A note on life expectancy and development
Dani Rodrik has an interesting post discussing how some North African countries have done surprising well in terms of the human development index, despite seeing much slower rates of GDP growth than the more famous East Asian models:
Which are the countries that have improved their human development indicators the most since 1970 relative to their peers? You’d be surprised, as I was, to find that the top 10 is dominated not by East Asian superstars, but by Moslem countries: Oman, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. This year’s Human Development Report is full of neat analysis and results, including this one.
Leaving aside the oil exporting countries, the North African cases are particularly interesting. As Francisco Rodriguez and Emma Samman, two of the report’s authors, note, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria have experienced remarkable gains in life expectancy and educational attainment, leaving many Asian superstars in the dust.
Rodriguez and Samman make the following claim:
Consider the following comparison. In 1970, a baby born in Tunisia could expect to live 54 years; one born in China, 62 years. Today, life expectancy in Tunisia has risen to 74 years, a year longer than that of China. So while China’s per capita income grew almost three times as fast as Tunisia’s, Tunisia’s life expectancy grew twice as fast as China’s. Since it also significantly outperformed China on the education front, Tunisia gives China a run for its money in the overall development story (as captured by the HDI).
I don’t wish to challenge this finding, partly because I am not an expert in this area. Tunisia’s performance does look impressive, and we all know China’s health care and education systems have some gaping holes. Instead I’d merely like to suggest we need to be very careful when considering the impact of economic development on life expectancy. Life expectancy at birth is a sort of snapshot that reflects conditions over a very long period of time.
I believe that life expectancy at birth in China is now much higher than the official statistics show, as those data are measuring life expectancies for people born at various times over the past 100 years. And I hope to convince you that the average person born in China today will live longer than the average person born in Denmark today.
One factor that has held back China is the poor health of its rural population. Part of that reflects poor health care facilities and part reflects environmental risks. But I also think a large part reflects poor health when young. Chinese who are 50 years old were born during the Great Leap Forward, when between 20 and 40 million Chinese starved to death, and many more suffered malnutrition. This link has data from an interesting study of Dutch people born during the 1944-45 famine in Holland. It turns out those people had consistently worse health during their entire lives.
Admittedly, only a small share of the Chinese population was born during the GLF, but most older people were born during periods of political and economic turmoil. Indeed until the land reform of 1979 sharply boosted food output, much of the countryside was chronically malnourished. Old people dying today (which make up a large part of the data from which we estimate life expectancy at birth), lived most of their lives in a country as poor as India and Sub-Saharan Africa were during the same time period. That’s much poorer than Tunisia.
The following list is the CIA estimate of life expectancy in 2009, which is the most recent I could find. I excluded nations with fewer than 100,000 people.
1. Macao 84.36
2. Japan 82.12
3. Singapore 81.98
4. Hong Kong 81.86
5. Australia 81.63
5.b Shanghai in 2008 81.28
6. Canada 81.23
.
.
40. South Korea 78.72
46. Denmark 78.30
50. U.S. 78.11
72. Tunisia 75.78
105. China 73.47
What do you notice? I see East Asian countries scoring really high, and the highest western countries being places with lots of East Asian immigrants. I also see Korea and China lagging somewhat, with indications (from Shanghai) that the problem in China is in rural areas. The other laggard (Korea) is also a country that suffered extreme poverty and war during the 1950s. I believe that Shanghai was less affected by famines than the countryside, although it also has better health care, so it’s hard to know what explains the difference. But I find the Korean case especially interesting; it suggests that the long cloud of history affects life expectancy for quite some time, at least when conditions were extremely bad in previous decades.
This data also suggests that environmental factors may be overrated. Obviously air pollution is extremely bad in Hong Kong and Shanghai, yet both places have extremely high (and fast rising) life expectancy. Undoubtedly there are industrial areas of China where local health suffers due to chemical spills, etc, but I’d guess the nationwide life expectancy is more affected by other factors, such as childhood nutrition, smoking, and current health facilities and access.
