Economic in the context of De-industrialization

Standard of living is the level of income, comforts and services available to an individual, community or society. A contributing factor to an individual's quality of life, standard of living is generally concerned with objective metrics outside an individual's personal control, such as economic, societal, political, and environmental matters. Individuals or groups use the standard of living to evaluate where to live in the world, or when assessing the success of society.

In international law, an "adequate standard of living" was first described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and further described in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. To evaluate the impact of policy for sustainable development, different disciplines have defined Decent Living Standards in order to evaluate or compare relative living experience.

Poverty is a state or condition in which an individual lacks the financial resources and essentials for a basic standard of living. Poverty can have diverse environmental, legal, social, economic, and political causes and effects. When evaluating poverty in statistics or economics there are two main measures: absolute poverty which compares income against the amount needed to meet basic personal needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter; secondly, relative poverty measures when a person cannot meet a minimum level of living standards, compared to others in the same time and place. The definition of relative poverty varies from one country to another, or from one society to another.

Statistically, as of 2019, most of the world's population live in poverty: in PPP dollars, 85% of people live on less than $30 per day, two-thirds live on less than $10 per day, and 10% live on less than $1.90 per day. According to the World Bank Group in 2020, more than 40% of the poor live in conflict-affected countries. Even when countries experience economic development, the poorest citizens of middle-income countries frequently do not gain an adequate share of their countries' increased wealth to leave poverty. Governments and non-governmental organizations have experimented with a number of different policies and programs for poverty alleviation, such as electrification in rural areas or housing first policies in urban areas. The international policy frameworks for poverty alleviation, established by the United Nations in 2015, are summarized in Sustainable Development Goal 1: "No Poverty".

A great power is a nation, state or empire that, through its economic, political and military strength, is able to exert power and influence not only over its own region of the world, but beyond to others. A great power typically possesses military, economic, and diplomatic strength that it can wield to influence the actions of middle or small powers.

In a modern context, recognized great powers first arose in Europe during the post-Napoleonic era. The formalization of the division between small powers and great powers came about with the signing of the Treaty of Chaumont in 1814.

Ownership is the state or fact of legal possession and control over property, which may be any asset, tangible or intangible. Ownership can involve multiple rights, collectively referred to as title, which may be separated and held by different parties.

The process and mechanics of ownership are fairly complex: one can gain, transfer, and lose ownership of property in a number of ways. To acquire property one can purchase it with money, trade it for other property, win it in a bet, receive it as a gift, inherit it, find it, receive it as damages, earn it by doing work or performing services, make it, or homestead it. One can transfer or lose ownership of property by selling it for money, exchanging it for other property, giving it as a gift, misplacing it, or having it stripped from one's ownership through legal means such as eviction, foreclosure, seizure, or taking. Ownership implies that the owner of a property also owns any economic benefits or deficits associated with the property.

In economic and environmental fields, decoupling refers to an economy that would be able to grow without corresponding increases in environmental pressure. In many economies, increasing production (GDP) raises pressure on the environment. An economy that would be able to sustain economic growth while reducing the amount of resources such as water or fossil fuels used and delink environmental deterioration at the same time would be said to be decoupled. Environmental pressure is often measured using emissions of pollutants, and decoupling is often measured by the emission intensity of economic output.

Studies have found that absolute decoupling was rare and that only a few industrialised countries had weak decoupling of GDP from "consumption-based" CO₂ production. No evidence was found of national or international economy-wide decoupling in a study in 2020. In cases where evidence of decoupling exists, one proposed explanation is the transition to a service economy. The environmental Kuznets curve is a proposed model for eco-economic decoupling.

A great power is a sovereign state that is recognized as having the ability and expertise to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength, as well as diplomatic and soft power influence, which may cause middle or small powers to consider the great powers' opinions before taking actions of their own. International relations theorists have posited that great power status can be characterized into power capabilities, spatial aspects, and status dimensions.

While some nations are widely considered to be great powers, there is considerable debate on the exact criteria for great power status. Historically, great powers have been formally recognized as members of organizations such as the Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 or the United Nations Security Council, of which the permanent members are China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The United Nations Security Council, NATO Quint, the G7, BRICS, and the Contact Group have all been described as great power concerts.

A suzerain (/ˈsuːzərən, -reɪn/, from Old French sus "above" + soverain "supreme, chief") is a person, state or polity who has supremacy and dominant influence over the foreign policy and economic relations of another subordinate party or polity, but allows internal autonomy to that subordinate. Where the subordinate polity is called a vassal, vassal state or tributary state, the dominant party is called the suzerain. The rights and obligations of a vassal are called vassalage, and the rights and obligations of a suzerain are called suzerainty.

Suzerainty differs from sovereignty in that the dominant power does not exercise centralized governance over the vassals, allowing tributary states to be technically self-ruling but enjoy only limited independence. Although the situation has existed in a number of historical empires, it is considered difficult to reconcile with 20th- or 21st-century concepts of international law, in which sovereignty is a binary concept, which either exists or does not. While a sovereign state can agree by treaty to become a protectorate of a stronger power, modern international law does not recognise any way of making this relationship compulsory on the weaker power. Suzerainty is a practical, de facto situation, rather than a legal, de jure one.

Marxist historiography, or historical materialist historiography, is an influential school of historiography. The chief tenets of Marxist historiography include the centrality of social class, social relations of production in class-divided societies that struggle against each other, and economic constraints in determining historical outcomes (historical materialism). Marxist historians follow the tenets of the development of class-divided societies, especially modern capitalist ones.

