the causes of economic growth...

There are clearly some benefits of economic growth. These benefits are most visible when for low income countries. Economic growth enables the possibility to deal with many serious problems of poverty, homelessness and lack of basic amenities. However there are clearly several issues, which suggest that economic growth, has contributed to serious social, environmental and economic problems, which have reduced living standards. This is not to say economic growth is doomed to bring unhappiness. In fact the challenge is to harness the potential of economic growth to make sure it really does increase sustainable living standards.
Benefits from economic growth are:
  1) Increased consumption. - consumers can benefit from consuming more goods and services. An assumption of economics is that consumption is related to utility, so in theory, with higher consumption levels, there is greater prosperity.
1) Improved Public Services. - with increased Tax Revenues the government can spend more on important public services such as health and education. Improved health care can improve quality of life through treating diseases and increasing life expectancy. Increased educational standards can give the population a greater diversity of skills and literacy. This enables greater opportunity and freedom. Education is seen as an important determinant of welfare and happiness.
2) Reduced Unemployment and Poverty -economic Growth helps to reduce unemployment by creating jobs. This is significant because unemployment is a major source of social problems such as crime and alienation. However, despite rapid increases in economic growth since the Second World War, areas of high unemployment in the EU remain. For example, in France and Spain there are currently high levels of structural unemployment. This kind of unemployment may not be reduced by economic growth.
3) Economic growth may lead to negative externality - it involves increase in output causes external side effects, such, as increased pollution. Global warming from pollution is becoming a real problem for society. The economic and social costs could potentially be greater than all the perceived benefits of recent economic growth. However, it is worth noting that economic growth doesn’t necessarily have to cause pollution. The benefits of growth could be used to develop better technologies that create less pollution. It is just at the moment this has been a low priority.
4) When it is economic growth I think it may have a big gap between poor and rich. It is perhaps a paradox that higher economic growth can cause an increase in relative poverty. This is because those who benefit from growth are often the highly educated and those who own wealth. In 1980s and 1990s higher growth in the UK and US has resulted in increased inequality. However, it depends on how growth is managed; economic growth can be used to reduce inequality. It is another paradox that as incomes increase and people are better off the level of crime has increased as well. This suggests that crime is not motivated by poverty but perhaps envy. One reason why crime rates increase is that quite simply there are more things to steal. Economic Growth has created more goods to steal. However the link isn’t absolute for example in recent years crime rates in US have reduced from their peak. But there has been a general association between growth and crimes. Economic Growth has enabled improved health care treatments, but at the same time there has been an unexpected rise in the number of diseases and illnesses related to increased prosperity. One example is obesity. Modern lifestyles and modern diets have created an epidemic of obesity, with significant proportions of the population expressing a desire to lose weight. It could be argued that problems such as obesity and stress related illnesses are not a direct consequence of growth. This is true, but, it is symbolic of the fact increased prosperity has created as many new problems as it has solved