I claimed that I would try to convince you that Chinese born today might live longer than Danes born today. That’s already true for Chinese living in places like Beijing, Shanghai and other wealthy coastal cities. My claim is that today even children in the Chinese countryside generally do not suffer from malnutrition (with very localized exceptions) and by the time they are old enough where medical facilities become very important in longevity (say in 50 or 60 years), even interior China will be at least as rich as Shanghai is today.
Why do Asian countries lead the world in life expectancy? Not because they spend a lot on health care, but rather some other factors (perhaps diet, culture, lifestyle, genetics, etc.) Whatever the reason, I’d expect the East Asian/Western gap to become even more noticeable over time, as the older generation of Chinese and Koreans dies off, and all of East Asia converges to Japanese life expectancies.
One reason I indicated that I didn’t wish to challenge the Rodriquez and Sammon finding is that they look at changes in life expectancy–and Tunisia’s has risen faster than China’s. Whether my argument is at all relevant to that claim is a surprisingly complex question that I’ll just hint at here. It depends on both the change in current health care, environmental, and nutrition conditions, as well as the extent to which chronic health problems developed in earlier decades can be ameliorated by those improvements. I’ll leave that to others. And of course they also look at many other indicators of development, such as education.
Tags: Development Economics, East Asia, Health Economics
14. November 2010 at 12:51
Your reasoning sounds convincing. Often people fail to recognize that today’s median Chinese is still a rural farmer in a developing count(r)y and often unable to purchase basic medical treatment.
However, healthy food is cheap and high in demand. –> PPP
14. November 2010 at 13:00
I find it interesting that French North Africa has done so well given that France itself does extremely well in HDI terms.
Might there be some sort of free rider situation?
I know I have encountered a surprising number of Moroccans in graduate study in economics, all seemingly healthy, wealthy and wise. And they all seem to be in some kind of competition to be more French than the French.
And on that note, what have the Romans (or the French for that matter) ever done for us?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso
14. November 2010 at 13:29
I am not sue what one can actually read into lists like this. For example, over 40 per cent of the population of Singapore was born elsewhere. So Singapore attracts a lot of wealthy people and they tend to have a high life expectancy. Does that say anything about Singapore or the average Singaporean? I am sure the same dynamics probably apply to Hong Kong. With the most prosperous Chinese agglomerating in Shanghai the figures could be somewhat distorted. The figures for Tunisia seem more meaningful because there has not been an influx of people from elsewhere distorting the figures. Although we will all need to eat more fish to catch up with Japan.
14. November 2010 at 13:41
“I see East Asian countries scoring really high, and the highest western countries being places with lots of East Asian immigrants. ”
Japanese-Americans have an even higher life expectancy than Japanese. But Japanese who immigrate to the US aren’t a independent sample of Japanese.
14. November 2010 at 14:09
Facinating commentary–but you might be wrong.
Why? East Asians are discovering fast food.
My wife is Thai, and the traditional Thai diet is nearly perfect. Desert was nearly unknown in traditonal Thai diet, while fruits sufficed (fruits are everywhere in Thailand). Despite zero health care in rural Thailand, my wife has all her teeth and is not fat.
It is battle to keep today’s Thai children away from candy and fast food. I see a little more obesity on every trip there.
There is something about french fries and ding-dongs that make them irresistible to children, and once they have them, they want them ever more.
To this day, I love good quality french fries and cheesecake. My wife looks forward to fruit.
Our kids…well.
14. November 2010 at 16:39
As a side note, Japanese Americans (Japanese people living in the US) have a higher life expectancy than Japanese people living in Japan). This is true for just about every ethnicity in the US. The group of that ethnicity within the US has a higher life expectancy than the same group outside the US.
14. November 2010 at 16:58
Doc Merlin.
That’s because we’re better than the original. That’s what makes us Americans.
