Ferraris for all

Indur Goklany has written a cheery article for the Cato Institute on death from extreme weather events in America. Despite the grim nature of the subject the ultimate conclusion is uplifting:

* Extreme cold is responsible for about half the deaths from weather-related events - about twice as many as extreme heat.

* Extreme weather accounts for a tiny proportion of the annual American death toll.

* The trend over time is for extreme weather to be responsible for an ever smaller proportion of deaths. That is despite any tendency towards global warming.

The more humanity advances economically the less vulnerable it becomes to extreme weather.

Labels: climate, development, progress, technology

The fact that life expectancy in Britain has reached record levels should be a cause for celebration. According to the latest release from the Office for National Statistics: “UK life expectancy at birth rises to record level: 77.2 years for males, 81.5 years for females”.

Presumably these figures have received relatively little publicity because they do not chime with the official view that we are facing some kind of national health emergency. The impression given by much of the discussion is that obesity will lead to rampant disease and falling life expectancy. But even if there are health risks associated with obesity (and it should be noted obesity is not the same as simply being overweight) they are evidently more than offset by other factors. The general trend is for greater affluence to lead to us living longer and healthier lives.

Labels: health, progress

Yesterday’s New York Times included a useful review of the assaults on the notion of GDP. It reminded readers that as long ago as 40 years ago it was attacked by Robert F Kennedy who said it: “measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” The article also welcomed the review of GDP as a measure of well-being in France and suggested it might apply to America too:

“We may be in the early stages in the United States of recognizing that the gross domestic product is very misleading and something must be done to get better measures of well-being,” said Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate in economics at Harvard. Professor Sen and Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate at Columbia, are co-chairmen of a commission recently appointed by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, to come up with a better measure for France. While Mr. Sarkozy’s goal is to showcase a ‘quality of life’ at odds with the country’s weak G.D.P., the high-profile effort might yield dividends here as well as abroad.”

Ultimately, as I have previously argued, there is less to these attacks than meets the eye. It would be hard to find someone who argues that GDP is a perfect indicator of well-being. But it does not follow that there is no relationship between rising prosperity and well-being. If there is a problem with GDP in this respect it is that it underestimates the benefits of prosperity to human welfare.

Labels: America, economics, Europe, happiness, progress

Jeffrey Sachs writes in an article for Project Syndicate on the spread of mobile phones in the world’s poorer countries:

“market penetration in poor countries is rising sharply. India has around 300 million subscribers, with subscriptions rising by a stunning eight million or more per month. Brazil now has more than 130 million subscribers, and Indonesia has roughly 120 million. In Africa, which contains the world’s poorest countries, the market is soaring, with more than 280 million subscribers.

“Mobile phones are now ubiquitous in villages as well as cities. If an individual does not have a cell phone, they almost surely know someone who does. Probably a significant majority of Africans have at least emergency access to a cell phone, either their own, a neighbor’s, or one at a commercial kiosk.

“Even more remarkable is the continuing “convergence” of digital information: wireless systems increasingly link mobile phones with the Internet, personal computers, and information services of all kinds. The array of benefits is stunning. The rural poor in more and more of the world now have access to wireless banking and payments systems, such as Kenya’s famous M-PESA system, which allows money transfers through the phone. The information carried on the new networks spans public health, medical care, education, banking, commerce, and entertainment, in addition to communications among family and friends.”

Labels: Africa, development, india, Latin America, progress, technology

The World Bank has launched its new $1.25 a day poverty measure (see post of 25 May 2008). Under the new measure a greater number of people are classified as poor although the proportion of people living in poverty is still falling over time.

The number living in poverty is 400m more than previously assumed but, according to the release:

“New poverty estimates published by the World Bank reveal that 1.4 billion people in the developing world (one in four) were living on less than US$1.25 a day in 2005, down from 1.9 billion (one in two) in 1981.”

A new paper by Martin Ravallion and Shaohua Chen discusses the changes in more detail.

Labels: development, economics, inequality, progress

I have added to and updated the list of useful links on the left hand bar at the side of this site. New links include China Digital Daily, Climate Debate Daily, Culture Wars’ world development pages, the Future Cities Project and Indur Goklany’s papers. Any suggestions for further links or material for posts please email me HERE.

