Progress Daily

When we hear that “average GDP per worker in 1890 was equal to $13,700 at 2000 prices,” we think that the material standard of living then was about what we could obtain now if we had $13,700 to spend to support us for a year. But that is not the case: the material standard of living then was roughly what we could obtain now if we had $13,700 to spend, and were required to spend it all on commodities that have been around for more than a century. People then not buy modern entertainment or communications or transportation technologies, no modern appliances, no modern buildings, no antibiotics, no air travel. An income of $13,700 today that must be spent exclusively on commodities already in use in the late nineteenth century is worth a lot less than $13,700.

William Nordhaus attempted to construct a consistent series of the real labor-time cost of illumination from the dawn of civilization until today. He concludes that the past hundred years have seen a ten thousand-fold decline in the real price of illumination. Yet commodity-based price indices have only captured a ten-fold decline in this real price.

Nordhaus guesses that the Historical Statistics estimates of economic growth have understated true economic growth since 1800 by between 0.5% and 1.4% per year — an amount that cumulates to a multiplicative factor of between 3 and 15 over the past to centuries, and to a conclusion that real wages since 1900 have multiplied by a factor between 20 and 100.

Inventions largely commercialized and diffused in this century include late-nineteenth century inventions like the monorail, the telephone, the microphone, the cash register, the phonograph, the incandescent lamp, explosives, the electric train, linotype printing, the steam turbine, the gasoline engine, the streetcar, movies, motorcycles, automobiles, concrete-and-steel construction, electric appliances of all kinds, inflatable tires, radio, aspirin, x-rays, taxicab meter. Twentieth-century inventions include the espresso machine, plastics, airplanes, helicopters, hydrofoils, the zipper, the traffic light, heat-resistant glass, television, bulldozers, antibiotics, highways, jet engines, radar, insulin, photocopiers, nylon, transistors, integrated circuits, computers, fiber-optic cables, videotape, oral contraceptives, lasers, CT scanners, catalytic converters, and genetic fingerprinting. A rough estimate is that roughly 45% of the value of what middle-class consumers in rich industrial countries use at the start of the third millennium is in commodities that were not invented or that were not in widespread use at all in the last years of the nineteenth century.

Instead of taking a representative sample of everything produced in 1890, stuffing it into a time machine, bringing it forward to today, selling it; suppose we took a representative sample of everything produced today, stuffed it into a time machine, took it back to 1890, and sold it then at the prices that then prevailed? Then we would have a very different answer, for a large chunk of what is produced now was unavailable back in 1890. It has a very high price.

“Cornucopia: Increasing Wealth in the Twentieth Century” by J. Bradford DeLong

In 1965 Gordon Moore published the paper that gave birth to his famous “law” that the power of computers, as measured by the number of transistors that could be fitted on a silicon chip, would double every 18 months or so.

Four decades later, some graphs of the growing efficiency of DNA synthesis that Rob Carlson drew look suspiciously like the biological equivalent of Moore’s law. By the end of the decade their practical upshot will, if they continue to hold true, be the power to synthesise a string of DNA the size of a human genome in a day.

Currently, what passes for genetic engineering is merely moving genes one at a time from species to species so that bacteria can produce human proteins that are useful as drugs, and crops can produce bacterial proteins that are useful as insecticides. The Carlson curve is making more radical redesigns possible.

The field’s pioneers have dubbed their fledgling discipline “synthetic biology.”

“Life 2.0,” The Economist

The government publishes the time series of real (that is, inflation-adjusted) GDP — gross domestic product — in Historical Statistics of the United States. You can construct a picture of long-run economic growth by taking the time series for real GDP from Historical Statistics, splicing the series onto contemporary estimates of current GDP, and then divide GDP by the number of workers in the American economy to arrive at an estimate of how the economy’s per-worker productive potential has changed over time.

Annual GDP includes all consumption goods and services produced (those bought by households for their own use), all investment goods purchased by businesses to expand their stocks of productive capital, and all goods and services purchased and used by the government.

As of the end of 1999, forecasts of US GDP in 2000 put it at $9,300 billion, which with 142 million workers (employed plus unemployed) comes to an annual real GDP per worker (measured in dollars of the year 2000’s purchasing power) of $65,540. Back in 1890, the spliced-together time series from the Bureau of Economic Analysis tells us that GDP in 1890 (at the year 2000’s prices) was $300 billion. With an 1890 labor force of 21.8 million that translates into an annual real GDP per worker in 1890 of $13,700.

The semi-official time series tells us that material standard of living and potential economic productivity at the start of the third millennium was nearly five times what it had been only 110 years before: a rate of per-worker real economic growth of 1.4% per year. And if we adjusted for the decline in the working year since 1890, we would find a six to sevenfold increase in measured per-work hour real GDP. According to these estimates, an American household with six times the median family income back in 1890 — a household as wealthy and as high up in the relative income distribution then as a household with an income of $300,000 today — was no better off in measured material welfare than the average American household today.

“Cornucopia: Increasing Wealth in the Twentieth Century” by J. Bradford DeLong

People of higher social status have better health and happiness than their lowlier contemporaries.

Over 30 years of research by Michael Marmot has shown that in western countries, where absolute deprivation and poverty is rare, “income per se is not an issue.”

“Where you stand in the social hierarchy - on the social ladder - is intimately related to your chances of getting ill, and the length of your life.”

And just a small difference in social status can have a big effect — people with doctorates live longer than those with Master’s degrees.

Marmot led the landmark “Whitehall study,” which followed the health of British civil servants and their job grades from the 1970s onwards. It showed that those at the bottom of the organisational pile - the clerks and the messengers - were much more likely to suffer coronary heart disease than the mandarins at the top.

The US is a rich nation with a gross domestic product per person (GDP) of about $34,000 and a life expectancy of 76.9 years. But Cuba, with a GDP of only $5200 almost matches the US lifespan with an average of 76.5 years. And Japan, which has the longest life expectancy at 81.3 years, has a significantly lower GDP than the US - about $25,000.

Japan may enjoy better health because of factors like low crime, better care of the elderly, higher industrial productivity and a smaller gap between rich and poor than countries like the US.

The difference in life expectancy in the UK between the highest and lowest social classes jumped from about 5.5 years in the 1970s to 9.5 years by the 1990s, after years of Thatcherite government policies.

After seven years of government by the UK’s Labour party, the gap is narrowing again and is currently about eight years.

In men especially, the “fight or flight” response to stress may have an negative impact. In women, a “tend and befriend” response - where people band together to help them through adversity - could reduce stress.

Most people experience a “morning rise” in cortisol after they awake each day, but the Whitehall study showed low status office workers have a higher morning rise than higher status workers.

This can lead to a higher risk of “metabolic syndrome” which is a precursor to cardiovascular diseases like heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Stress also affects the sympathetic nervous system, responsible for the adrenaline rush caused in “fight or flight” situations. This system is also related to metabolic syndrome and may also cause inflammation.

“Higher status leads to a longer life” by Shaoni Bhattacharya

At the turn of the last century, Montgomery Ward was the largest mail-order retailer in the United States. It was one of the few ways the 40% of Americans living in small towns or on the farm could buy the products of modern industry.

Comparing the prices charged in the Montgomery Ward catalog with prices today — both expressed as a multiple of the average hourly wage — provides an index of how much our productivity in making the goods consumed back in 1895 has multiplied.

Consider a one-speed bicycle, costing $65 if ordered from Montgomery Ward in 1895. The price of a bicycle measured in “nominal” dollars has more than doubled over the past century (as a result of inflation). But the bicycle today is much less expensive in terms of the only measure that truly counts, its “real” price: the work and sweat needed to earn its cost. It took perhaps 260 hours’ worth of the average American worker’s production in 1895 to mount up to enough money to buy a one-speed bicycle. Today a bicycle costs 1/36 as much in labor time today as it did back then. On the bicycle standard — measuring wealth by counting up how many bicycles it can buy — the average American worker today is some 36 times richer than his counterpart in 1895.

Other commodities tell their — different — stories. A six-volume set of (cheaply made) novels by Horatio Alger costs 1/35 as much in this labor-wage-metric now as it did a century ago. A 100-piece dinner set from Crate and Barrel today costs 1/12 as much in labor time as a set from Montgomery Ward used to. A cushioned office chair has become 12 1/2 times cheaper.

