Kruse Kronicle

WSI: Conclusion

We began this series looking at what the prophet Isaiah recorded concerning the "new creation" in Isaiah 65:17-25. This passage directly references long lives, no infant mortality, and a society full of peace and justice. These circumstances are characteristic of what the Hebrews called shalom. I made the case that as Christians bearing witness to Jesus Christ, our mission is to seek the greatest shalom possible in the world, always cognizant that shalom in its fullness will only be recognized at the consummation of the new creation after Christ's return. So has the trajectory of the world been toward shalom?

Let's look at the world through the lenses of longevity, infant mortality (surrogate indicators of other societal health variables), and economic prosperity. I think the answer must be yes. As we look at technophysio evolution and the Demographic Transition Model, we see unprecedented improvement in the lives of everyday people beginning in England and the Anglo colonies. Eventually, it became Europe, which had advanced, and the rest of the world was poor. Now it has become a world where there is a complete continuum of nations from rich to poor, with most moving in the direction of greater prosperity but with a significant minority of nations, concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, which have stagnated or are even deteriorating. The improving state of more than five billion people on the face of the planet is unprecedented and needs to be celebrated. But we cannot close our eyes and ears to the one billion people trapped in poverty.

When I began this series, I intended to review world trends, offer some analysis of what had propelled those trends, and then investigate the challenge of the remaining poor by reviewing Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion. I've changed my plans here a little. I've given an overview of world trends and briefly mentioned what led to unprecedented changes in the past couple of centuries. I will now end this series and begin a new series on Cycles of Prosperity.

I will say more in the introduction of that series, but my basic aim will be twofold. First, can we model the essential components of a prosperous economic system based on the unprecedented change we have encountered? I believe we can come up with a basic model. Second, with a model of health, can we then examine the situation for the bottom one billion? I will review Collier's book as the primary source for answering that question. I believe we will see that while there is great reason for optimism, there is also no inevitable march of history leading us to the final resolution of human suffering and the achievement of eternal shalom.

With that in mind, this post concludes the series on World Social Indicators.

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WSI: Addressing Global Warming

The hot environmental topic today (pun intended) is anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change. The leading theory is that CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels are causing a greenhouse gas effect that is causing global warming. I don't take this as an indisputable fact. However, I'm not interested in debating that point here. We will assume that CO2 is the driving cause. CO2 emissions must be reduced. That leaves us with options of reducing our CO2 by switching to alternative power options and/or contracting the global economy.

The United Nations' International Panel on Climate Control (IPCC) estimates global temperatures will rise by about 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. Political Scientist Bjorn Lomborg has looked at the IPCC reports and other research to understand the impact such warming will have. There will be problems, but nothing approaching the hyperbolic apocalypse portrayed in Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth or similar presentations. The following is just a sampling of the exaggerated problems placed in perspective by Lomborg. (I'm drawing heavily on Lomborg's book Cool It with some supplemental additions. I highly recommend the book for the full story.)

Extreme Hurricanes and Cyclones

Al Gore claims that warming will lead to dramatic increases in hurricane activity. The UN World Meteorological Organization (parent organization to the IPCC) published a report in 2007 that says that no conclusion can be drawn from science that conclusively links hurricane activity and global warming. (Lomborg 73) The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association released an updated report of hurricane statistics last year that concluded that, “These records reflect the existence of cycles of hurricane activity, rather than trends toward more frequent or stronger hurricanes.” The reason the most recent cycle of hurricanes appears more intense is because so many more people now live in their potential path of these storms. Therefore, we take greater notice of the events. Had the Miami hurricane of 1926 occurred with today’s population where it is today it what have been twice as destructive as Katrina. The 1900 Galveston hurricane would have been greater than Katrina as well.

Heat Related Deaths

Al Gore gives us images of people dropping dead from extreme heat. The fact is that cold climates are much greater (by magnitudes) human killers than heat. Since the nature of the warming we are now experiencing is driven by more moderate temperatures in the winter, warming will lead to fewer net deaths. A 2006 survey of the world estimates that the net result of warming by 2050 would be 1.4 million lives saved each year. Only Africa showed a net loss per year of 50,000 people. The study further reported that this trend would continue until at least 2200. (Lomborg 38-39) Rising temperatures will create problems for some people in specific areas but those are problems that can be addressed on a localized basis.

Melting Ice Caps and Rising Sea Levels

In Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore shows what happens if the ice cover on Greenland or half the ice in Antarctic were to melt. Sea levels woud rise 20 feet. But no scientific body suggests that anything remotely near this level of melting will occur. Melting polar ice does not raise the sea level any more than ice cubes in your glass increases the liquid level in your glass of ice water. Sea level increases come from glacier’s melting and running to the sea, as well as rises in temperature that cause water to expand. The UN estimates a one foot increase over the next century. (Lomborg 60) How serious is that? The IPCC estimates that a three foot rise (triple the estimate) would cause less than $6 billion dollars damage over the century. Consider that sea levels have risen by about one foot over the previous 100-150 years. People gradually adapt to these changes. The fact that I had to inform you that we have just experienced the same level of change over the past century should tell you how threatening this is.

It is also worth noting that ice is forming in some places in the world while receding in others. For instance, much has been made of the melting of the Larsen B ice shelf of the Antarctic Peninsula in recent years. Yet ice core samples show that the area was likely open water 6,000 years ago and reached its maximum ice accumulation over the last two hundred years. It is now contracting from this maximum expansion. Ice accumulation and thawing is constantly in transition at the poles.

New Ice Age in Europe

A year or two ago you may have seen the movie The Day After Tomorrow, where climate change leads to a tipping point that results in a reversal the Gulf Stream ocean current, ushering in a cataclysmic ice age over most of North America and Europe. The Gulf Stream last shut down about 8,200 years. Yet scientists estimate that the resulting net temperature drop was about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Virtually all of the ice on Greenland would need to melt to repeat the events of the 8,200 years ago. The IPCC expects the melting over the next century to achieve one one-thousandth of the effect necessary to cause such an event. (Lomborg 87-92.)