Labels: china, cities, climate, development, progress

Miller-McCune magazine, a publication from the Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media and Public Policy in California, has a useful review essay by David Villano on the “more-is-less” thesis. In other words it examines (sympathetically) the argument that it is possible to be more prosperous while consuming less.

Many of the points it makes are familiar – Americans consume far more per head than most of the rest of the world, the threat of climate change is imminent, the need to change lifestyles etc – but it includes many useful references. Among them are Confronting Consumption, (MIT Press) a 2002 book on America’s consumer society co-edited by Michael Maniates. Others include the California-based Global Footprint Network, the Voluntary Simplicity Movement, Redefining Progress and Mean Genes, a book on how our desire to consume is embedded in our DNA.

Labels: affluenza, America, book, climate, consumption, environment, footprint, inequality, progress, review, sustainability

Spiegel Online has a substantial article arguing that globalisation, by encouraging overfishing, is destroying the world’s oceans. As it happens even Indur Goklany, an articulate and avid defender of economic development, concedes that overfishing is a problem. But the solution is more systematic farming of the world’s oceans rather than the hunter-gatherer approach that prevails at present.

Labels: consumption, environment, Europe, globalisation, progress

Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, argued in a feature in yesterday’s paper that sustaining economic growth is the century’s big challenge.

The article, which was partly a review of the new book by Jeffrey Sachs and partly a discussion of the recent growth commission report, started by asking:

“Is it possible for the vast mass of humanity to enjoy the living standards of today’s high-income countries? This is, arguably, the biggest question confronting humanity in the 21st century. It is today’s version of the doubts expressed by Thomas Malthus, two centuries ago, about the possibility of enduring rises in living standards. On the answer depends the destiny of our progeny. It will determine whether this will be a world of hope rather than despair and of peace rather than conflict.”

As a free marketeer Wolf says that his inclination is to argue that problems raised by economic development can be resolved. But later on he admits to developing some sympathy with environmentalism:

“it has become evident, at least to me, that the human impact on the planet on which we depend has risen to enormous proportions. We have treated the global commons as if they were free. Self-evidently, they are not.”

Evidently free marketeers cannot be relied upon to give an unequivocal defence of economic growth.

Labels: development, economics, environment, growth, Malthus, progress

The current discussion of the Tata Nano, India’s “people’s car”, reminds me of the brilliant “sculptor” advert by Peugeot a few years ago for its 206. Whoever made the commercial, with a catchy backing track by Bhangra Knights, caught the popular aspiration for a better life in a clever and witty way. Only as an advert it was geared towards selling a particular product rather than making a more general point.

I was also struck to read recently that first production model of the Ford Model T, the car that popularised motoring in America, was assembled in October 1908. In other words India is about a century behind America in that respect. Henry Ford had many faults but he fulfilled his promise to “build a motor car for the multitude”.

Labels: America, consumption, development, india, progress

John Komlos, a professor of economics at the University of Munich, has evidently done extensive work on how physical height generally rises with prosperity – what he calls “anthropometric history”. For example, he is quoted in a recent article in the Chicago Tribune (28 May) saying: "height is a pretty good indicator of how well a society treats its children and young people." He has also looked at why average heights in Many European countries have overtaken those in America.

Komlos got his PhD under Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago (see posts of 30 July 2006, 7 August 2006 and 21 December 2007).

Labels: economics, progress

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has started producing newsletters to promote its project on “measuring the progress of societies” (see 24 June 2007 post). The welcome note on the first issue discusses the January annoucement by Nicholas Sarkozy, the French president, of a commission to investigate alternative measures of economic progress and social progress for France. It will be chaired by Joseph Stiglitz and advised by Amartya Sen.

Labels: economics, happiness, progress

BBC online decided to lead its news coverage of Britain’s latest Social Trends report (PDF) with Easterlin’s paradox: that beyond a certain point happiness does not rise with incomes. Given that Richard Easterlin formulated the paradox in the early 1970s, and it has been repeated many times since, it is hard to see how it qualifies as news. However, there is lots of useful empirical material in the full report.

Labels: affluenza, happiness, progress

The newly opened airport in Beijing looks amazing. Its architects evidently describe it as “the biggest building on the world”.

A comparison with London’s Heathrow airport is instructive. According to an article on the BBC website :

“Beijing's terminal is twice the size and about half the cost of Heathrow's new Terminal Five, which is due to open next month.

“Beijing has got from start to finish in four years. Heathrow has taken nearly 20.”

