TY - BOOK ID - 117619529 TI - Austerities and Aspirations PY - 2022 SN - 9789633863510 9633863511 9789633863527 963386352X PB - Budapest New York DB - UniCat KW - Economic development KW - Post-communism KW - Quality of life KW - Life, Quality of KW - Economic history KW - Human ecology KW - Life KW - Social history KW - Basic needs KW - Human comfort KW - Social accounting KW - Work-life balance KW - Postcommunism KW - World politics KW - Communism KW - Development, Economic KW - Economic growth KW - Growth, Economic KW - Economic policy KW - Economics KW - Statics and dynamics (Social sciences) KW - Development economics KW - Resource curse KW - History KW - Europe, Eastern KW - Economic conditions KW - Politics and government KW - Communism, Consumption, East and West, Economic development, Economic history, Postcommunism. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:117619529 AB - This monograph updates existing scholarship on the economic performance of Czechoslovakia (and its successor states), Hungary, and Poland since 1945, in contrast with Western Europe. For this longitudinal comparative exercise, the author goes beyond the traditional growth paradigm and analyzes the historical patterns of consumption and leisure, as well as quality of life, broadly understood, aspects that Tomka argues can best be analyzed in relation to one other. By adopting this "triple approach," his analysis relies not only on economic history and economics, but also on the methods and results of sociology and demography. Tomka's three-pillar description shows that the pre-World War I period was the time when East Central Europe was closest to Western Europe. The interwar period sustained this level. The book thus dispels the widespread myth of the communist era as one of catching up and convergence. Beyond providing useful quantitative information, the author provides insight on the scholarly debates ranging from the factors of growth to demographic developments to the complexities of consumption in communist regimes. The analysis finally demonstrates that the post-communist transition, despite its high social and economic costs, allowed for qualitative and quantitative convergence, stalled only by the financial crisis of 2008. ER -