Polar Bears and Species Impact

One of Al Gore’s most heart tugging presentations is polar bears drowning to due to melting ice. Over the past forty years the population of polar bears has expanded from 5,000 to 25,000. Eighteen of the twenty or so subpopulations are stable are growing. Only two have experienced some decline and that is largely due to hunting. It is also the case that the two declining populations are located where the climate has been getting colder, while the two populations that are growing the fastest are in areas where the climate is getting warmer. (Lomborg 5-6) While warming well likely have a negative impact on some species it will cause others to flourish. The threat to various species is far more related to encroachments of humans on habitats rather than changes in climate.

Lomborg addresses a host of other cataclysmic claims (malaria, food production, water shortages), and the fact is that the impacts of global warming over the next century are mixed. The most problematic ones are not that challenging to address, provided that people across the globe have the resources to address them. Activists frequently claim that the poor, who are the least able to respond to the consequences of global warming, will be the most adversely affected. Again, we encounter a parochialism of the present, projecting present circumstances unaltered into the future. If economic growth continues in emerging nations, then by centuries end, in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, we will not have subsistence-level farmers responding to changes but people with the resources of typical European living today. Still, if CO2 truly is the driver in warming the planet, we must eventually find a way to reverse the CO2 problem.

Strategies like the Kyoto Accord's plan to reduce emissions back to 1990 levels will cost $5 trillion over the next century. The net result will be that the warming will have been reduced by 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit for 4.7 to 4.4 degrees. It would postpone the 4.7-degree rise five years from 2100 to 2105. (Lomborg 22. He insists that this is "scientifically entirely uncontroversial.”) The net savings from this $5 trillion investment? $2 trillion dollars. (Lomborg 33) Kyoto, and similar emission reduction strategies for existing technologies, are exorbitantly wasteful.

Lomborg argues (and I strongly concur) that implementing new energy technologies is the solution to reducing CO2. The money poured into emission reduction would be far better spent on technology development. In the meantime, we should be doing our best to expand material abundance around the globe. That will enable people to address better whatever future challenges they may encounter. We are better off investing our resources in preventing HIV/AIDS, addressing malnutrition, expanding free markets (particularly eliminating trade barriers in Europe and the US), and wiping out diseases like malaria. For relatively small investments, we can make an enormous improvement in the lives of hundreds of millions around the globe. We must move people along the Environmental Transition Curve (discussed in the previous post) as quickly as possible.

There are challenges to the expansion of material abundance around the world. But to suggest, as some do, that the expansion of material abundance is all about destroying the environment is an oversimplification of a very complex issue. By definition, accessing resources, processing resources, and human activity generally impact the environment. Yet human beings are material beings (i.e., part of nature and the natural order) whose flourishing signifies a healthy environment. Nature isn't just that which is non-human. Thus, an environment where humans flourish is a healthy environment. Many environmentally conscious Christians have a view everything begins and ends in a garden. However, the biblical narrative begins in a garden and ends in a garden city. Human culture, government, art, and cities are a human contribution to the created order. They are part of the New Creation at the end of the narrative.

Darrel Cosden notes that the natural world is both our habitat and the object of our work (see the stewardship commission in Genesis 1 and 2.) Humans were not placed on the earth as preservationists. We are to be stewards, bringing the created order to fulfillment. But the created order isn't mere fodder for our every whim and desire. God created the earth, and it is good. It is worthy of our conservation. The problem is when human flourishing destroys the habitat God placed in our stewardship. The problem is correctly discerning when our efforts toward human flourishing have become destructive. Modernist paradigms have not ushered in the Kingdom of God, nor are we living in dark dystopias on the verge of apocalypse. Proper Christian stewardship requires that we not become ensnared by Modernist hubris or anti-Modernist reactionary movements but that we work to discern what creates flourishing for humanity and all creation.

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WSI: Destroying the Environment?

Listening to environmental activists today, you get the idea that we have only two options.

1. An ascetic no, economic growth world where we "live within limits" and protect the environment.
2. An economically robust world that collapses from exhausting resources and destroys the ecosystem.

Is there a third option? Is there an option that leads to robust economic development, human flourishing, and a healthy environment? There is.

Return with me to America in 1910. Imagine that we have foreknowledge that the population will increase more than threefold over the next century. The present cropland in use is 330 million acres. The amount of cropland in use, as a ratio of population, has not changed dramatically over recent years. How much additional cropland will we need to accommodate future population growth? Approximately 700 million acres will be needed, an area approximately the land area of the US east of the Mississippi River. What actually happened?

Through improvements in farming methods, irrigation, fertilizer, storage and transportation, seeds, and other variables, enough food was produced to accommodate the growing domestic population and generate a surplus for distribution to other nations. Corn yields per acre increasing by 60% between 1977 and 2007, is just one example of these changes. In fact, government subsidies are paid to some farmers who do not grow crops so prices can be kept at stable levels. But in addition to food production, this explosion in productivity has empowered tremendous overall economic growth. Note the impact on gross domestic product.

One of the single biggest threats to biodiversity is the destruction of habitat. The World Conservation Union estimates that habitat loss, of which agriculture is the biggest contributor, affects 85-90% of bird, mammal, and amphibian species. (The Improving State of the World, 117-118) Think of the millions of acres of land that were conserved, not destroyed, because of economic growth. Until 1960, the world was in a situation similar to that of the United States in 1910. However, due to infusions of technology and aid, the conversion of land to cropland worldwide has slowed drastically. Despite a 160% increase in population since 1960, cropland has expanded by 14%. And there still are vast regions of the planet where existing technologies have yet to be applied. As the world population is likely to grow again by half before leveling off (and possibly declining) in a few decades, agricultural technology will indirectly protect billions of acres of habitat worldwide.