The BBC tries to soften the comparison by pointing out that the Chinese authorities, unlike those in Britain, do not have to engage in a lengthy consultation exercises.

But there is nothing democratic about such exercises. The slowness is more a symptom of Britain’s lack of dynamism and culture of excessive caution.

It is also sad that the small band of reactionaries who are campaigning against Heathrow’s third runway after often viewed so sympathetically. They should have the right to protest but their cause is entirely backward-looking.

Labels: china, climate, development, progress

A new paper (PDF) by Andrei Shleifer, a professor of economics at Harvard, gives some useful statistics on the general rise in global living standards since 1980. To quote the introduction: “The last quarter century has witnessed remarkable progress of mankind. The world’s per capita inflation-adjusted income rose from $5400 in 1980 to $8500 in 2005.Schooling and life expectancy grew rapidly, while infant mortality and poverty fell just as fast.” I do not accept the generally free market thrust of his conclusions but he is broadly right on the facts of development. Of course things could be better still than they are now.

Labels: development, economics, inequality, progress

Unicef’s latest annual report on The state of the world’s children (PDF) reveals enormous improvements in infant mortality. Evidently the number of deaths of children under five fell from about 20m in 1960 - the earliest year for which such figures are available - to under 10m in 2006. This despite a large increase in total population over the period. Between 1990 and 2006 infant mortality fell by 23% to 93 deaths per 1,000 live births to 72.

Clearly the figures could and should fall much further still. But it would be wrong to underplay what has already been achieved.

Labels: development, health, progress

The latest annual Family Expenditure Survey from Britain’s National Statistics gives some idea of how living standards have increased over the past 50 years.

For example, according to the official release: “In 2006 most homes had central heating (95 per cent), a washing machine (96 per cent), a microwave (91 per cent) and a telephone or mobile phone (99 per cent).”

Even the bottom decline (poorest 10th) of the population is benefitting. According to a BBC report on the survey 31% of the bottom decline have computers, 21% an internet connection and 56% a mobile phone.

From a 50 year perspective the trends are also revealing. For instance, in 1957 food and non-alcoholic drinks took up 33% of the household budget compared with 15% in 2006.

In contrast, food and travel costs have risen from 8% to 16%. This suggests more people have cars and they travel more.

Labels: affluenza, consumption, inequality, progress

Matthew Taylor, a former senior adviser to Tony Blair and now chief executive of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, has an astute although ultimately misplaced article on the happiness debate in the New Statesman (3 January). His starting point is the widening gap between the private and public spheres:

“Pessimism is becoming an impediment to progressive politics. It is 50 years since J K Galbraith coined the phrase ‘private affluence and public squalor’; today, the dichotomy is between private hubris and public pessimism.”

Taylor’s solution to this problem is what he calls a “new collectivism”. However, what he misses is the need to challenge the low horizons of contemporary social debates. Missing out this stage in the process means that any new collective enterprise will simply be one of individuals with an exaggerated sense of vulnerability.

For example, Taylor ends his piece with a call to use the issue of climate change to help build a new collectivism (the first time he mentions global warming in the article):

“Tackling climate change offers a fascinating opportunity to interweave stories of action at the individual, community, national and international levels. This potential will be fulfilled only when we provide spaces for collective decision-making and action that speak to the same vision of collaboration, creativity and human fulfilment that progressives claim to be our destiny.”

Yet the mainstream discussion of climate change if a perfect example of low horizons in relation to what humans can achieve. It assumes we must limit the human impact on the environment and act primarily as individuals to reduce our consumption. The idea of boldly acting to develop technology and increase human control over nature is alien to the mainstream debate.

Labels: happiness, progress

The current Economist (19 December) has an article savaging those who romanticise hunter-gatherer societies. It argues against the view put forward by the likes of Jared Diamond that the development of agriculture was the worst mistake in human history.

