmquist productivity index (MPI) derived from the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) algorithm. This study focused on the economic recession and austerity measures initiated in 2015. Moreover, it’s essential to highlight that the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in Brazil in 2020 brought significant changes to the country’s economic, social, and health dynamics. Therefore, this research intentionally concentrated on the pre-pandemic period. Our results revealed that TFP in the PHC sector in Brazil decreased between 2015 and 2019. It was possible to note that three out of every four Brazilian municipalities experienced either stagnation or a decline in the TFP of primary healthcare, with more pronounced challenges in the Midwest and Northeast regions. Looking at the TFP elements, we could see a continuous drop in technical efficiency everywhere in the country, markedly in the Midwest and Northeast. Conversely, there was a considerable uptick in Brazil’s technological component. These results implied that there might have been advancements in PHC’s technological infrastructure, preventing even less favorable outcomes in the TFP indicator. We concluded that the productivity of primary healthcare in Brazil declined when the 2015 fiscal ceiling was implemented. This decrease in performance was evident in the sluggish growth rate of primary healthcare inputs, a diminution in vaccination coverage indicators, and an increase in hospitalizations for preventable causes. Given that health is a crucial component of social well-being, it is vital to highlight the need for comprehensive efforts to guarantee the effective operation and advancement of primary healthcare services, even during economic downturns.

Negative interest rate policy and banks' earnings management

Using bank-level data from 35 OECD countries over the period 2011–2018, we examine the impact of the introduction of negative interest rate policy on banks' earnings management. Overall, our findings underscore the unintended positive consequence of unconventional economic policy and austerity measures aimed at stimulating the economy on the earnings quality of banks.

Entrepreneurship as conditionality: New geographies of work(fare) in mental health services under austerity

This paper investigates work undertaken by clients of voluntary sector mental health services in the context of austerity. While mental health geographers have often interrogated ‘work cures’, little attention has been paid to client work within traditional care-oriented services. Drawing on interviews and fieldwork in a mental health day centre threatened with closure, I demonstrate that client fundraising can become a crucial source of income when marketised services face budget cuts. Clients are incentivised to act as entrepreneurs, developing creative strategies to secure funding. I conceptualise this as a novel form of conditionality, as access to services comes to depend on entrepreneurial activities. Existing theories offer a narrow conception of conditionality, as behavioural standards imposed through rules. Entrepreneurship appears more flexible, autonomous and voluntary than such rule-based conditionalities. Yet in practice clients face the same choice: work or lose access to welfare provision. I argue that entrepreneurship transforms the institutional geographies of services, directing them towards economic productivity. This can undermine longstanding practices of care, leading some clients to withdraw from services. By focussing on client responses to austerity, this paper makes a crucial contribution to geographical research into voluntary sector precarity, which has tended to focus on staff. More broadly, it advances understandings of the institutional geographies which embed the politics and economics of austerity within everyday experiences of care provision.

Austerity: An environmentally dangerous idea

The article examines austerity as a policy and practice that is dangerous not only for human societies and economies, but also for more-than-human ecologies and lives. Often presented as an economic tool that can 'fix' an economic crisis, austerity nevertheless carries serious environmental consequences which are not systematically documented or theorized. Here, we sketch a political ecology agenda for understanding austerity as environmental politics, focusing on three facets. First, austerity as justification for intensifying environmental destruction in the name of economic recovery. Second, austerity as a catalyst for increasing socio-environmental inequality, exacerbating colonial extractivism, and complexifying North/South binaries. Third, austerity as a socio-environmental condition that can kindle innovative environmental protection movements; but can also exacerbate climate denialism and new forms of 'othering.' The framework we offer here is pertinent at the aftermath of consecutive economic, pandemic, and inflation-induced austerity periods, when aggressive pro-growth agendas fast become normalized as prime recovery strategies. 

Cultural narrative, crisis, and contention in Iceland's bid to join the European Union, 2009–2015

In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, Iceland launched a bid to join the European Union. Joining the EU was presented domestically as a key to economic recovery and as a preventative measure against future economic distress. The bid itself was framed within a rapidly shifting political landscape, set against a backdrop of spreading economic malaise across Europe, accompanied by economic bailout plans and austerity measures. Several aspects of the bid's ultimate failure demonstrate the importance of identities and narratives around national independence and European integration. Most saliently, widespread perceptions about what it would mean to join the EU, particularly around sensitive notions of sovereignty, proved insurmountable to the more economistic rationale of the pro-EU campaign. The Icelandic bid thus presents a distinct opportunity to drill down into the complex relationships between austerity economics, popular politics, and the European integration project, with significant policy implications. To better understand the emergence of the bid and its failure in sociopolitical terms we assess different conceptual frameworks, including functionalist, intergovernmentalist, and post-functionalist approaches and theoretical perspectives on crisis and contentious politics. We also include voices of Icelandic citizens from civil society and government collected in research interviews between 2012 and 2018. Overall, our comparative theoretical approach and original case data sharpen an emphasis in the social sciences and policy research on the importance of cultural narrative and identity as key determinants of EU integration.