14. November 2010 at 17:10
Good ideas from Bruce Bartlett:
http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/2040/how-fix-economy-short-term-version-and-long-term-version?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+CapitalGainsAndGames+(Capital+Gains+and+Games+-+Wall+Street,+Washington,+and+Everything+in+Between)
But the odds of Bernanke taxing reserves are about as high as the odds the Republicans will cut spending – i.e. vastly less than zero.
14. November 2010 at 17:12
One has to wonder again about Bernanke – maybe he really is trying to destroy us all. He knows what to do and just refuses to do it. It is so horrible.
14. November 2010 at 17:16
E-P is in fine fettle. Will the ECB print? No chance.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8132689/Europe-stumbles-blindly-towards-its-1931-moment.html
14. November 2010 at 17:35
Bernanke knows what to do. But he is facing a huge crowd of FRB presidents in each FOMC meeting. Thanks to the passivity of the President he has not had a sufficient number of governors to balance their numbers. As a result we (the people) are screwed.
14. November 2010 at 18:20
I think since the fed isn’t just the central bank but also the trade organization for banks and the banking regulator, their incentives aren’t what we would like.
I think this list approximates what they care about in the order which they do.
1. Health of the politically connected banks
2. Health of the less politically connected banks.
3. Their own regulatory and political power
4. Monetary stability
5. Unemployment
14. November 2010 at 18:39
S.O. Thanks.
Mark, That brings up the issue of the Mediterranean cuisine, which is supposed to be healthy. BTW, they don’t mention the Algerian civil war from the 1990s, which had an appalling death toll.
Richard, Those are good points, but it’s not just income. Asian-Americans live longer than white Americans, even adjusting for income. Shanghai is much poorer than Europe, but its residents live longer than any European country. That’s rather amazing when you consider all the poverty, pollution, and smoking in Shanghai.
John, That’s a good point. BTW, I read that the Japanese smoke quite a bit. I’m guessing Japanese-Americans smoke less.
Benjamin, Yes, I also married a women from Asia (China) and the Chinese diet has improved my health. I used to feel 10 yours older than I really am, now I just feel 5 years older.
Doc Merlin, That’s a good point–and it’s also true for income, if I’m not mistaken. So even if we have lots of inequality, at least we can say that each ethnic group is better off than in the country they left. Of course Native Americans may not be thrilled by that argument.
JimP, Negative IOR is a great ideas. Wish I had thought of it. 🙂
Ditto for consumption taxes.
E-P is great when he’s on your side, but he can be fickle.
Mark and JimP, Mark’s right, as frustrated as I have been with Bernanke, he’s actually on the side pushing for easier money. He needs to push harder, but looking at the reaction to QE2, i see what he’s up against. I think zero IOR and level targeting might actually be less controversial and more effective, as “printing money” sounds to the average person like the road to Zimbabwe.
14. November 2010 at 18:43
Doc, I find it hard to believe Bernanke would be that cynical. He was just a college professor like me–why wouldn’t he want to do a good job?
In any case, the tight money of 2008 hurt the banks.
14. November 2010 at 18:49
@Scott:
Its partially because he believes that poor-banking health is what causes the RGDP drop down during depressions with adverse AD shocks.
14. November 2010 at 19:06
@Mark A. Sadowski,
“I find it interesting that French North Africa has done so well given that France itself does extremely well in HDI terms.”
The report provides some hints:
“Interestingly, one consequence of the Cold War in this region may have been to create relatively strong states that were also able to forge a space for independent policymaking. The French colonial legacy and its emphasis on building a strong public bureaucracy may also have played a role here.” [1]
@Scott,
“Tunisia’s performance does look impressive”
It doesn’t look that impressive if you know the history of Kerala, an Indian state. It’s one of the poorest states in India but it has eradicated illiteracy and has the health indicators of a developed country [2, 3, 4]. What’s the main cause of this impressive achievement? Empowering women. From the UN report:
“Take Tunisia. Much of its progress in education can be traced back to a set of reforms adopted early after independence in 1956 by the administration of Habib Bourguiba. A vital step here was the 1958 educational reform, which established a timetable for enrollment of all 6 year olds by 1966 and full enrollment of all primary school aged children by 1971. There is now substantial evidence that the health and schooling of children can be raised by empowering women, and this is precisely what Tunisia did when it raised the minimum age for marriage, revoked the colonial ban on imports of contraceptives, instituted the first family planning programme in Africa, legalized abortion, made polygamy illegal, and gave women the right to divorce as well as the right to stand and vote for election.”
