The Standard Of Living

The United Kingdom has come a long way as since the nineteen hundreds the Gross
Domestic product has risen by about 626%. So when comparing the 1970s and the
early 2000s many people argue that we were better off in the 2000s than we were in
the 1970s and this judgement is based on a number of factors which are education,
employment and unemployment, weekly earnings of selected workers, The number of
abortions, The GDP per capita, The percentage of households who own selected
consumer durables and the daily flow of vehicles. The statistics which have been
obtained on these areas should be sufficient to point out the differences in the living
standards of the two periods.
2.
In the 1970s the size of the UK economy was much smaller than it is today. The size
of the UK economy as calculated by GDP was only about 57.5 billion pounds but by
the early 2000s it had increased to over a trillion pounds. As a result of this huge
increase in the GDP it can be said that huge amounts of economic growth occurred in
between the 2 periods. As a result of this the GDP per capita increased and the UK
population is now thought to be much better off than it was before. As a result of this
the standards of living have improved as the population is generally financially better
off. Between the two time periods the level of consumption by households has also
increased. According to the index it has actually more than doubled and this will
imply that the households now have more disposable income for consumption due to
a rise in their incomes as a result of the mass economic growth that occurred between
these two time periods. The effect of economic growth on the standards of living can
also be shown by a massive increase in the number of people who own some selected
consumer durables such as telephones and washing machines. For example the
percentage of households with washing machines has increased from 65% to 94%.
This shows that the standard of living between the two periods has increased.

In the early 1970s the NHS was a disaster as the waiting lists were miles long and
there was a general dissatisfaction with the performance of the National Health
Service. By the early 2000s even though there are still waiting lists these have
reduced very dramatically in length and the services have improved. As a result if the
economic growth between these periods the government has received more revenue in
the form of taxes and as a result the government has been able to increase it’s
expenditure on health and this has led to an improvement in the health service. This
can be seen in the reuction of deaths in both males and females but mostly males as a
result of circulatory illnesses, cancers and respiratory illnesses between the 1970s and
the early 200s. The most remarkable reduction was the reduction in the death rates for
males with circu;atory illnesses which fell from about 7000 per million of population
to about 3000 per million of population. As a result of this the life expectancy of the
Briton has improved. In the early 200s it was actually speculated that every one in 5
children born in the 2000s could expect to live till they were 100 tears old. This shows
a massive improvement in the standard of living.

The number of people who go to through to higher education has also increased
between the 1970s and the early 2000s. As at 1971 the number of people in higher
education was 620 000 but as at the early 2000s this number had increased by over
100% to about 2 370 000. This not only improved the general standard of living as it
helped school leavers get better paying jobs but also improved the quality of life as a
good education is often expressed as priceless or invaluable. The numbers in nursery
schools in the 2000s was also higher than that in the 1970s. This shows that the
standards of living in the early 2000s was higher than that of the 1970s.

There has also been an increase in the total amount of people who are employed
between the 1970s and the early 2000s as there was an increase in employment of
booth male and female full time and part time workers. However the more notable of
the 2 was the increase in the number of female workers the increase was over four
million between 1971 and the early 2000s. This implies that the standard of living was
much higher in the early 2000s than in 1971.

However all that glitters is not gold and in my opinion the information before this
paragraph is not only extremely one sided but also disastrously deceptive. An
excellent example would be my last point. Yes employment increased between the
two time periods but quite ironically the number of unemployed people increased as
well. The total number of unemployed people went up from about 75million to about
87 million. So here it could actually be argued that the UK was worse off in the early
2000s than we were in the early 1970s.

Between the early 1970s and the early 2000s the number of abortions increased from
63 400 to 193 799 in the early 2000s. From this data it can be argued that the number
of rapes and teenage pregnancies increased as these are the most frequent cases of
abortions in the UK. If rapes have increased then the quality of life of many people
reduces and their living standards decrease as well. In the case f teenage pregnancies
it would show that there has been a fall in the values that a person has as more
teenagers are delving into the realms of pre-marital sex.

The number of lone parents has increased from about 7% in the early 1970s to about
10% by the early 2000s. This could imply that there has been a breakdown in the
importance of human relationships. It could be said that because we are better off
more people can now afford to be single than ever before. This reduces the quality of
parenting as it is often argued that one parent can never do the job of two. This has
been argued to have led to an increase in the number of juvenile delinquents (yobs)
who terrify many innocent people as they go about their business with vile activities
such as “egging”. This has contributed to a decline in the living standards of many
people.

