37 research outputs found
Are pensions “growth-dependent”?
No full textLimits to growth raise concerns about “growth dependencies” or adverse social effects that follow if the economy does not grow. The first point of this article is that identifying pensions as growth-dependent is more conditional than has so far been recognized. It requires operationalizing growth dependence, making complete economic assumptions, and scoping the issue to specific pension functions. The second point is to take those steps and, with exploratory scenarios, show how growth dependence is and is not evident under all ideal-type pension-financing principles. All plans would be growth-dependent if we interpret the end of growth as lower interest rates and earnings development but higher inflation than under growth assumptions. However, no plan shows growth dependence under all assumptions. I also discuss post-growth pensions, arguing that funded pensions entail vulnerability and distributional issues that make them problematic in a non-growing system. Unfunded financing combined with comprehensive social and economic policies could work as a long-term approach. Growth dependence is an important research area. However, without specification, the concept may blur the conditionalities that generate and alleviate pension vulnerabilities
Pensions can work without economic growth:Working paper
No full textThis working paper is a tentative, solutions-oriented response to concerns that pensions would not work without economic growth. It aims to concretize post-growth visions, but also validate post-growth thinking to those who consider it too far outside the mainstream. To the contrary, this analysis begins from mainstream policy aims and economic concerns, and as its result proposes institution types that are already widespread. A pension system can be widely acceptable if it promotes three ‘provisioning aims’: poverty alleviation, income maintenance, and voluntary provisioning. Without economic growth, possible ‘adverse economic conditions’ of pension systems include low earnings; low, negative, or volatile interest rates; high inflation; and demographic aging. Additionally, even financially sustainable pension funds can have ‘adverse social effects’if their interest income is extractive, exploitative, or inequality-amplifying. I argue that three broad institution types could constitute a post-growth pension system: non-contributory (governmentfinanced) minimum/basic pensions, contributory pay-as-you-go pensions, and collective pension funds. Together they promote all three provisioning aims. The provisioning aims make tradeoffs against each other and their institutions have different weaknesses regarding adverse economic conditions and social effects. Still, even without economic growth, most wealthy economies could probably promote at least poverty elimination and income maintenance without paradigmatic reforms. To close, I anticipate four interesting aspects of post-growth pensions governance: benefit protection versus cost control, distribution versus redistribution, challenging of economic individualism, and property rights within funded pension schemes
Pensions can work without economic growth:Working paper
No full textThis working paper is a tentative, solutions-oriented response to concerns that pensions would not work without economic growth. It aims to concretize post-growth visions, but also validate post-growth thinking to those who consider it too far outside the mainstream. To the contrary, this analysis begins from mainstream policy aims and economic concerns, and as its result proposes institution types that are already widespread. A pension system can be widely acceptable if it promotes three ‘provisioning aims’: poverty alleviation, income maintenance, and voluntary provisioning. Without economic growth, possible ‘adverse economic conditions’ of pension systems include low earnings; low, negative, or volatile interest rates; high inflation; and demographic aging. Additionally, even financially sustainable pension funds can have ‘adverse social effects’if their interest income is extractive, exploitative, or inequality-amplifying. I argue that three broad institution types could constitute a post-growth pension system: non-contributory (governmentfinanced) minimum/basic pensions, contributory pay-as-you-go pensions, and collective pension funds. Together they promote all three provisioning aims. The provisioning aims make tradeoffs against each other and their institutions have different weaknesses regarding adverse economic conditions and social effects. Still, even without economic growth, most wealthy economies could probably promote at least poverty elimination and income maintenance without paradigmatic reforms. To close, I anticipate four interesting aspects of post-growth pensions governance: benefit protection versus cost control, distribution versus redistribution, challenging of economic individualism, and property rights within funded pension schemes
Pensions can work without economic growth:Working paper
No full textThis working paper is a tentative, solutions-oriented response to concerns that pensions would not work without economic growth. It aims to concretize post-growth visions, but also validate post-growth thinking to those who consider it too far outside the mainstream. To the contrary, this analysis begins from mainstream policy aims and economic concerns, and as its result proposes institution types that are already widespread. A pension system can be widely acceptable if it promotes three ‘provisioning aims’: poverty alleviation, income maintenance, and voluntary provisioning. Without economic growth, possible ‘adverse economic conditions’ of pension systems include low earnings; low, negative, or volatile interest rates; high inflation; and demographic aging. Additionally, even financially sustainable pension funds can have ‘adverse social effects’if their interest income is extractive, exploitative, or inequality-amplifying. I argue that three broad institution types could constitute a post-growth pension system: non-contributory (governmentfinanced) minimum/basic pensions, contributory pay-as-you-go pensions, and collective pension funds. Together they promote all three provisioning aims. The provisioning aims make tradeoffs against each other and their institutions have different weaknesses regarding adverse economic conditions and social effects. Still, even without economic growth, most wealthy economies could probably promote at least poverty elimination and income maintenance without paradigmatic reforms. To close, I anticipate four interesting aspects of post-growth pensions governance: benefit protection versus cost control, distribution versus redistribution, challenging of economic individualism, and property rights within funded pension schemes
