The one-sentence truth: Economic vocabulary matters in GP because many public questions are really questions about incentives, distribution, trade-offs and who bears the cost of change.
Students sometimes approach economics as a collection of statistics: GDP, wages, inflation, unemployment. General Paper requires a broader language. You need to explain how markets allocate resources, why inequality persists, how policy changes incentives and why average growth can hide unequal outcomes.
Use the Top 100 General Paper Vocabulary Words for JC1 as the suite’s core inventory, and keep the wider JC1–JC2 vocabulary guide as the conceptual parent.
Core economics vocabulary
- productivity — output produced per unit of input.
- growth — expansion in economic output over time.
- redistribution — shifting resources through taxes, transfers or public services.
- incentive — something that changes the attractiveness of a choice.
- externality — a cost or benefit imposed on others outside the original transaction.
- mobility — movement between income or social positions.
- disparity — a significant difference in income, wealth or opportunity.
- progressive — placing a relatively greater burden on those with greater capacity to pay.
- regressive — imposing a relatively heavier burden on lower-income groups.
- market failure — a situation where market outcomes do not allocate resources efficiently or fairly enough for the objective considered.
Growth is not the same as wellbeing
Economic growth can raise incomes and expand fiscal capacity, but it does not guarantee that gains are evenly distributed or that non-economic forms of wellbeing improve. Useful language includes distributional impact, median income, living standards, quality of life.
Inequality has several dimensions
- income inequality
- wealth inequality
- opportunity inequality
- spatial inequality
- intergenerational inequality
- digital inequality
A strong GP essay identifies which dimension is being discussed rather than using inequality as one undifferentiated problem.
Relative and absolute improvement
A poorer group can become better off in absolute terms while falling further behind a richer group relatively. This distinction matters when judging whether growth has reduced hardship without reducing inequality.
Mobility changes how inequality is judged
High inequality is often regarded as less troubling where people can genuinely move upward. If family background strongly determines future opportunity, inequality becomes more entrenched.
Incentives and unintended consequences
Policies change behaviour. Taxes can discourage an activity; subsidies can encourage it. But incentives may also create unintended responses. A benefit designed to improve affordability can push prices upward where supply is rigid.
Externalities
Pollution, congestion and second-hand smoke are classic negative externalities. Education and vaccination can generate positive spillovers. Externality vocabulary allows students to explain why private choice can have public consequences.
Efficiency and equity
A policy can improve efficiency while worsening distribution, or improve equity while creating costs. GP evaluation becomes stronger when these criteria are separated rather than collapsed into “good for the economy”.
Before-and-after language
Weak: “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”
Stronger: “Wealth concentration can intensify when asset values rise faster than wages, allowing households that already own property or financial assets to capture a disproportionate share of gains.”
Weak: “Government help is good for poor people.”
Stronger: “Targeted transfers can mitigate short-term hardship, although long-term mobility also depends on access to education, housing and productive employment.”
Paper 1 use
Economics questions improve when you identify incentives, distribution and constraints. Ask who gains, who pays, how behaviour changes and whether the policy remains sustainable over time.
Paper 2 use
Economic vocabulary helps compress complex passages and identify competing criteria. One writer may emphasise growth, another mobility, another equity.
A concept-cluster drill
Choose one policy such as public transport subsidies. Write a paragraph using incentive, externality, distributional impact, regressive or progressive, viability. Explain the mechanism rather than merely inserting the terms.
The deeper lesson
Economic vocabulary is useful because it turns vague debates about “money” into questions about behaviour, scarcity, distribution and institutional design.
Return to the JC1 Top 100 GP Vocabulary Hero, especially the economics, causation and evaluation families.
Phase 4 Expansion: Inequality Is About Stocks, Flows and Mobility
Economic inequality becomes easier to analyse when students separate stocks from flows. Income is a flow received over time; wealth is a stock of accumulated assets. A society can see rising wages while wealth concentration still increases if asset ownership is highly unequal.
Absolute and relative outcomes can move differently
A lower-income group can become materially better off while the gap with richer groups widens. This is why “everyone gained” and “inequality increased” can both be true. GP evaluation should specify which comparison matters to the question.
Mobility changes the meaning of disparity
Persistent gaps are more troubling when movement between positions is limited. Vocabulary such as intergenerational mobility, opportunity inequality, structural barrier, cumulative advantage helps explain why distribution cannot be understood from one year’s income alone.
Policy incidence: who really bears the cost?
The person legally charged a tax or fee is not always the person who ultimately bears its economic burden. Costs can be passed through prices, wages or rents. This idea of incidence encourages students to look beyond policy labels toward real distributional effects.
Model paragraph
“A consumption tax can be efficient to administer while still producing regressive effects if lower-income households spend a larger share of earnings on taxed necessities. The relevant evaluation is therefore not simply whether the tax raises revenue, but whether compensating transfers or exemptions prevent a disproportionate burden.”
Economics audit
- Am I discussing income, wealth, opportunity or mobility?
- Who changes behaviour because of the incentive?
- Who ultimately bears the cost?
- Are average gains hiding unequal distribution?
- What trade-off matters most: efficiency, equity or viability?
What mastery looks like
You are reasoning economically when “growth” and “inequality” stop being slogans and become questions about incentives, stocks, flows, mobility and distribution.
Continue with Work, Markets and Productivity Vocabulary for GP Essays.