The economic growth generated by new technologies has not been without trouble. Factories and vehicles turned out a tremendous about of pollution in Europe and the United States. As scientists began to assess the harm caused by pollution, and as people had ever higher incomes meeting their basic needs, demand began to grow for a cleaner environment. The 1960s became a major turning point for cleaning up pollution. The chart below from the EPA shows the pollution levels for the six principal air pollutants and how they have dropped by 54% since 1970; this while the population grew by half and GDP tripled.

The American experience exemplifies what economist Indur Goklany describes in his Environmental Transition theory. The graph below illustrates what Goklany calls the Environmental Transition curve.

Those familiar with the Kuznets Curve will recognize the similarity, except "Time" has replaced per capita income (or GDP) on the X-Axis. Goklany describes the Environmental Transition hypothesis this way.

"...society is on a continual quest to improve its quality of life, which is determined by numerous social, economic, and environmental factors. The weight given to each determinant is constantly changing with society's precise circumstances and perceptions. In the early stages of economic and technological development, which go hand-in-hand, society places a higher priority on increasing� affluence than other determinants, even if that means tolerating some environmental deterioration, because increasing wealth provides the means for obtaining basic needs and amenities (e.g., food, shelter, water, and electricity) and reducing the most significant risks to public health and safety (e.g. malnutrition, infectious and parasitic diseases, and child mortality). Also, in those early stages, society may, in fact, be unaware of the risk imposed by a deterioration in the specific environmental impact, measured by the particular indicator in question. However, as society becomes wealthier; tackles these problems; and, possibly, gains more knowledge about the social, health, and economic consequences of the environmental impact in question, reducing� the environmental impact due to the specific indicator automatically rises higher on its priority list (even if the impact does not worsen). But because the first increments of economic activity further increase environmental impact, it becomes an even more important determinant of the overall quality of life. Accordingly, lowering the specific impact becomes even more urgent. (The Improving State of the World, 106-107)

The Kuznets Curve uses only affluence on the X-axis. Goklany points to the need for sufficient time for the technology generated by rising affluence to emerge and be deployed. Consequently, technological innovation may lag due to varying degrees depending on a nation's particular set of issues. Furthermore, critical to the performance of the Environmental Transition Curve are democracy, property rights, free press, and rule of law. Individuals must have just social institutions by which they can make their growing concerns felt.

Environmentalist Seymour Garte drives the importance of this home in Where We Stand: A Surprising Look at the Real State of our Planet. There is a tendency by some parties to resist moving toward less polluting technology even when it becomes apparent that failure to do so is harming others. Property rights are important because they give us a basis for challenging folks who harm our property and people through pollution. Political freedom and rule of law are important in providing means for holding polluters accountable. Without this freedom, many of the improvements made to the environment would not have been possible. I would also add that alleged polluters can seek justice against overly aggressive environmentalists through these same processes.

The process is often messy and rancorous. If we had perfect knowledge about all issues and impacts involved, we would no doubt discover that improper balances have been struck on any number of issues. But that is precisely the point. We don't have perfect knowledge. That is why these less-than-perfect outcomes (by divine standards), sometimes achieved only through adversarial engagement, are probably the optimal we can hope for. It is hubris to believe that state-run expertocracies or perfectly functioning markets can move us closer to divine wisdom. Russia and former Soviet Bloc nations had increasing per capita income but horrendous pollution levels. Several Latin American countries have had rising per capita gain, but due to corruption and inadequate government, aid, and trade have tended to impact only the top minority of society. There is little recourse to address abuses, including environmental issues. Political freedom, property rights, free press, and rule of law are the only soil from which sustainable cycles of prosperity can be generated.

Addressing environmental challenges can be costly. Businesses and industries may find it more costly to operate, which means their goods will become more expensive to consumers. The more economically advanced a society is, the less of a burden this is. Subsistence societies are not environmentally friendly and do not allow for human flourishing. When people are trying to live day to day, there is little concern about long-term environmental consequences. As economic growth takes root, environmental issues will still not be an immediate priority, but as described in the Environmental Transition Curve, people will increasingly have both the will and the resources to care for their environment.

Now any astute reader will note that we have eschewed the issue of CO2 and global warming. What impact does the issue of global warming of emerging cycles of prosperity, and how should we respond?

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WSI: Malthus Returns (Parochialism of the Present)

One of the biggest challenges in appreciating the world trends we've examined in this series is "parochialism of the present." This refers to the twofold trap we fall into if we do not try to view our circumstances from beyond our narrow sliver of time. One trap is that we ignore history and fail to appreciate the trajectory of change moving through our time. The other trap is to insufficiently appreciate rates of future innovation and erroneous project present circumstances into the future. A particular variety of this mindset, known as Malthusianism, extends back to the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution. (More recent versions are frequently called neo-Malthusian.)

Thomas Malthus was an early nineteenth-century British minister who analyzed parish records spanning many years. He published his research in An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. The relationship between population and resources was at the core of Malthus' observations. He observed that while resources grow arithmetically (i.e., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…), the population tends to grow geometrically (i.e., 1, 2, 4, 8, 16…). Population always outgrows the ability of resources to support the population.

