What is the important role of social norms and the community in economic development?

Important role of social norms

Every society has its norms, some of which are upheld by law. At the same time, it is far from clear that only the best norms survive. Norms may be inimical to development in another setting. This does not mean, however, that norms will be eroded overnight.

The desire human beings to conform are immense and as long as conformity is fundamental, norms will take their own time to change. Often, people do what other people do. The glue of conformism is what holds social relationships and societies together.

Conformism assures stability and limits the need for law enforcement, and indeed it is the expression of a shared conformism that we know as culture. The very strength of such norms becomes a weakness when the environment of the society begins to change.

Accepted, appropriate practice over many centuries may now become inappropriate, but once this happens, social practice is often slow to alter. It becomes necessary to coordinate on some new norm, but such coordination requires many people to move in unison.

Norms do ultimately change and chase what is appropriate, but it may be a long time coming. Consider a poor society with high rates of infant mortality and intensive use of child labour in farming, as well as for old-age support.

It is not surprising to find such a society celebrating the birth of many children (especially sons). Such societies develop certain attitudes toward the “appropriate” age of marriage, the role of women, the importance of contraception, the desirability of primary education, ancestor worship, and even practices such as breast­feeding.

Now imagine that advances in sanitation and medicine dramatically bring down infant mortality rates. Suppose that dependence on agriculture is on the wane (or mechanisation is increasing, so that child labour is less important). Suppose that institutional forms of old-age security are becoming available. Will fertility change overnight?

Jolting such a society into a “new equilibrium” is not easy. It requires coordinated change. An example of such a change is one in which ancestor worship is permitted through adopted children. If everybody thinks this is acceptable, then it’s acceptable. It is in this sense that programmes such as family-planning programmes play a very important role.

Quite apart from spreading important information regarding the cost, availability and effectiveness of different methods of contraception, these programmes serve as a form of social legitimisation.

Consider the family- planning experiment known as the Matlab project in Bangladesh, in which seventy “treatment villages” were served by a birth control/family-planning programme in 1977, while another seventy-nine “control villages” offered no such service. Contraceptive use in the treatment village jumped from 7 to 33% in eighteen months.

By 1980, the fertility rate in the treatment villages had declined to two-thirds that of the control villages. Obesity has long been considered a major public health challenge; few studies have provided a comprehensive look at the economic impact of the epidemic.

Ross Hammond and Ruth Levine give an overview of research in this area, and find that economic costs of obesity in the United States could exceed S215 billion annually, from direct medical spending, lost productivity, and increased transportation costs.

The total costs of obesity in the U.S. alone may exceed $215 billion annually, according to a new comprehensive study by Ross Hammond. With more than two-thirds of American adults now considered overweight, and one-third obese, Hammond gives an overview of economic and policy impacts of the epidemic at the national level.

During a time of tight state and local budgets, child abuse prevention programs can save public dollars that would otherwise be spent on treatment and associated social programmes. Higher marriage rates among the poor would benefit poor adults themselves, their children and the nation, says Ron Haskins.

He argues that non-coercive programs that are delivered by community-based agencies can be effective. By helping couples who want to marry, the payoff to them, their children and society is potentially enormous.

Despite its status as one of the world’s leading economies, the United States is faced with high poverty rates and less economic opportunity than many other affluent countries.

Senior Fellows Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins, argue that it will take a combination of personal responsibility along with smarter and better-targeted government policies to make the American Dream a reality for children and families now stuck at the bottom.

Voters elect governments to solve social problems and governments design and implement an array of programmes to ensure the public good.

However, little theoretical attention has been devoted to the final step of the implementation chain: explanations of why the targets of public policies do or do not “comply” with those policies.

Kent Weaver focuses on why programme “targets” frequently fail to act in the way that programme designers intended and wanted, even when it appears to be in their self- interest to do so.