According to Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, liberating women can be done cheaply: 77 billion dollars per year for universal primary education, eradication of adult illiteracy, school lunch programs for 44 poorest countries, assistance to preschool children and pregnant women in 44 poorest countries and reproductive health care and family planning services [5]
77 billion a year is a small price to pay for ending extreme poverty, accelerating development and stabilizing population, the dreaded P factor [6]
1- http://hdr.undp.org/en/humandev/lets-talk-hd/
2- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/631960
3- http://www.jstor.org/pss/4364830
4- http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/98sep/kerala.htm
5- http://www.earth-policy.org/books/pb4/pb4_presentation
6- http://www.sustainablescale.org/ConceptualFramework/UnderstandingScale/MeasuringScale/TheIPATEquation.aspx
14. November 2010 at 19:26
“Interestingly, one consequence of the Cold War in this region may have been to create relatively strong states that were also able to forge a space for independent policymaking. The French colonial legacy and its emphasis on building a strong public bureaucracy may also have played a role here.”
Ah Yeah. Maybe that was part of my point.
14. November 2010 at 19:26
Doc Merlin, Yes, I agree that’s how Bernanke looks at things.
Lucas, Good comment.
I knew about Kerela. What’s the underlying cultural factor that explains their progressive policies?
I’m all for equal rights for women, and agree it does help boost all sorts of social indicators. Regarding the $77 billion plan: Can this be done in a way that avoids some of the previous failings of aid (identified by people like Easterly?) Or are you saying this money can be spent by local governments? It doesn’t seem that large relative to the GDP of even the low income countries.
If you’ve followed my blog, you may know that I am a fan of “liberalism” broadly defined–which to me means free markets plus government interventions that make sense on utilitarian grounds. It also means political liberalism, decentralization, democracy, and an end to racial and gender discrimination.
14. November 2010 at 19:55
This reminds me of the time I was foolish enough to take on HDI
http://mapscroll.blogspot.com/2009/06/human-development-in-united-states-part.html
And then invent my own:
http://mapscroll.blogspot.com/2009/06/human-development-in-united-states-part_26.html
How much of an idiot was I?
14. November 2010 at 20:39
@Mark
Due to decreasing marginal returns per hour worked, average GDP per hour worked may not be the best measure.
Also, the big question is, are people working more because they chose to, for example is longer US work hours a result of higher home-production efficiency? Or are people working different hours because they have to?
If europeans are just working less because they chose to, then thats fine. If they would like to work more (and get paid more) but cannot, because of labor restrictions… then that is a problem.
Also, it would be interesting to look at the data using a nationality comparison instead of a state by state comparison. I think just about every nationality averages better in the US than they do in their home country. (I have seen the data on life expectancy for this, but not for GDP or wages etc.)
14. November 2010 at 21:04
Haha,
I’m glad you’re desturbed Doc Merlin. That was my whole point. I hate when people are comfortable in their beliefs.
Your points are well taken but they’re also points that should be carefully explored.
15. November 2010 at 05:53
Mark, You said;
“How much of an idiot was I?
Well let me put it this way, an HDI index that has Spain above 550, Switzerland below 470 and Portugal around 300 is certainly “interesting”.
Doc Merlin, The Europeans are discouraged from working by high tax rates–when French taxes were at US levels in the 1960s, they worked as long as we did. There’s also the possibility that many Europeans officially listed as unemployed are actually working off the books, so that they can continue collecting benefits. I’m told this is fairly common.
