The “Bad Labor” Footprint: Quantifying the Social Impacts of Globalization
By Moana S. Simas, L. Golsteijn, Mark A. J. Huijbregts, Richard Wood, Edgar G. Hertwich. 2014
115 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The extent to what bad labor conditions across the globe are associated with international trade is unknown. Here, we quantify the bad labor conditions associated with consumption in seven world regions, the “bad labor” footprint. In particular, we analyze how much occupational health damage, vulnerable employment, gender inequality, share of unskilled workers, child labor, and forced labor is associated with the production of internationally traded goods. Our results show that (i) as expected, there is a net flow of bad labor conditions from developing to developed regions; (ii) the production of exported goods in lower income regions contributes to more than half of the bad labor footprints caused by the wealthy lifestyles of affluent regions; (iii) exports from Asia constitute the largest global trade flow measured in the amount bad labor, while exports from Africa carry the largest burden of bad labor conditions per unit value traded and per unit of total labor required; and (IV) the trade of food products stands out in both volume and intensity of bad labor conditions.
Subfields: Business and International Management, General Health Professions, Safety Research
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9e65b364c1fdfe4a424bc594d3885019bed65f8e
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Citations in the corpus
- Indicators in Social Life Cycle Assessment: A Review of Frameworks, Theories, and Empirical Experience (2017, methodology): “Quantitative indicators range from the number of user injuries and diseases (e.g., Pishvaee et al. 2014; Seuring et al. 2003) to product toxicity potential as measured in ELCA (e.g., Santoyo-Castelazo and Azapagic 2014; Yu and Halog Kühnen and Hahn, Indicators in Social Life Cycle Assessment 1557 2”
- EXIOBASE 3: Developing a Time Series of Detailed Environmentally Extended Multi‐Regional Input‐Output Tables (2018, background): “Based on an emerging interest for coupling environmental and social sustainability analysis (Simas et al. 2014, 2015) EXIOBASE now also includes an extended set of social extensions related to gender and vulnerability aspects of labor.”