Pensions can work without economic growth
No full textThis working paper is a tentative, solutions-oriented response to concerns that pensions would not work without economic growth. It aims to concretize post-growth visions, but also validate post-growth thinking to those who consider it too far outside the mainstream. To the contrary, this analysis begins from mainstream policy aims and economic concerns, and as its result proposes institution types that are already widespread. A pension system can be widely acceptable if it promotes three 'provisioning aims': poverty alleviation, income maintenance, and voluntary provisioning. Without economic growth, possible 'adverse economic conditions' of pension systems include low earnings; low, negative, or volatile interest rates; high inflation; and demographic aging. Additionally, even financially sustainable pension funds can have 'adverse social effects'if their interest income is extractive, exploitative, or inequality-amplifying. I argue that three broad institution types could constitute a post-growth pension system: non-contributory (governmentfinanced) minimum/basic pensions, contributory pay-as-you-go pensions, and collective pension funds. Together they promote all three provisioning aims. The provisioning aims make tradeoffs against each other and their institutions have different weaknesses regarding adverse economic conditions and social effects. Still, even without economic growth, most wealthy economies could probably promote at least poverty elimination and income maintenance without paradigmatic reforms. To close, I anticipate four interesting aspects of post-growth pensions governance: benefit protection versus cost control, distribution versus redistribution, challenging of economic individualism, and property rights within funded pension schemes
Wider publics as Agents of Sustainability Transitions:Tipping points in Suomi24 Online Community Energy Discourses
No full textWider publics as Agents of Sustainability Transitions:Tipping points in Suomi24 Online Community Energy Discourses
No full textL’Usage dans la pensée architecturale
No full textThis article is the English version of a paper delivered thirty years ago, in 1993, for the Laboratoire Architecture, Usage, Altérité (LAUA) and published in Les Cahiers du LAUA, 1993, 1, p. 11-19, Nantes, ENSA-Nantes, [online] [https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01563700], under the title: “L’Usage dans la pensée architecturale”.International audienceThis article is the English version of a paper presented 30 years ago, in 1993, for the Laboratoire Architecture, Usage, Altérité (LAUA). The author explores the place historically held by concepts specific to architecture in relation to its societal aims. Highlighting the fact that these concepts have become the poor cousin of architectural theory, Daniel Pinson shows the significance that ‘use’—a modern term covering societal goals that are richer and better understood today thanks to the social sciences—has every right to reclaim in a modern democratic society
The growth-independent welfare state
No full textKeeping high-income societies within their biophysical limits likely means an end to their economic growth. Welfare states, in turn, appear ‘growth-dependent’, or unable to serve their welfare provisioning and democratic legitimation functions without growth. In this chapter, we describe the growth dependence problem and offer reform options towards growth independence, a necessary condition of the eco-social polity. We discuss how welfare states have through history been justified in relation to growth and productivity and break down growth dependence into three interrelated economic categories: unemployment, low welfare state revenues and pension fund underperformance. Growth independence requires new types of economic institutions, social policies and policy doctrines for welfare provisioning and its justification. Together, these might constitute a new welfare state paradigm that departs from prior thinking
Validation of the Spanish version of the multi-affect indicator questionnaire among Spanish employed and unemployed
No full textWhereas affective well-being has been widely studied in occupational research, there is not a short questionnaire in Spanish with differentiated affects based on activation and valence. To fill that gap, this article examines the psychometric properties of the Multi-Affect Indicator Questionnaire in Spanish, a four-dimensional scale to measure well-being at work. We used an employed (n = 189) and an unemployed (n = 257) sample to test the factor structure and the invariance test through a series of confirmatory and multi-group factor analyses. Results show that the Multi-Affect Indicator Questionnaire is a valid and reliable scale with invariant four dimensions (i.e., HAPA, LAPA, LAUA, and HAUA) across both samples. Therefore, this questionnaire is highly recommended to measure differentiated affects in Spanish-speaking individuals who are employees and those who are actively seeking employment