1.N. Workshop: Improving the wellbeing of the health workforce in Europe: Issues and lessons from Ireland

Abstract Health systems have been subject to a series of crises over the last fifteen years from economic austerity to the COVID-19 pandemic and now the cost of living crisis. At the same time many high-income countries have bolstered their own deficient supply of health workers by importing skilled health professionals from other countries. The health workforce has borne the brunt of each of these shocks and it is no surprise that there is demotivation, burnout and high attrition across staff cadres across Europe. Not enough is known about the root causes of these phenomena and therefore what can be done to effectively enhance workforce wellbeing and engagement and also assist health systems to deal effectively with the legacy of pent up demand from the pandemic which is threatening to overwhelm services. This session seeks to identify and evaluate the different factors that have led to disengagement of staff and assess strategies to improve staff wellbeing, retention and health system recovery, based on quantitative and qualitative research. Three case studies from Ireland distinguish different elements of the problem: 1) an investigation of the dimensions of disengagement and their underlying causes after austerity across staff cadres with particular focus on bullying and discrimination 2) an evaluation of turnover amongst nurses post COVID and the factors which are linked to this, and 3) an examination of racial attitudes and discrimination towards non-Irish health professionals in Irish hospitals. Each study highlights particular factors which have caused disengagement and evaluates their consequences and causes. Together they paint a powerful picture of a health system and its workforce struggling to cope with crisis after crisis, mismanagement and ambitious change programmes. A fourth presentation will compare and contrast this picture with analysis from other high-income countries and examine optimal investment strategies to solve the heath workforce problems. This high-level analysis places the Irish case studies in perspective and allows a more thorough evaluation of key factors and strategies to turn round the situation across Europe. Each presenter will be given a strict deadline of 10 minutes each by the chair and then the audience will be invited to debate the problems identified and strategies proposed to discuss: (i) the appropriate course of action for health systems in Europe at this time, (ii) the conditions under which strategies will achieve the desired results for the health workforce and (iii) how and whether a coordinated approach across Europe would be more effective. Key messages • This session will improve understanding of the causes of burnout, disengagement and high turnover amongst the health workforce in order to address these problems. • Strategies for investing in the education, protection and wellbeing of the European health workforce will be evaluated to assist with our readiness for future shocks.

Civil disobedience and lawfare: Protest movement and contentious politics in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

AbstractAfter the US‐led invasion of Iraq, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) appeared to be on a path toward consolidation of liberal democracy. While the rest of Iraq drifted into chaos and civil war, the KRI remained quiescent and was for many years hailed by outsiders as: “a beacon of hope”, “an oasis of stability and democracy”. The region adopted the principles of press freedoms, religious tolerance, and good governance to conform with United States (US) and western incentives. The adoption of procedural democracy, however, concealed an underlying system of rigid social regulation based on a two‐party power sharing agreement that resisted democratization while appropriating its parlance and institutional structures. The government's resistance to liberalization along with its lack of resilience to political and economic shocks promoted popular disillusionment with the Kurdish nation‐building project with the region's dominant political parties at the center. In response, the ruling parties have sought to exert influence through alternatives to the democratic process that reinforce partisan rule. This article argues that economic crisis and austerity have precipitated the expansion in the scope of dissent and hastened the demise of the power sharing arrangement in the KRI. The ruling political parties have since employed a variety of undemocratic means to manage popular grievances. However, these responses do not address significant public concerns regarding freedom of expression, unemployment, and governance issues.

