Passive Modernization? The New Human Development Index and Its Components in Italy’s Regions (1871-2007)
- Autores: Emanuele Felice, Michelangelo Vasta
- Localización: Working Papers (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Unitat d'Història Econòmica), Nº. 10, 2012
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
- Dialnet Métricas: 3 Citas
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Resumen
The article presents and discusses estimates of social and economic indicators for Italy’s regions in benchmark years roughly from Unification to the present day: life expectancy, education, Gdp per capita at purchasing power parity, and the new Human Development Index (HDI). A broad interpretative hypothesis, based on the distinction between passive and active modernization, is proposed to account for the evolution of regional imbalances over the long-run. In the lack of active modernization, Southern Italy converged thanks to passive modernization, i.e., State intervention: however, this was more effective in life expectancy, less successful in education, expensive and as a whole ineffective in Gdp. As a consequence, convergence in the HDI occurred from the late XIX century to the 1970s, but came to a sudden halt in the last decades of the XX century.