Aside from the normal causes of death, like accidents and old age, factors like war, pestilence, and famine also served as a check. This would reduce the population to manageable levels. Population would increase again and repeat the cycle all over again. Being opposed to contraception and abortion, the only solution Malthus saw was late marriage and abstinence. His outlook for humanity in the century ahead was one of catastrophic economic disasters. Malthusian thinking predominated in the early years of the nineteenth century.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, other Malthusians appeared. William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882) wrote The Coal Problem in 1865. Concerning Jevons, Angus Maddison writes:

Jevons estimated that British coal output was 83.6 million tons in 1861, and projected a need for 2,607 million tons in 1961, if 'the present' annual growth of 3.5 per cent persisted (in fact production grew from 1820 to 1860 at about 3.8 per cent a year). Such growth 'would exhaust our mines to a depth of 4,000 feet or 1,500 feet deeper than our present deepest mines' (p. 274), and bring a prohibitive rise in prices. He rejected the feasibility of substitutes -- timber, wind, water, tidal energy, hydrogen, or petroleum. ... He also rejected the feasibility of large scale imports, because of heavy transport costs. ... He recommended 'wholesale emigration' to countries like Australia of the US which had much larger coal reserves. In fact British coal production peaked a 292 tons in 1913, fell to 118 million in 1973 and 26 million in 2003. In 2003, British energy consumption was equivalent to 370 million tons of coal, about a seventh of what he projected for 1861, and British coal provided only 7 per cent of it. Thus Jevons failed to see the possibilities for reducing energy intensity, was wrong about substitution possibilities and the pace of technological advance. He also demonstrated the fragility of centennial forecasts. (Contours of the World Economy, 1-2030, AD. 353)

Those old enough to remember the 1960s and 1970s will remember the last neo-Malthusian revival with people like Paul Ehrlich, the Club of Rome, and Jimmy Carter and his Global 2000 Report. These folks predicted exhaustion of most major commodities, increased famines, and unprecedented global unrest from shortages and economic collapse by 2000. In 1980, economist Julian Simon offered a $1,000 bet that commodities chosen by his opponent would be cheaper than they were in 1980, at a date in the future chosen by his opponent. Ehrlich took him up on the bet, choosing a handful of commodities to be valued after ten years. Ehrlich paid up a decade later when every commodity fell from its 1980 price.

In the past decade or so, we've seen another neo-Malthusian resurgence married to cataclysmic climate change scenarios (which we will visit soon), suspicion about economic growth, and an anti-technology predisposition. Much of the "sustainable growth" movement is permeated with neo-Malthusian thinking. People who don't hold neo-Malthusian views are cast as sinister people who refuse to live within limits (meaning the overwhelming majority of economists.)

Like failed second-coming forecasters, each new revival has reasons why it will come true this time. The problem with the Malthusian views is the failure to appreciate the dynamism involved in the market economies. If the supply of a commodity is becoming scarcer for the commodity, then the commodity's price will climb. Commodity prices factor in anticipated growth in present and future demand, estimated quantities of natural resources, and the capacity to extract resources for productive use. What has happened to commodity prices over the years? A 2001 study examined commodity prices over the previous 140 years and charted the following trend.

Paul Cashin and John McDermott conclude:

“…while there has been a downward trend in real commodity prices of 1.3 percent per year over the last 140 years, little support is found for a break in the long-run trend decline in commodity prices. …”

Keep in mind that over this 140-year period, the earth's population grew by a factor of five, and the per capita gross domestic product grew by a conservative factor of ten. Meanwhile, resources have become more abundant! How is this possible?

When a commodity becomes scarcer, several things happen. Suppliers are motivated to search harder for more of the commodity, to find ways to renew supplies of it (i.e., the lumber industry), and to embark on recovering less accessible deposits of the commodity. Entrepreneurs enter the markets. They begin offering substitute commodities, they recycle the existing commodity, and they begin to find ways to use the commodity more efficiently. In the Ehrlich vs. Simon bet, most of the commodity prices went down because of better extraction or processing techniques (ex., better smelting for tungsten) or substitute commodities came into the market (ex., aluminum began replacing tin for some uses and sand made into fiber optic cable began replacing cooper.) Commodity users will likely decrease usage as price increases and/or look for alternatives.

Donald Hay writes in his book, Economics Today: A Christian Critique:

Assuming that an exhaustible resource is going to be put to a good use, are we justified in depleting it and so depriving future generations? Our response is in the affirmative, but with a reservation. If a substitute does not exist, then it is presumptuous to believe that our needs are greater than those of a later generation. In practice, it is hard to find an example of a resource without a biologically renewable substitute. For example, the fossil fuels could, in principle, be replaced by wood or solar energy. Metals are more of a problem, but it is not impossible to conceive of a culture that uses no metal in its artefacts (and metals can be recycled their availability over time). (298)

Jared Diamond is a biologist and geographer who has contributed significantly to our understanding of past cultures, but he, too, unfortunately, lapses into a Malthusian mindset. If you look at most of his examples of resource exhaustion, two factors are at play. First, insufficient scientific and technological knowledge allowed innovation to develop. Second, assuming sufficient knowledge, there were inadequate feedback loops about the supply and demand of waning resources. Market economies provide a dynamic feedback loop that prohibits abrupt exhaustion of resources, even as they generate the human and financial capital to address new challenges. The market will inhibit the total depletion of resources because people will abandon the commodity when the price is too high, long before its exhaustion. Human and financial resources empower aggressive searches for new solutions.

The remarkable improvements in human life over the last couple of centuries do not warrant pessimism. It is not a suicide machine. I believe Indur Goklany gets it right when he writes:

...these overall improvements in human well-being contradict the view advanced by Jared Diamond, for example, that new technology creates more problems than it solves because it replaces old problems with new, more difficult problems. A more accurate characterization of new technology is that it generally replaces imperfect existing technologies with improved, but still-less-than-perfect technologies. (The Improving State of the World, 374)

Just as Malthus could not see the impact of the Industrial Revolution on resource availability, I think many neo-Malthusians are blind to the evolution of renewable, reusable, and synthetic fabrication (from renewable resources) that is taking place in our lifetimes. Had Malthus' perspective won out in the early nineteenth century, it is hard to imagine the devastating impact it would have on generations down to this day. The same caution needs to be sounded about neo-Malthusians today.

