“Footnotes: Chapter 4” in “Scaling Up”
1 See OECD, 2014, “Policy Challenges for the Next 50 Years”.
2 This formulation of general versus concrete characterizations of social needs is derived from Stefano Zamagni, a professor of economics at the University of Bologna. (Lecture, Bologna Summer Program for Co-operative Studies, 2009)
3 In Canada, despite a growing GDP and federal surpluses, the issues of poverty, homelessness, and hunger show no signs of abating. Between 1989 and 2005, food bank usage increased by 118 percent; in 2005, approximately 15 percent of Canada’s children lived in poverty and rates of child poverty, a powerful indicator of broader social and economic conditions, had remained unaffected for fifteen years (CAFB 2005, 3, 5). In 2013, an average of 833,098 people used a food bank every month (Food Banks Canada 2013, 1).
4 Alberto Alberani, formal presentation to Bologna Summer Program for Co-operative Studies, Bologna, 2007.
5 Taking into account both the costs and benefits of social co-ops to the public sector (costs being public subsidies and fiscal advantages and benefits being taxes paid by both the employed workers and the co-operative and a decrease in the demand for social and health services by disadvantaged workers), public authorities save more than €5,000 per capita annually (Borzaga and Depedri 2013).
6 According to Alain Leclerc of the Federation of Funeral Co-ops, the average cost of a funeral in Québec is about $5,600, whereas a funeral arranged through a co-op generally costs less than $4,000 (presentation at BC Co-operative Association, 2011). For more information on funeral co-operatives in Québec, see Fédération des coopératives funéraires du Québec ( http://www.fcfq.coop/en/funeral-cooperatives/ ). For an example of a funeral co-op in Alberta, see Serenity Funeral Service ( http://www.serenity.ca ).
7 This is the common position adopted by social co-op activists for example in Emilia Romagna and by the Lega Co-operative e Mutue and Confcooperative, the two largest co-operative federations in Italy.