15. November 2010 at 06:32
Wow – amazing. QE works before it starts. Guess we need a new theory. Oh wait – we already have one.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-15/bond-options-showing-quantitative-easing-starting-to-work-before-it-begins.html
15. November 2010 at 06:45
Here is the opening for Obama.
An open letter begging for deflation (not openly of course) – in that voice for deflation – the WSJ.
The WSJ intro to the letter:
The following is the text of an open letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke signed by several economists, along with investors and political strategists, most of them close to Republicans:
end quote
Yes – most of them close to the Republicans. How surprising is that?
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/11/15/open-letter-to-ben-bernanke/
Obama should debate this – openly. And of course he would be much much better off to talk about incomes, not inflation. And he should openly demand that IOR be ended.
Lets debate this – jobs vs hard money. Who do you think would win? And he can put long term fiscal reform in this context.
15. November 2010 at 06:55
And here is Felix Salmon responding to the Bloomberg article. The perfect voice of conventional reasoning. Someone ought to try to set the guy straight.
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/11/15/is-qe2-already-working/
15. November 2010 at 07:07
Blinder defends Bernanke – and mentions negative IOR.
Come on Obama. Speak up.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704658204575611052418939656.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
15. November 2010 at 07:16
Scott is mentioned here:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/253160
15. November 2010 at 07:57
“despite seeing much slower rates of GDP growth…”
It’s not the growth rate that matters, it’s the level that should matter for things like education and life expectancy. Tunisia has slightly higher GDP per capita than China, and has been richer for a longer period of time. The mystery to me is how China managed to get a life expectancy of 62 during the height of Mao’s reign.
15. November 2010 at 09:45
Why Chanos signed the deflationary letter – because deflation is his bet. Its what he (and the other barking bears) want.
http://www.businessinsider.com/jim-chanos-on-quantitative-easing-2010-11
15. November 2010 at 09:47
JimP:
“Blinder defends Bernanke – and mentions negative IOR.
Come on Obama. Speak up.”
You can’t seriously expect him to speak? He hasn’t taken a real position on anything other than healthcare.
15. November 2010 at 09:53
@JimP:
Bartlett’s N.Y. Times piece begins: “We have a growing debt problem that is too large to stabilize just with spending cuts.” But over at Econlog Arnold Kling and David Henderson have solved the debt problem without extra revenues. (http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/11/can_i_have_my_p.html and http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/11/i_agree_budget.html.)
15. November 2010 at 10:28
Hoo-boy. Cover of WSJ today says Republican Party is against QE2. This is illiterate partisan dogma.
15. November 2010 at 10:43
Stats
I know. Ain’t it sad. I am encouraging him to save his own bacon (another word comes to mind). Will he?
15. November 2010 at 10:49
@Benjamin Cole
‘Hoo-boy. Cover of WSJ today says Republican Party is against QE2. This is illiterate partisan dogma.’
Dangit, no, there are very good reasons to be against QE2, that are not partisan at all.
15. November 2010 at 11:08
It would be a terrible idea for President Obama to get involved in monetary policy. The Fed are the least independent of the major central banks and monetary policy has already been horribly politicised in the US. Hardly a day goes by without some politician telling them they are following the wrong monetary policy.
Roger Farmer again calls for QE to buy stocks rather than bonds. There is certainly logic in the proposal. However, one can only imagine how politicised that would make monetary policy.
http://blogs.ft.com/economistsforum/2010/11/how-to-restore-confidence-in-the-us-economy-without-inflating-a-new-asset-market-bubble/#more-12501
15. November 2010 at 11:27
Richard
I certainly do not agree. The Fed has failed in its mandate – failed. We are a democracy and the Fed is part of our democratic national institutions. It should be subject to direct criticism from the President on this failure. Prices are just not stable, and haven’t been for more than two years.
Here is a good Bloomberg interview from Ned Phelps – on the Fed failure, among other things.
