Converging World Economic Development
In the linked brief BBC video, Professor Hans Rosling of Karolinska Institute in Sweden explains the last 200 years of remarkable human development and progress and demonstrates how the world economies have converged during the past 50 years.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYsojo&featu
As an international economic development professional, I appreciate this positive view of development and progress by humanity. Professor Rosling relies on statistics to prove his point very convincingly. My discussion of Prof. Rosling’s lecture and some observations follow.
Hans Rosling's lecture combines enormous quantities of public data with a sport's commentator's style to reveal the story of the world's past, present and future development. He explores stats using augmented reality animation. In this spectacular section of BBC’s 'The Joy of Stats' program, he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers - in just four minutes. He plots life expectancy versus levels of income to measure wealth, and how in time the economies converged especially during the last 50 years.
Prof. Rosling is the chairman of Gapminder Foundation that has developed a large data bank associated with this available on www.gapminder.com . The data bank includes a substantial amount of economic data that can be used to answer some very basic questions relative to the indicators of wealth and poverty.
Some of the quick indicators of poverty reduction include information such as per capita income; poverty Index; life expectancy; access to modern technology like cell phones, computers, internet, etc; family size (associated with women's fertility), and on. Gapminder data shows striking results on economic convergence in the most important indicators of poverty such as life expectancy, women's fertility, urbanization etc.
While it is true that within countries there is increased inequality with the rich gaining a larger share of the spoils of the nations resources, for the world as a whole this is not true, there is a growing middle class in many countries. However, this takes time.
There are exceptions, such as the failed states. The failed states index include a list of countries that are usually isolated dictatorships with lots of corruption (Zimbabwe, Cuba, North Korea, Burma etc.), or others where law and order has ceased to exist.
This reminded me of a 1970s book by Alvin Toffler, entitled, "Future Shock," which was a required reading for one of the courses I took at Syracuse University graduate school of management. I understand “Future Shock” has sold over 6 million copies and has been widely translated.
“Future shock” is a term for the psychological state of individuals and entire societies, which Toffler introduced. Toffler's shortest definition of future shock is a personal perception of "too much change in too short a period of time".
Toffler argued that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a "super-industrial society". This change will overwhelm people, the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaving them disconnected and suffering from "shattering stress and disorientation" – future shocked.
Toffler stated that the majority of social problems were symptoms of the future shock. In his discussion of the components of such shock, he also popularized the term information overload.
I would like to use one of Toffler’s arguments to explain the spectacularly rapid human development that took place during the last half century: If the known human history is about 10,000 years, and an average human life expectancy during most of the human history has been, on average 40 years, then, all known human history could be expressed in 250 human life years (or life spans).
Using Rosling’s argument of the last two centuries of rapid human economic development, this translates into 6.25 human life years—six and a quarter years. Data shows that the most rapid human development has taken place during the last 50 years. This translates into 1.25 human life years, or one and a quarter human life years or life spans. This is phenomenal.
If most of the human economic development has taken place during the past 1 and a quarter human life years, this is a phenomenal development and human progress. As the human health improves, so do the life spans, and thus progress in many areas of development is taking less and less.
In this case, Hans Rosling's argument, relative to Alvin Toffler’s observations, shows that humanity is capable of coping with the future shocks brought on by economic progress. But as the velocity of this human progress increases, development assistance must also take into consideration the “future shock” effects.
Life was once short and cheap and this was only 250 years ago, then some countries took off with the industrial revolution and medical improvements. Now others are rapidly catching up to make for a more equal world. Globalization has caused this convergence.
In our line of work in development, we help accelerate this human progress by building the pillars of free market economies, its necessary institutions and required capacity to ensure this economic development to take root.
Especially since the 1990s, the world has become a smaller village with the increased liberalization, privatization and structural reforms. These increased access of many poorer countries to new technologies and investment capital. The inhuman conditions under which most highly populated countries live have begun offering more job opportunities to their citizens. This has had a large impact in reducing the mass migrations from rural areas to urban areas. This is inadequate as yet. More must be accomplished.
I think the next stage of human progress that follows will even be more rapid, and we must consider developing ways and means for our constituents to cope with the rapid development. The best one is education, and awareness. The other one is definitely entrepreneurship, access to finance and improved business environment.
Once again, globalization is the force underlying this progress.
Dr. Demir Yener
Hans Rosling is Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute, and Director of the Gapminder Foundation in Sweden. For his lecture please click on:
