Care Economy 15 results

The False Economy of Big Food. And the case for a new food economy | Report

New analysis commissioned by the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) has found that the costs of Britain’s unhealthy food system amount to £268 billion every year – almost equivalent to the total annual UK healthcare spend. The report by Professor Tim Jackson provides the first comprehensive estimate of the food-related cost of chronic disease, caused by the current food system.

WHO non-communicable diseases Global Monitoring Framework: Pandemic resilience in sub-Saharan Africa and Low-income Countries | Journal Paper

This study provides an empirical assessment of how effective the WHO’s Global Monitoring Framework for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) has been in improving COVID-19 resilience in low-income countries. Our findings suggest that future global health policies should focus on the link between NCDs and infectious diseases, especially for vulnerable populations.

Health resilience and the global pandemic: the effect of social conditions on the COVID-19 mortality rate | Journal paper

This paper shows that countries with robust health-related policy targets aimed at reducing non-communicable diseases (NCDs) experienced significantly lower mortality rates during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Growth dependency in the welfare state | Journal Paper

Modern economies rely on economic growth for stability and prosperity, but this dependence is ecologically unsustainable. Understanding growth dependency is crucial. This paper proposes a sector-led framework to transform these reliances and disrupt their inevitability.

From Davos to Reykjavík: decoupling wellbeing from growth | Keynote at Icelandic Wellbeing Economy Forum, 12 June 2023

In June this year, Iceland’s Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdóttir hosted the first Wellbeing Economy Forum in Reykjavík. Tim Jackson’s keynote there explored the relationship between the ‘wellbeing economy’ and the ‘growth economy’ teasing out where the logic of wellbeing differs from the logic of growth.

Imagining a postgrowth world | Speech at the EU Beyond Growth Conference, 17 May 2023

Growth is unsustainable. But the world beyond growth is frightening. We have built an economy that is dependent on growth. We must learn anew how society works, when the economy is not growing. And we need to confront the impossibility theorems presented to us by those who resist change.

The invisible heart: postgrowth economy as care | EU Beyond Growth Conference, 15 May 2023

Care is an anathema to capitalism. Its virtues are capitalism’s vices. Its employment-rich foundation for wellbeing is capitalism’s ‘productivity crisis’. Yet, without care we are nothing, our progress is nothing. Without care there is no economy.

Pathways towards Sustainable Prosperity in the EU | Second Post-Growth conference at EU Parliament

On 15-17 May 2023, scientists, politicians, policymakers and civil society organisations are gathering in Brussels for the second Post-Growth Conference for Europe. The event is a cross-party initiative of 20 Members of the European Parliament, supported by a wide-range of partner organisations.

Towards a Model of Baumol’s Cost Disease in a Postgrowth Economy—developments of the FALSTAFF stock-flow consistent (SFC) model

This working paper describes an extension of the stock-flow consistent FALSTAFF model to test the existence of a monetary growth imperative. The extension is designed to simulate the phenomenon known as Baumol’s cost disease which arises from the existence of differential labour productivity rates in a mixed economy.

A critique of the marketisation of long-term residential and nursing home care | Journal Paper

Long-term care systems across countries within the OECD have undergone a progressive marketisation and financialisation in recent decades. In this Personal View, we argue that the accomapnying neoliberal market values make poor guiding principles for the care sector, identifying the dysfunctional dynamics that arise as a result, and reflecting on the clinical implications of each, with a focus on facility-based care.

Why health should replace wealth as the heart of prosperity | Blog by Tim Jackson and Julian Sheather

The economic system to which we are in thrall throws us out of balance, Tim Jackson and Julian Sheather write in this blog. By failing to meet our most essential needs it is doomed to immiserate and, ultimately, sicken us. We urgently need to regain a richer, more satisfying understanding of ourselves, and our place in the world. (This article first appeared on the BMJ website.)

Tackling growth dependency—the case of adult social care | Report and Briefing

Paper by Christine Corlet Walker and Tim Jackson, presenting a systematic approach to identifying, analysing and transforming growth dependencies in the welfare state. Using adult social care as the case study, the paper explores how growing demand, rising costs and rent seeking can create growth dependencies.

Welfare systems without economic growth | Review paper

Welfare systems across the OECD face many combined challenges, with rising inequality, demographic changes and environmental crises likely to drive up welfare demand in the coming decades. Economic growth is no longer a sustainable solution to these problems. It is therefore imperative that we consider how welfare systems will cope with these challenges in the absence of economic growth. This paper by Christine Corlet Walker, Angela Druckman together with Tim Jackson reviews the literature tackling this complex problem.

Careless Finance—Operational and economic fragility in adult social care | CUSP Working Paper

Adult social care across the OECD is in crisis. Covid-19 has exposed deep fragilities. Principal amongst these is the process of marketisation and financialisation of the social care sector. In this paper, we take a critical perspective on this process. We find that marketisation has facilitated the conditions for both financial fragility and operational failure.

Let’s be less productive—Restoring the value of care | Opinion piece for The New York Times

The challenges facing the world and the UK today are unprecedented. A global health emergency, a global climate crisis, and a catastrophic loss of biodiversity are undermining the basis for future prosperity in the UK and across the world. This article, written for The New York Times in 2012, speaks to the theme of restoring the value of decent work to its rightful place at the heart of society.