In closing this post, I'm sure many know there has been a recent spike in oil and commodity prices. None of this has an impact on the long-term trend of commodity prices. Artificial factors intervene from time to time to cause prices to spike or drop. For instance, OPEC may decide to restrict the rate at which they pump oil. (See here.) That doesn't change the actual quantity of oil available. Economic growth in emerging nations likely has some impact in the short term on commodity prices, but it is worth noting that with both the US and emerging economies slowing, commodity prices have still gone higher. The recent rise in prices likely has much to do with the present unusual situation of negative real interest rates. (See this article by Harvard economist Jeffrey Frankel.)

The bottom line is that we are not running out of resources or depriving future generations of a better life. On the contrary, economic growth accomplished through developing cycles of prosperity (more about this phrase later) is an important gift we can give to our children. It is essential for lifting billions of others worldwide into prosperous lives. Parochialism of the present must be resisted.

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WSI: Demographic Transition Model

To understand technophysio evolution's impact on the global population, we can look at what demographers call the Demographic Transition Model (DTM). The DTM is a model reflecting the experience of Western Europe, extrapolated to interpret anticipated global demographic trends. There are four phases to the DTM:

Stage 1: Death rates (deaths per 1,000 population) and birth rates (births per 1,000 population) vary but tend to balance each other out. Prior to the eighteenth century, this was the near universal story for humanity (although as we have seen, very slow steady growth had been the norm for many centuries before.)

Stage 2: Death rates begin to decline significantly. Birth rates stay constant for a while and then began to drop in a pattern similar to death rates. Though both are declining, the birth rate stays significantly above the death rate for decades (see the dashed line in the chart.) This leads to a significant increase in the population.

Stage 3: Death rate decline begins to slow and level out. Meanwhile fertility rates continue to decline leveling out at a later date. The population continues to experience growth but at an ever slowing rate.

Stage 4: Death rates and birth rates stabilize at or below replacement levels.

Wikipedia provides a chart for 250 years of Sweden's history that illustrates this. Notice the parallel death and birth rates until the beginning of the 1800s. The stages are demarcated for you at the top of the chart.

Stage 2 emerged in Europe because of technophysio evolution. Increased agricultural productivity led to a surplus of food and an improved diet. Improved health and vigor meant more productive people. It reduced the death rate as people lived longer and more productive lives. (Robert Fogel notes that, in England, agriculture improved the caloric intake, but the rapid urbanization created health problems that tended to retard advances in life expectancy until the late nineteenth century.) With improved health, and enough resources to meet basic subsistence needs, people began to address environmental problems like waste elimination and personal hygiene. This lessened the amount of disease and allowed more people to live longer and more vigorous lives.

Stage 3 was when the infant mortality rate (children dying before their first birthday) was noticeably lower. Whereas only four or five children out of eight might have lived to adulthood in the past, now seven or eight children might reach maturity. Fewer children were needed to perpetuate the family, and birth rates declined. Increased industrialization also meant urbanization and a departure from traditional values about family size and the role of women. Women no longer gained as much status from family. They become more educated and literate, often entering the workforce. This led to greater affluence and greater sophistication, creating a better quality of life. People became evermore empowered, and greater demands were made for environmental improvements, safety, and health care.

Stage 4 has seen a stabilization of death and birth rates. Concerns about quality-of-life issues, including environment and health, have risen in importance.

Some believe there may be a stage 5. Eventually, our ability to extend life expectancy will hit a wall, and the death rate will rise a little before stabilizing. With affluence, death rates may begin to increase because of decreased physical activity and increasingly unhealthy lifestyles like overeating. How birth rates will respond isn't known. Whether this is true and to what degree is a subject of debate.

We can extrapolate the DTM to represent global changes with one significant change. The distinguishing feature of the global model is that instead of a relatively smooth transition into declining death rates over decades, death rates plummet quickly. Most developing nations experienced population explosions in the years after World War II when large amounts of aid, vaccines, and technological knowledge were made available. Traditions and customs about family size can't adapt as quickly. Therefore, the gap between birth and death rates (see the dashed line in the graph below) is considerably larger than with the DTM for Western nations. This leads to very rapid population growth.

Here is a chart showing the global birth and death rate from 1950 with projections until 2050:

Another distinguishing feature of the global DTM is the linkage between increases in per capita income and improvements in living conditions. In the Western DTM, growth in per capita income seemed to draw living conditions to higher levels. The global experience has been more a matter of improved living conditions and health, drawing per capita income to higher levels. Aid and technology transfers from the West have essentially shortened the learning curve for other nations following the West through the demographic transition.

It is important to note that the DTM is not without controversy. Looking nation by nation, there is considerable variation in how demographic transitions occur. Still, the DTM is a good standard that helps us frame questions about specific nations and regions. It does seem to capture a sense of the overall global trend.

Next, we will look at the economic growth machine that made the recent rapid population growth while expanding prosperity possible.

(For a scholarly presentation of technophysiological evolution, see The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100: Europe, America, and the Third World. Wikipedia has a pretty good article on the Demographic Transition Model.)

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WSI: Technophysio Evolution

Two “L” shaped graphs highlight the extraordinary changes in human prosperity over the last twelve thousand years. After millennia of infant mortality rates of 200-300 per 1,000 and life expectancy at birth of 20-30 years, most people today live in nations where infant mortality rates are dropping below 50, on their way to the single-digit levels of the West. Global life expectancy is pushing 70 years. These “L” shaped developments contribute to another “L” curve. Look at this chart of world population:

We can get a better sense of population growth if we break the chart into two segments:

From 10,000 BCE to 5000 BCE, the global population increased from about 4 million to 5 million. Beginning in the fifth millennium, the plow was invented, irrigation began, and cities emerged. There was an upturn in population during the Greco-Roman era beginning in the middle of the first millennium BCE. Much slower growth followed in the third through eighth centuries CE. Population fluctuated until after the major European plague in the mid-1300s, after which population resumed an upward trajectory, particularly accelerating in the seventeenth century.