Congestion has increased between the early 1970s and now as the average daily flow
of cars on our motorways has more than doubled. As a result of the increase in
vehicles traffic has increased. As at the early 2000s it was so bad that many motor
ways are referred to as car parks as there is little or no movement of cars. As our GDP
increased our individual incomes increased and more people were able to buy cars .
These cars get stuck in traffic and this leads to a reduction in the quality of life as
people spend less time with their families and more time on the roads commuting
between home and work. This has been said to have reduced our quality of life.

Since the early 1970s the level of obesity has increased nationwide. It actually started
at about the 1970s but today it is a general problem. Which has often been blamed on
the rise of the fast food industry. However research tells us that the eating of fast food
is not the primary cause obesity but it is actually inactivity, which has increased as
economic growth continued. Technological advancements have allowed us to do
much less exercise. A very god example of this would be walking. In the 1970s the
number of people with cars was less than it was in the early 2000s and so in the 1970s
people were quite likely to walk short distances like a mile, however in the early
2000s society became increasingly town based and drove even shorter distances thus
depriving themselves of the exercise that they would have gained if they had walked.
This promoted obesity and when people actually became obese it decreased their
living standards and quality of life. So it could be argued that the UK was actually
worse off in the early 2000s than it was in the early 1970s.
3.
In my opinion I do not believe that rising GDP will be sufficient to ensure that the UK
is better off in 2020 than it was in the early 2000s. GDP is a highly deceptive measure
of economic welfare as it tends to place emphasis on the income which is good but it
leaves everything else out, such as the quality of life, inflation, unemployment, life
expectancy, level of education, length of hospital waiting lists, how happy people are
generally, suicide rates and so many other things so abstract that they do not
immediately spring to mind. Rising levels of GDP may not be sufficient to ensure
that the UK is better off in 2020 because of the following reasons.

The GDP alone tells us about the size of the economy, which is fantastic, but it does
not tell us about the income per head, which is the GDP per capita. GDP per capita is
the GDP divided by the population. The UK population is currently increasing so if in
a given year the population growth exceeds the growth rate then we are worse off as
our GDP per capita declines. So therefore rising GDP alone really does not tell us
enough the standard of living or even the quality of life and if the GDP alone is not
enough to tell us about economic welfare now then by 2020 it will be “redundant”.

As GDP increases our average income is often said to increase and so does our
standard of living. However our quality of life does not always tend to increase with
our living standards. Economic growth generally leads to increases in pollution as the
current driving force of many economies now is the carbon rich black gold which also
contributes to pollution. Pollution does several things to the environment and none of
these things is beneficial to our quality of life. Usually it tends to reduce it as fumes
from factories and cars tend to make us ill. These fumes also contribute to global
warming which some doomsday scientists say is the wrath of God coming to destroy
mankind. Global warming definitely infringes on our quality of life and hence reduces
economic welfare.
Increases in GDP do not necessarily improve the distribution of income in various
countries. The distribution of income is measured by the gini coefficient. The closer
to 0 the distribution is the more equal and the closer to 1 the distribution is, the more
unequal. Usually economic growth (increases in GDP) tend to be associated with a
‘pareto gain’ which is a situation where no 2 parties become worse off. Since the
seventies as the British economy grew the poor were left stagnant and the income of
the rich increased and this actually made the poor relatively poorer. Also if GDP
continues rising there are fears that by the year 2020 this pareto gain may end as the
poor may become worse off. So rising GDP is not enough to ensure that the
distribution of income in the UK still ensures that the poor keep up with the growth
and are not made materially worse off.

By the year 2020 rising GDP may be subject to the micro-economic concept of
diminishing marginal utility. This concept argues that as consumption increases utility
increases, but after a certain point it begins to increase at a decreasing rate and at this
point diminishing marginal utility sets in. The problem is that as GDP rises our
incomes rise and so our consumption increases, the increases in consumption as a
result of the increase income may not bring us significant marginal utility. So
increases in GDP (national income) may not affect our welfare significantly.

In my opinion, if the costs of rising GDP such as pollution, and congestion at any
point in time outweigh the benefits of economic growth (rising GDP), then economic
growth is pointless. As instead of improving our standards of living or our quality of
life it actually decreases them and many great economists have come to think about
the ideas of Karl Marx in new light. If in the event that economic growth actually
reduces the quality of life and the standard of living then it will have to be stopped. If
it is stopped then capitalism as we know it will fall and then we will be forced to
move to the “next stage” of economic development which according to Karl Marx is
Socialism. As you know Karl Marx listed 6 stages of development, which are
Communalism, Slavery, Feudalism, Capitalism, Socialism and Communism.

I do not believe that rising GDP alone can ensure that the UK is better off in 2020, but
I believe that rising GDP plays a major part in doing so. For rising GDP to ensure that
the UK is better off in 2020 a number of factors would have to be included, such as
the quality of life, which would have to improve, the distribution of income and many
others.