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A Brighter Future
Improving the Standard of Living Now and for the Next Generation
Edited by Richard P.F. Holt, Southern Oregon University;
Daphne T. Greenwood, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Foreword by Robert H. Frank
As the United States continues its slow climb out of the Great Recession, it is important to
focus on new directions to improve the standard of living in America. This book explores what
is behind a faltering standard of living in the United States since the early 1980s and what can
be done to restore it. The book is uniquely valuable in going beyond mainstream thinking
about how to restore prosperity. Economics has traditionally equated economic growth
(increases in per capita income) with improvements in quality of life and the standard of living. This book questions that
assumption. The different chapters in the book show the standard of living as being more than income, to include many non-market
aspects such as access to public goods (roads, clean air and water, schools, parks, and museums), intangible aspects of quality of
life such as equity and a sense of community, and broadly based economic opportunities. This means that improving the standard
of living is a multi-dimensional challenge rather than one of solely increasing aggregate demand, productivity, or GDP. This book
embodies a pluralistic approach and draws on the expertise of a wide array of thinkers. The intended audience is for various
courses offered in economics, sociology, political science, public policy programs, and in environmental and ecological studies.
“In this pathbreaking volume, Ric Holt and Daphne Greenwood have enlisted an extremely talented group of scholars to
share their thinking about how we might turn things around. Readers who study the papers will come away with a renewed
sense of optimism. Collectively, their authors make a compelling case that we can well afford what needs to be done …
Read this volume carefully, and be stimulated to launch some intelligent discussion of your own. From there, what happens
is anyone’s guess.”
—From the Foreword by Robert H. Frank, Henrietta Louis Professor of
Management and Professor of Economics, Cornell University
Selected Contents:
Foreword, Robert H. Frank
Acknowledgments
Introduction, Richard P.F. Holt and Daphne T. Greenwood
Part I: Recent History and Prospects for the American
Standard of Living
1. Improving the Standard of Living: Income, Quality of Life, and
Sustainability, Daphne T. Greenwood and Richard P.F. Holt
2. Economic Well-Being in the United States: A Historical and
Comparative Perspective, Ajit Zacharias, Edward N. Wolff,
Thomas Masterson, and Selcuk Eren
3. Measuring the Standard of Living: Quality of Life and Income
Differences in the United States, Thomas M. Power
4. Achieving a Brighter Future from the Bottom Up: Activist
Laissez Faire Social Policy, David Colander
Part II: Lagging Incomes and the Middle Class Dream
5. The Future of Middle-Class Jobs: Macroeconomic Effects and
Shrinking Unions, Paul J. Kozlowksi and Steven Spirn
6. Low Paid Workers: The Minimum Wage and Employment in
the United States and France, David Howell, Bert M. Azizoglu,
and Anna Okatenko
7. Opportunity and Mobility: The American Dream and the
Standard of Living, Daphne T. Greenwood and Richard P.F. Holt
8. Reducing Child Poverty in America: The Effects of a Paid
Parental Leave Policy, Steven Pressman and Robert Scott III
Part III: Policies to Improve Quality of Life and Sustainability
9. Raising the Standard of Living Through Jobs that Lessen
Climate Change, Robert Pollin
10. Food, the Environment, and a Good Standard of Living,
Emily Northrop
11. Improving the Standard of Living Through Investments in
Intangible Capital, John Tomer
About the Editors and Contributors
Index
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-7656-3488-7 / Price: $79.95
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-7656-3489-4 / Price: $29.95
Pages: 312 / Pub. Date: July 2014
Includes: Tables, figures, foreword, index.
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A Brighter Future
Improving the Standard of Living Now and for the Next Generation
Edited by Richard P.F. Holt and Daphne T. Greenwood
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