Patterns of production, distribution and consumption

Question 1

What are the 2 main groups of labour?

Answer 1

Skilled - highly paid, research and managerial occupations.
Developed countries.
Unskilled - poorly paid, assembly occupations.
Developing countries - low labour costs.
LECs have now become NICs in the last 40 years.

Question 2

What has happened to manufacturing since the 1950s?

Answer 2

1954 - 50% manufacturing was concentrated in industrialised eoncomies.
Decentralisation has occurred - FDI by TNCs.
Developing countries now able to take manufacturing tasks at a competitive price.

Question 3

What is a global shift?

Answer 3

Filtering down of manufacturing industry from developed countries to lower wage economies.

Question 4

What is the transfer of technology?

Answer 4

High technology - no longer associated with high wages.
Enables developing countries to increase their productivity without raising wages.
Could widen development gap - developing world workers are paid less to make the same products as in the developed world.
50% manufacturing jobs.
60% exports manufactured (developing) goods.

Question 5

Where are services now mainly located?

Answer 5

No direct link between financial sector and manufacturing.
Dispersed worldwide.
High level services concentrated in places other than old centres of manufacturing.
E.g. top of the service hierarchy found in London, Tokyo, LA, Chicago etc.

Question 6

What is the trend regarding decentralisation?

Answer 6

Decentralisation of low level services from the developed to the developing world.
E.g. call-centre operations - UK to India.
Indian employment costs 10-20% lower than UK.

Question 7

What are the factors of deindustrialisation?

Answer 7

Happening in richer countries - declining.
Global shift.
Outmoded production methods.
Ending product life cycle.
Poor management.