Changing trends in child welfare inequalities in Northern Ireland

ObjectivesThis study uses longitudinal administrative data to investigate the relationship between area level deprivation and the 1) referral, 2) investigation, 3) registration and 4) looked-after stages of children’s contact with child and family social work in Northern Ireland (NI) from 2010-2017 (stages 1-3) and 2010-2020 (stage 4).
 MethodsChildren’s social care data (SOSCARE database) for the years 2010 to 2020 were obtained from the Honest Broker Service in NI. The data were linked with the 2017 NI Multiple Deprivation Measure through the family of origin postcode. Cross-tabulations of year and deprivation decile were used to produce frequencies of children who experienced the four levels of intervention within each of the study years. These were then used to calculate various measures of absolute and relative inequality including the Slope Index of Inequality (SII), the Relative Ratio of Inequality (RRI) and the Relative Index of Inequality (RII).
 ResultsThere was a clear and increasing social gradient in child welfare interventions over time. Children referred to children’s social care during 2010-2017 were 4-5 times more likely to come from the most deprived areas compared to the least deprived. Despite fairly stable levels of referral inequality, the ratio of children subject to child protection investigations rose from 3 in 2010 to 6 in 2017, the ratio of children subject to child protection plans rose from 4.5 in 2010 to 8 in 2017 and the ratio of children looked after rose from 4 in 2010 to 9 in 2020. This widening inequality was largely driven by the increasing involvement of younger children from the most deprived areas in child protection and looked-after processes.
 ConclusionIn an environment of economic austerity and reduced spending, we are intervening in the lives of children and families living in the most deprived areas of NI at disproportionate rates. The current independent review of children’s social care offers an opportunity to reconfigure current provision with a clear inequalities focus.

Expropriation of Rights, Dependent Capitalism and Transfer of Income: Reflections on the Effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic

The text focuses on taking stock of income transfer programs in Brazil in order to bring subsidies to analyze these initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic. The result of a bibliographical review and documentary research, the article points out that monetary aid was the main form of protection against pauperization in the capitalist periphery during the health crisis, but ensuring the maintenance of the neoliberal fiscal and economic austerity agenda. The conclusions show that income transfer programs in dependent countries, where the relationship between expropriation and overexploitation prevails, were enlarged with the COVID-19 pandemic, thus helping to ensure the expanded reproduction of dependency conditions by maintaining the stagnant relative overpopulation in informality and precarious work that increased during the health crisis.

Excellence in art is unutterable: interview with Isidore Diala

In this interview with Chibueze Darlington Anuonye, Nigerian writer and respected literary scholar Isidore Diala speaks about his recently published play, The Truce, and about the impact of literary prizes on his creative and scholarly careers, highlighting the prospects and challenges of writing and publishing in Africa, where the economic capital of literature is daunted by the economic austerity of the continent.

Migrants, refugees, invaders: responses to the Riace Model’s inclusive citizenship project

ABSTRACT In imagining a post-nationalistic and post-racialized future, the refugee hospitality and integration project implemented in Italy, known as the Modello Riace (Riace Model), sought to use state-funded, sustainable activities to encourage asylum seekers to mix with locals and settle in the economically depressed and depopulated areas of southern Italy. The project navigated legal frameworks and defied rampant ethno-nationalism to integrate refugees during the Mediterranean migrant crisis and to mitigate the associated climate of hostility towards them. The experiment prompted a political backlash and stirred paranoia about an imagined ethnic replacement of Italians. This paper introduces the Riace Model’s humanitarian vision and its interaction with the social solidarity economic sector in Italy after the 2008 financial crisis. It analyses interviews with the then-mayor of Riace, Domenico Lucano, and their reception on social media, to examine notions of humanitarianism and citizenship in Italy. Highlighting the contrast between Riace’s imagined future and hostile views of refugees as invaders and criminals, the study demonstrates the conflict that arose at a time of economic austerity. The study also illustrates how public figures became proxies for opposing factions, discusses the Model’s legacy, and highlights the challenges facing future integration schemes.

Consensus under strain: policy ideas and decline of Finnish public innovation funding in the 2010s

Over the last three decades, the literature on innovation policy and ideas has expanded. Yet the ideas deployed by governments and elected politicians in day-to-day budgetary discourses have mostly escaped research attention. Against this background, this article provides an extensive empirical case study on the policy ideas (policy solutions and related problem definitions) invoked in the Finnish government and parliamentary discourses over budget allocations to the Finnish innovation funding and governance agency in the 2010s. The article argues that the interplay of three policy ideas motivated the Finnish governments and members of parliament to decrease public innovation funding in the 2010s. It is suggested that policymakers’ interpretations of macroeconomic developments, institutions and industrial change shaped the salience and feasibility of these ideas. The Finnish case illustrates that during prolonged economic crises austerity and business subsidies are particularly powerful policy ideas.