Many have attributed the population explosion of recent centuries to the Industrial Revolution, but clearly, its impetus predated the Industrial Revolution by one or two centuries. Economist Robert Fogel attributes this population growth to the Second Agricultural Revolution beginning in the seventeenth century (the First Agricultural Revolution beginning around 9000 BCE with the discovery of farming techniques.) The Second Agricultural Revolution, starting in Europe, involved a combination of improved crop rotation methods, better planting and cultivation techniques, new technology, and improved storage and distribution methods. Beginning in the early nineteenth century (c. 1820), the Industrial Revolution was built upon the gains from agricultural advancements.

Robert Fogel calls the phenomenon we have experienced in recent centuries “technophysio evolution.” Technology improved agriculture so that many people could eat beyond mere subsistence levels and live healthier and more productive lives. Better agriculture production also required fewer workers freeing up labor for other pursuits. These other pursuits included the pursuit of new technologies that both bettered people’s lives and further improved agricultural production. Thus, a cycle of technophysio evolution was set in motion.

Next we look at what is known as the Demographic Transition Model

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WSI: Other Measures

The relationship between longer lives, more income, greater freedom, and other aspects of prosperity also show up in other indicators. Here are just three:

Keep in mind that the world's population has nearly doubled over the time elapsed in these graphs. Thus, the absolute numbers grow rapidly if the percentages are increasing. I could go on with more stats like the precipitous drop in conflicts worldwide over the fifteen years (click here), but you get the picture. The world is becoming a more prosperous place for more and more people!

With that said, I want to be clear on a few issues. Nothing I've written in these last three posts justifies colonialism or the horrific abuses that have occurred with oppression. Nor does it justify interventionist acts committed by the United States and other world powers in pursuit of their own interest. Nor does it suggest that there isn't abuse today or that every corner of the world is growing prosperity. But it suggests that, in a stumbling, bumbling manner, the world has been experiencing a widespread and spreading outbreak of prosperity that dwarfs anything humanity has encountered before. 

In the next few posts, I want to look at what sparked the changes of the last three centuries.

(For further enlightenment, I'd also invite you to check out this entertaining and informative 20-minute presentation at the TED conferences by Hans Rosling about the improving state of the world.)

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WSI: Political and Economic Freedom

The previous four posts have illustrated the improvement in prosperity spreading across the globe as measured by long life and the soaring improvements in economic status. But there is at least one other measure of prosperity we need to visit. What about political freedom and civil liberties?

At the close of the eighteenth century, the number of democracies in the world could be counted on one hand, representing only a tiny fraction of the world population. By the late nineteenth century, democracy began spreading to more nations. Today, most nations feel obliged to characterize themselves as democracies, regardless of their actual circumstances.

Freedom House has been using various criteria to evaluate nations on their political and civil rights for decades. They rank nations into seven categories but more generally rank them as "free," "partly free," and "not free." I have compared the state of freedom between 1975 and 2005 in the two tables below. Each nation's population at the time was assigned one of the three statuses. Each percentage below is the percentage of people in a designated region with a given status. Pay particular attention to the size of the green bars as they indicate the percentage of people living in "free" countries.

The percentage of the world population living in free countries has soared from 16% to 43% over the last thirty years. Only the Middle East and North Africa region has moved away from freedom. Significant improvements are seen in most other regions of the world.

Next, we turn to a few other general indicators.

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WSI: Regional Variation in the Global Economic Expansion

Economic historian Angus Maddison offers some other powerful insights into the recent global economic expansion by doing some regional analysis. The popular history of the world is that through colonization, the West European nations enriched themselves by robbing other regions of the world of their resources, thus driving them into destitution. Let's take a look at the impact of colonization and the industrial revolution on those regions outside Western Europe, West European Offshoots (like the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), and Japan:

Every region has experienced magnitudes of growth since the beginning of the industrial revolution. We see this is particularly true after World War II. The former USSR data is a bit distorted on the graph because there was a significant drop in per capita income during the 1990s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. However, growth has returned over the past decade. Russia's per capita GDP has grown nearly 25% in the three years after 2003.

The truly bleak portion of the picture is Africa. Africa was ahead of Asia in growth throughout the twentieth century until the 1980s. The inability to establish sound governments and the AIDS epidemic have stagnated Africa's growth and even reversed it in several sub-Saharan nations. Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the few stagnated or declining regions globally, but this reversal did not begin until the 1980s.

The fact is that there has been a significant improvement in the absolute per capita income of nations outside the West. And not only are people not getting poorer outside the West, but non-Western emerging economies have also been growing faster than Western economies.

(Source: The Economist)

However, as this chart below shows there is a lot of catching up to do:

The realities of world economic growth are more complex than I can nuance in this short post. There are disparities when we disaggregate the data. Still, the percentage of people living on the equivalent of less than I$1 a day has shrunk from 39% in 1970 to less than 20% in 2000. The UN anticipates it will be less than 10% in 2015. All this during a period when the world population doubled!

Nearly half of humanity lives in forty nations experiencing 7% annual growth, a growth rate that will double the size of the economy every ten years. A recent article in the Economist reports:

...since the mid-1990s, the incomes of the poorest fifth have risen everywhere except, marginally, in Latin America, where they have been affected by after-shocks of debt crises. In Asia, the real incomes of the poorest fifth rose 4% a year; in Africa, by 2% a year, faster than the rise for other income groups.