Evidently in the 1970s some experts began to argue that the advent of agriculture led to a decline in human health – as people were short of protein and caught diseases from domestic animals – and the emergence of significant social inequalities. However, it now seems that hunter-gatherer societies were exceedingly violent:

“Several archaeologists and anthropologists now argue that violence was much more pervasive in hunter-gatherer society than in more recent eras. From the !Kung in the Kalahari to the Inuit in the Arctic and the aborigines in Australia, two-thirds of modern hunter-gatherers are in a state of almost constant tribal warfare, and nearly 90% go to war at least once a year. War is a big word for dawn raids, skirmishes and lots of posturing, but death rates are high—usually around 25-30% of adult males die from homicide. The warfare death rate of 0.5% of the population per year that Lawrence Keeley of the University of Illinois calculates as typical of hunter-gatherer societies would equate to 2 billion people dying during the 20th century.” (For another reference to Keeley’s work see post of 30 July 2006. On living conditions before the Industrial Revolution see 14 August 2006 and 7 April 2007 posts).

The Economist also makes an interesting parallel with the Industrial Revolution:

“When rural peasants swapped their hovels for the textile mills of Lancashire, did it feel like an improvement? The Dickensian view is that factories replaced a rural idyll with urban misery, poverty, pollution and illness. Factories were indeed miserable and the urban poor were overworked and underfed. But they had flocked to take the jobs in factories often to get away from the cold, muddy, starving rural hell of their birth.”

Labels: cities, happiness, health, inequality, progress

An international opinion poll conducted in 20 countries by GfK Research on behalf of the Wall Street Journal Europe shows how gloomy contemporary opinion tends to be. According to the main article in Friday’s (7 December) Weekend Journal Europe:

“the most surprising detail of the survey statistics was the overall negative outlook. "It is striking how negative the attitude is in Europe, but even more so in the U.S.," where 62% said society was getting worse, says Mark Hofmans, a managing director in GfK's Brussels office, who analyzed the survey results…

“The survey didn't point to a single source of dissatisfaction among Europeans but showed a diverse set of worries. Terrorism ranked as the biggest fear for 17% of those surveyed, but issues such as war (15%) and global warming and environmental degradation (14%) were also major concerns.

“By comparison, in the U.S., moral decay was the single-largest worry, cited as the paramount problem by 20% of respondents. In Europe, only 11% of those surveyed said moral decay was their main source of anxiety.

“India, with its booming economy, was the most optimistic country included in the survey, with 51% of respondents saying global society was getting better. By contrast, only 20% of Europeans and 22% of Americans said society is improving. Turkey, where global warming was the single-largest worry for 27% of respondents, was among the most pessimistic countries included in the survey -- only 13% of those polled said global society is getting better, while 72% said it is deteriorating. (The most negative overall was Greece -- devastated by forest fires last summer -- where 74% said life is getting worse.)”

In other words the mood is overwhelmingly downbeat despite the fact that objective trends are generally improving. This is one of the key paradoxes I hope to examine in my forthcoming book.

Labels: America, environment, india, progress

The happiness conference circuit is, it seems, incredibly busy. This coming Monday and Tuesday there is a two-day conference in Brussels on “Beyond GDP” hosted by the European Commission, European Parliament, Club of Rome, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and World Wildlife Fund. The conference can be watched by webcast via its website.

This conference follows a similar one organised by the OECD in Istanbul in June (see 24 June post). A glossy brochure (PDF) is now available on that one.

Then from 22-28 November in Thailand there is the third international conference on gross national happiness. It will be opened by the prime ministers of Bhutan and Thailand while partners included the Centre for Bhutan Studies and the Japan Foundation. This is followed from December 6-9 in San Diego by the 2007 conference of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies.

Next year there is an International Sociological Association conference in Barcelona from September 5-8 on the role of social indicators in public policy.

Labels: Asia, happiness, progress

Spiked has run my review of Gregory Clark’s A Farewell to Alms in its monthly review of books.

Labels: Africa, book, Malthus, progress, review, spiked

There seems to be a surge of interest in economic history. After the works by Jared Diamond and Greg Clark (see 7 August and 10 August posts), and the provisional text on growth by Daron Acemoglu (see 6 October post), another draft work has appeared on the internet. Meir Kohn, professor of economics at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, has put most of his The Origins of Western Economic Success in PDF format on his homepage.

Labels: book, economics, growth, progress

Daron Acemoglu, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has published a draft version of his massive Introduction to Modern Economic Growth on the internet. The work looks highly technical but it does address three of the core questions in economic development (p25):

• Why are there such large differences in income per capita and worker productivity across countries?

• Why do some countries grow rapidly while others stagnate?

• What sustains economic growth over long periods of time and why did sustained growth start 200 years or so ago?

