Human Welfare and All We Have to Be Thankful For

This post is the second in a series on The Skeptical Environmentalist, by Bjorn Lomborg. The first dealt with Part 1: The Litany. This installment will deal entirely with Part 2: Human Welfare

How are people getting by today, in all corners of the Earth, compared with how they have been doing in the past? In the section entitled "Human Welfare", Bjorn Lomborg attempts to answer as many facets of that question in as much detail as the information available to him allows. In many ways, this section reminds me of W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm's Myths of Rich and Poor, an entire book dedicated to answering similar questions as they pertain to America.

The difference is that "Human Welfare" is just one section in a much larger book, making up about a third of the total Skeptical Environmentalist. Beyond that, it goes into far more statistical detail than Cox and Alm's book, and covers a global scope rather than a national one. Still, the two readings complement one another well.

In this section, Lomborg intends to demonstrate that all the evidence suggests that human beings are, for the most part, better off than they ever have been; they are living longer and their quality of life is at a historical high.

He begins his exploration of "Human Welfare" by examining the overpopulation myth.

In the early 1950s women in developing countries gave birth to an average of more than six children - compared to an average of around three today

With improved living conditions, medicine, sanitation and general economic prosperity, the death rate falls. The transition towards a more urban and developed economy makes children more likely to survive while they start to cost more than they contribute, needing more education, working less and transferring the care of their parents to nursing homes. Consequently, the birth rate drops. In the gap between the falling death rate and birth rate, the population grows. In the case of Sweden, it quintupled during this process.(page 46)

He argues, therefore, that populationg growth is not a general trend, but rather, the mark of a transitional period in the development of a civilization. He continues:

the growth of the global population peaked in the early 1960s at just over 2 percent a year. It has since fallen to 1.26 percent and is expected to fall further, to 0.46 percent.(page 47)

So while the global population is undeniably growing, the rate of increase is slowing. Lomborg then moves to his first critique of the overpopulation myth, arguing against the idea that the density of population will create a problem.

The poit is, however, that the number of people is not a problem. Many of the most densely populated countries are in Europe. The most densely populated region, Southeast Asia, has the same number of people per square km as the United Kingdom. The Netherlands, Belgium and Japan are far more densely populated than Indonesia.

Lomborg continues:

Another interpretation of overpopulation which Ehrlich employs these days, focuses on the population density being sustainable. If a nation's present population cannot sustain itself in the long term then the nation is overpopulated. But to put it mildly, it seems bizarre to insist that a population should be able to support itself from the specific land on which it lives. The whole idea of a trading economy is that productiong does not necessarily have to take place at the physical location of demand, but where it is most efficient.(page 48)

An idea that is explained not nearly often enough, and so I will provide this reading material for those interested in the economics of trade. Needless to say, the myths of suffocating living space and unsustainability are based on a flawed criteria for evaluating the facts.

Lomborg goes on to argue that, not only is population density far from a problem, in fact, the most densely populated cities offer a better standard of living than the more spread out rural lifestyle.

In more densely populated areas, the most serious infectious diseases such as malaria and sleeping sickness become less of a problem the closer the buildings are together, because less space is left for the swampy areas where mosquitos and flies can breed. Moreover, water supplies, sewage systems and health services are considerably better in urban areas than in rural ones. Education is much easier to come by in the city - in most developing countries there is more than ten percentage points difference between the education of rural and urban areas - and city-dwellers are on average better fed and less malnourished.
Actually, rural regions by far dominate the problem of global poverty. Towns and cities, on the other hand, are power centers which provide greater economic growth. Urban areas in developing countires produce 60 percent of GDP with just one third of the population. The World Resources Institute clearly concludes that "cities are growing because they provide, on average, greater social and economic benefits than do rural areas."(page 49)

Having tackled overpopulation, Lomborg moves on to examine trends in life expectancy.

Talking about what we consider today to be the "developed world", Lomborg explains:

After 1850, life expectancy soared. Over the 150 years that followed, the increase in life expectancy was astonishing. It almost doubled.
The sequence of events was similar in the most industrialized countries. In France, life expectancy in 1800 was about 30. In Denmark it was around 44 in 1845. All have ended up with a life expectancy in the seventies, with an average of 77 years for developed countires.