A recent Reuters story indicates that while Brazil's overall annual economic growth for the first decade of the 21st Century has been at 5%. In comparison, the annual economic growth rate for Brazil's bottom 10% of the population has been 9%.

The overall picture is one of unprecedented improvements in the lives of billions of people around the world. Whatever we may think of the rate of change, the overall picture is not one of the poor getting poorer under the oppression of Western consumerism.

Finally, a closing note on the impact of colonialism. Economic historian Paul Bairoch highlights two powerful and pervasive myths about colonialism in his book Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes. One is held by the right and the other by the left. The one held by the right is that Western European nations achieved their growth through free trade. He shows convincingly that only after about 1960 did free trade begin to be practiced widely among nations. The other myth, more pertinent to our discussion, is that colonialism was the backbone of European economic growth. On the contrary, Bairoch shows that imports of raw materials into Western economies accounted for a small fraction of total raw materials, and colonial markets for finished goods never amounted to a few percentage points of the overall economy. In fact, colonial possessions, originally established when mercantilist thinking was in vogue, may have stunted colonial powers' economic growth during the industrial revolution because of the high "carrying cost" of maintaining colonies.

The real damage done to colonies was less a matter of the resources extracted and more about suppressing industrial development within the colonies. The good news is you don't need colonialism to develop a strong economy. The challenge is to nurture industry among the former colonial states, which is happening at various rates worldwide right now.

So once again, when we look at our present circumstances in the context of the flow of history, we see an expansion of prosperity working its way throughout the world. But there are a few more indicators we should also note.

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WSI: Worldwide Per Capita Income

We have seen how prosperity, measured in terms of long life, is spreading throughout most of the planet. Yet when most people think of the disparity between nations, they usually think in terms of income levels. Income is correlated with other factors that empower us to survive and thrive.

The common refrain we hear today is "The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer," and that perspective is present in Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change. N. T. Wright, a theologian whose work I've found very helpful, writes:

And now we have the new global evils: rampant, uncaring, and irresponsible materialism and capitalism on the one hand; raging unthinking religious fundamentalism on the other. As one famous book puts it, we have ‘Jihad versus McWorld.” (Whether there is such a thing as caring capitalism, or for that matter thoughtful fundamentalism, isn’t the point at the moment.) …. It doesn’t take a Ph.D in macroeconomics to know that if the rich are getting richer by the minute, and the poor poorer, there is something badly wrong. (Simply Christian, 8)

It also doesn't take a Ph.D. in macroeconomics to verify such claims either. :) What can we say about per capita income on a historical basis?

Comparing income across eras is difficult. Inflation and other variables make direct comparison impossible. Furthermore, comparing contemporary currency-based economies to barter economies will not work. Economic historians have developed a concept called "purchasing power parity" (PPP) to aid in this comparative analysis. The value of a dollar at a fixed point in time is chosen, and the value of income at all other points is pegged to the fixed dollar's purchasing power. We will use a PPP measure of "1990 International Dollars" (I$) for our purposes. Annual per capita Gross Domestic Product (the total market value of all final goods and services produced within a given country in a given period, usually a year) will be used as a proxy for income.

Not all economists agree on how to achieve parity between the present and more distant eras. Angus Maddison, one of the foremost authorities on this topic, suggests that I$400 per capita is a subsistence income level typical of subsistence living before the industrial revolution. However, economist Brad Delong, who has done his own analysis, claims:

“A large proportion of our high standard of living today derives not just from our ability to more cheaply and productively manufacture the commodities of 1800, but from our ability to manufacture whole new types of commodities, some of which do a better job of meeting needs that we knew we had back in 1800, and some of which meet needs that were unimagined back in 1800.” (Brad DeLong)

Therefore, DeLong puts historic subsistence living at I$90, but both scholars have similar income estimates in recent eras.

Another difference is that while Maddison has tended to focus his analysis on the past two millennia, DeLong has analyzed more ancient eras. Either way, when you plot their data over the past few millennia on a chart, you get this:

DeLong reports that it took from 10,000 BCE until 1750 for per capita GDP to double from I$90 to I$178. (I$109 in year 1 CE.) Maddison says a per capita GDP of I$467 in 1 CE and I$616 in 1700. The following chart shows their estimates between 1600 and 2003:

You can see that the growth accelerates beginning in the early nineteenth century. Many have suggested that the industrial revolution began not long after 1750, and many inventions indeed came into being not long after that time. However, there was a lag time of a few decades between the advent of various technologies and their placement in productive use. Maddison argues for a beginning point of 1820 (as do other economic historians.) Regardless, keep in mind that the world population grew more than sixfold from less than one billion to more than 6.6 billion from 1750 to 2000 during this explosion in per capita income.

So in the aggregate, we can see that growth in worldwide per capita income is astounding. But how broadly spread is the economic expansion?

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WSI: Infant Mortality

A second measure of prosperity demographers frequently use is the infant mortality rate. The infant mortality rate is the number of children that die between birth and their first birthday per 1,000 live births. Because the first year of life is when human beings are most vulnerable, their ability to survive the first year of life says a lot about the state of their society; thus, the significance of the infant mortality rate.