Labels: book, economics, growth, progress

The 2007 State of the Future report from the World Federation of UN Associations takes a generally positive view of the future outlook. It starts by noting that people are becoming healthier, wealthier, better educated, more peaceful, increasingly connected and living longer. However, it also warns that the world is becoming more corrupt, congested, warmer and increasingly dangerous. Some of these latter claims in particular are open to question.

Labels: development, progress

Helene Guldberg writing in the latest spiked review of books reviews several works arguing, among other things, that affluence is damaging children’s lives. Guldberg counters that the problems are exaggerated and on balance children have benefited immensely from greater affluence.

A particularly interesting passage looks at how the idea of childhood can be seen as relatively new. She discusses the work of Philippe Aries, a French historian, who she describes as arguing: “In the seventeenth century the modern view of childhood first emerged, but it was not until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the advent and extension of compulsory schooling and a corresponding decline in child labour, that childhood really existed in the modern sense.”

Labels: affluenza, book, health, progress, spiked

Clive Crook wrote a column in yesterday's Financial Times praising Gregory Clark¹s history of the world economy (see posts of 7 August 2007 and 1 August 2006). He contrasts Clark¹s work, which emphasises cultural factors, with that of Jared Diamond, who focuses on biology on geography.

Crook describes A Farewell to Alms as "bold" and "politically incorrect". But surely cultural explanations of underdevelopment are not that unpopular.

Labels: book, development, environment, progress

The economic history of the world by Gregory Clark, a professor of economics at the University of California, Davis, is about to be published by Princeton University Press. When I first wrote about it in my post of 1 August 2006 the book was to be called The Conquest of Nature but the final version is called A Farewell to Alms.

According to the review in today’s New York Times the book argues against institutions as an explanation for the transition from poverty to wealth. Instead it locates the explanation for the change in shifting values: “The change was one in which people gradually developed the strange new behaviors required to make a modern economy work. The middle-class values of nonviolence, literacy, long working hours and a willingness to save emerged only recently in human history.” (Although this quote begs the question of why such values emerged).

The book also sounds like it has an interesting and closely related discussion of how humanity escaped from the “Malthusian trap”: “each time new technology increased the efficiency of production a little, the population grew, the extra mouths ate up the surplus, and average income fell back to its former level.”

Labels: book, economics, Malthus, progress

Human beings are worth virtually nothing. That at least is the conclusion of the new “insignificance” tour at the prestigious American Museum of Natural History in New York. The tour is led by Jing Li, a Columbia university student, who is quoted in an article in the New York Sun as saying "The objective for me is to show how insignificant humans are on a planetary, evolutionary, and socio-economic-anthropologic scale". So humans have only lived for a tiny fraction of time in planetary terms, we are not at the top of the food chain and our environment determines who we are.

It is a sad reflection of contemporary society that human achievements are viewed with such disdain.

Labels: America, development, environment, progress

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is organising a substantial conference in Istanbul this coming week on “measuring and fostering the progress of societies”. It is an important step in a trend to move away from economic indicators such as GDP as measures of progress towards well-being indicators (see, for example, posts of 4 April and 31 May). Among the many subjects being discussed are happiness (Richard Layard will be there), what constitutes progress, biodiversity, climate change, governance and global cities. The conference is being organised in co-operation with the European Commission, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the United Nations and the World Bank. It follows on from an earlier conference in Palermo in 2004. A large amount of useful information, including background papers, (PDF) is available at the OECD website.

Labels: cities, economics, happiness, progress

The Economist has a survey on cities by John Grimond in the new issue (5 May). Non-subscribers can get free access to the first article which puts the rise of cities into historical context. He also has a piece today on the Guardian’s comment is free site.

Labels: cities, development, progress

An astute point buried in the letters page of today’s (London) Sunday Times:

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: India Knight (Comment, last week) writes: “Our ancestors existed on red meat, and there is no evidence to show they all died of breast cancer.” But almost all of them died before the age of 30. Statistically, they would have had little risk of breast cancer relative to all life’s other dangers whether they ate red meat or not. Even by 1800 life expectancy was only about 35 years. She also says “organic food is the way forward”. Our ancestors only ate this along with fresh air and plenty of physical activity – and still died by 30. – Dr Ian Horman, co-author of 2 Million Years of the Food Industry, Blonay, Switzerland.