And Phelps is interesting, because he is hard to identify as either on the right or the left.
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/64528742/
15. November 2010 at 14:05
I’m a little surprised that the yield curve jumped today, anyone else? Does it mean the traders think the Fed will back off of its purchases, or do they really expect higher inflation? Or is the drive to push other asset prices up working such that people are selling their bonds? The S&P was slightly down today…tea leaves.
15. November 2010 at 14:20
‘Does it mean the traders think the Fed will back off of its purchases, or do they really expect higher inflation.’
Its not so much expect as it is currently happening. The commodity markets are already predicting higher price inflation. Wallmart just released a study that iirc points to about 4% annual price inflation.
15. November 2010 at 14:21
The above post was directed at JTapp.
15. November 2010 at 14:23
DeLong on the deflationists letter.
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/11/economists-and-non-economists-behaving-very-badly-indeed-watch.html
15. November 2010 at 15:41
I had an essay due on this at the end of the week, your timing is excellent!
Always difficult to work out how to properly cite a blog post. Totally off topic but where do you stand as an academic with reference to citing blog posts? I assume something like Vox would be okay, but Brad DeLong’s blog?
15. November 2010 at 16:57
I notice that the UN has very different numbers than the CIA in your Wiki link. I wonder what the methodology difference is, there seems to be a systematic difference in the Asian life expectancy measures.
The interesting thing, to me, is how much Mao-ist China overperformed it’s HDI, while post colonial North Africa underperformed relative to its wealth in 1970.
Also the Gapminder chart linked on Wiki is great, giving a bubble chart estimating PPP income and life expectancy from 1800-2010 in every country.
http://www.bit.ly/9htwpK
15. November 2010 at 18:15
JimP, Yes, and rates also rose after QE1, as the economy started to recover slightly from the awful condition of March 2009. A modest rise of rates is consistent with growing economic strength (I hope.) The good news is that both real and nominal rates are rising, so inflation expectations (although a bit higher), are still not excessive, but the higher real interest rates point to slightly higher real growth
JimP#2, My hunch is that Obama is afraid to debate the issue. It may be better politics to let Bernanke handle it. Again, his big mistake was not getting his people on the Board earlier.
When Diamond is confirmed, he’ll have 4 out of seven on the Board, and the Board controls the IOR, not the 12 member FOMC.
Thanks for all the links. I have one new post–and may do another.
azmyth, A later commenter has an interesting graphical link to life expectancy by country over time. It shows Chinese life expectancy falling from about 55 to 35 in 1960 (the Great Leap Forward.) I think in general temperate countries like China have a bit longer life expectancies than tropical countries like India and the African countries. Perhaps due to less microbes or some other environmental factor.
Richard, There are good arguments both ways. The reason we are in such a mess is that the Fed hasn’t been given a clear mandate. If it had then things would be much simpler–either do their job or have Obama tell them to do their job. But no one knows what the hell their job is.
JimP has a good point that it seems they have fallen short of their mandate. Indeed they explained their QE2 partly on grounds that both inflation and employment were lower than they would like, and are expected to both remain lower.
JTapp, I can’t figure out the yield curve. I couldn’t understand why 5 year TIPS yields fell to negative 0.6%. Now they’re up to negative 0.2%, which seems slightly less insane. Inflation expectations rose earlier, but have not risen during this recent rate increase.
Doc Merlin, The TIPS still say inflation will remain low.
Left Outside, Since I’m a blogger I’ll say that blog posts should be taken seriously, and cited. Some of mine are fluff, but some are serious.
OGT, Really neat chart–other people might want to look at it. The US is the big yellow circle, BTW.
I am pretty sure the CIA data is more recent. The UN data is from a range of dates, and countries like Singapore have seen fast rising life expectancies. That’s why I used their data.
15. November 2010 at 20:10
@Scott,
“Lucas, Good comment.
I knew about Kerela. What’s the underlying cultural factor that explains their progressive policies?”