Then, for everyone else:

On the other hand, life expectancy in the rest of the world was very low until the beginning of the twentieth century. It is traditionally estimated that the life expectancy of the whole world in 1900 was still around 30. In 1950 people lived for an average of 46.5 years, and in 1998 for as long as 67 years. So life expectancy has more than doubled within the last hundred years.(Page 50)

Of course, a worldwide average will often result in the very well off averaging out those with a much lower life expectancy. So Lomborg charts the average life expectancy by country, and that chart he makes the most modest conclusion that he can:

the important thing is to stress that more than 85 percent of all the world's inhabitants can expect to live for at least 60 years (page 53)

We live not just longer lives, but also healthier ones:

The important killers, pneumonia and tuberculosis, have decreased dramatically over the past century in the US, and total mortality from infections per 100,000 has dropped from 800 to 50, compared to the stable non-infection rate of about 800. Figures from the UK and other industrialized nations show similar declines in infectious diseases.

Because of a rise in food production, we now have more food per person than ever.

It is remarkable that the fall in the proportion of people starving in the world should have come at the same time as the population of developing countries doubled. What is more astounding is that the actual number of people starving in the Third World has fallen. While in 1971 almost 920 million people were starving, the total fell to below 792 million in 1997. In 2010 it is expected to fall to 680 million. These figures are, of course, still frighteningly high, but it is important to emphasize that today more than 2 billion more people are not starving. (Page 61-62)

The final analytical chapter of "Human Welfare" examines prosperity, and in characteristic fashion, before the chapter even begins Lomborg takes his readers on an aside to describe the shortcomings and margins of error associated with measuring prosperity with GDP statistics. The conclusion that he comes to:

Thus, we found earlier that GDP over time tends systematically to overestimate wealth, due to the progressive inclusion of the informal and illicit economy. Now we also see that growth measured in terms of GDP is systematically and substantially underestimated when corrected for inflation. This allows us to conclude that GDP measurement probably provides a reasonable impression of wealth and will over a period of time be not over-optimistic, but rather the contrary.

The key phrase, I believe, is "reasonable impression", and though more than simple GDP statistics, be they adjusted for inflation or not, are used in the chapter on prosperity, the goal remains the same: to give readers a "reasonable impression", rather than absolute knowledge, of the situation.

He begins by discussing an estimate of global GDP per capita over 2,000 years:

After an almost constant $400 throughout most of human history, we passed the $700 line in 1800, and 200 years later we were on average more than eight times richer.
If we look at Figure 30 we can see that there has been a 36-fold increase in per capita American production since 1789, and a similar 20-fold British increase since 1756.

The issue of distribution, which in many ways every chapter in "Human Welfare" touches upon, is none the less filled with inspiring facts:

We often believe life in the developing world is deteriorating and that the proportion of poor people is increasing, but the evidence clearly shows the opposite. In fact the UN writes in its 1997 report on poverty and inequality: "Few people realize the great advances already made. In the past 50 years poverty has fallen more than in the pervious 500. And it has been reduced in some respects in almost all countries."(Page 71)

Lomborg also tackles the much-debated question of income inequality.

In 1800 the distribution of income in the UK was probably more skewed than it is today. Back then the poorest 20 percent were at most making 300 present-day pounds a year, compared to the 20 percent richest's £1,650. Today the poor make about £5,500 and the rich £30,000. Now the ratio of rich to poor has declined slightly, and economists would say that inequality has been diminished. However, using the Worldwatch argument, inequality has increased more than 18-fold from £1,350 to £24,500. Does this make sense? Would we really believe that the poor are 18 times worse off today? Or to put it differently, even if the distribution in the UK today was the extremely level £14,000 for the poor and £16,000 for the rich, would we still seriously claim that inequality had increased (from £1,350 to £2,000)?

Lomborg then looks at four categories of countries where an decrease in prosperity occurred in short-term trends and raised understandable concerns about their future prospects. For reference's sake: "PPP" refers to the value of the dollar in the context of what it can buy in a local population.

The first group is the 200+ million population of the former Soviet Union (now CIS), with the Russian Federation as its leading member. Since the beginning of "the shock reforms" in 1992, Russian industrial production has fallen by almost 50 percent and income by 40 percent, and prices have increased by over 2,500 percent. Because of tight state finances, the social safety net has been substantially weakened - 44 percent of the population live below the local poverty line of only PPP$4 a day. After slight GDP growth in 1997 - the first since 1990 - Russia was hit by another crisis in August 1998, causing yet another drop in production, and only in 1999 has growth returned at 3.2 percent. Although much of this growth was achieved through high prices on energy exports and low imports, real increases in production are now prevalent, with growth at 7 percent in 2000 and a forecast 4 percent for 2001.

The second groups is made up of the Latin American countries (with the exception of Chile).