Labels: book, food, progress

Emily Cockayne’s Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England, 1600-1770 (Yale UP) gives a graphic view of what English streets were like before the Industrial Revolution, according an article in Literary Review by Christopher Hart:

“The personal liberty of every freeborn Englishman and woman to spit, dump and defecate meant considerable misery for everyone. In the streets of London you would stumble over ‘the disagreeable Objects of bleeding Heads, Entrails of Beasts, Offals, raw Hides, and the Kennels flowing with Blood and Nastiness’. I never knew that ‘Mount Pleasant’, near Gray’s Inn, was actually a bitterly ironic name for a huge man-made heap of the most nauseous offal and ordure. It is now, of course, home to the Guardian newspaper.”

It should complement other books I have previously cited to help show how living conditions have improved enormously over the years. These include Judith Flanders’ Consuming Passions (Harper Press) on how few consumer goods we used to have (see 14 August 2006 post) and Lawrence Keeley’s War Before Civilization (Oxford UP 1997) on how murder was rife before modern times (see 30 July 2006 post).

Labels: book, progress

Advance leaks of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts for global economic growth in 2007 and 2007 look positive. A report from Reuters says growth looks set to be 4.9% in both years after a 5.3% rise last year. A slight dip but it still leaves the world economy enjoying its strongest run since the early 1970s. The official forecasts, along with many more details, should be published next week.

Labels: development, economics, growth, progress

Spiked has published my interview with Indur Goklany, the author of the excellent The Improving State of the World (Cato 2007).

Labels: book, health, progress, spiked

My review of Indur Goklany's Improving the State of the World (Cato 2007) for Fund Strategy magazine (15 January 2007) can be found below. An article based on an interview with Goklany should appear in spiked later on this week:

One of the great tragedies of contemporary life is that we are gripped by what could be called the "miserabilist tendency". There is a pervasive sense that things are generally worse than in the past and the outlook for the future is even more negative. This bleak view is embodied in popular books such as Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur's Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit? (Time Warner 2005). Unfortunately, it is not just them. The whiners, who would previously have been assigned the status of pub bore, have become hugely influential in policy making, the media and academia.

Under such circumstances Indur Goklany, an American policy analyst, has written a genuinely important book. From a careful analysis of masses of data he shows that life for human beings is better than ever before. Of course the world is far from perfect. But the combination of economic growth and technological development could make things better still in the future.

The inclusion of so many statistics does not make for easy reading but it is worth the effort. Statistics are not perfect but they are necessary to help overcome impressionism. Too many people rely on a vague sense of how they think life today compares with the past. Far better to look at the hard data. Perhaps the single most important set of statistics relate to life expectancy. It is staggering to realise the average life expectancy in the world before the industrial era was 20-30 years. In other words, the average person would be lucky to reach the age of 30. By 2003 the figure had risen to 66.8 years. So thanks to growing prosperity the average person had more than doubled their lifespan, with an extra 36.8 or more years of life.

Of course there remain inequalities between the rich countries and the developing world. The average person in the developing world today lives 63.4 years - although this is still more than double that in the pre-industrial era - compared with 75.6 years in the developed world. However, today's gap of 12.2 years between the two compares with 25.2 years in the early 1950s. Both sets of populations are living longer, although the gap between the two is narrowing.

A similar trend is apparent in relation to infant mortality. In the pre-industrial era it was more than 200 per thousand live births - more than 20% of babies died before reaching their first birthday. It was a common experience for parents to see their babies die. Today the global average figure is 56.8 and in the developed world it is 7.1

The single most important factor behind these improvements is the spectacular rise in agricultural productivity. Food is cheaper and more easily available than ever despite massive increases in the world's population. For example, average daily food supplies rose from a global average of 2,254 calories per person in 1961 to 2,804 calories in 2002. Whereas food supplies in the developed world rose by 24% over that period, the increase for developing countries was 38%.

The improving trend disguises some remaining tragedies. Globally more than 850 million people are undernourished - they cannot meet their basic needs for energy or protein. About 3.75 million deaths a year can be attributed to insufficient food supplies.

Under such circumstances, Goklany is strongly in favour of genetically modified crops. He argues that such technology could boost agricultural productivity still further, making it possible to feed more people better than ever before.

He also dismisses health and environmental concerns in relation to GM as unfounded. On health he points out that 300 million Americans and tens of millions of visitors have consumed GM food with no apparent ill effects since 1996. If there are any as yet undiscovered problems, they are likely to be hugely outweighed by the benefits of higher agricultural productivity.