So what can we say about this measure of prosperity throughout human history? Here are estimates typical of social scientists and economists who study these issues:

In the year 1000, the average infant could expect to live about 24 years. A third died in the first year of life. Hunger and epidemic disease ravaged the survivors. By 1820, life expectation had risen to 36 years in the west, with only marginal improvement elsewhere. (Angus Maddison, Contours of the World Economy, 1-2030 AD, 69)

Before industrialization, at least one out of every five children died before reaching his or her first birthday; that is infant mortality measured as the number of children dying before the age of one, typically exceeded 200 per 1,000 live births. … In the United States, as late as 1900, infant mortality was 160; …” (Indur Goklany, The Improving State of the World, 27)

 

Let's look at the change in the infant mortality rate for the last fifty years:

Note that the average infant mortality rate for developing nations in 2003 is at the same level as that for the developed world fifty years ago. The trend continues downward. This is not to say that every nation, or every region within a nation, or every subgroup within a nation, has prospered equally well. As with life expectancy, note the tragic impact the AIDS epidemic has had on sub-Saharan Africa by looking at this map of infant mortality from Wikipedia:

During the 1990s, there was a small increase in the rate for the former Soviet nations, but that trend turned positive again. There are disparities between Anglos and non-Anglos in the United States. Disparities exist, but only about a dozen (mostly small) African nations have infant mortality rates above 100. Most of the world population lives in nations with far lower rates, including India (34.6) and China (22.1).

Using infant mortality as a measure of prosperity, the world is far more prosperous than ever, and the gap is narrowing between the top and bottom rungs of the global social ladder. Again, most of this change occurred during a time when the world population grew sixfold, from less than one billion in 1800 to about 6.6 billion today!

So as we look at the trajectory of change in the world, we find unprecedented rises in prosperity. It is uneven growth, but every corner of the planet has improved, and the gap between top and bottom nations is closing.

Next, we will look at economic issues.

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WSI: Life Expectancy

Demographers commonly use life expectancy rates as a measure of societal well-being. The life expectancy rate is the years someone is expected to live when born based on actuarial science. Long life is a universal indicator of prosperity across cultures and time. It is an important measure to demographers because achieving it requires a complex mix of variables, like a sustained nutritious food supply, a sanitary and safe environment, relatively little disease, the absence of war, and a stable society.

So what can we say about this measure of prosperity throughout human history? Here are estimates of two social scientists and economists typical of those who study these issues:

For most of its existence, Homo sapiens lived in far-flung hunter-and-gathering communities, each of which was quite small and barely able to reproduce itself. Life expectancy at birth was hardly twenty-five years on average, and those persons who survived childhood often died violently, in combat with other hunters, at relatively young ages. (Robert William Fogel, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism, 48)

For much of human history, average life expectancy used to be 20-30 years. By 1900, it had climbed to about 31 years … By 2003 it was 66.8 years. (Indur Goklany, The Improving State of the World, 31)

To put the last statement by Goklany in perspective, let's graph the estimated life expectancy on a chart:

If we show only the last two centuries, we get a clearer picture of what has happened:

Using life expectancy as a measure of prosperity, the world is far more prosperous than ever, and the gap is narrowing between the top and bottom rungs of the global community. More amazing, most of this change occurred over a time when the total world population grew sixfold, from less than 1 billion in 1800 to about 6.6 billion today!

This is not to say that every nation, or every region within a nation, or every subgroup within a nation, has prospered equally well. Note the tragic impact of the AIDS epidemic and social chaos has had on sub-Saharan Africa by looking at this map of life expectancy from Wikipedia:

The trajectory of change is an unprecedented rise in prosperity. It is uneven growth, but every corner of the planet has improved, and the gap between top and bottom nations is closing.

Next, we look at infant mortality rates.

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World Social Indicators: Introduction

Is the state of the world getting better or getting worse? How would you answer that question? What indicators would you look to?

In his book Making the Best of It: Following Jesus in the Real World, John Stackhouse makes the case that our mission is to seek the greatest shalom possible in the world, always cognizant that shalom in its fullness will only be recognized at the consummation of the new creation after Christ's return. I think he's right on target. But how would we measure shalom?

A few weeks ago, I was at a worship service where Isaiah 65:17-25 was the Scripture text.

17 For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
20 No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
21 They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
23 They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD --
and their descendants as well.
24 Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent -- its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain, (NRSV)

Several themes jump out from this characterization of a world restored to shalom. There are some very practical and specific features:

• God will delight in his people and be attentive to them. (18-19, 24)
• Safety will prevail. (19)
• Infant mortality will cease. (20)
• Life expectancy will increase beyond 100 years. (20)
• There will be a just and prosperous order in society (absence of war and oppression.) (21-24)
• Nature itself will be altered into a more peaceful order. (25)

The New Testament version of the new creation expands this vision even further. In the New Testament, God dwells with humankind, and there is eternal life. But it seems that if we look at the features of shalom like the ones in this Isaiah passage as standards, we can get a good sense of whether or not the world is moving in the right direction.

Especially interesting about this Isaiah passage is the direct reference to infant mortality rates and life expectancy. Demographers and sociologists frequently turn to these measures for an overall sense of societal welfare. Why? These two indicators serve as indirect indicators of other societal realities. Many other social variables (i.e., adequate food, health care, environment, social stability, healthy social institutions, and low crime) must be positive for these two variables to be positive.

What was particularly interesting about the worship service I attended was that the preacher used this passage to point to the declining state of shalom in our world. Rising inequality, AIDS, poverty in Africa, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and polar bears drowning due to melting ice (the last one was in the prayer of confession.) The pastor was not alone. Earlier this year, I extensively reviewed Brain McLaren's Everything Must Change, in which he characterizes the present world order as a "suicide machine." Is this an accurate assessment? I think not.

The most common trait in these assessments is that they are usually thoroughly ahistorical. They are without context. What I want to do with this series is offer some thoughts about how we might measure shalom, at least from the perspective of physical and material matters over lengthy periods. (Regular readers of the Kruse Kronicle have seen some of this before.) I'll do several posts that look at some key indicators. As you will see, I conclude that we live in an era of unprecedented expansion of global shalom.

That is not to say we are at some Francis Fukuyama-like "End of History" moment, but the idea that the global village is in decline is indefensible. Unprecedented positive change is underway and has been for some time. Yet there are still a billion or more people who are untouched by these world events. After presenting my indicators, I will do a few posts on Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It.

I hope you'll join me for some conversation.

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