A Public Health, Whole-of-Government Approach to National Suicide Prevention Strategies

A Public Health, Whole-of-Government Approach to National Suicide Prevention Strategies

The Neoliberal Turn that Never Was: Breaking with the Standard Narrative of Mitterrand's tournant de la rigueur

On 10 May 1981, French voters elected a socialist president, François Mitterrand, whose programmes promised to change their daily lives. Less than two years later, his government definitively endorsed economic austerity. The adverse international context, it was argued at the time, forced France to prioritise its European commitments over radical reform of capitalism. Since then, most commentators have interpreted this decision either as a betrayal by the socialist elites or as a symbol of their economic incompetence. This article reappraises these narratives. Based on archival research and a large body of lesser-known critical French-language scholarship, it contends that the 1983 austerity plan was neither a sudden shift nor a neoliberal turn. Without denying the crucial political and symbolic dimensions of the decisions of the left in 1983, the article also shows that the crucial stages of the liberalisation of French capitalism occurred in fact later in the decade.

How to escape from the debt trap: Lessons from the past

AbstractRising public debt everywhere has raised the question of how to reduce debt again in the future. High public debt also seems to be an impediment for the exit of central banks from ultra‐low interest rates and quantitative easing. Historical precedents and proposals have included austerity, haircuts and the generation of inflation. Each way has advantages and disadvantages, including uncertainty about effects and side effects. We approach the issue from an historical perspective, based on case studies of prominent approaches to debt reduction. We analyse debt reduction through economic austerity in Italy, hyperinflation in Germany after World War I, inflation in Argentina since the 1980s, currency reform in Germany after WW II, and financial repression in the United States and the United Kingdom after WW II. Finally, we discuss Ronald McKinnon's order of economic and financial liberalisation as well as the Chicago Plan combined with the introduction of central bank digital currencies as an option for the future.

Spaces for music in English state secondary schools and the crisis of democracy, 1976–1982

ABSTRACT This article examines documentation from a previously unpublished architectural survey of English comprehensive secondary school music classrooms, conducted between 1976 and 1978 by a team of Department of Education and Science architects led by David and Mary Medd on behalf of a Schools Council music curriculum research project directed by John Paynter. Close readings of the results of the survey and the circumstances leading to its eventual withdrawal guide an examination of the ways foundational child-centred music curriculum research and early musical postmodernism were articulated in relation to the crisis of deindustrialisation and the first experiments in economic austerity. The conclusion examines the later appropriation and transformation of Paynter’s ideas in English music education policy, and argues that music critics and historians are wrong to denounce the postmodern aesthetics of progressive pedagogies as ‘neoliberal culture’, as neoliberal policy’s actual investments have been in an anti-democratic apparatus of canon and competition.

Temporal trends of morbidities, and risk and protective factors for noncommunicable diseases in elderly residents in Brazilian capitals.

To analyze the temporal trends of prevalence of morbidities, risk and protection factors for noncommunicable diseases in elderly residents in Brazilian capitals between 2006 and 2021. A time series study with data from the Surveillance System of Risk and Protective Factors for Chronic Diseases by Telephone Inquiry. The variables analyzed were: high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, overweight, obesity, consumption of alcoholic beverages, soft drinks, fruits and vegetables, and the practice of physical activity. Prais-Winsten regression and Interrupted Time Series from 2006 to 2014 and 2015 to 2021 were used. From 2006 to 2021, for the total elderly population, there was an increase in diabetes (19.2 to 28.4%), alcohol consumption (2.5 to 3.2%), overweight (52.4 to 60.7%) and obesity (16.8 to 21.8%), and a reduction in the prevalence of smokers (9.4 to 7.4%) and in soft drink consumption (17 to 8.7%). By the interrupted series, between 2015 and 2021, there was stability in the prevalence of diabetes, female smokers, overweight among men, obesity in the total and male population, and soft drink consumption. Over the years, there have been changes and worsening in the indicators analyzed, such as an increase in diabetes, alcohol consumption, overweight, and obesity, which reinforces the importance of continuous monitoring and sustainability programs to promote the health, especially in the context of economic crisis, austerity, and COVID-19 pandemic.

Interrogating the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in Malawi

This paper interrogates the implementation of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in Malawi, with a focus on its impacts on the livelihoods of the working class and poor people. The SAP was superimposed by the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), since 1981, to recover an ailing economy through economic austerity measures and to promote sustainable development. This paper critically discusses the key effects of the SAP in the long run, looking in particular at the effects on the unemployment rate, falling real wages, Malawians’ poor living standards and food insecurity. The analysis is based on data from the National Statistical Office for the period 1981 to 2022 and a review of the literature on SAPs in Malawi. The paper argues that the implementation of the SAPs in Malawi has not protected wage labourers and poor people’s livelihoods, but rather it has exacerbated the downward spiral of Malawi’s economy and citizens’ living standards. And it posits that development policy guidelines should not conceal power relations that compound social and economic ills, but should be transparent and targeted to solve economic problems of developing countries, protect the working class, and improve the livelihoods of poor people.