Costs and Benefits of Economic Growth

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Alex Thomas Macroeconomics What are the costs and benefits of economic growth to a developing country? In recent years many countries, such as Brazil, India and china are rapidly developing and are experiencing a very high level of economic growth, while economic growth has its many benefits, to both the government and the general population, it also has several considerable negative impacts in the long term, which could lead to an unstable economy in the future if it is mismanaged. One example of how economic growth can benefit the economy is that living standards generally improve, this is because when an economy encounters rapid growth, there is a significant increase in the amount of services and goods produced, therefore the average standard of living will increase. As an economy grows, the average annual earnings increases, for an example India’s annual growth in real GDP in 2000 was only 5.5%, and by 2010 it was 10.4%. As well as increasing living standards, it also benefits the government, as they will see an increase in revenue collected in income tax. This will allow the government to further improve public services such as healthcare, and as the quality of healthcare increases, so does the quality of life for the population. Another benefit of economic growth is that unemployment will fall. As companies and services expand, they can output a great deal more, and therefore more labour is demanded, this means that unemployment will fall. If unemployment falls, less people will be claiming unemployment benefits and other similar pay-outs from the government, this will allow a lot of tax to be spent on other things, such as expanding public services further, which also leads to an increase in living standards. Another benefit of economic growth is the increase in confidence, with all these new goods and services on offer to the country, the consumer
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