The Great Regression refers to worsening economic conditions affecting lower earning sections of the population in the United States, Western Europe and other
advanced economies starting around 1981. These deteriorating conditions include rising
inequality; and falling or
stagnating wages, pensions, unemployment insurance, and welfare benefits. The decline in these conditions has been by no means uniform. Specific trends vary depending on the metric being tracked, the country, and which specific demographic is being examined. For most advanced economies, the worsening economic conditions affecting the less well off accelerated sharply after the
Late-2000s recession.
[
The Great Regression contrasts with the "Great Prosperity" or Golden Age of Capitalism, where from the late 1940s to mid 1970s, economic growth delivered benefits which were broadly shared across the earnings spectrums, with inequality falling as the poorest sections of society increased their incomes at a faster rate than the richest.
]
Examples
Some of the trends making up the great regression pre-date 1981. Such as stagnating wages for production and non-supervisory workers in the U.S. private sector; real wages for these workers peaked in 1973. Or the divergence in increases of productivity and pay for such workers: these two factors tended to increase in "lock-step" until about 1973, but then diverged sharply, with productivity increasing massively over the following decades, while pay stagnated. The break down of Bowley's law, the apparently near fixed proportion of economic output going to workers, is another enduring change which began around the mid 1970s.
Causes
Robert Reich considers the main cause to be political, with the rich better able to influence politics.economic trend
*all the economic indicators that are the subject of economic forecasting
**see also: econometrics
*general trends in the economy, see: economic history.
*general trends in the academic field of economics, see: history of economics
Hist ...
s have been increasingly blamed on technological unemployment
Technological unemployment is the loss of jobs caused by technological change. It is a key type of structural unemployment.
Technological change typically includes the introduction of labour-saving "mechanical-muscle" machines or more effici ...
, and with recently increased uptake of robots and automation in the emerging economies, there are concerns that workers there too may soon suffer from the great regression.
See also
* 2000s commodities boom
The 2000s commodities boom or the commodities super cycle was the rise of many physical commodity prices (such as those of food, oil, metals, chemicals and fuels) during the early 21st century (2000–2014), following the Great Commodities Depress ...
* Great Recession
The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...
* Great Recession in the United States
* Financial crisis of 2007–08
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline o ...
* Late capitalism
* Savings and loan crisis
* Share repurchase
* Stock market crash
A stock market crash is a sudden dramatic decline of stock prices across a major cross-section of a stock market, resulting in a significant loss of paper wealth. Crashes are driven by panic selling and underlying economic factors. They often f ...
* '' The Great Stagnation''
References
External links
Charts on the New York Times comparing the Great Regression with the "Great Prosperity" of 1947 - 1979.
{{United States – Commonwealth of Nations recessions
1990s economic history
2000s economic history
2010s economic history