But there are other goods with less of a productivity multiple: a multiple of less than 5 for a solid gold locket, a productivity multiple of only a little more than two for a Steinway piano, and a productivity multiple of 0.8 for a sterling silver teaspoon: it costs more hours to earn the money to buy a silver teaspoon today than it took back in 1895.

A farm household ordering a few silver implements back in 1895 was presumably seeking flatware that would not corrode rapidly. They did not know how to mix chromium atoms with iron and carbon atoms to make corrosion-resistant flatware. We do. Thus our everyday utensils are made of stainless steel: our silver is reserved for when (and who) wants to set a glittering table. For those who think that the important characteristic is that it is made up of silver, it is indeed 25% more expensive now than it was back then when you could pick the silver up off of the ground in Nevada. But for those who think that the important characteristics is that it does not rust, a teaspoon today costs only one-fiftieth as much in terms of labor time as it did a century ago.

Or consider the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Today its print version costs $1,250 — in labor hours one quarter as much as it cost back in 1895. But the Encyclopaedia Britannica CD 2000 costs $49.95 — a drop in labor-time price of a factor of 100, if the CD is taken as an equivalent product. And the Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia can be accessed over the internet for free.

The answer to the question “how much wealthier are we today than our counterparts of a century ago?” depends on which set of commodities you view as central and important. If you care only about personal services — having a butler around to answer the door and polish your silver spoons — then you would find little difference in national average wealth between 1895 and 1990: an hour of a butler’s time then cost about an hour’s worth of the time of an average worker. But suppose you care about your ability to buy mass-produced manufactured goods — then the multiple is 36.

“Cornucopia: Increasing Wealth in the Twentieth Century” by J. Bradford DeLong

“Mirror neurons” create in us a replica of the feelings and intentions of the people we’re with and, in turn, make what we do an active ingredient in their brains. This class of brain cell may explain, for example, why flirting is so powerful. A study at the University of London found that when a woman whom a man finds attractive looks him straight in the eye, a specific circuit in his brain releases dopamine, delivering a dollop of pleasure. But this only works when their eyes lock. Simply looking at beautiful women, or eye contact with someone a man does not see as attractive, fails to stir this pleasure circuit.

The people whom we love the most are biological allies. Being with them boosts the secretion of brain chemicals like oxytocin, which calms distress and lowers levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that weakens the immune system.

When we feel rebuffed or left out, the brain activates a site for registering physical pain, neuroscientists at UCLA report.

Australian researchers found that workers recall a boss’s downbeat comments far more often, in greater detail and with more intensity than they do his encouraging words. When negative remarks become a preoccupation, that worker’s brain loses mental efficiency.

“Can You Raise Your Social IQ?” by Daniel Goleman

During the last three decades of the 20th century, demographic transition was associated with continuous declines in the vulnerability of countries to civil conflicts (ethnic wars, antigovernment insurgencies and terrorism resulting in multiple deaths).

Demographic transition is the change that countries go through when they progress from a population with short lives and large families to one in which people tend to live longer lives and raise small families. About 1/3 of the world’s countries have completed this transition. About another 1/3 of all countries, plus the northern states of India — in total, about 1.5 billion people — remain in the transition’s early or middle phases. Most are in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Others are scattered across southern Asia and Latin America.

During the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, countries in the late phases of demographic transition were less likely to experience new outbreaks of civil conflicts than those still in the transition’s early or middle phases. The likelihood of civil conflict steadily decreased for high-risk countries as they experienced overall declines in birth and death rates.

Because death rates typically decrease before birth rates begin to decline, population tends to grow rapidly during the transition.

From the 1970s through the 1990s, a decline in a country’s annual birth rate of 10 births per thousand people corresponded to a decrease of about 10% in the likelihood of an outbreak of civil conflict. Each decade, countries in the earliest phase of demographic transition (with birth rates above 45 per thousand) had more than a 40% probability of experiencing a new outbreak of civil conflict. This vulnerability descended until the latest phase of transition, in which countries had less than a 5% probability of an outbreak of civil conflict.

The demographic factors most closely associated with the likelihood of a new outbreak of civil conflict during the 1990s were a high proportion of young adults (aged 15 to 29 years) and a rapid rate of urban population growth.

