Abstract
“Economies in Transition” consist of 31 countries that are in the process of transitioning from centrally planned economies and autocratically controlled political systems to free market economies and democratic forms of political governance. EITs are located in all regions of the world and include (1) the successor states to the former Soviet Union, including the Russian Federation (N = 12), (2) the countries of Central and Eastern Europe that functioned under direct Soviet control (N = 10), (3) the Baltic States of Northern Europe (N = 3), (4) Turkey (N = 1), and (5) selected countries of East and Southeast Asia (N = 5). The combined population of the EITs account for approximately 28% of the world’s total. The present chapter is the third in a series of reports on the EITs prepared by this author since the collapse of the former Soviet Union in December 1991 (Estes, Trends in world social development. Praeger, New York, 1998; Social Indicators Research 83:375–411, 2007). The time-series analysis that makes up the core of the chapter uses the author’s statistically Weighted Index of Social Progress for analyzing EIT development trends for three time periods, i.e., 1990, 2000, and 2010. Data are reported for four levels of analysis: (1) development trends occurring within the EITs vis-à-vis those of other geopolitical groupings of nations, (2) social patterns for the EITs as a group, (3) EIT subgroup variations in development, and (4) development trends occurring in each of the 31 EITs. The chapter identifies a range of policy implications for use in accelerating the pace of development over the near term within the EITs, but especially within the subgroup of EIT “Middle Performing Countries.”
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Notes
- 1.
China (1949) and the Russian Federation (1917) are still in the process of transitioning from state-controlled political systems. The transition to participatory democratic political systems is proving to be especially difficult for both countries, albeit their transformation to open market economic systems has been quite rapid.
- 2.
Unfortunately, some young people migrating from their countries – mostly young women and children – do so under criminal circumstances, often as victims of human trafficking (U.S. Department of State 2010).
- 3.
“Adequacy of social provision” refers to the changing capacity of governments to provide for the basic social, material, and other needs of the people living within their borders, e.g., for food, clothing, shelter, and access to at least basic health, education, and social services, etc. (Estes 1988).
- 4.
For methodological reasons, the ISP’s 41 indicators are divided between positive and negative indicators of social progress. On the Education Subindex, for example, higher adult illiteracy rates are negatively associated with social progress, whereas gains in primary school enrollment levels are positively associated with overall improvements in development. Thus, the ISP has been structured to achieve a balance between negative and positive factors that influence development.
- 5.
A fuller description of these procedures is summarized in Estes (1988), pp. 199–209.
- 6.
- 7.
Owing to problems of data availability, three EITs were excluded from the present analysis – Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro.
- 8.
Note: The average scores for each of the WISP’s ten subindexes was set at 10.0; thus, the theoretical range of WISP scores is 0.0–100.0, albeit owing to some unusual conditions operating in selected countries, some nations achieved scores that fell outside the theoretical range (Estes 2011).
- 9.
The current “Eurozone” group of countries includes Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain. The countries currently at greatest risk of being removed from this group are Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain (Editors 2011).
- 10.
A fuller discussion of positive social development changes occurring among the world’s poorest nations is the subject of another recent report prepared by this author (Estes 2012).
- 11.
The WISP’s 10 subindex scores (N = 161) were artificially set at a mean of 10.0 with a standard deviation of 1.0. Thus, WISP scores for 2010 ranged from a low of 17.0 to a high of 71.9 (Average =48.7, SD = 11.8). For the 31 EITs WISP scores, values ranged between 39.8 and 65.5, group WISP average scores = 53.8, and the SD was 6.7.
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Acknowledgments
Zhou Huiquan (Mary) of the Chinese University of Hong Kong is acknowledged for her research assistance in updating the statistics contained in this chapter.
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Estes, R.J. (2012). Economies in Transition: Revisiting Challenges to Quality of Life. In: Land, K., Michalos, A., Sirgy, M. (eds) Handbook of Social Indicators and Quality of Life Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2421-1_20
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