Economic and Social Rights: Obstacle to Growth or Handmaiden of Growth?

University Of Connecticut, Storrs CT

Investigators

Abstract

A central component of this project is the refinement and consolidation of an annual and longitudinal international social and economics rights fulfillment index, a SERF Index. The second component of this project utilizes the created SERF Index to address three empirical questions. First, is there a trade-off between meeting economic and social rights obligations and economic growth? Second, do some policies simultaneously foster the fulfillment of economic and social rights obligations and economic growth? Third, to what extent does a government's success (or failure) to meet obligations under the ICESCR depend on direct ESR expenditures, the ability to raise revenues, and the interplay between the two? Cross-sectional and time-series econometric techniques are used to address the first two questions, while case studies are used to address the third. The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) legally obligates countries to fulfill the rights enumerated therein to the maximum of available resources. This translates to an obligation of progressive realization, under which the level of obligation on each country differs according to its resource capacity. The SERF Index created in this project operationalizes this standard of progressive realization.