There’s a field called Kerala studies [1] A while ago, I did a little reading and it seems to me there are multiple factors that explain Kerala’s performance. Wikipedia has a nice summary [2] To my untrained eye, the most important things seem to be:
– Benevolent rulers and Christian missionaries in the 19th century [3]
– The efforts of a democratically-elected Communist government to push hard for the abolition of the caste system [4] and land reform [5]
– A culture of strong grassroots activism.
“I’m all for equal rights for women, and agree it does help boost all sorts of social indicators. Regarding the $77 billion plan: Can this be done in a way that avoids some of the previous failings of aid (identified by people like Easterly?) Or are you saying this money can be spent by local governments? It doesn’t seem that large relative to the GDP of even the low income countries.”
I think that money can be spent by local governments with a bit of help from aid agencies. But political stability and peace are needed first, according to the UN report.
If the Earth Policy Institute got the numbers right, there are too many welfare-enhancing interventions available at low cost. It seems unbelievable that millions of human beings can escape the age of pestilence and famine [6] while also laying a strong foundation for development.
I think you’ll like Lester Brown’s book [free download, 7], even if the tone suggest too much central planning for your taste.
“If you’ve followed my blog, you may know that I am a fan of “liberalism” broadly defined-which to me means free markets plus government interventions that make sense on utilitarian grounds. It also means political liberalism, decentralization, democracy, and an end to racial and gender discrimination.”
I’m a fan of your blog. I’m surprised of the many agreements between your ideas and mine. I completely endorse your view of macro and monetary policy and there’s much in common between our ideal tax policies. The main differences, I think, are that I want bigger government (Nordic style) and that I think the “Limits to Growth” argument is true. In my book, the laws of physics/biology rule over the laws of economics. This belief may be the result of my natural science background, though.
1- http://scholar.google.com.ar/scholar?q=%22Kerala+studies%22
2- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala_model
3- http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0517/p12s01-legn.html
4- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namboothiri#Social_reforms
5- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Reforms_Ordinance
6- http://www.courseweb.uottawa.ca/pop8910/Notes/Epidemiologic_Transition.htm
7- http://www.earth-policy.org/books/pb4
16. November 2010 at 03:49
Sumner-Notice on the chart, you can check whatever country you’re interested in from the list on the right and it will highlight that particular country’s movement in income and life expectancy over the two hundred years.
16. November 2010 at 19:43
Scott,
You wrote:
“Well let me put it this way, an HDI index that has Spain above 550, Switzerland below 470 and Portugal around 300 is certainly “interesting”.”
Does it really? Does it really surprise you that Spain is above Switzerland? Or that Portugal is as low as it is?
It doesn’t surprise me.
17. November 2010 at 18:11
Lucas, thanks for that infor, A few quick comments:
1. The info on Kerela fits in with my view that a strong civic-minded culture produces better governance.
2. There are limits to the sort of growth we are doing now. I am one of the few right-wingers who does believe global warming calls for a carbon tax. The reason I don’t see ultimate limits to growth is that I think we’ll continue to develop new ways of addressing environmental issues, allowing us to grow in unexpected ways (less energy- intensive ways.)
OGT, Thanks for that info. Oddly, I have a pretty good eye for graphs, and I can usually tell which country is which by just the size and color of the dot–except that there’s a bunch of European countries with similar populations.
Mark, Switzerland seems way ahead of Spain to me, and Portugal seems only modestly behind Spain. But obviously that’s just my gut instinct (although at least I’ve visited all three countries.)
18. November 2010 at 19:11
Scott,
Granted, I’ve never been to any of those countries. I’m only going by the data. But then sometimes too much stock is put in anecdotal evidence.
19. November 2010 at 15:32
Mark, When you vist Switzerland, you see a country that seems perfect in almost every respect. It looks prosperous, and everything seems to work just right. Or at least that’s my impression.
Spain . . . not so much. Although I prefer to visit Spain.