The Improving State of the World also argues that greater use of GM crops could be better for the environment. If less land is needed to produce food then more will be available for forestry and other uses. This greater availability of unfarmed land could also bolster biodiversity.

Although Goklany's book is heavy in its use of figures it would be wrong to see it as a statistical almanac. It includes useful and insightful arguments too. For example, it argues that economic development is typically characterised by an "environmental transition". In the early stages of development, as countries industrialise and urbanise, their environments tend to worsen. But then, as they become more prosperous, the environment generally improves.

Most key indicators follow this trend. For instance, British cities were hellish places to live when Charles Dickens was writing in the mid-nineteenth century. Goklany quotes a passage from the The Old Curiosity Shop describing a London darkened by coal dust and factory smoke. It should also be remembered that at that time diseases such as cholera and typhoid, carried by polluted water, were rife. In contrast, London today is an immensely clean and healthy place. And even third-world cities are much better than Victorian London as they have learned from the experience of the developed world.

Goklany uses the concept of environmental transition to draw astute conclusions about future possibilities. He concedes that the world's fish stocks are currently on the wrong side of the environmental transition, with supplies dwindling through over-fishing. However, the conclusion he draws is the need to develop modern aquaculture - farming the sea using modern technology - just as agriculture was developed in the past. That way the productivity of food production from the sea could rise enormously.

The Improving State of the World is an excellent antidote to the painful whining of the miserabilist tendency. The world is far from perfect but complaining about how bad everything is only reinforces cynicism rather than opening the way to improving things further.

Labels: book, economics, Fund Strategy, health, progress, review, spiked

The cover story of this week’s Spectator is based on fascinating-sounding research by Indur Goklany, an American economist and former delegate to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In a book to be published by the Cato Institute he evidently argues that on every objective measure the human condition is improving. Naturally this does not mean that everything is perfect but things are, on average, much better than at any time in human history.

Labels: inequality, progress

The fact that the number of Americans is predicted to hit 300 million this coming Tuesday – up from 200m in 1967 – has provoked a mixed response. Lester Brown, a veteran environmentalist, is predictably miserable. In a recent dispatch from his Earth Policy Institute he argued that:

“Population growth is the ever expanding denominator that gives each person a shrinking share of the resource pie. It contributes to water shortages, cropland conversion to non-farm uses, traffic congestion, more garbage, overfishing, crowding in national parks, a growing dependence on imported oil, and other conditions that diminish the quality of our daily lives.”

Much more positive and accurate was an op-ed piece entitled “The kids are all right” by John Tierney in the New York Times on 14 October. He made the correct point that human beings are producers as well as consumers. In other words, we may create problems but we also have the capacity to solve them. Or, as he eloquently put it:

“In the long debate about overpopulation and famine, none of the gloomy projections by intellectuals proved to be as prescient as an old proverb in farming societies: “Each extra mouth comes attached to two extra hands.” No matter what problems lie ahead, the good news on Tuesday will be that America has 600 million hands to solve them.”

Labels: America, progress

A reminder from Sight Savers , a British-based charity, that most blindness can be cured or prevented. This month the charity is running an exhibition at the BA London Eye on “my favourite sight” by celebrities and Bangladeshi children. Most of the pictures are not to my taste but some of the background information on the organisation's website is useful. For example:

“Globally, there are 37 million people who are blind. 90 percent of blindness occurs in the developing world. Three quarters of all blindness is preventable or curable.”

Labels: progress, technology

Interesting figures on the “great divergence” - the huge widening in global inequality following the Industrial Revolution - from the annual economics symposium at Jackson Hole held by America’s Federal Reserve. According to a paper by Anthony Venables (PDF), a professor of economics at the London School of Economics: “the ratio of per capita incomes of the richest to the poorest nations increased from around 8:1 in 1870 to more than 50:1 in 2000.” Of course it would be wrong to conclude from these statistics that economic growth should be rejected. On the contrary, the poorer countries need more growth so that they can catch up.

For anyone interested more generally in the world economy the papers at Jackson Hole look worth reading.