With double-figure growth figures, Brazil was a "miracle economy" in the 1960s.

indexation of wages and tight controls on currency exchange contributed to extreme inflation, reaching 5,000 percent in early 1994. After introduction of the new currency, the real, and tight monetary policy, there now seems to be a potential for more stale development. Although growth is still sluggish, GDP per capita in the late 1990s has consistently exceeded earlier output(page 76)

The third group consists of the many oil-producing nations, which between the onset of the oil crisis and the mid-eighties earned a lot of money on the high price of crude oil. Unfortunately, most of the revenue was spent on consumption and now with much lower oil prices (the latest increase from 1999 notwithstanding) many of these countries have experienced large income drops.

The final, largest group consists of countries south of the Sahara, most of which have experienced extremely low or even negative growth. Together, these nations have shown negative growth of 0.2 percent a year since 1965.

production rate has been measured in terms of exchange rate. This systematically skews the picture

Again, the value of a dollar in Ethiopia is not particularly relevant for most of the country's population, and it is much more a question of what they can buy with their birr. For this reason we should look at the situation in terms of PPP-dollars, which produces quite a different result. In Figure 36 we can see how sub-Saharan Africa experienced almost a doubling of its real per capita income from 1950 to 1992, even though the 1980s brought them little improvement.

Lomborg therefore questions the idea of the "failure of growth" in the majority of these four groups.

as far as Sub-Saharan Africa is concerned it does not seem reasonable to make a comparison based primarily on the American dollar. The region has actually experienced a 75 percent increase in PPP income over the last 42 years. Moreover, the "failure of growth" does not apply to Mexico or Brazil, boasting a doubling and almost tripling of income, respectively, over the past forty years, both experiencing new heights in per capita income.

Lomborg concludes that only one-tenth of the world's population has not experienced any substantial growth in prosperity, and that that is constituted for the most part in the former USSR and in oil-rich Arab states.

Common to most of these nations were that they had structural problems with their economies, and that the readjustment necessary as a result of political and economic instability unfortunately included a sharp decline in income. It is not clear, however, whether this readjustment would not have been necessary in any case in these countries given the history of their local political decisions and their position in the world economy. It certainly seems bold to suggest that growth has failed these countries. There seems to be no reason to assume that they will not once again begin to see substantial growth in income per capita, an income that will eventually exceed their previous maximimum.(page 77)

In the end, "More than 85 percent of the population of developing countires (90 percent of the entire world) have experienced growth to the extent that they have never been as rich as they are now."

Lomborg looks at consumption as one measurement of how we are doing, more of which you can read about here.

In education, the outlook is also very good.

Figure 42 shows how the populations of developing countires now spend far more time at primary school, at secondary school and in higher education. On average, they spend almost twice as long at primary school, more than twice as long in high schools and almost five times as much time attending higher education.(page 81)

In terms of deaths from Epidemics, floods, tidal waves, wind, drought, famine, earthquakes, and volcanos, the decrease has been staggering.

In Figure 46 we see how the death rate from natural disastors has declined dramatically since the early part of the twentieth century. The death rate from 1900 to 1939 was 66 per 100,000 compared to a total death rate of about 2,000-3,000. In the 1990s the disastor death rate was 1.4 compared to a total death rate of 927. The absolute decline has been almost 98 percent, even compared to the decline in the general death rate, the decline has been more than 94 percent. Despite more than a tripling of the global population, the number of dead has dropped from an average of 1.2 million per year in the early part of the century compared to 77,000 in the 1990s.(page 85)

This is particularly worth noting in light of the recent reaction to the 2005 Hurricane season.

Lomborg has taken in a vast amount of information about human welfare and his diagnosis is that on the whole, and in every measured facet, human beings are overwhelmingly better off than they have ever been.

Lomborg never avoids the exceptions to the rule, though he finds them to be mostly subject to slower, rather than negative, growth, and occasionally victims of short-term catastrophes. Even taking these examples into account, however, he maintains that life has continued to improve for almost everyone, though as he explained in "the Litany", there are frequent differences in the rate of improvement.

Once again, Lomborg has made it clear how the most important thing when attempting to gauge anything is context. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, many shouted about the failure of the United States to protect its citizens--before we had any count of how many had died, and without drawing any comparison to equivalent disastors in recent US history. Without context, anything can be labeled as an "unprecedented disastor", because unless you look beyond the immediate example, there are no precendents, good or bad, to measure that claim by.

The Vulgar Moralist has recently stated that "The human race is an ungrateful species", and with Lomborg's assessments in mind, it is hard to disagree.

Part 2: Human Welfare does not look at the possibilities for the future, for it is too concerned with establishing what the current situation is. Our future prospects are examined in Part 3: Can Human Prosperity Continue? This will be the subject of discussion in the next installment.