Marxist historiography has developed in varied ways across different regional and political contexts. It has had unique trajectories of development in the West, the Soviet Union, and in India, as well as in the pan-Africanist and African-American traditions, adapting to these specific regional and political conditions in different ways. Marxist historiography has made contributions to the history of the working class, and the methodology of a history from below.

The history of the Republic of Singapore began when Singapore was expelled from Malaysia and became an independent republic on 9 August 1965. After the separation, the fledgling nation had to become self-sufficient, but was faced with problems including mass unemployment, housing shortages, and a lack of land and natural resources, such as petroleum. During Lee Kuan Yew's term as prime minister from 1959 to 1990, his government curbed unemployment, raised the standard of living and implemented a large-scale public housing programme. The country's economic infrastructure was developed, racial tension was eliminated and an independent national defence system was established. Singapore evolved from a third world nation to first world nation towards the end of the 20th century.

In 1990, Goh Chok Tong succeeded Lee as prime minister. During his tenure, the country tackled the economic impacts of the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 2003 SARS outbreak, as well as terrorist threats posed by the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) post-9/11 and the Bali bombings. In 2004, Lee Hsien Loong, the eldest son of Lee Kuan Yew, became the third prime minister. In 2024, Lee was succeeded by Lawrence Wong as prime minister.

In the field of international relations, a sphere of influence (SOI) is a spatial region or concept division over which a state or organization has a level of cultural, economic, military, or political exclusivity.

While there may be a formal alliance or other treaty obligations between the influenced and influencer, such formal arrangements are not necessary and the influence can often be more of an example of soft power. Similarly, a formal alliance does not necessarily mean that one country lies within another's sphere of influence. High levels of exclusivity have historically been associated with higher levels of conflict.

The sociology of race and ethnic relations is the study of social, political, and economic relations between races and ethnicities at all levels of society. This area encompasses the study of systemic racism, like residential segregation and other complex social processes between different racial and ethnic groups, as well as theories that encompass these social processes

The sociological analysis of race and ethnicity frequently interacts with postcolonial theory and other areas of sociology such as stratification and social psychology. At the level of political policy, ethnic relations is discussed in terms of either assimilationism or multiculturalism. Anti-racism forms another style of policy, particularly popular in the 1960s and 1970s. At the level of academic inquiry, ethnic relations is discussed either by the experiences of individual racial-ethnic groups or else by overarching theoretical issues.

Poverty reduction, poverty relief, or poverty alleviation is a set of measures, both economic and humanitarian, that are intended to permanently lift people out of poverty. Measures, like those promoted by Henry George in his economics classic Progress and Poverty, are those that raise, or are intended to raise, ways of enabling the poor to create wealth for themselves as a conduit of ending poverty forever. In modern times, various economists within the Georgism movement propose measures like the land value tax to enhance access to the natural world for all.

Poverty occurs in both developing countries and developed countries. While poverty is much more widespread in developing countries, both types of countries undertake poverty reduction measures.

Salem Hanna Khamis (Arabic: سالم حنا خميس) (November 22, 1919 – June 16, 2005) was a Palestinian economic statistician for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization who helped formalise the Geary-Khamis method of computing purchasing power parity of currencies.

The infant industry argument is an economic rationale for trade protectionism. The core of the argument is that nascent industries often do not have the economies of scale that their older competitors from other countries may have, and thus need to be protected until they can attain similar economies of scale. The logic underpinning the argument is that trade protectionism is costly in the short run but leads to long-term benefits.

Infant industry protection is controversial as a policy recommendation. As with the other economic rationales for protectionism, it is often abused by rent seeking interests. In addition, countries that put up trade barriers to imports often face retaliatory barriers to their exports, potentially hurting the same industries that infant industry protection is intended to help. Even when infant industry protection is well-intentioned, it is difficult for governments to know which industries they should protect; infant industries may never grow up relative to adult foreign competitors.

The Renaissance of the 12th century was a period of many changes at the outset of the High Middle Ages. It included social, political and economic transformations, and an intellectual revitalization of Western Europe with strong philosophical and scientific roots. These changes paved the way for later achievements such as the literary and artistic movement of the Italian Renaissance in the 15th century and the scientific developments of the 17th century.

Following the Western Roman Empire's collapse, Europe experienced a decline in scientific knowledge. However, increased contact with the Islamic world brought a resurgence of learning. Islamic philosophers and scientists preserved and expanded upon ancient Greek works, especially those of Aristotle and Euclid, which were translated into Latin, significantly revitalizing European science. During the High Middle Ages, Europe also saw significant technological advancements which spurred economic growth.

In sociology, societal transformation refers to “a deep and sustained, nonlinear systemic change” in a society. Transformational changes can occur within a particular system, such as a city, a transport or energy system. Societal transformations can also refer to changes of an entire culture or civilization. Such transformations often include not only social changes but cultural, technological, political, and economic, as well as environmental. Transformations can be seen as occurring over several centuries, such as the Neolithic Revolution or at a rapid pace, such as the rapid expansion of megacities in China.

Whereas social transformation is typically used within sociology to characterize the process of change either in an individual’s ascribed social status, or in social structures, such as institutional relationships, habits, norms, and values, societal transformation refers to a wider set of societal structural changes.