Labels: economics, growth, inequality, progress

A useful reminder in today’s Wall Street Journal Europe (subscription required) about the scourge of malaria and how it can be solved by economic development. Evidently malaria afflicts half a billion people a year and kills a million of them. One way to deal with the disease it to spray DDT, a pesticide, but such action is vetoed by environmentalists. The article also quotes Roger Bate, of Africa Fighting Marlaria, explaining the link between fighting malaria and economic development:

"We eradicated malaria in Malaysia in the '50s and '60s, and in Singapore at the same time. It came back in Malaysia in the '70s but not in Singapore, and the reason it came back is that there wasn't enough wealth for people to have screens on the windows. Singapore's economy, however, grew rapidly, and there isn't a problem there anymore."

Labels: Asia, development, health, progress, technology

Nowadays it is easy for those in the developed world to forget how positively the acquisition of consumer goods was once viewed. It sounds like Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain (Harper Press), a new book by Judith Flanders, helps to explain why. According to a review in the Observer:

“In the 17th century it was not unusual for a poor, rural household to own no more than two or three pots, a knife apiece and a cup between them. By 1715, 90 per cent of families had a clock, and by the end of the 19th century comparable households lived in cottages filled with 'Victorian clutter'. By 1910, there was one piano for every 10 to 20 people.”

Evidently Emile Zola, a leading nineteenth century French author, also celebrated capitalism, commerce and consumerism in The Ladies' Paradise (Au bonheur des dames, 1883).

Labels: book, consumption, progress

Reading further on the work of Robert Fogel (see dispatch on July 30) I have discovered the useful concept of technophysioevolution. As I explain in the comment in the latest issue of Fund Strategy (August 7):

“The trend of improving morbidity is clear from the work of Robert Fogel, a Nobel laureate and professor of economics at the University of Chicago, and a federally funded project on ‘Early indicators of later work levels, disease and death’.

“Fogel's work shows that in an 80-year period - comparing those born in the mid-nineteenth century with those born in the early twentieth century - American life expectancy increased by 6.6 years. Over the same period the average age of the onset of common conditions such as arthritis, heart disease and respiratory problems increased by 10 years.

“Some researchers have even suggested a theory of "technophysioevolution" to explain these trends. As humans gain greater control over their environment there are rapid improvements in both mortality and morbidity.”

Also his March 2005 National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper on Changes in the physiology of aging during the twentieth century looks like a useful update of his previous work. A summary can be found in the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health .

Labels: America, economics, Fund Strategy, health, progress

One of the things I intend to do in my book is to use economic history to show readers how much the world has benefited from growth. In that respect the work of Brad De Long , a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley and a former Treasury department official, is useful. His semi-daily journal outlines the key readings for his economic history courses. One of the most interesting is The Conquest of Nature, an introduction to world economic history by Greg Clark. The introduction has a graph showing global output per person stagnant until about 1800 and then rising sharply after that.

De Long also includes a references which reminds me how degraded the discussion of economic growth has become. It includes a 1987 article by Jared Diamond , an environmentalist and best-selling author, arguing that the agricultural revolution was a mistake. Apparently we were all better of as hunter-gatherers.

Labels: energy, growth, progress

Rereading Richard Layard’s Happiness: Lessons from a new science (Allen Lane 2005) I unexpectedly came across a useful reference. Evidently for primitive societies for which there are records over 20% of all male deaths happened through war. This figure is far higher than for the twentieth century, even taking the two World Wars into account. The source is Lawrence Keeley’s War before civilization (Oxford University Press 1997).

Labels: book, happiness, progress

An article in today’s New York Times discusses the remarkable changes to human bodies over the past century (“So Big and Healthy Grandpa Wouldn’t Even Know You”). It is fairly well known – although not as widely recognised as it should be – than humans are living longer and healthier lives than ever before. But the article goes further:

"The biggest surprise emerging from the new studies is that many chronic ailments like heart disease, lung disease and arthritis are occurring an average of 10 to 25 years later than they used to. There is also less disability among older people today, according to a federal study that directly measures it. And that is not just because medical treatments like cataract surgery keep people functioning. Human bodies are simply not breaking down the way they did before.

“Even the human mind seems improved. The average I.Q. has been increasing for decades, and at least one study found that a person’s chances of having dementia in old age appeared to have fallen in recent years.”

The New York Times article seems largely inspired by the work of Robert Fogel, a Nobel laureate in economics and professor at the University of Chicago. His The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100 (Cambridge University Press 2004) looks well worth reading. His 1993 Nobel lecture (PDF) is also available on the internet.

Labels: economics, progress