Comparing Britian to France

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Economics coursework

The aim of this coursework is to see which of two countries are better off.

The two countries in question are Britain and France

My hypothesis is ‘is the British better off than the French?’

These will be proven by seeing which country has the better quality of life and standard of living. To show this I will be outlining the following points:

To show the standard of living I will outline the following points:

  • National income
  • Unemployment rates
  • Taxation and government spending
  • Birth rates
  • Death rates

To show quality of life I will outline the following points:

  • Holidays
  • Hours worked
  • Crime rates
  • Life expectancy

Britain located in Western Europe has a population of 60,094,648 compared to the 60,180,529 of France. France has a faintly higher population of 85881 people compared to Britain.  

By producing this figure I can show how different the two countries are and how different there living standards and quality of life can be.

Living standards are the standard of how well people live in the specified country. Whereas the quality of life is calculated on how well people live their life. E.g. the amount of holidays people have, how big their homes are.

 By looking at the size of the two countries you could say that France has the better quality of life and maybe even a better living standard. This is just a statement and does not necessarily have to be right.

Standard of living

National income is the total amount of income for the economy as a whole. It can be arrived by three methods-

  1. The income approach involves all forms of income, wages, salaries, profits, rents and net incomes from abroad.
  2. The expenditure approach involves consumption, investments and government expenditures.
  3. The output approach involves the total value of all output.

All three methods in theory should come to the same total as they each reflect a different aspect of the circular floe of money.

By looking at the national income of the two countries it can show me which country is richer and has the more people working and bringing in a source of income into the economy.

I will look at the two countries populations, total income and income per capita.

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* Per capita means ‘per head’ e.g. income per capita means income per person.

From these figures you can already see that the United Kingdom has then lower population but still has a higher total national income and income per capita. This shows to me that Britain has more jobs that are bringing in income to the economy than that of France. This could be one factor that would bring Britain’s standard of living up, higher than France’s.  

This data is so far, proving my hypothesis to be correct.

Unemployment rates are the how many people are unemployed. By ...

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