When coupled with a large youth bulge, countries with a very low availability of cropland and/or renewable fresh water (measured on a per capita basis) plus a rapid rate of urban population growth had a roughly 40% probability of experiencing an outbreak of civil conflict.

Most of the world’s countries are moving toward a range of population structures and dynamics that make civil conflict less likely. Progress through the demographic transition gives countries a more mature and less volatile age structure, slower workforce growth and a more slowly growing school-age population. It reduces urban growth, and gives countries additional time to expand infrastructure, meet the demand for services and conserve dwindling natural resources.

Over the past 40 years, the demographic transition has been moving forward impressively in nearly all of the world’s regions. Human population worldwide is growing at nearly half the pace of 35 years ago, and infant mortality and family size are roughly half of what they were at that time.

The material in this factsheet is based on the PAI publication, “The Security Demographic: Population and Civil Conflict After the Cold War.”

“FactSheet: How Demographic Transition Reduces Countries’ Vulnerability to Civil Conflict,” Population Action International

Norman Borlaug, 92, has saved perhaps more lives than anyone else in history.

In 1944, Borlaug accepted an invitation from the Rockefeller Foundation to work on a project to boost wheat production in Mexico. At the time, Mexico was importing a good share of its grain. Borlaug spent nearly 20 years breeding the high-yield dwarf wheat that sparked the Green Revolution. Borlaug’s team painstakingly cross-bred thousands of wheat varieties to find those resistant to highly destructive “rust” fungi. They also changed the architecture of the wheat, from tall gangly stems to shorter sturdier ones that produced more grain.

It was an achievement that made Mexico self-sufficient in wheat by the late 1950s and, when later deployed throughout much of the developing world, forestalled the mass starvation predicted by neo-Malthusians. (In the late 1960s most experts were speaking of imminent global famines in which billions of people would perish.)

Borlaug worked with scientists and administrators in India and Pakistan, & got his dwarf wheat varieties to hundreds of thousands of South Asian peasant farmers. These varieties resisted a wide spectrum of plant pests and diseases and produced two to three times more grain than traditional varieties.

At the time, many developing nations — eager to supply cheap food to their urban citizens, who might otherwise rebel — required their farmers to sell into a government concession that paid them less than half of the world market price for their agricultural products. The result was hoarding and underproduction. Borlaug persuaded the governments of Pakistan and India to drop such self-defeating policies.

By 1968 Pakistan was self-sufficient in wheat, and by 1974 India was self-sufficient in all cereals. Researchers at a research institute in the Philippines used Borlaug’s insights to develop high-yield rice and spread the Green Revolution to most of Asia. As with wheat, so with rice: Short-stalked varieties proved more productive. They devoted relatively more energy to making grain and less to making leaves and stalks. And they were sturdier, remaining harvestable when traditional varieties had collapsed to the ground and begun to rot.

Despite occasional local famines caused by armed conflicts or political mischief, food is more abundant and cheaper today than ever before in history.

Borlaug remains a consultant to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico and president of a private Japanese foundation working to spread the Green Revolution to sub-Saharan Africa. He believes that biotechnology will be crucial to boosting world food supplies in the coming decades.

“The Man Who Fed the World,” Ronald Bailey’s review of Leon Hesser’s The Man Who Fed the World

Research has repeatedly shown that introverts aren’t as happy as extroverts. 

William Fleeson, Ph.D., asked 50 undergraduates in group discussions to act assertive and energetic. They later rated their emotions. He then repeated the experiment, but asked the same students to act shy and passive.

Without exception, when students acted extroverted, they indicated high levels of happiness and fun. When the same individuals acted introverted, they consistently rated themselves as unhappy. Extroversion, and by extension happiness, may be within our reach.

“Don’t worry, be extroverted” by Anne Becker

The dynamics of human population — rates of growth, age structure, distribution, etc. — influence when and where warfare breaks out. A review of data from 180 countries, about half of which experienced civil conflict at some time from 1970 through 2000, concludes that:

Recent progress along the demographic transition — a population’s shift from high to low rates of birth and death — is associated with continuous declines in the vulnerability of nation-states to civil conflict. If this association continues through the 21st century, then a range of policies promoting small, healthy and better educated families and long lives among populations in developing countries seems likely to encourage greater political stability in weak states and to enhance global security in the future.

“The Security Demographic,” Population Action International