The informal sector or informal economy is that part of an economy that is not taxed, monitored by any form of government, or included in any gross national product (GNP), unlike the formal economy.
Other terms used to refer to the informal sector can include the black market, the shadow economy, the underground economy and System D. Associated idioms include under the table and "off the books".
Read more about Informal Economy: Definition, History, Statistics, Gender, Issues From Within, Expansion, Poverty, Possible Improvements, Informal Housing, Informal Housing in Developing Countries
Famous quotes containing the words informal and/or economy:
“We as a nation need to be reeducated about the necessary and sufficient conditions for making human beings human. We need to be reeducated not as parents—but as workers, neighbors, and friends; and as members of the organizations, committees, boards—and, especially, the informal networks that control our social institutions and thereby determine the conditions of life for our families and their children.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)